Recommended Viewing: Manuel Kalimbue Testimony

The Florida Annual Conference, which has a partnership with the East Angola Annual Conference, recently posted a video interview with Rev. Manuel Kalimbue. Rev. Kalimbue is the pastor of Central Malange UMC in Angola and dean of the Quessua School of Theology. In the video, which is just under 20 minutes long, Rev. Kalimbue recounts (in Portuguese with English subtitles) his early life story and eventual call to ministry.

As a child, Rev. Kalimbue was displaced by the civil war in Angola, lived in an international refugee camp, was separated from his family while escaping the camp and was enslaved, escaped enslavement and reunited with his family, and lived through the death of his mother and the rejection of him and his siblings by his father. It is a dramatic life story, and it is well worth listening for its human interest.

It is also worth listening for the questions it raises about intercultural theology. Again, Rev. Kalimbue is dean of the Quessua School of Theology. Certainly his teaching about theology is shaped by his life experiences and the similar life experiences of others in his context, as it should be. Yet those life experiences are very different than the life experiences of most US United Methodists.

How do such different life experiences impact the way in which United Methodists do theology and then communicate about that theology with one another? To give just one instance, trauma-informed theological education is a hot topic in North American theological education. What are the connections between trauma-informed theological education in the US and theological education among Angolans who have been shaped by the traumas of war, displacement, and slavery? There are potentially rich conversations to be had there and mutual learning to occur.

The future of United Methodist theology depends upon mutual recognition of the unique contexts that shape specific instances of United Methodist theology, and it also depends upon our ability to communicate about our theology across those contexts.

Recommended Reading: Bishop Nhiwatiwa's Autobiography

Bishop Eben K. Nhiwatiwa, the soon-to-retire bishop of Zimbabwe, has recently published an autobiography with Abingdon: By the Grace of God: My Life as an African Bishop. The book is well worth a read, especially for US United Methodists. Here are six reasons why:

1. Bishop Nhiwatiwa's loyalty to The United Methodist Church and his leadership in the African Colleges of Bishops were an important factor in preparing African delegates to General Conference to support regionalization. You get a sense of this in his sermon at General Conference. His autobiography explains how he grew up in The United Methodist Church and where his loyalty to that church comes from. His story is an important window for US United Methodists into understanding similar African perspectives as we work together for the ratification of regionalization.

2. As African United Methodists come to compose more of the denomination's members and much of its areas of growth, it's important for United Methodists in the US to understand the variety of perspectives and experiences among African United Methodists so that together we can work for the good of the denomination and the kin(g)dom of God. Bishop Nhiwatiwa's autobiography represents a significant opportunity to do that in English in a format that's readily available in the US.

3. In his autobiography, Bishop Nhiwatiwa is reflective on how cultural practices in Zimbabwe shaped his life and his faith. Thus, his autobiography is an opportunity to learn not just generally about African perspectives but also more specifically about the relationship between culture and faith in Zimbabwe and in a broader sense, Africa generally.

4. Bishop Nhiwatiwa studied in the United States in college. Thus, the book also contains his reflections on his experiences in the US and on US culture. This opportunity to learn how some of our fellow denominational members see us is an important opportunity for US United Methodists to better understand ourselves and how we come off to those with whom we are in partnership.

5. In his work as bishop, Bishop Nhiwatiwa is famous for promoting the concept of "chabadza" mission partnerships. This is a significant contribution to mission thinking by a practical United Methodist mission leader. Bishop Nhiwatiwa's concept of chabadza partnership deserves more attention and study, especially as the church ponders what a decolonial mission future looks like.

6. Bishop Nhiwatiwa is also a student of leadership, and he reflects throughout the book on his understanding of leadership. Leadership is both a universal human experience and a culturally-conditioned practice. For both of those reasons, Bishop Nhiwatiwa's insights into leadership are worth exploring.

James M. Lawson, Jr. - Civil Rights Leader and Missionary

In honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, we are republishing a short biography of one of his collaborators - Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr. The biography is excerpted from Linda Gesling, Mirror and Beacon: The History of Mission of The Methodist Church, 1939-1968 (New York: General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 2005), 206. It first appeared online as part of the Methodist Mission Bicentennial project.

Lawson was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1928, one of nine children of a U.S. Methodist pastor and a Jamaican mother. He took much of his attitude toward others from his mother, who did not believe in violence. Lawson grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became a good student in predominantly white schools.

He entered Methodist-related Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and became interested in the nonviolent methods of Mahatma Gandhi. He must A. J. Muste, the executive secretary of FOR, and others in the pacifist movement, including James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and Glenn Smiley.

