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The Social Trinity in the Life of the Church: An Evaluation from a Central American Perspective

This paper explores the dynamics between the trinitarian nature of God and ecclesiology in Central America in order to suggest a better theological understanding for the worship and mission of Churches of Christ in Central America. The history of Churches of Christ in Central America dates back to the 1960s.1 Salvadorian missionaries graduated from the Sunset Bible School in Texas and established the church in Nicaragua in 1969. Their formation was rooted in the spirit of the Texas tradition, which emphasized preaching as making plain God’s requirements in the plan of salvation and a focus on the marks of the true church found in Acts and the Pauline epistles, such as its name, terms of admission, and organization.2 In contrast, this paper argues that the Christian faith, practice, worship, and proclamation of Churches of Christ in Central America must be shaped by a holistic trinitarian vision inviting human beings to align with the life of the Holy Trinity.

There has been a reemergence of the doctrine of the Trinity in modern theology.3 This interest is, in large part, the result of the groundbreaking efforts of Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics.4 By placing the doctrine of the Trinity at the beginning of his theology, Barth challenges theologians to consider the experience of God as triune as the proper starting point for Christian theology.

Churches of Christ in Central America neglect the doctrine of the Trinity and its importance for Christian faith, worship, and community.5 This paper is a theological examination of the doctrine of the social Trinity from the perspective of liberation theology in particular. This paper proceeds in three steps. First, there is an examination of the doctrine of the social Trinity in the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and Miroslav Volf. Second, there is an evaluation of the arguments pointing to key theological issues with the doctrine. Finally, this paper will offer suggestions for Churches of Christ in Central America to apply the doctrine of the social Trinity to its worship and mission.

There is a particular challenge, however, that the doctrine of the Trinity must overcome, namely its relevance for Christian ministry. Given the doctrine’s complex problems, including its central conceptual threeness-oneness relation, the Trinity is considered at best paradoxical or mysterious, at worst, contradictory.6 Further, this misguided perception of the Trinity as irrelevant for Christian ministry is, in part, rooted in the Western theological tradition, which emphasizes the unity or oneness of the Godhead, following the tradition of Augustine.7 Augustine used a series of “psychological” analogies which related the Trinity to the human person, including the mind, knowledge, and love.8 The Western tradition therefore tends to emphasize divine oneness in order to stress the equality of the three persons. The Eastern church, by contrast, was influenced by the Cappadocian fathers. They used more “social” analogies than Augustine.9 For instance, Peter, James and John all are persons who share a single, common humanity and could form a community.10 The Eastern tradition thus emphasizes the monarchy of the Father along with the threeness of the persons.

This general overview sheds light on a contemporary trinitarian emphasis that this paper takes up, namely the social model of the Trinity.11 The contemporary theological articulation of the social Trinity begins with Jürgen Moltmann. He rejects the individualistic concept of experience espoused by Schleiermacher and followed by Liberal Protestants.12 Likewise, Moltmann integrates the experience of the self into the experience of God. He writes that “experience of God has to be integrated into the trinitarian history of God with the world.”13 The image of God therefore should not be sought in human individuality alone but also in human sociality.14 The focus then is not only on the individual experience of God but also on social relationships and human society. The human experience of God as Triune is a communal experience of the revelation of the immanent Trinity. Moltmann argues for the significance of perichoresis. He writes that in the doctrine of the Trinity, the term perichoresis is used to capture the mutual indwelling of the equal divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.15 All life thus is community in communication.16 This implies that through their mutual indwelling the divine persons are giving each other themselves and the divine life in selfless love.17

The social emphasis of the doctrine of the Trinity finds support among liberation theologians. Some of the key representatives among liberation theologians from Latin America include Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff. They are relevant for discussing the social Trinity because they share the conviction that the church’s mission to the world includes challenging unjust political and social structures that oppress and marginalize human beings.18

Liberation theologians also highlight community and relationship at the core of the Trinity. Leonardo Boff writes, “By the name of God, Christian faith expresses the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in eternal correlation, interpenetration and love, to the extent that they form one God.”19 The divine community and interpenetration within the Trinity becomes a theological model for understanding human dynamics, including society.20

Boff explains that as creatures, humans are the image and likeness of God. The relationality of God as three personae with the creation means that God is absolute openness, supreme presence, total immediacy, eternal transcendence, and infinite communion.21 The implication of Boff’s argument is that God must be perceptible in true form in the historical revelation of Scripture.22 In order to recover God’s image, humans are invited to participate in communion with the Trinity, because to be a persona means to be in a relationship both with God and creation.

Ecclesiology plays a major theological role for Boff’s understanding of the social Trinity. He expresses that the church is the community of faith, hope, and love seeking to live the ideal of union proposed by Jesus “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us” (John 17:21).23 Boff supports his ecclesiology with the help of Tertullian when he argues that the church is the body of the three divine Persons, suggesting that by the living out of faith, sharing in worship, and the holy organizing of the church, something is made known of the mystery of the Father, of the intelligence of the Son, and of the love of the Holy Spirit.24

Boff rejects the efforts of Barth and Rahner in replacing the term person in trinitarian language.25 He finds their terms insufficient because they are very abstract, and they fail to deal with the trinity of Persons and the relationships stirring among them. “Ultimately,” Boff adds, “these approaches do not manage to escape from monotheism, and they run the risk of modalism.”26

Gustavo Gutiérrez is another key liberation theologian. He explains the significance of the immanent Trinity in human experience. The encounter with God takes place in the encounter with our neighbor.27

Gutiérrez affirms that there is a close connection between creation and salvation.28 For Gutiérrez salvation encompasses a progression from “the less human to the more human.”29 Gutiérrez wants to avoid a false dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical. Salvation should also contribute to concrete human life.30

The concern for reaching a better understanding of the Trinity in liberation theology comes from the way people experience God. The doctrine of the social Trinity therefore becomes an interpretative model for understanding God in relation to the world. Moreover, to speak of the Trinity in terms of community is to understand God as being relational in nature.31

