Transforming Church: Participating in God’s Mission through Community Development

By Tim Monger

The area of community development provides a unique opportunity for the church to partner with God in his mission to see the world transformed.

In Transforming Church, Tim Monger draws from over a decade of experience working in integral mission alongside local congregations in East Africa. Providing an overview of the current landscape of African community development, he engages the question of how the church can be truly effective in alleviating poverty and bringing hope to its communities. He explores the theological and biblical foundations for integral mission, alongside its practical realities, and casts a vision for what can be achieved when the church engages the development context in ways that are biblically grounded, culturally appropriate and practically relevant.

This book is an excellent resource for practitioners, students and Christian leaders involved, or seeking to be involved, in rural and urban community development, especially in Africa. Transforming Church calls readers to think biblically, theologically and culturally about their work, while inviting them to expand their vision of the church’s role in ushering in the kingdom of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Langham Global Library
• Release date: Jan 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781839737732

Book preview

Foreword

We Africans and African Christian leaders know all too well the challenges and struggles of Africa today. We see them every day. And we also know the immense calling God has for his church to proclaim the good news of Jesus and see his kingdom and wisdom come in every place in society. But how can the African church be effective in this task and offer real hope among the day-to-day challenges and struggles of its communities?

The church must be transformed from the inside out in order to be transforming. We must see that the life of the church in all its aspects is missional and that God calls us to embrace his holistic mission as he is concerned with the whole person, the whole community: body, mind and spirit. This means that to be true to the Bible, to follow the example of Jesus, the church must address the whole person and whole community in all their needs. This has implications for the individual Christian, for the local church, for denominations and church groups, for missionary societies, for Christian NGOs and for theological training institutions.

Tim Monger partnered with our family of churches in the Mwanza region of Tanzania as we began this journey of growing into holistic or integral mission. He, his wife Rachel and their daughters Amisadai and Louisa lived and worked with us. As a family, they lived an ordinary life, adapted to the Tanzanian environment and served together, making many sacrifices to make sure that less-privileged people and families including children with albinism were reached.

Tim is known to be a leader full of God’s grace and wisdom. He is a preacher of the gospel of Jesus reaching many people with the word of God and showing how it connects with daily life. But he is also a practical trainer as he teaches what he lives, adjusting quickly to Tanzanian culture and learning our language. He helped us introduce sustainable agricultural skills to our student pastors in church-planting schools which has led them into a more effective ministry. But he and his team also helped us begin beekeeping, girls’ menstrual health, community health education and entrepreneurship projects, sometimes in the farthest places. All these enabled the church to bring to many communities spiritual, physical, psychological and even economic benefits.

Tim has enabled Emmanuel International to be recognized as the co-worker with Tanzania Assemblies of God (TAG) in integral mission. Emmanuel International is recognized by TAG national office and is now helping TAG in another region with particular challenges to reach the predominantly Muslim population through integral mission and practical projects.

As Christianity in Africa comes of age, may the church be enabled to bring about a lasting and wide gospel transformation so Africa can enjoy living under the reign of God. And so I heartily recommend this book, Transforming Church: Participating in God’s Mission Through Community Development.

Valentine Mbuke

Assistant Bishop of South Mwanza District,

National Leader of Teen Challenge, Tanzania

September 2021

Preface

This book comes out of many years of living in Tanzania and serving with churches to assist them to be equipped for integral mission in their communities. My work with the churches consisted of biblical training in mission, practical training in community development projects and seeking to put these two together into a unified whole. My time in Tanzania was a journey of discovery, attempting, making mistakes, listening and learning. The church’s workers and I found no well-worn paths or methods for doing this work, but discovered that, though there are many pitfalls, if we are faithful, wise and willing to learn, God can lead us to work effectively with the African church so that it is shaped to participate in a mission of community transformation.

I have written this work to pass on what I have learned in seeking to implement practically a theological vision of church-based mission, rooted in the biblical story and relevant for today. Theology and practice must go hand in hand. God’s mission is always profound and deep and at the same time always relevant and practical. Community development among poor communities is a vital outworking of the gospel, concretely revealing the wisdom, power and love of God.