Although he initially registered for the draft, he became a conscientious objector at the time of the Korean War and was sentenced to three years in federal prison. Baldwin-Wallace refused to grant his degree because of his prison sentence. Entering prison in April 1951, he served until May 1952, when he was paroled. He returned to college to obtain his degree, then became a short-term missionary of The Methodist Church to Nagpur, India, where he was an instructor at a Presbyterian school, Hislop College. Lawson was surprised to find that some Western missionaries did not like Gandhi and considered him a troublemaker. But Lawson considered that Gandhi had exemplified Jesus’ teaching of love.

Lawson returned to the U.S. in 1956, did postgraduate work at the Oberlin Graduate School, and also received a degree from Boston University. He met Martin Luther King, Jr., who urged him to find a way to serve in the South. Lawson accepted an invitation from FOR to develop nonviolent methods for African-American students in Nashville, Tennessee. In the fall of 1959, he began voluntary training workshops for college students there, and shortly after the Greensboro sit-ins, Nashville students started sit-ins on February 13, 1960. In the ensuing months, students continued to protest, and the lunch counters were desegregated, but not before Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt and jailed.

Lawson participated with King and others in the civil rights protests throughout the 1960s. He was a founding member of Black Methodists for Church Renewal in 1968. In 1974, he was appointed pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, where he served for many years. He served the denomination as a member of its agencies and continued to articulate concerns for justice in the U.S. and peace abroad. In October 1996, he received the distinguished alumnus award from Vanderbilt University, despite never having received a degree there.

Recommended Reading: Dictionary of Christian Biography in Asia

The Dictionary of Christian Biography in Asia launched at the beginning of the month. This online resource contains life stories of Christian leaders from Asia, both indigenous leaders and foreign missionaries. The project will continue to add biographies from across Asia, but the initial batch of biographies draw especially from Malaysia, Singapore, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Many of those biographies are of Methodists. Thus, the Dictionary makes an excellent resource for those interested in learning about the history of Methodism in Southeast Asia. There will be an official launch event online on April 17th at 8:00pm Malaysia time at which more information about the Dictionary will be shared.

Recommended Reading: Doug Wingeier biography

The Michigan Annual Conference has published a lovely biography of Douglas E. Wingeier, a retired United Methodist missionary to Southeast Asia and professor of Christian education and practical theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. The thorough biography gives testimony to one who has served faithfully "as a teacher, mentor, peacemaker, advocate for justice, for the health of the planet, as a witness for the love and grace of Jesus, as a relationship builder between cultures around the world." This summary of the life and work of a great mission thinker is well worth a read.

Recommended Reading: German Profiles of Methodist Mission Leaders

The Evangelish-methodistische Kirche im Deutschland (UMC in Germany) has recently published two profiles of Methodist mission leaders. Both profiles (written in German) are well worth reading for understanding the character of Methodist mission engagement in the 20th century and early 21st century.

 

The EmK website published a nice biography of Philip Potter on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his death. Potter, who was born in Dominica, went on to serve as the Secretary of the British Methodist missionary society, the Director of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches (WCC), and ultimately the General Secretary of the WCC. As Klaus Ulrich Ruof writes in the profile, "Potter shaped the ecumenical movement like no other in the second half of the last century."

Emk-Weltmission (the German Methodist mission agency) published an obituary of former long-time EmK-Weltmission Treasurer Walter Volz. The obituary, written by Thomas Kemper, gives a sense of how one person can live out the principles of mission through faithful service. As Kemper writes, "Mission is friendship. Mission is relationship. Mission is sharing life. Walter Volz lived it."

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.

United Methodist Mission Bicentennial Stories

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. This post originally appeared in altered form in the Fall 2018 version of New World Outlook.

As a component of the United Methodist mission bicentennial celebration, I have been collecting and sharing stories of Methodists in mission on the bicentennial website. I encourage you to visit the website, read some of these stories, and submit a story of your own.

Reading the 250+ stories on the website has given me a real appreciation of the breadth of Methodist mission over the last two hundred years. Methodists have engaged in evangelism, social justice, health and healing, and education as forms of mission, among others. The wide variety of ways in which Methodists have participated in God’s mission is truly amazing!

Yet it is not surprising. We serve a God whose mercy is wide, whose power is great, and whose creativity is unbounded. Since mission starts with our God who is beyond all our abilities to describe and transcends all limits we may seek to place on God, it is a natural thing that mission should also be multifaceted, complex, and expansive.

I have been struck, too, by the breadth of those Methodists engaged in mission as well as the breadth of the types of mission in which they were engaged. Nowadays, Global Ministries speaks of missionaries going “from everywhere to everywhere.” Certainly, our corps of missionaries is increasingly international compared to previous decades.