During the 1960s, there were several revolutions going on in different Latin American countries. Some of these revolutions did not survive even a decade.32 Central America also experienced various revolutions during the 1980s. These war conflicts contributed to poverty and marginalization. How do humans experience God in these conflicts? Again, how does the church, the community of God, experience the Triune God in war and poverty? In view of such questions, community is a significant theological issue for those at the margins of society.33

The relational and communal nature of God is at the core of the doctrine of the Trinity. When Christians invoke God as Father and Son, they are using analogical language that refers to God in terms of parental and filial relationships.34 The practical implication of this trinitarian language is that it reveals to us a God who is relational and communal, thus humans too must be relational and in community.35

Social trinitarians, therefore, conceive a God who is both “one and three” and whose being consists in a relationality that derives from the “otherness-in-relation” of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.36 Moreover, the objective of the revelation of the Triune God in human history is to invite creation to enter into the eternal relationality of the Trinity. Iain Taylor writes, “the triune God of reconciliation is the same triune God of creation.”37

The divine community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the origin of human community. The implication is that as the origin of human community, the Trinity is the model that human community, first the church and then society at large, should imitate. Moreover, this theological assumption is a variant of the Eastern Orthodox theme of divinization. Donald Fairbairn agrees when he writes that “the concept of deification was primarily a way to focus on the relational aspects of sonship . . . thus sharing by grace in the fellowship the Son has with the Father by nature.”38

Miroslav Volf, another social trinitarian, points to the novelty of the social implications of the theme of divinization. He argues that Nicholas Federov interprets the resurrection of Christ as a new ontological state for humanity.39 Likewise, this new ontological state has a major ethical implication for humanity. The gospel is more than just the good news of what God has done: “the Gospel is a social project humanity needs to accomplish.”40

But the question remains, is it possible for human society to imitate the relational and communal life of the Trinity? Moreover, given the influence of sin on humankind, to what extent is the Trinity a valid model for organizing human society and relationships? I will now evaluate the arguments of social trinitarians in order to highlight some key issues.

Ted Peters rejects the attempts of Federov and other social trinitarians to try to use the Trinity as a model for human society. He writes that what attracts social trinitarians is the category of community rather than personality for understanding God.41 In addition, Peters affirms that the ideal of a nonhierarchical community wherein relationships come prior to persons, as espoused by social trinitarians, is the product of the emerging postmodern Western mind.42 Peters therefore argues that the kingdom or reign of God is a better theological basis for human community.43 The symbol of the kingdom or reign of God includes the basic elements that social trinitarians argue for, including a call for social justice, images of a world community at peace, and an expectation of the eschatological kingdom of God.44

Volf is also aware of limitations of modeling human society on the Trinity.45 First, since ontically human beings are not divine, trinitarian concepts such as “person,” “relation,” and “perichoresis” should be applied to human community only in an analogous rather than a univocal sense.46 The implication is that as creatures, human beings can correspond to the uncreated God only in a creaturely way.47 The second limitation is human sin.48 Accordingly, in history human beings cannot be made into the perfect creaturely images of the Triune God because this will be realized in the coming of the eschatological kingdom. The implication of this second limitation is that human beings have the possibility to correspond to God in historical ways as well.49 That is, humans can act to shape history and society to speed up the coming of the kingdom.

Volf therefore revises the methodology of the doctrine of the social Trinity. He argues that the methodology of interpreting the Trinity as the model for human community should not start from above, that is, not from the doctrine of the Trinity down to a vision of social realities.50 Rather, Volf adds, the conceptual elaboration of the correspondences must be interpreted as a two-way street, both from above and from below.51

Mark Husbands rejects the methodology proposed by Volf.52 He examines the doctrine of the social Trinity defended by Volf and offers a critique of its theology. Accordingly, Husbands shares a basic rule to measure the relative value of a given proposal regarding the doctrine of the Trinity: “A theology that purports to be properly ‘trinitarian’—and by this I mean consistent with both the biblical witness and Nicene Christianity—must preserve an ontological distinction between God and humanity in order to maintain an order consistent with their distinct natures.”53 This rule is important because it helps to be aware of some of the dangers of the social Trinity presented by Volf and liberation theologians. First, failure to maintain the ontological distinction between the Trinity and human beings would lead to the eclipse of the doctrine of God by any number of contemporary social, cultural, or political agendas.54

Second, the proposal of Volf and social trinitarians from liberation theology runs the risk of reducing the doctrine of God to ecclesiology and the doctrine of ecclesiology to social practices.55 This critique echoes the concerns of the International Theological Commission, appointed by the Catholic Church after Vatican II to examine liberation theology. The Commission concluded that the force and dynamism of God’s word do not consist in its function of stimulating social and political change.56

Moreover, the practice of Christian faith cannot be reduced to changing conditions in society, because it also involves conscience formation, changes of attitude, and adoration of God.57 Therefore, a proper understanding of the doctrine of God and the practice of Christian faith are key elements for a vision of the Trinity that honors the biblical witness and Nicene Christianity.

What is the function of the doctrine of the social Trinity from a Central American perspective? The basic function must be to ground Christian faith, worship, and practice in a trinitarian vision of God that empowers the church to become a community in imitation of the revelation of the immanent Trinity. This paper will offer suggestions to Churches of Christ in Central America in order to stimulate interest in the doctrine of the social Trinity.

First, the theological heritage of Churches of Christ in Central America continues to ignore the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity for Christian faith, worship, and practice. Moreover, some parts of the region are constantly threatened by social injustice, political corruption, and poverty. While there is no such a thing as a “normative” liberation theory of salvation,58 there is one central emphasis to be observed: The view of God’s manifold activity for the sake of creation, described in the Scriptures as deliverance, redemption, justification, and salvation, should be understood holistically.59 Further, this holistic view challenges Churches of Christ in Central America not to limit the work of the Triune God to the “spiritual” area of life because salvation is integral, thus impacting all areas of human concern including social justice. The work of the Trinity frees human beings from sin while at the same time condemning injustice in any form, including political and social injustice.