This is a book for students, pastors and Christian development workers (local or expatriate), involved, or seeking to be involved, in rural or urban community development in Africa, to help them think theologically and culturally about their work. It is heartening to see a shift taking place in community development in Africa, where African churches themselves are increasingly taking up the mantle to undertake this vital work. The church is after all the people charged by God to partner with him in bringing his kingdom into every sphere of life, with Jesus enthroned as Lord over all. But often we can be unreflective about this work, doing what comes naturally, following accepted development theories, being at the mercy of donors and their agendas, or not sure how community development quite fits into the overall mission of the church. No wonder there is often a lack of whole-life transformation, empowerment and sustainability of the work! But this need not be the case.

This book then is an attempt to show the reader how community development can be conducted within the overall mission of the church and explicitly connected to this mission. In this way community development and mission are mutually enhancing, and the church is empowered to participate more fully in God’s mission to renew and transform all creation. We consider vital components to community development that must be reflected upon theologically and culturally to ensure we are living and working within a proper missional framework. The aim is not to prescribe a method to follow but to give Christian workers the vital tools to be able to think biblically, culturally and relevantly so as to design and conduct a contextualized transformative approach to community development for the churches in their localities. Then, even if a church involves other actors in supporting this work, the church itself through the power of the Holy Spirit will be the driver of change.

It may help if I provide some background to me and my work in Africa, since I refer to it throughout, sometimes positively and sometimes less so, as a means of grounding the discussion or offering examples to reflect upon. My family and I served with Emmanuel International, a Christian organization which partners with churches to serve the poor in holistic mission. We began in Iringa, Tanzania, partnering with the Anglican Diocese of Ruaha, assisting them to set up a fuel-efficient stoves project in the villages of Magozi and Kimande. During this time, we also partnered with the Pentecostal Holiness Mission, Iringa District, for which I taught missiology courses in their Bible college.

After this, at the request of the Tanzania Assemblies of God bishop of Mwanza, we moved to Mwanza to help them develop a holistic approach to mission across the region. My task involved working with village and city churches, as well as helping the regional and national Tanzania Assemblies of God. The practical engagement included assisting churches to run conservation agriculture projects in villages such as Kayenze and beekeeping projects in villages such as Ngudu and advising on both a community health education project on Kome Island and an entrepreneurship for social transformation project on Ukerewe Island, all of which are mentioned in this book. And throughout this time I was privileged to teach courses on missiology and biblical studies at St. Paul College, Mwanza, and on practical mission at the church-planting schools, which provided constant challenge and enrichment.

Although my work has been conducted in East Africa – largely Tanzania, some engagement in Kenya and now in Uganda – which serves as the primary context for the book, I believe it has particular applicability to many other places in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. First, I have engaged with Africans from other countries, both at conferences and through reading, and the same issues and challenges frequently crop up. And second, I have seen that Africans tend to refer to themselves interchangeably as nationals and continentals.

While this book has been written for the African context, several people have brought to my attention that such a book is also needed for the West with many churches struggling to know how to be relevant and make a significant contribution to community transformation in their localities. Their villages, towns, cities and countries are in desperate need of experiencing the light of gospel transformation. Though the issues may differ to a degree from those in Africa, they are no less deep and Western churches are equally called to join with God in community transformation. Western readers should therefore be able to contextualize the approach offered to make it applicable for their situations – something that African students, pastors and theologians have had to do for years when reading books and articles by Western authors.

As African pastors like to say – and I also believe – that Africa’s time is now, my prayer in writing this book is that the double meaning of its title, Transforming Church, will be displayed in and through the African church so that it will write a rousing new chapter in church history both for the good of Africa and as a stimulus to the rest of the worldwide church.

There are so many people who deserve acknowledgment in the writing of this book. Some are mentioned throughout the pages of the book and it has been my joy to work with them. There are in fact too many to list or even to remember but I know God will not forget them or their labour for his kingdom. I do wish to note Pastor Aldo Maliga, Bishop Charles Mkumbo, Canon Jackson Mwidowe and Pastor Huruma Nkone, godly and servant-hearted pastors with whom I had the privilege of working and who were a constant source of encouragement and wisdom. I also thank my esteemed St. Paul College colleague Marco Methuselah, from whom I learned so much about the African and Sukuma worldviews. Marco kindly read and offered valuable comments on chapter 4. I express my deep appreciation to Bishop Valentine Mbuke for graciously writing the foreword. But more than that, we have enjoyed a rich friendship and working relationship. He exemplifies the type of leadership this book tries to call for and his church, Beacon Mission Christian Centre, is a transforming church. I give my thanks and sincere love to my wonderful Emmanuel International colleagues, without whom none of this work with the church would have been possible. I also thank our many supporters and supporting churches who enabled my family and me to serve God in Africa over the years. I am appreciative to my Amigos Worldwide colleagues in Uganda for the chance to teach through some of the chapters with them and make refinements. I am very grateful to Rachel Lewis who read the entire manuscript and offered insightful contributions to improve it. And I express my thanks to Langham Publishing for kindly publishing this book.

