Today’s post contains remarks prepared by Rev. Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma for the panel “African Women and Mission” at the Methodist Mission Bicentennial Conference. Rev. Mwayuma is administrative assistant to Bishop Mande Muyombo of the North Katanga Episcopal Area. Rev. Mwayuma’s remarks are translated from French.
The Role of African Women in Mission, Today and Tomorrow
Women are the strength and vitality of the churches of Africa by their great number, their drive and their constant availability. They are the bold energy of God, indispensable today as they have never been, capable of provoking a change. They are everywhere and interconnected.
They keep the flame of faith awake, especially in the most remote areas. They transmit the faith to children, who are the face of the future generation of the church of tomorrow.
Despite the zeal of the male missionaries, their efforts do not produce sufficient fruit if they are not helped by women.
For example, consider M. Louis and Madame Deschact and Marc Nelis and his wife, missionaries among the teachers at the United Methodist station of Mulungwishi. They cannot fulfill this ministry themselves. Only women can freely approach pagan women, maintain with them loving relationships, heal their evils, touch their hearts.
It is thus that the doors open wide before women, not only those of preaching but also those of female education, pastoral coordination, the ministry of evangelization, medical work, as well as the exercise of the hospitality.
Africa is a continent characterized by wars, violence, discrimination and poverty. Several African women have decided to lead a fight for a better life through an evangelistic and pastoral ministry. Consider these cases:
- Reverend Joaquina F. Nhanala, first woman United Methodist Bishop on the African continent, serving in Mozambique;
- Reverend Kabamba Kiboko, first woman pastor in the South Congo Annual Conference. Currently head pastor of Forest Chapel United Methodist Church in the city of Cincinnati, OH;
- Reverend Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma, first woman Assistant to the Bishop in the North Katanga Episcopal Area in the Democratic Republic of Congo;
- The Reverend Mutombo Kimba, first female Methodist pastor in the North Katanga Episcopal Area, subsequently working in the South Congo region and Zambia;
- Ms. Leymah Gbowee, a Methodist woman from Liberia who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her role in the management of a women's peace movement;
- Mother Odette Kalangwa and Ngoie Mutwale, missionary women from northern Katanga and Tanzania.
Nowadays women have a strong influence, especially in social work, education, technical training, etc.
The future of the mission of The United Methodist Church in Africa is to increase evangelization in difficult to reach areas. We must use all the means available to achieve our objectives, with a single goal of strengthening and extending the trust of the mission. This is based on the church's main mission, which is to put faith into action by making all nations disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the whole world.
With God's help, I wish that all mission activities continue, for Jesus said in the Gospel according to John (10:10b) that he came to give a life in abundance. It would be better that the people who will be brought to Jesus enjoy this life in the church of God. The church must open its buildings and systems to persons with disabilities, orphans, widows and widowers, must welcome those who have mental and psychological difficulties and work in a way that integrates each person.
And then the church is called to reflect the love of one’s neighbor by reassuring them of their basic needs such as food, clothing, housing, education, health care etc.
Jesus himself was the example. Wherever he went proclaiming the word of God, he was not indifferent to the sick, nor to the hungry (Luke 7:21), nor to the suffering. In the Gospel according to Matthew (15:31), the crowd was in awe to see that the mute spoke, that the crippled were healed, that the lame walked, that the blind saw. All glorified the God of Israel.
As a church, all these activities should not be separated. They must evolve simultaneously.
Since it is the primary activity, evangelism must be the main purpose of a church for the transformation of the world, bringing lost souls to Christ (Matthew 28:19).
The Church must support all activities without regarding one as more important than the other.
The Church must ensure active participation in all activities, according to the organization, in order to contribute to its development.
The Church must expand the ministry of compassion to needy people, because faith and social work go together hand in hand. This leads us to say that the relationship between these activities must be regarded as an equal one.
To do so, it is appropriate to give the woman all the necessary training so that she is able to regain her dignity and improve her condition of life in the church. Education is necessary because it allows her to play her full part and ensures greater integration into the structure of the Church in the decision-making process.