Second, the mission of the church must also be transformed by the doctrine of the social Trinity. Bonino argues that mission is participation in the fullness of God’s mission; therefore evangelization cannot but be a testimony to God’s good creation and an announcement of God’s justice with a call to practice and serve it.60 The Trinity, nevertheless, should not be reduced to ecclesiology, but rather the Trinity should shape our understanding of the church as a community transformed by the Trinity to participate in the life of the Trinity.

Finally, the doctrine of the social Trinity proposed by Moltmann, and followed by Boff, Gutiérrez, and Volf must be qualified, lest the ontological distinction between God and man be blurred. Thus, Churches of Christ in Central America must proclaim that the New Testament speaks primarily of liberation from sin and death. Therefore, the New Testament stresses that no genuine change in society will occur except through conversion to Jesus Christ.61 Therefore, the Christian faith, practice, worship, and proclamation of Churches of Christ in Central America must be shaped by a holistic trinitarian vision inviting human beings to align with the life of the Holy Trinity. Human society will change only if it aligns with God.

Lenin Munguia (MDiv, Harding School of Theology) is a Nicaraguan missionary among Churches of Christ. He has served as Bible teacher in various undergraduate programs in Central America, as well as preacher and missionary in Honduras, Venezuela, and the US. Lenin and his wife and son, Mateo, are currently working with Churches of Christ in Managua, Nicaragua, as missionaries of the Waterview Church of Christ in Richardson, TX.

1 See further D. Newell Williams, Douglas A. Foster, and Paul M. Blowers, eds., The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History (St. Louis: Chalice, 2013): 285–310.

2 Ibid., 152.

3 Norman Metzler, “The Trinity in Contemporary Theology: Questioning the Social Trinity,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 67 (2003): 271.

4 Ibid. The significance of Barth cannot be overstated. Ted Peters affirms that his significance lies in the fact that Barth places the doctrine of the Trinity at the beginning of his systematic theology. Peter argues that the trinitarian distinctions belong to the primary utterances of the Christian experience. Our most primitive experience with God is as Father or as Son or as Spirit. See further Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville: John Knox, 1993), 38–9.

5 This is the author’s understanding of Christian ministry among Churches of Christ in Central America since his ministry experience in the region began in 2003.

6 Thomas R. Thompson, “Trinitarianism Today: Doctrinal Renaissance, Ethical Relevance, Social Redolence,” Calvin Theological Journal 32 (1997): 9.

7 Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber, “Introduction,” in Trinitarian Theology for the Church: Scripture, Community, Worship, ed. Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 12.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid. However, this analogy, as well as other social analogies, runs the risk of tritheism.

11 Metzler, 271.

12 Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 4–5.

13 Ibid., 5.

14 Ibid., 199.

15 Jürgen Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic World for a New Trinitarian Theology,” in Trinity, Community, and Power: Mapping Trajectories in Wesleyan Theology, ed. M. Douglas Meeks (Nashville: Kingswood, 2000), 114. Although the term perichoresis is not found in the New Testament, two passages traditionally used to describe its meaning are John 10:38 and 14:10. For a brief historical survey of the use of the term perichoresis see Michael G. Lawler, “Perichoresis: New Theological Wine in an Old Theological Wineskin,” Horizons 22 (1995): 49–54.

16 Moltmann, “Perichoresis,” 113.

17 Ibid., 115.

18 Mary E. Hines, “Community for Liberation,” in Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 165.

19 Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society, trans. Paul Burns (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), 9.

20 Ibid.

21 Leonardo Boff, “Trinitarian Community and Social Liberation,” Cross Currents 38 (1988): 295.

22 Ibid.

23 Leonardo Boff, Holy Trinity, Perfect Community, trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 43. All biblical references in this paper are taken from the English Standard Version.

24 Ibid., 44. The organization here refers to the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church. The ecclesiology of the majority of Churches of Christ in Central America is structured around the figure of the preacher.

25 Ibid., 51. Boff rejects Barth’s “three modes of being” and Rahner’s “three modes of subsistence.”

26 Ibid., 52.

27 Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Toward a Theology of Liberation,” in Liberation Theology: A Documentary History, trans. and ed. Alfred T. Hennelly (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 74.

28 Ibid., 71.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., 73.

31 Luis G. Pedraja, “Trinity,” in Handbook of U.S. Theologies of Liberation, ed. Miguel A. De La Torre (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004), 53.

32 Phillip Berryman, “Latin American Liberation Theology,” in Handbook of U.S. Theologies of Liberation, ed. Miguel A. De La Torre (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2004), 142.

33 Pedraja, 53.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Quentin P. Kinnison, “The Social Trinity and the Southwest: Toward a Local Theology in the Borderlands,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 35 (2008): 262.

37 Iain Taylor, Pannenberg on the Triune God (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 139. Taylor explains that Pannenberg affirms that the work of the Spirit in reconciliation is the continuation of his creative work as the origin of all life.

38 Donald Fairbairn, Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 9.

39 Miroslav Volf, “The Trinity Is Our Social Program: The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement,” Modern Theology 14 (1998): 403.

40 Ibid.

41 Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville: John Knox, 1993), 184.

42 Ibid., 185.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Volf, 405.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid. For Volf, then, the doctrine of the Trinity first functions to name the reality that human communities ought to image, and then the doctrines of creation and sin inform the way in which human communities can image the Triune God. See Ibid., 406.

52 Mark Husbands, “The Trinity Is Not Our Social Program: Volf, Gregory of Nyssa and Barth,” in Trinitarian Theology for the Church: Scripture, Community, Worship, ed. Daniel J. Treier and David Lauber (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 120–41.

53 Ibid., 121.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid., 122.

56 Arthur F. McGovern, Liberation Theology and Its Critics: Toward an Assessment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989), 51.

57 Ibid.

58 José Míguez Bonino, “Salvation as the Work of the Trinity: An Attempt at a Holistic Understanding from a Latin American Perspective,” in Trinity, Community, and Power: Mapping Trajectories in Wesleyan Theology, ed. M. Douglas Meeks (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2000), 71.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 82.