My parents, Edwin and Margaret Monger, who brought me up to know the Lord Jesus and who were able to share in our work in the training of pastors in Tanzania, have my heartfelt gratitude. Though my dad has now died, it is heartening to see his labour in the Lord continuing to bear fruit.

Finally, I wish to thank my family, my wife Rachel and our daughters Amisadai and Louisa, because we could do all this together for the strengthening of the church, the good of Africa and the glory of God. What an adventure it has been!

1

Integral Mission: Will the Church in Africa Take up the Mantle?

God Surprises Us

Amon Suge was the youthful, enthusiastic and hardworking pastor of the Kayenze church, the first church we worked with in the Mwanza region of Tanzania in 2014. His small church of about ten to fifteen members were meeting in a disused cotton storehouse for their weekly gatherings. Kayenze is a fishing village on the shores of Lake Victoria but outside the village centre most inhabitants, including the majority of the church members, are subsistence farmers. The name, Kayenze, derives from the Sukuma word Mayenze, meaning reeds, symbolizing abundance. Villagers say that the strong, vibrant Mayenze were located just offshore, but they, along with the abundance the land used to be known for, had sadly long disappeared. Kayenze was symbolic of much of the Mwanza region which was known for its struggle to produce enough food for its population. For this reason, Tanzania Assemblies of God, Mwanza had identified agriculture as one of the opportunities for the church’s involvement in community development. Kayenze and its outlying villages were selected as some of the suitable places to begin a conservation agriculture project, not least because Amon was himself a keen farmer.

We conducted the initial classroom training with the small pilot group of farmers, including Amon and his villagers, in which we shared how God was the first farmer, and how the principles of conservation agriculture work out, and then left them the challenge to prepare their fields. Then it was time for us to begin the practical training. My wife and I and our two agriculture trainers, Peter and Esther, turned up full of anticipation to assist Amon in planting on his demonstration farm. Could Kayenze become Mayenze once again? Together we followed the principles of conservation agriculture, planting maize and beans, and spreading big piles of rice stems Amon had collected as mulch to cover the soil and aid water retention. Having finished we prayed for God to send the rain, committing the field and the crops to him, knowing that without him there was no chance of success and every chance Amon and his family would go hungry. Kayenze was the Lord’s and everything in it (Ps 24).

That year was a good year. Amon helped our trainers to show the other participants how to plant their fields. He also cared for his fields well, weeding them and doing his best to keep his chickens from eating the mulch. He was delighted with the yield from the exhausted soil, harvesting three times as much maize from his conservation agriculture plot as from his conventional agriculture plot. We encouraged him that by continuing with this approach and leaning on God and his wisdom, he could hope for even better harvests in the future as the land healed. And neighbouring villagers, who laughed at us all for smothering the land with grasses on the day we planted, were now also intrigued and asking if they could join the project next year.

In the following years the momentum built, even through times of drought or deluge. More farmers joined the programme each season as they saw or heard of the results. Amon and we conducted further trainings and he loved to impart to others what farming could be like, from both Scripture and experience, when God is involved. He visited participants on their farms, advised them, encouraged them and prayed with them, pastoring those inside and outside the church as they worked. He never tired or lost hope. God has persevered with us and so we should persevere with others, he encouraged me one day after we experienced frustrations with project participants who seemed not to be participating!

As we worked together in Kayenze, we and our trainers spent considerable time with Amon and the church, often joining the church for worship services. When we were invited, we preached from different angles about the mission God has for us, his church, always seeking to link the agriculture project to that mission. One Sunday, after about four years, it dawned on us what God had done. The church of ten to fifteen members had grown to over a hundred strong. As we talked afterwards, Amon gave thanks for the part the project had played in the increase. People have become Christians and joined the church through the project, he said. There had been the natural blending of physical and spiritual outcomes. They had seen God’s handiwork in creation on the farm, enjoying the subsequent benefits, and had given him praise. This was God’s doing. We of course had made many mistakes, some of which I will pick up and address later in the book. But God’s blessing and grace and the outworking of his mission were evident. Even today Kayenze is still a work in progress but the signs of God’s transforming power are there.