We affirm that men and women are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). All human beings are endowed with an equal degree of the same dignity. In the Lord, the woman is no different than the man, and the man is no different than the woman.
For just as the woman was taken out of the man, so is the man born by the woman, and all come from God (1 Corinthians 11:11-12). What is important is to encourage African women to bring their stone to the building of the church, that they are not only necessary in the field of the family, that they have ecclesial positions like men because of the educational and transformative power of this equality for a church of tomorrow.
Women’s potential must be taken into account by entrusting them with responsibilities in the ministry of evangelism because they are very present and very engaged in the daily life of the communities. Without the contribution of women, the Africa of tomorrow will not succeed in its evangelizing mission.
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Showing posts with label Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma - African Women and Mission, Part II
Today’s post contains remarks prepared by Rev. Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma for the panel “African Women and Mission” at the Methodist Mission Bicentennial Conference. Rev. Mwayuma is administrative assistant to Bishop Mande Muyombo of the North Katanga Episcopal Area. Rev. Mwayuma’s remarks are translated from French.
Personal History
“The Lord says a word, and the messengers of good news are a great army.” This text from Psalm 68:11 has often encouraged me as a woman in missionary work in Africa.
In all the history of the world, God needed humans to accomplish his salutary mission for the whole of humanity. The history and mission of The United Methodist Church in Africa is very important to me personally as a clergyperson because I am part of it.
I was called from a young age to serve God, something that is not easy. In this society, the primary roles of women were agriculture, child-care, caring for cattle, and housework. God freed me from this hold through The United Methodist Church in order to be a valuable tool in the primary mission of the Church.
After graduating with my degree in theology in 1984, I served in the following positions:
From 1984 to 1999, the Church entrusted me with a great responsibility at the level of our Episcopal region, that of coordinator of women's work. In that role, I took charge of technical, spiritual and literacy services for women in several ecclesial districts. After two years, the supervised women were able to manage their small businesses. Because they mastered basic concepts of reading and arithmetic, this work was successfully accomplished.
I worked in a newly established parish that had fewer than 60 members. After two years, more than 200 souls were won for Christ. God used me for the healing of a sick woman whose arms could not make any movement. Thanks to prayer, she was healed.
From 2000 to 2005, after having had an accelerated training in the field of basic community healthcare in India, the responsibility for basic community healthcare was entrusted to me.
Several seminars were organized in villages near the city of Kamina on preventive medicine with the motto, “Better to prevent than to heal.” In order to support this work financially, the wife of the missionary Tom Rayder of Kamina gave sewing equipment to upgrade the workshop as a basic community health care production unit.
From 2006 to the present day, several responsibilities have been entrusted to me among others:
I was circuit superintendent, that is to say, the head of several parishes. My duty of visiting them was indispensable to the clergy there. I travelled long distances varying between 50 and 60 kilometers by bicycle to achieve these objectives. A few years later, we planted five churches using the greatest strategy of prayer and door-to-door evangelism. Following this growth, the Bukama circuit became an ecclesial district with a District Superintendent.
As I journeyed in ministry, I did not cease to plant new churches and build new schools (Bukama, Luena, Lubudi, Kabalo) and to urge young people to serve God as clergy. That is how I have ten clergy as my spiritual children, including my current Superintendent in the Kalemie district where I work.
I was appointed superintendent of a rural district destroyed by wars, with responsibility for 11 pastors, 5 local preachers, and 10 heads of establishments (directors and prefects). Nine churches were rehabilitated, and six were built. Five new schools were built, and seven were rehabilitated. The membership statistics in the District of Kabalo increased from 326,540 to 912,693 members.
In view of this experience, the church has entrusted me with another great responsibility, that of being the Assistant to the Bishop.
In short, this mission has had a great impact in my life as a clergyperson and as the second female pastor in the North Katanga episcopal region and the first in our Annual Conference of Tanganyika.