61 McGovern, 51.

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Stewardship of Creation

Ananias Moses

Environmental problems reveal the sinful nature of humanity that is characterized by greed, materialism, consumerism, and other harmful human activities. A response to the crisis, therefore, demands a radical transformation of character: people changing who they are in relation to the environment and becoming virtuous and faithful stewards of the creation of God.

Environmental problems such as global warming, loss of biodiversity, desertification, drought, and pollutions of water, land, and air are not primarily scientific or natural problems. These are mostly moral or ethical problems caused by the sinful nature of humanity (anthropogenic activities). They reveal a moral character of humanity—a character corrupted by sins such as pride, greed, materialism, consumerism, egocentrism, and indiscriminate use of modern science and technology. As Clifford Cain posits:

The environmental problems we see and know are but the symptoms of an underlying disease—a disease that, like a cancer, lies at the center of our social body and threatens the health of the whole organism, as well as the integrity of earth’s ecosystem: And that disease is greed, materialism, consumerism, and short-term thinking.1

Since environmental problems primarily emanate from human morality, to avert them demands a radical change of character—a change of who people are in relation to God, others, and the environment. This understanding of the ecological crisis suggests that instead of merely asking what should be done to address the crisis, people should first and foremost ask who they are in relation to the environment. When people are who God created them to be—that is, faithful stewards of God’s creation—they embody an ecologically friendly attitude and a godly spirit that delights in God’s creation. Who people are shapes how they behave. In other words, behavior is a reflection of the inner, core being—the character. As Steven Bouma-Prediger rightly points out, “How we live depends on who we are, and who we are depends on the stories we identify with. Practices are rooted in character, and character is rooted in a story.”2 People are shaped by their community and individual stories, which eventually become embedded in their identity and culture.3 An ecological response, therefore, calls for people to identify with God’s creation story, which then defines their purpose of existence—they are stewards of God’s creation (Gen 2:15).

Ecological Problems

Human ability to alter the environment has increased tremendously, whereas the capacity of the environment to cope with these alterations is limited. With the rise of philosophies such as environmental possibilism, people believe they are in control of all possibilities.4 Through the use of science and technology, they have assumed power to alter the environment for their own good.

Many modern cultures are driven by material possessions and economic productivity to the extent that identity and success are defined in those terms. In pursuit of accumulation, humanity has become more egocentric and exploitative of each other and the earth.5 Materialism takes away the joy and happiness of the society, which comes from being who God created them to be—faithful stewards of creation.

When people see that their identity and worthiness are based on who God created them to be, and they daily live as stewards of God’s creation, they are freed from the “bondage of a materialistic consumer society . . . a hedonistic culture based on creating insatiable human consumers.”6 Through this story, God calls people to foster a spirit of contentment, temperance, appreciation of the beauty of the earth, and cooperation with God in taking care of it.

Materialism creates a consumeristic culture that views the earth as having only utilitarian value. Richard Young argues that “the growth of science and technology . . . coupled with economic structure of our society, has obliterated any notion of intrinsic value in the subhuman world. It has turned nature into a secularized object be to observed, analyzed, controlled, exploited, and used apart from any reference to God.”7 Yet, the earth has intrinsic value. God did not only create the earth to be utilized by people but also for his own purpose and pleasure. The whole earth belongs to him.

All living things depend on a healthy environment for survival. In addition, there is interdependence and interrelatedness within the creation. When a person is created, he is called adam in Hebrew because he is made from ⁽adamah (ground). Therefore, people are not totally distinct from the rest of creation—they are part of it. The psalter says, “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps 103:14).8 The only difference between human beings and other creations is the image of God in them. When the environment suffers, human beings likewise suffer. So, to exploit nature is to do injustice to ourselves, God, and to deny creation its natural right to glorify God (Ps 148; 150). One characteristic of a godly and righteous person is taking care of other creatures (Prov 12:10). Materialism destroys the communal existence of creation and robs humanity of the blessings and grace of loving and taking care of the earth.

It is unfortunate that the church also falls into consumeristic culture. When this happens, the church forgets God’s creation story and its stewardship mission and hence detaches itself from the rest of creation. It only focuses on its own redemption and forgets God’s comprehensive redemption (including creation). Furthermore, the church often keeps silent while the predatory economy destroys the earth. No other institution or community should better understand its living relationship with creation than God’s community. If the church lives out its holistic mission (Gen 2:15), its lifestyle of benevolence and creation care may transform the watching world.9 The church should take its role as steward seriously in order to show the world true worthiness and identity is found in God’s creation story.

Christianity and Ecology

Even though Christianity is said to be ecologically oriented, many Christians have not lived as faithful stewards of God’s creation. Their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors tend to portray Christianity as an anti-ecological faith. According to Kellert and Berry, when people attend religious services frequently, they become less knowledgeable about “environmental issues and are more utilitarian.”10 Christians who only focus on the redemption story tend to forget that the biblical narrative begins with creation and ends envisioning a new creation. When Christians neglect the creation story, there is a need for humility to redefine their ecotheology because the Christian faith is not ecologically bankrupt.

In Genesis 1:28, people are commanded to subdue and have dominion over the earth. This text does not encourage Christians to neglect or exploit the earth as some scholars, like Lynn White Jr., have suggested.11 Instead, the text commands people to exercise authority and rule as God rules. God is a King; his sovereignty is characterized by compassion, love, justice, patience, humility, service, mercy, honesty, power, and wisdom. Similarly, Bouma-Prediger points out that to rule and have dominion in this context does not necessarily mean domination but service. “For Jesus, to rule is to serve. To exercise dominion is to suffer…for the good of the other.”12 In Genesis 2:15, YHWH commands people to work and keep the Garden of Eden. According to Christopher Wright, the verb ⁽abad means to serve. Moreover, human beings “are servants of creation, and that is the way they are to exercise their kingship over it. The verb samar means to keep something safe, with protection, care, and watchfulness. It means treating something (or someone) seriously as worthy of devoted attention.”13 Christian Scripture is not ecologically bankrupt, nor does it perpetuate exploitation of the earth. Rather, it is the followers of Scripture who fail to be faithful to it. God calls people to be like him by taking care of his creation, for the story of God’s people begins with caring for creation.