The message I wish to convey in this book is to offer an approach of how the African church can learn in their way to participate more fully with God in his mission in their communities. Not every place will need agriculture like Kayenze. Some places will require water supply, health education, children’s ministries, business training, student programmes, advocacy, conflict resolution . . . or more likely a combination of several projects. The setting will vary from remote villages to bustling cities. But in each place, God has work for the church to do, and if we are faithful to work with him, he may surprise us by bringing his transformation through our church to our community. I hope to set out how the pastor, church planter or development worker can help churches to think theologically for themselves and to construct with God’s help a culturally appropriate approach to sharing in his all-embracing mission.

The African church has a huge opportunity today to be a blessing to its communities and be part of God’s transformation in a way, I believe, no other entity can. Secular organizations see community development as something like a process where community members come together to identify and take collective action on issues which are important to them with the aim of increasing quality of life, opportunity, equality and justice. The church can aim higher for thoroughgoing community transformation. (I will consider an apt definition of community development at the end of this chapter.) But although the church is uniquely placed to carry out this transforming role, it has often unfortunately not been able to grasp this place, the reasons for which we will come to later in this chapter. If the oft-quoted saying The local church is the hope of the world is to become a reality in its fullest sense, then the church and its servants must be willing to face and address some important opportunities and challenges in today’s African contexts. To these we now turn.

The Opportunities the Church Has for Involvement in Community Development

Sometimes the church carries on its life and mission oblivious to the situation around it. In this way, the church acts as if its mission is timeless and fails to be relevant to its context. In one sense, the church’s mission is timeless, unchanging. We are still carrying out the same mission Jesus entrusted to his disciples and which they have handed through the generations all the way to us as believers in the twenty-first century. But in another sense, the church’s mission is always to be expressed and worked out in ways that respond to the situation of its time, culture and locality, answering the cries of those around. As we will see later, Jesus always responded to the pleas of the poor, needy and oppressed in his vicinity. And the church likewise does best when it is aware of its context and has its eyes and ears open.

So what is the situation which affords the church opportunities in mission and community development? What I offer are just the contours of some of the bigger general opportunities that are commonly understood as relevant and fundamental to much of Africa. There are of course many others, at both continental and local levels, but this brief sketch will suffice for our purposes. I survey the situation in terms of the church’s potential response to poverty, the deeper contribution it could make to fill the gaps in relation to the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments and business, and the church’s own growth and increasing capacity.

Poverty

First, although in many ways Africa is a blessed continent, it does face widespread poverty. I will examine the nature of poverty later, but the fact is that wherever we look in Africa we see the poor, in the fields, in the villages, on the streets, in the city centres, even lurking in the wealthy neighbourhoods, desperate for any help they can get. Poverty often exists because of a lack of community development,[1] leading to deprivation and injustice. The church that wants to respond to the poor needs to think long and hard about the nature of poverty and underlying causes in its community, so that it can act like Jesus who, seeing the situation in his time, in launching his radical ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth exclaimed, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor (Luke 4:18).

Designing relevant and effective ministries to alleviate poverty is a process for any church. The first stage for the church in seeking to set up such ministries is to understand the general and basic causes of poverty in Africa. After that, the church will need to spend time refining its understanding and considering the more specific reasons for poverty in its locality. For now, I briefly outline some of the basic causes[2] of poverty in Africa as a means of highlighting how the church, if it has not done so already, can begin to think about its response to poverty. These basic causes include climate change, food insecurity, community health struggles, the lack of education, unemployment, conflict issues, gender disparity and leadership.

Climate change has become a dominant issue of our day in the whole world and not only in Africa. But in Africa, particularly in the rural areas, it is felt acutely.[3] It is often the rural poor who are among the most affected by these changing weather patterns. If anyone doubts climate change is happening, that person should go to rural Africa. Villagers constantly talk about climate change and how it has adversely affected their lives. Hotter temperatures and uneven rainfall are not just inconvenient; they directly affect people who are dependent on the land for their livelihood. Travel too can be made impossible when dirt roads are washed away by flash floods, which can also result in the loss of homes and increase in disease. Although there are global factors in the changing weather patterns in African villages, there are often local factors too. I have seen dramatic variation in weather patterns even within the same region. Some villages have experienced the destruction of the local environment particularly through the excessive cutting down of trees and consequently low rainfall whereas other villages which have