An African Theologian Advise to Western Missionaries

After finishing my academic year I opted to get out from the seminary and responded to go to mission work here in Thailand. I really didn't have a choice. I wanted to finish my dissertation badly but I could no longer do it inside the campus for some reasons. One was that my bill was filing up, my scholarship grant was good only for my academic tuition fees and no more. So the longer I stayed in the campus the more I will be buried in debt. Some people could live with that and hope that someday somebody would pay their seminary debts, I could not live with that. Although I still owe the seminary some money, it is something manageable and if one day I got enough money I will pay it in cash.

Anyway, we are now in the mission field. And before I left with my family for mission works my Professor (visiting) gave me a book entitled, Contemporary Gospel Accents: Doing Theology in Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. This book were edited by our good professor and Daniel Carro. The book is about contextualizing theology and I found it very useful in mission works. I go back to it from time to time.

Here I would like to cite Hary G. Olan'g recommendations to western missionaries regarding theological education in Africa. Theological education in Africa could help those preaching the gospel to be more contextual and relevant in three ways.

First, our theological education programs should include in their curricula courses that affirm the dignity of and worth of every African. The "bulldozer mentality" of western missionaries, which seeks to uproot everything African in order to make clean room for reconstructions by using western design and materials, should be rejected.

Secondly, new missionaries from the West coming to Africa need to attend orientation programs conducted in a local seminary setting to give them the opportunity to reshape their mission perceptions and to be able to contextualize the gospel. Such programs should be conducted by Africans.

Thirdly, theological training programs in Africa need to prepare Africans for missions both inside and outside of Africa. This will help to neutralize cultural infiltration caused by one culture dominating mission enterprise, by providing qualified nationals who can preach the gospel in a more contextual way with less risk of acculturation.

These are indeed good recommendations and these are applicable also to missionary enterprise in other regions like here in Southeast Asia. We thought that these criticisms of the Western missionaries are things of the past, evidently these are still prevailing. In my own observation, unless we as missionaries are willing to learn theology in local seminaries we will never be effective in our work. However, I never heard of any Western missionaries who are willing to be theologically taught by the locals in mentor-student setting.

Philippine Churches Need More Theologically Educated Pastors

I found this article in the internet written by E. G. Homrighausen and I agree with his assessment regarding the problems of the church in the Philippines regardless of denomination. My experience as a Pastor in rural areas tells me that this problem is more prevalent in my denomination. However, there is still hope as more and more pastors now think they need theological education in order to become more effective in their ministries. The churches, the Convention, seminaries and theological institutions should have an on-going dialogue and consultations to address this problem.

To be sure, the church in the Philippines has problems. Contrary to a common opinion, that church needs "missionaries" or fraternal workers in many areas. It needs more pastors. More of the best men and women must be recruited for theological education. The rural pastorate must be given greater dignity and financial support so as to attract able ministers who otherwise gravitate to the great city. Theological education is in need of more books for its libraries, translations of western volumes to be sure, but even more of books written by Filipinos who are provided time and resources to write out of a Philippine cultural context and in the native Tagala. More creative methods could be employed in theological education so as to produce graduates who will be students all their lives. Continuing education may well be expanded to refresh the hard-working pastor. The newer concept of the minister as the pastor-director of the people of God would do much to make theological education conscious of its task to train ministers for the situation in which they will work, and with a view to building the ministering church.

Visiting lecturers from abroad could relieve professors in seminaries of their heavy teaching schedules, and bring about a healthy exchange of theological ideas and church practices. Greater congregational financial support needs to be given to the churches and the seminaries, for a church is never quite independent until it is independent financially. And the church (and the convention) will need to take care lest its energy be spent in organization and administration, and the necessary and promising work of evangelization be neglected.