One of the reasons some Christians may neglect the task of creation stewardship is misunderstanding of the doctrine of eschatology. They argue that since Jesus Christ is coming soon to take saints with him and destroy the earth, it is therefore pointless to take care of the earth. Texts such 2 Pet 3:10–13 and 1 Thess 4:13–18 are sometimes used to support such beliefs. An alternative reading of these texts, however, shows that the earth will not be totally destroyed, and the saints will not escape from it. In 2 Pet 3: 10–13, the writer says the earth will be found (eurisko), and it will be redeemed, restored, and purified by fire.14 God is not going to make all new things but rather all things new. In 1 Thess 4: 13-18, Paul is talking about Christians joining Christ in the royal procession and ushering him to the earth as he comes down to redeem the whole creation and reign on a renewed earth. The verb apantao (v. 17) means “to go out and meet a visiting dignitary in the final stage of his journey in order to escort him back to your city (e.g., Matt 25:6; Acts 28:15).”15 The New Jerusalem will come down and there will be no separation between heaven and earth. God will dwell among his people on a redeemed earth. Redemption and salvation is not escape from the earth: rather, the Lord will descend and claim it for himself.

Virtues and Ecology

Godly character is the foundation of human life and stewardship of creation. It is indispensable for a healthy relationship with others and with nonhuman species. In Gal 5:22–23, Paul lists some of the fundamental virtues (fruit of the spirit) people should develop in order to have a godly character. If people were to be shaped by these virtues, their relation to earth would be godly, and they could avert some of the environmental problems the world is facing.

One of the virtues needed to nurture a godly ecological spirit and attitude is love. God creates everything out of his divine love and for his own purpose. His unconditional love is perfectly manifested in his relationship to his creation. Creation “highlights God’s closeness to and almost motherly care for creation.”16 God demonstrates his agape love by calling his creation to participate in his divine creativity. The earth is commanded to produce all other species (Gen 1:11), and every living thing is commanded to be fruitful and multiply. Furthermore, God does not leave his creation to run itself—he is in charge. Bouma-Prediger notes that the universe is not autonomous: “It exists solely because of the continuous care and sustenance of God its Creator.”17 He is the God who is involved in the affairs of his creation; he is transcendent yet immanent to his creation.

In 1 Cor 13, Paul highlights the importance of love that is humble, kind, patient, and not envious. If people were to be shaped by this love, they would reflect the character of God to the whole creation. God is kind, loving, patient, and humble to his creation, hence, those who love God should be like him. To love creation does not mean deifying it but to see and value it as the Creator does; he delights in his creation (Gen 1:31).

Love is the greatest theological virtue (1 Cor 13); on it the whole of the law and prophets rest (Matt 22:36–40). When people have love, they seek the best interests and well-being of other human beings and nonhuman things. In addition, they care, respect, and value God’s creation for its intrinsic value and not only for its utilitarian values. With love, people are temperate and disciplined; they are capable of controlling their behaviors and actions for the common good of others. People display proper attitudes and behavior toward the things they love. Lack of love leads to egocentrism and a disregard for the well-being of God’s creation. It also leads to dishonest dealing with others, including exploiting the earth.

Other important Christian virtues are faith and hope. Christian faith and hope are rooted in the creation, redemption, resurrection, and eschatology narratives. Faith is the assurance and confidence in God who created the universe and sustains it. It is by faith that God calls his people to share his story—the story of creation and redemption. In participating in the story, people identify with it, and it shapes their character. The story then becomes part of their lives. Where there is faith, there is also hope. There is hope that God is coming again to redeem and restore the earth. The Christian life should be characterized by faith and hope in the promises of God who will bring a perfect earthly future. According to Cameron Lee, “Hope, reorients our existence so that we live toward the promise of a consummated Kingdom. We enter the narrative by faith, and in hope, we actively direct ourselves towards the climax.”18 Nonhuman species also share this faith and hope. The whole creation is groaning in pains waiting for redemption (Rom 8:21–23).

Faith asserts that people are earth-keepers, hence they are morally obliged to act responsibly, preserve the earth, and act for the common good of other creatures in such a way that other species will continue to exist in the future. Without faith and hope, people lose their godly identity and purpose, and consequently they cannot envision a perfectly future earth where the whole creation will thrive. Additionally, without faith and hope, people become destructive to themselves and the earth.

With virtues such as love, faith, hope, patience, self-control, and others, people are able to embody a virtuous practice and spirit of Sabbath or rest. Their souls are able to find joy, peace, and contentment in Sabbath. Sabbath then becomes part of their lifestyle. Sabbath is one of the rare lifestyle practices in our consumerism driven society. Workaholism and restlessness are often celebrated by our community stories. Sabbath provides an opportunity for people to reflect upon their true identity as children of God and what is meaningful in their lives. It calls people to focus on something greater than themselves and their materials needs. Walter Brueggemann points out that the Sabbath calls people “to an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. The alternative on offer is the awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God.”19 The foundation of understanding rest as a virtuous practice is the creation narrative in Genesis. After completion of creation, God entered Sabbath; he took time to celebrate, appreciate, and enjoy the existence of his creation. Likewise, Sabbath gives people time to heal, share, reflect, and enjoy the presence of God, others, and creation. Furthermore, it reminds people that while work is good, it is not the sole purpose of human life, nor is the acquisition of goods. The goal of human life is to have a meaningful communion with God, one another, and the earth.20

Sabbath gives people an opportunity to renew their trust and dependence on God. It is in Sabbath where people see God not only as the Creator and Redeemer of the universe but also as the Sustainer and Provider of everything. It is such trust in God which cultivates a steadfast spirit and content heart. The Sabbath reminds people that God is in charge of his creation and not them.

