Becoming global Christians

Today, 60% of all Christians live in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To find out what that means for us in North America, Carmen Andres, editor of The Christian Leader (the US Mennonite Brethren periodical) interviewed Nancy Heisey, president-elect of Mennonite World Conference and an instructor in biblical studies and church history at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., and Nzash Lumeya, a native of Congo who now teaches at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno, Calif.

What does it mean to say that the southern hemisphere is changing the face of Christianity?

Nancy Heisey

Heisey: The measures of growth in the Christian family in the Two-Thirds World and the shift of the percentages from northern to southern hemisphere are statistics. From my perspective, two observations offer more insight into these changes than the numbers themselves.

First, just as early Christians moved out from Jerusalem into all directions of the known world (and not just to Rome and Europe), today the Christian family is truly a round-the-world family. The promise of Revelation 5:9 – that people of every tribe, language, people and nation are within the community praising God – has been fulfilled in our time.

Second, members of the Christian family in the Two-Thirds World are helping churches everywhere to rediscover our Christian roots. Like members of the early Christian movement, believers in many places today live with a lively awareness of the spirit world and a concrete belief that God’s Spirit gives them the power they need to respond to the other spirit powers of their world. Our southern sisters and brothers, in a way similar to what is recorded in the New Testament, understand that God is at work everywhere and not only in the small corners of our personal lives. As did the early Christians, today’s growing churches are carrying out Jesus’ healing, liberating ministry with a warm invitation that is shaped not by wealth or technology, but by vibrant preaching, loving service and peaceable action.

Nzash Lumeya

Lumeya: The communication of Christ in countries south of the equator has transformed people’s concept of life. They now owe their lives to God. Idols and shrines no longer occupy the central place in a clan or village. The growing number of new faces in African, Asian and Latin American local churches challenge a provincial understanding of Christianity. Christ and His Word have become the ultimate reference to Christians. Worshipping Christ together has consolidated the unity Christians across ethnic, cultural, linguistic and denominational divisions. There is a whole growing missionary movement sweeping through our world from churches south of the equator.

How will Anabaptism change as a result?

Heisey: I characterize the changes in the global Mennonite and Brethren in Christ family – descendants of the 16th-century Anabaptists – as moving from a commitment to our “tradition” to a commitment to our “heritage”.

Commitment to Anabaptism as a tradition has focused on the history of the movement in 16th-century central Europe and on learning from those experiences and the models of the early leaders how to follow Christ faithfully. It has also focused on the many traditions that have grown up among European, US and Canadian descendants of those early Anabaptists, including everything from styles of mission activity, structures of organizing the church and formal patterns of educating our youth to ethnic details such as singing in four-part harmony and eating special foods.

This history and these traditions are good – they are a gift from God – but they don’t necessarily represent faithful Christian living for all the family. So Anabaptism is changing to an understanding of Anabaptism as a heritage, a well of resources that help believers in many different settings and circumstances to think through the fundamental question: “What does it mean to faithfully follow Christ in our environment?”

I believe that the responses to this question need to be shaped not only by Anabaptism’s past history but perhaps even more by the social, economic, religious and political realities of individual locations where churches are growing. In the process of interweaving understandings from the past and realities of the present, with God’s help, many beautiful and vibrant forms of ministry are growing up. We may not look all that much alike, but by our common commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and to following His way of making peace and justice, we will know that we belong to the same heritage.

Lumeya: In the South, most Anabaptist Christians were not exposed to Anabaptist beliefs such as nonviolence, pacifism, simple lifestyle/sharing and mission. The 1980s and 1990s have been instrumental in fostering a biblical Anabaptist belief anchored in Christ (conversion, baptism and the Lord’s Supper), community and holistic mission. For the moment, Anabaptism from the South and evangelicalism look almost the same theologically.

Leadership and formal and informal training are going to bring change in the future. Following Christ as the Prince of Peace, instead of local and national powers, may produce persecutions and suffering in the permissive global village (Acts 4, 1 Corinthians 3:11).

Why is it important for Africans to host the Mennonite World Conference assembly in Zimbabwe in August 2003?

Heisey: One reason for holding this gathering in Africa is that it has never been held on that continent before.

Another is that the assembly will provide opportunities for more African Mennonites to get to know other African brothers and sisters – and (this) should enrich the witness of the different African conferences. (Inter-Anabaptist relationships in Africa are not as well developed as in Latin America or Asia.)

Third, it is important for African sisters and brothers to have the opportunity to lead the rest of us in worship, share with us their lives as a faith community and demonstrate for us approaches to mission that they are developing. It’s one thing to read about these realities in a church periodical but something entirely different to experience them firsthand.

Lumeya: Every six years, Mennonite and Brethren in Christ around the world have decided to meet and fellowship together. This is one of the ways we express our unity in Christ and love to one another. This is a time of celebration and praise but also listening to God as we read the Scriptures together and grasp its meaning in a global multicultural context.

Coming together in the name of Christ means that we belong to Him and to one another. Healthy relationships with Christ and within the extended family of Christ are central for Anabaptists. In going to Zimbabwe, one can visit Anabaptist sisters and brothers from Angola, Burkina Faso, Congo–Brazzaville, Cabinda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

Why is it important for Americans and Canadians to go?

Heisey: The host church in Zimbabwe is living through very difficult times, both in terms of political uncertainty and in terms of a serious food shortage. These realities mean that North Americans cannot go lightheartedly, as if on a tourist holiday. But it is important for us to go, to join in the witness there to Jesus’ way, to support the church with the presence of many Christian brothers and sisters and to share in the suffering they are undergoing.

We in the North have a habit of viewing ourselves as givers and others as receivers. That temptation might also plague us in attending the assembly. It is my hope that by attending the assembly we can be receivers of God’s grace through the lives and witness of our African sisters and brothers, (that) we open ourselves to receive spiritual nourishment and new insights into faithful living.

Lumeya: Our sisters and brothers from North America and their siblings in Christ who live around the world stand side-by-side through covenantal love. This is part of our commitment to Christ and loyalty to His worldwide body. Going to Zimbabwe is one way to be both local and global followers of Christ.