Yet, if one looks in the right places, one discovers that mission has always been “from everywhere to everywhere.” Examples abound of people like Kanichi Miyama, a Japanese immigrant to the US in the 19th century, who converted to Methodism in San Francisco, founded Japanese-American Methodism in both California and Hawaii, and eventually returned to Japan as a missionary.

In mission history, as in other types of history, we are too often tempted by the “great man” version of the past, in which the past is a series of heroic exploits by leading individuals, usually men, and usually white Western men at that. Yet when we focus solely on such figures, we overlook the fact that mission has primarily been a women’s movement, both in terms of those who engage in mission and those who have supported mission. We also overlook the critical role that native leaders, usually unnamed and unnoted, have played in making disciples and in mobilizing the church to reach out to its surroundings.

At the bicentennial conference, we are still highlighting some of the great leaders of Methodist mission, but in a way that demonstrates the diversity of Methodists in mission by featuring the following stories (in approximate chronological order) on poster boards at the conference:

John Stewart
Nathan Bangs
Ann Wilkins
Wilhelm Nast
William and Clementina Butler
Mary McClellan Lambuth, Walter Russell Lambuth, and Nora Kate Lambuth Park
William Taylor
Amanda Berry Smith
James and Isabella Thoburn
Frances Willard and Katharine (Kate) Bushnell
Gertrude Howe, Ida Kahn, and Mary Stone
Francisco Penzotti
Lochie Rankin
Belle Harris Bennett
William Oldham
Teikichi Sunamoto
Henry and Ella Appenzeller
Dr. Marietta Hatfield, Dr. Mabel Silver, and Rotifunk Hospital
Andres Martinez, Kicking Bird, and J. J. Methvin
Herbert Welch
John R. Mott
Alma Mathews and Kathryn Maurer
Anna Eklund
Susan Collins, Anna Hall, and Martha Drummer
William Springer, Helen Rasmussen Springer, and Tshangand Kayeke
E. Stanley Jones
Justina Showers
Helen Kim and Prudencia Fabro
Vivienne and U.S. Gray
J. Harry Haines
Mai Gray
Theressa Hoover

Of course, by focusing only on the greats of whatever background, we miss the faithful, dedicated service of everyday people, ordained and lay, in mission. We miss stories such as Billie Rench of Michigan, who faithfully promoted mission among Methodists of the Detroit Conference for decades, or Rhodes Chimonyo, who served for a long time as the treasurer of Methodism in Zimbabwe as a Person in Mission, or Ed Ririe, who volunteered for 27 UMVIM trips in his life and died while on his last trip.

It is everyday people like this that have made up the bulk of Methodists involved in mission over the last 200 years; it is everyday people that make up the bulk of Methodists involved in mission today; and it will surely be everyday people that will make up the bulk of Methodists involved in mission in the future. We are all missionaries, and whether or not our deeds are written in the human annals of the history of mission, they will surely be recorded in the heavenly book.

Recommended Reading: Methodist Mission Bicentennial Story Collection

Next year will be the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the first denomination-wide mission organization in American Methodism.

Among the ways in which this anniversary is being commemorated is a compilation of profiles of Methodists from around the world engaged in mission. This compilation includes short biographies of individual Methodists and descriptions of congregations and other institutions significantly involved in Methodist mission.

Currently, there are over 200 profiles included in the database, and new profiles continue to be added. The profiles come from a mix of stories submitted by individuals and existing academic, journalistic, and denominational publications. The majority are in English, though there are currently some Spanish-language profiles as well.

This resource is likely to be of interest to teachers and students of mission and/or Methodist history as the fall semester begins. The profiles can serve as a means of exploring mission according to various themes and locations, as well as a entry-level reference on the lives of specific missionaries.

The compilation can also be a means of sharing your own research. To submit a profile you have written to the database, visit http://methodistmission200.org/mission-stories/submit-your-story/.

Recommended Reading: Chinese Christians with Methodist Ties

Christianity Today published a piece last fall entitled "10 Chinese Christians the Western Church Should Know." UM & Global is entirely supportive of the idea that Western Christians should learn about and learn from our fellows Christians around the globe, and the piece is worth reading for that reason alone.

Yet it is also worth noting that four out of the ten Chinese Christians profiled had Methodist connections. Look for the stories of Shi Meiyu (Mary Stone), Sung Shangjie (John Sung), Xi Shengmo (Pastor Hsi), and Yu Cidu (Dora Yu).

Xi and Yu's Methodist connections aren't stated, but both had them. David Hill, one of the missionaries mentioned in Xi's write up, was Methodist. After Yu finished medical school, she preached at a Methodist school. She also accompanied MECS missionary Josephine P. Campbell on an early preaching tour of Korea.

To learn more about Chinese Christians with Methodist ties as well as Western missionaries who worked in China, read the collection of China-related biographies from the Methodist Mission Bicentennial website.