Sabbath also applies to nonhuman things under the care of people. In the Old Testament, God gave the Israelites specific laws for taking care of the land and animals. This was meant to promote health and prevent creation from being exploited and overworked (Exod 23:10–12). Also, the book of Leviticus promotes proper sanitation. During wars, God demanded that the fruit trees not be indiscriminately destroyed (Deut 20:19–20). When the Sabbath becomes part of people’s character; they reflect the beautiful biblical narrative of creation, redemption, and imagery of well-being, gratitude, trust, faith, and love for God and his creation.21

In conclusion, our ecological crisis reveals the moral character of humanity. By our actions, we have shown that we have aligned ourselves with the consumerism story instead of God’s creation story. A response to the ecological crisis calls for a change of narrative and of character. It calls us to be virtuous and faithful stewards of God’s creation. And so, stewardship of creation becomes part of our identity and purpose. We share in the divine life and mission of God. We join him in cultivating and keeping the earth, and together we delight in the beauty of creation.

Ananias Moses lives in Oodi, Botswana, where he works as a minister. He also serves the community by facilitating health-related activities, particularly activities that sensitize and educate people about HIV/AIDS.

1 Clifford C. Cain, “Down to Earth Theology: Reclaiming our Responsibility for Creation and Embracing Biblical Stewardship,” American Baptist Quarterly, 30, nos. 3–4 (2011): 277.

2 Steven Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty of the Earth: a Christian Vision for Creation Care (Michigan: Baker Academic, 2001), 134.

3 In African culture, everything is summed up in the concept of God and religion. God is the Creator and Giver of every life, hence every life is sacred and should be preserved. There is mutual interdependence between human beings and the earth. The well-being of a person is closely connected to the well-being of the whole creation. In other words, a person is not distinct from his or her environment. The earth is considered to be the mother of all living things. She is kind, loving, caring, and generous to all her children. However, she is able to curse or withhold her blessings if she is mistreated or disrespected. Environmental issues such as famine, infertile soil, and rainfall variability are, therefore, seen as a sign that God and mother earth are displeased with the behavior of the earth’s inhabitants. When this happens, people have to pray and confess their sins to God. Some make sacrifices to appease the spirits (libations are poured to ancestors’ spirits). When mother earth is purified and appeased, the relationship between the mother and children is restored. Taboos are cultural conservation strategies which ensure that nonhuman species are protected and preserved from those who deviated from the cultural ecological norm. One should point out that this cultural ecological belief is changing due to the impact of secularization and postmodernity. In addition, the rise of industrialization has led to commercialization and consumeristic attitudes. Mother earth is less appreciated for her intrinsic values.

4 Environmental possibilism is a philosophical belief that human beings have the ability to change their environment to meet their needs. It emphasizes alterations of the environment, and it is different from environmental determinism, which states that the environment shapes human culture and behaviors. Charles Whynne-Hammond, Elements of Human Geography (London: Collins Educational, 1985), 6.

5 Earth and environment are used interchangeably in this paper.

6 Joseph K. Sheldon and David K. Foster, “What Knowledge is Required for Responsible Stewardship of Creation?” Christian Scholar’s Review 32, no. 4 (2003): 366.

7 Richard A. Young, Healing the Earth: A Theocentric Perspective on Environmental Problems and their Solutions (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 80.

8 All biblical quotations in this article are taken from English Standard Version (ESV).

9 Millard J. Erickson, “Biblical Ethics of Ecology,” in The Earth is the Lord’s: Christians and the Environment, ed. Richard D. Land and Louis Moore (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), 76–78.

10 S. R. Kellert and J. K. Berry, “Phase III: Knowledge, Affection and Basic Attitudes Toward Animals in American Society,” (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1980), quoted in Joseph K. Sheldon and David K. Foster, “What Knowledge is Required for Responsible Stewardship of Creation?” Christian Scholar’s Review 32, no. 4 (2003): 366.

11 Critics of Christianity charge that Christianity perpetuates environmental degradation in its endeavor to obey the Scripture. Lynn White Jr. blames Christianity for the rise of modern science and technology which have given people uncontrolled power to exploit the earth. Furthermore, he claims that Christianity is one of the anthropocentric religions. Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science, n.s., 155, no. 3767 (1967): 1203–7.

12 Bouma-Prediger, 64.

13 Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: a Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 51.

14 Bouma-Prediger, 68–69.

15 Bouma-Prediger, 69–70.

16 Kyle D. Fedler, Exploring Christian Ethics: Biblical Foundations for Morality (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 73.

17 Bouma-Prediger, 135.

18 Cameron Lee, Beyond Family Values: A Call to Christian Virtue (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 195.

19 Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), xiv.

20 Fedler, 110.

21 Jama L. White, Amanda M. Blackburn, and Mary K. Plisco, “Rest as a Virtue: Theological Foundations and Application to Personal and Professional Life,” Journal of Psychology & Theology 43, no. 2 (2015): 115.

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Missional Spirituality: A Case Study in the Pauline Spirituality or Paul’s Model for Contemporary Missionaries

This paper describes the characteristics of missional spirituality and proposes a model that is less isolationist and more participatory and empathetic, less fragmentary and more holistic. Using examples from Paul’s life and teachings as a case study, this paper overviews approaches to spirituality that influence missions and concludes by considering the relevance of such missional spirituality for churches in Brazil.

Today’s spirituality is very anthropocentric (human-centered), meaning the spiritual life is all about the person’s needs, desires, and beliefs. Focused on the personal growth of one’s faith and spirituality in their relationship with God, this kind of self-centered spirituality views the world as a threat and consequently isolates itself and flees rather than engaging with and aiming to transform the world.

Biblical spirituality, by contrast, is centered in God and our neighbor: focused on loving God and our neighbor (Mark 12:30–31) and serving God and others (1 John 4:20–21). This spirituality is missional because it calls us to embrace the missio Dei and to join God in his mission to redeem, restore, and transform this world.

Missional spirituality sees all our acts of service to God and our neighbor as acts of devotion to, worship of, and intimacy with God. From this perspective, these acts must be done with love in order to be acceptable to God and transformative to those around us (1 Cor 13:1–3).