Personal History
“The Lord says a word, and the messengers of good news are a great army.” This text from Psalm 68:11 has often encouraged me as a woman in missionary work in Africa.
In all the history of the world, God needed humans to accomplish his salutary mission for the whole of humanity. The history and mission of The United Methodist Church in Africa is very important to me personally as a clergyperson because I am part of it.
I was called from a young age to serve God, something that is not easy. In this society, the primary roles of women were agriculture, child-care, caring for cattle, and housework. God freed me from this hold through The United Methodist Church in order to be a valuable tool in the primary mission of the Church.
After graduating with my degree in theology in 1984, I served in the following positions:
From 1984 to 1999, the Church entrusted me with a great responsibility at the level of our Episcopal region, that of coordinator of women's work. In that role, I took charge of technical, spiritual and literacy services for women in several ecclesial districts. After two years, the supervised women were able to manage their small businesses. Because they mastered basic concepts of reading and arithmetic, this work was successfully accomplished.
I worked in a newly established parish that had fewer than 60 members. After two years, more than 200 souls were won for Christ. God used me for the healing of a sick woman whose arms could not make any movement. Thanks to prayer, she was healed.
From 2000 to 2005, after having had an accelerated training in the field of basic community healthcare in India, the responsibility for basic community healthcare was entrusted to me.
Several seminars were organized in villages near the city of Kamina on preventive medicine with the motto, “Better to prevent than to heal.” In order to support this work financially, the wife of the missionary Tom Rayder of Kamina gave sewing equipment to upgrade the workshop as a basic community health care production unit.
From 2006 to the present day, several responsibilities have been entrusted to me among others:
I was circuit superintendent, that is to say, the head of several parishes. My duty of visiting them was indispensable to the clergy there. I travelled long distances varying between 50 and 60 kilometers by bicycle to achieve these objectives. A few years later, we planted five churches using the greatest strategy of prayer and door-to-door evangelism. Following this growth, the Bukama circuit became an ecclesial district with a District Superintendent.
As I journeyed in ministry, I did not cease to plant new churches and build new schools (Bukama, Luena, Lubudi, Kabalo) and to urge young people to serve God as clergy. That is how I have ten clergy as my spiritual children, including my current Superintendent in the Kalemie district where I work.
I was appointed superintendent of a rural district destroyed by wars, with responsibility for 11 pastors, 5 local preachers, and 10 heads of establishments (directors and prefects). Nine churches were rehabilitated, and six were built. Five new schools were built, and seven were rehabilitated. The membership statistics in the District of Kabalo increased from 326,540 to 912,693 members.
In view of this experience, the church has entrusted me with another great responsibility, that of being the Assistant to the Bishop.
In short, this mission has had a great impact in my life as a clergyperson and as the second female pastor in the North Katanga episcopal region and the first in our Annual Conference of Tanganyika.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma - African Women and Mission, Part I
Today’s post contains remarks prepared by Rev. Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma for the panel “African Women and Mission” at the Methodist Mission Bicentennial Conference. Rev. Mwayuma is administrative assistant to Bishop Mande Muyombo of the North Katanga Episcopal Area. Rev. Mwayuma’s remarks are translated from French.
Introduction and History
In debates about "feminism," too often one confronts abstract and simplified theses. It is worth the trouble of going to the field to see how things went yesterday and go today. Despite their marginalization, African women are creators and actors in several sectors: social, economic, political, religious and cultural. A woman’s identity is more determined by roles in the secular social that limit her rather than by her understanding and acceptance as a child of God who can exercise ministry in the world.
Most of the statistics available today report the presence of three women among every five missionaries, all countries considered together. That is to say, that the role of women in the mission is far from negligible. However, it has not always been so, as a quick historical glimpse highlights.
During the post-Reformation period, Christian missionaries emphasized the family. Women going out in mission had, as their primary responsibility, to care for their homes and to support their husbands in prayer (1 Corinthians 14.33 -36).
The difficulties faced by women in the mission of the church in Africa start with the fact that the acceptance of the missionary woman was not easy in the society where she worked.