This article proposes a model of spirituality that is less isolationist and more participatory and empathetic, less fragmentary and more holistic, and less inspired by human triumphalist models and more shaped by Jesus’s example of humility, suffering, and obedience as it was taught and exemplified by Paul.

A Human Spirituality

Spirituality is too often associated with doing and hardly considered being. The idea seems to be that the more we do activities considered spiritual, the more spiritual we become, and the less human we become. This conception seems to ignore the complexity of life and our humanity filled with conflicts, doubts, struggles, fears, and anxieties. Our humanity is an integral part of our spirituality.

The tendency of Brazilian believers has been to mask or try to suppress the reality of our humanity with all its weaknesses, limitations, and imperfections, and to project a narcissistic ideal of being that does not reflect our reality and our identity as humans and children of God. We imagine that God loves only the future and improved version of us, and until we reach it, we will have little of God and the Christian life to enjoy.

By contrast, a missional spirituality does not ignore our sinful, flawed, limited human condition, nor does it encourage the careless resignation that covers up carnal sins and passions that alienate us from the will of God. Instead, it promotes a happy and courageous self-acceptance. This kind of more human spirituality not only makes the Christian recognize his need and dependence on Christ and the grace of God to complete his incompleteness but it opens him up and sensitizes him to the condition of all people. The spiritual person treats others with empathy and grace and not with intolerance and condemnatory judgment.

It is understood: we are all human, sinners and needy for God and his love, and in him we find the way to a new humanity transformed in the image of his Son Jesus Christ (Rom 8:29). According to Paul, our humanity and fragility is considered as strength and efficacy in the task of being the recipients and proclaimers of the treasures of God’s grace and His kingdom (2 Cor 4:7). How? Paul himself answers by affirming that the excellence of power is from God and not from us. To glorify God as a minister is to depend on the power of God!

Among Brazilian Churches of Christ, the expectation for a good missionary and minister, a successful worker, is that he hardly makes mistakes. He does not go through suffering, he does not get depressed, he does not fail in his projects, he does not get sick, and he will always be successful and popular. This picture certainly does not describe Paul’s ministry. Paul in his missionary work shows that the missionary also bleeds, weeps, suffers, sins, fails, grieves, falls ill, and dies. Paul speaks in several of his letters of his struggles and sufferings.

  • Physical suffering (2 Cor 6:4–10; 11:23–30; Phil 3:12–14).
  • Emotional suffering: Paul suffered the pain of concern for the well-being of the churches (Col 1:24; 2 Cor 11:28), emotional pain for the lost (Rom 9:2), sorrow for the suffering of their fellow men (Phil 2:27–29). He also experienced the emotional pain of rejection, betrayal, and disappointment with fellow ministers (2 Tim 1:8, 15) and the ill-treatment of those who were served and blessed by him (1 Cor 4:9–13).
  • Solitude: Paul experienced the pain of loneliness and abandonment in the moments that he most needed companions (2 Tim 1:15–18; 4:9–13).
  • Failure: Paul experienced many failures in his ministry, both in terms of evangelization (Acts 14:1–5; 16:11–15, 31) and teamwork (Acts 15:36–41) and of the continuity of his work in the lives of the people he trained (2Tim 1:15–18; 4:9–13).

Our imperfection highlights the perfection of God. Our weakness highlights the power of God. God can and will act through a broken and imperfect humanity to reach a broken and imperfect humanity. We see this when Paul experienced being empowered by God in his imperfections in order to be a more effective missionary (2 Cor 12:9–10).

A human spirituality is an incarnated spirituality, as demonstrated by Paul, who assumes his condition and longs for his redemption. It is a spirituality that follows in the footsteps of the Son of God, who took on humanity to build a new humanity for God (Eph 2:15). It is a spirituality in a constant state of transformation to promote transformation in others.

A Holistic Spirituality

The typical view of spirituality tends to define and restrict spirituality to the mystical, individual, and inner dimension of one’s relationship with God. The practical manifestation of this type of spirituality is perceived in an emphasis on and practice of the spiritual disciplines and in the individual and community moments of worship and church activities. This view creates a dichotomy between what is considered spiritual (worship, fasting, Bible study) and what is considered secular (work, school, fun). So self-centered Christians often think that what we do for God is just what we do in the church building, on Sunday, and in the worship service.

This fragmentary and dualistic view of life and spirituality does not correspond to the biblical view of a full life (our whole life belongs to God) and to a complete spirituality (doing everything to glorify God) (1 Cor 10:31). A holistic spirituality is not confined to the church’s Sunday worship, but it reverberates on the other days of the week and with all the people we relate to outside the church. Holistic spirituality covers every aspect of our lives, not just activities considered spiritual or religious. God wants to be part of not only a fragment of our life but of our whole being and our whole experience.

The concepts of mission and spirituality are very broad and inclusive in the New Testament and especially in the example and ministry of Paul. They include every action of the Christian in public and private life to bring us closer to God and bring others closer to him through the gospel. A missional Christian is someone who understands that every place he steps is a mission field (work, school, family, neighborhood, and so on) and everything he does for God and his neighbor is spiritual.

Holistic spirituality according to Paul is a spirituality grounded in faith in Christ and evidenced by the good works of love produced by this same faith (Gal 5:6; Eph 2:8–10). It is a spirituality that balances faith and Christian praxis, that transcends the personal and inner dimension of our daily devotional time and leads us to the collective and external dimension in contact with people and their needs, especially the most foundational and urgent need—the need for a relationship with God.

A Cruciform Spirituality

Cruciform spirituality is, first of all, Christocentric. True Christian spirituality in a nutshell is to seek to identify with Christ in every way. We must reflect the character of Christ in a life full of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23); we should serve in a dedicated, selfless, and humble way as Christ served others (Phil 2:5–11). Thus, the true goal and result of a Christocentric spirituality is “Christ being formed in us” (Gal. 4:19), pressing forward “until we reach maturity, reaching the full measure of Christ” (Eph 4:13). According to the teachings of Paul we understand that the true spiritual person is the one who relentlessly seeks to be like Jesus and do what Jesus did. In this Christocentric spirituality Jesus is the model, the content, and the goal of the spiritual life.