Within African society, in a traditional approach, women could neither teach men nor exercise any authority over man. Another more current approach states that the woman could teach, but she was not allowed to occupy a position of authority.
The woman was poorly perceived by those around her, which points to discrimination on the part of men. Women encountered serious depression in the face of cultural arrangements where women in primitive society were considered second class.
On the one hand, knowing that a leader is necessary and that one has the gifts for assuming this function, but that the leadership role has not been offered because one is a woman, led to a lot of frustrations.
On the other hand, accepting such a position in a cultural situation where the woman did not usually occupy a place of leadership can cause strong tensions that will often be very difficult to manage. A woman assigned to a leadership position in mission can easily be judged badly, even by her own colleagues. If she makes an error, it will be judged more severely than a male colleague occupying the same position. If under her direction certain aspects of the work are not as satisfactory as expected, the fact that she is a woman will often be blamed, sometimes quite wrongly.
After several decades, the missionary movement had a great impact in Africa, where women played a large role in this mission, in accordance with the opinion that men and women are equal according to Galatians 3:28.
Men and women, youth and adults, rich and poor, all have understood their baptism as the basis for service in the Christian ministry. Historically, the Methodist movement has given women the opportunity to assert their callings to their duties and to ensure roles of ecclesial leadership for them.
Thus, The United Methodist Church in Africa involves women in all activities – evangelical, spiritual, material, financial and social. Therefore, in Africa, women perform all the same functions as a man; they are actively involved in the functions with which they have been entrusted, according to their gifts.
Over time, the opinion that men and women are equal in the church is spreading more and more nowadays, especially within the major denominations: Reformed, Methodist, Lutheran, and others. This is how John Wesley, the organizer of the Methodist movement, used the biblical foundation to encourage all people.
The church is aware of the importance of the contribution of women to its mission in Africa, which would be less dynamic, less ready to welcome education and generous service without them. They have helped the African church to clarify the understanding of proper service due the power of evangelism. This is particularly true from the point of view of dedication, self-giving, welcoming, listening, concrete attention to people small and large, rich and poor. It is a perspective capable of helping people to challenge certain mental patterns, prejudices or ways of understanding and to organize ecclesial life.
The challenge today in Africa is to give many more places to women in the management of ecclesial affairs. The voice of women continuing the mission must be heard in the same way as the voice of men, because the church is not for men only but also women, especially in Africa where our churches are 70% filled with women.
Bibliography
Mady Vaillant, “Les femmes dans la mission,” Fac-Réflexion 49 (1999), 24-36.
Ruth A. Tucker, “A Historical Overview of Women in Ministry,” Theology News and Notes (Fuller Theological Seminary, March 1995), quoted by Dr. Saphir Athyal.
E. M. Braekman, Histoire du Protestantisme au Congo, (Bruxelles: Librairie des Eclaireurs Unionistes, 1961).
Delia Halverson, Kabamba Kiboko, M. Lynn Scott, and Laceye Warner, Women Called to the Ministry: A Six-Session Study for The United Methodist Church, (Washington, DC: General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, The United Methodist Church, 2015).
Leevy Frivet, “Femmes pasteurs et femmes de pasteurs: Porte-voix des femmes,” Gender Links (March 30, 2013), https://genderlinks.org.za/classification/themes/femmes-pasteurs-et-femmes-de-pasteurs-porte-voix-des-femmes-2013-03-30/
The United Methodist Church, Le Quotidien du Défenseur Chrétien, Vol. 2: Ministères Globaux (Nashville, TN: [n.d.]).
Introduction and History
In debates about "feminism," too often one confronts abstract and simplified theses. It is worth the trouble of going to the field to see how things went yesterday and go today. Despite their marginalization, African women are creators and actors in several sectors: social, economic, political, religious and cultural. A woman’s identity is more determined by roles in the secular social that limit her rather than by her understanding and acceptance as a child of God who can exercise ministry in the world.
Most of the statistics available today report the presence of three women among every five missionaries, all countries considered together. That is to say, that the role of women in the mission is far from negligible. However, it has not always been so, as a quick historical glimpse highlights.
During the post-Reformation period, Christian missionaries emphasized the family. Women going out in mission had, as their primary responsibility, to care for their homes and to support their husbands in prayer (1 Corinthians 14.33 -36).
The difficulties faced by women in the mission of the church in Africa start with the fact that the acceptance of the missionary woman was not easy in the society where she worked.
Within African society, in a traditional approach, women could neither teach men nor exercise any authority over man. Another more current approach states that the woman could teach, but she was not allowed to occupy a position of authority.
The woman was poorly perceived by those around her, which points to discrimination on the part of men. Women encountered serious depression in the face of cultural arrangements where women in primitive society were considered second class.
On the one hand, knowing that a leader is necessary and that one has the gifts for assuming this function, but that the leadership role has not been offered because one is a woman, led to a lot of frustrations.
On the other hand, accepting such a position in a cultural situation where the woman did not usually occupy a place of leadership can cause strong tensions that will often be very difficult to manage. A woman assigned to a leadership position in mission can easily be judged badly, even by her own colleagues. If she makes an error, it will be judged more severely than a male colleague occupying the same position. If under her direction certain aspects of the work are not as satisfactory as expected, the fact that she is a woman will often be blamed, sometimes quite wrongly.
After several decades, the missionary movement had a great impact in Africa, where women played a large role in this mission, in accordance with the opinion that men and women are equal according to Galatians 3:28.
Men and women, youth and adults, rich and poor, all have understood their baptism as the basis for service in the Christian ministry. Historically, the Methodist movement has given women the opportunity to assert their callings to their duties and to ensure roles of ecclesial leadership for them.
Thus, The United Methodist Church in Africa involves women in all activities – evangelical, spiritual, material, financial and social. Therefore, in Africa, women perform all the same functions as a man; they are actively involved in the functions with which they have been entrusted, according to their gifts.
Over time, the opinion that men and women are equal in the church is spreading more and more nowadays, especially within the major denominations: Reformed, Methodist, Lutheran, and others. This is how John Wesley, the organizer of the Methodist movement, used the biblical foundation to encourage all people.
The church is aware of the importance of the contribution of women to its mission in Africa, which would be less dynamic, less ready to welcome education and generous service without them. They have helped the African church to clarify the understanding of proper service due the power of evangelism. This is particularly true from the point of view of dedication, self-giving, welcoming, listening, concrete attention to people small and large, rich and poor. It is a perspective capable of helping people to challenge certain mental patterns, prejudices or ways of understanding and to organize ecclesial life.
The challenge today in Africa is to give many more places to women in the management of ecclesial affairs. The voice of women continuing the mission must be heard in the same way as the voice of men, because the church is not for men only but also women, especially in Africa where our churches are 70% filled with women.
Bibliography
Mady Vaillant, “Les femmes dans la mission,” Fac-Réflexion 49 (1999), 24-36.
Ruth A. Tucker, “A Historical Overview of Women in Ministry,” Theology News and Notes (Fuller Theological Seminary, March 1995), quoted by Dr. Saphir Athyal.
E. M. Braekman, Histoire du Protestantisme au Congo, (Bruxelles: Librairie des Eclaireurs Unionistes, 1961).
Delia Halverson, Kabamba Kiboko, M. Lynn Scott, and Laceye Warner, Women Called to the Ministry: A Six-Session Study for The United Methodist Church, (Washington, DC: General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, The United Methodist Church, 2015).
Leevy Frivet, “Femmes pasteurs et femmes de pasteurs: Porte-voix des femmes,” Gender Links (March 30, 2013), https://genderlinks.org.za/classification/themes/femmes-pasteurs-et-femmes-de-pasteurs-porte-voix-des-femmes-2013-03-30/
The United Methodist Church, Le Quotidien du Défenseur Chrétien, Vol. 2: Ministères Globaux (Nashville, TN: [n.d.]).
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