Furthermore, this cruciform spirituality understands and interprets the gospel, Christian life, and mission from the point of view of the cross. The “crucified Christ” is the lens through which we see and understand the Scriptures and life in community. Carrying the cross (Luke 14:27) and preaching the cross of Christ (1 Cor 2:2) identify and define a true spiritual Christian. Cruciform spirituality has two distinct marks: (1) self-emptying and humility and (2) obedience and suffering.

Self-emptying and humility

Philippians 2:7 states that Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.” Paul cites this example of Jesus to teach about humility as an essential element for Christian unity. Many conflicts in and out of the church can be resolved by practicing this cruciform spirituality. A lot of transformation and growth can happen in our lives when we empty ourselves and recognize that we have much to learn and improve, if we keep an open heart and mind in order to receive the fullness of the Spirit (Eph 3:19; 5:18).

The more we empty ourselves, the more we create space to fill ourselves with Christ and the overflowing of the Holy Spirit, leading to a transformed life. Authentic spirituality is not measured by the amount of knowledge or by the abilities and gifts that we possess but by how much Christ fills us and how much he overflows around us.

Obedience and Suffering

Philippians 2:8 goes on to say, “. . . becoming obedient [even] unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” Suffering is the result of emptying. This spirituality questions and confronts our ambitions and life goals. Those who prioritize safety, well-being, and prosperity will certainly not be attracted to the spirituality of the cross that leads to suffering, humiliation, and death. The success of the mission exemplified in Jesus is not in the victory against his enemies, the size of his projects, or his popularity but in submission to God’s will that he suffer and die for those who hated and crucified him. This obedient suffering is rewarded by God’s acceptance and glorification (Phil 2:9–11). This crucified spirituality is missionary and transforming because it sacrifices itself to serve, bless, and reach its neighbor for Christ and his kingdom.

A Relevant and Necessary Missional Spirituality among Brazilian Churches of Christ

The missional movement and the concept of missio Dei is fairly well known and practiced in Brazil among evangelical Christian churches in general, especially among the great historical denominations (Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Anglican, Lutheran, etc.). Authors like John Stott, Alan Hirsch, Ed Stetzer, Tim Keller, Christopher Wright, and David Bosch are known and referenced in many articles and books published by Brazilian theologians and missiologists.

Brazilian Evangelical Publishers has published a considerable amount of missional material from renowned foreign authors and from Brazilian authors. Many missional conferences and lectureships are organized every year, calling on Brazilian Christian leadership to rethink the church’s mission and its responsibility in Brazil and in the world. Great global movements such as the Lausanne Movement, the missional movement, and, in Latin America, the Integral Mission Theology Movement, are studied and their influence is seen in the way many Brazilian churches develop their ministerial and missionary work.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said among the Churches of Christ in Brazil. As a member of the Churches of Christ now for more than thirty years, I do not remember hearing about the concept of the missio Dei, the distinction between missions and mission, between missionary and missional, or the concept of the kingdom of God that transcends the church in any of my tradition’s studies, conferences, articles, or books that address the subject of missions. I also have not heard about the concept of missional spirituality in my history with the Churches of Christ.

The reality of the Brazilian Churches of Christ in general shows that missional authors are unknown, or at least not mentioned, the global movements are ignored, and some events that promote in-depth missonal conversations are discarded and even rejected. Why? Perhaps the idea is that everything that originates from and is spread by denominational or even interdenominational leaders and organizations is harmful, wrong, and compromises our Christian faithfulness. What is the practical result of this isolationist and prejudiced attitude that we reap in terms of our mission and spirituality?

  • Institutionalized spirituality: In our Brazilian context there is a great emphasis on attending Sunday worship services and weekly congregational activities. This emphasis is perceived in the Christian’s definition of faithfulness and spirituality. The faithful member is considered to be one who does not miss Sunday service and weekly activities, even if he is not involved in any ministry that promotes mission, discipleship, and evangelism. If he is physically present at the right place and at the appointed time, he is a faithful and exemplary spiritual member. We know the importance and motivating power of the worship service and the activities that the church promotes (Heb 10:24–25), but an institutionalized spirituality focuses on this inner ecclesiastical environment and often ignores the external and community environment of our spirituality.
  • Proselytizing and reductionist mission: The lack of missional concepts makes the church reductionist in its mission. Then the church has only the conversion of people and the multiplication of churches as criteria of success and fidelity in the mission. If there are no converts or new churches planted, then are we not fulfilling the mission? What if a person has not yet been baptized but has already heard the gospel and her heart is already accepting the truths of Christ in her life, and she wants a different life with Jesus? Even though she has not yet been baptized but is already experiencing internal changes that we cannot measure, is the mission not being fulfilled? Have we been sent to sow the gospel or to convert people? If we cannot plant new churches in our city, but we bring the gospel and its transformation to people outside our congregation, is the mission not being fulfilled? In Brazil we fight against much corruption, poverty, low education, and violence, among other evils that affect our country. The number of professed Christians in the country has grown, and today we are 22.2% of the population, but these increased numbers are not alleviating the evils that affect the nation in a significant way. More self-centered churches and members are not necessarily the answer. The growth of missional Christians and missional churches, however, can be the determining factor of change. If the number of churches does not grow in the city, but if the Christians we have are transforming society in a significant way, fighting violence, corruption, immorality, and injustice, like salt of the earth and light of the world in their communities, are we not fulfilling the mission? The answer is a resounding yes!

What can be done to change this situation in Brazil? How can we become an ever more missional church that carries the gospel that saves, transforms, and unites people? I would like to suggest a few simple initiatives that can help our Brazilian congregations.

  • Missional training: Ministers in Brazilian Churches of Christ are well trained doctrinally, apologetically, and evangelistically, but they need more missional theological training in order to understand that the mission of the church is the mission of God and that the church continues the mission of Christ here on earth (John 20:21). The leaders must grasp that the church carries the mission to live the gospel, proclaim the gospel, and demonstrate the gospel in good works of love and mercy. How can this be implemented? I believe breaking the barrier of fear, mistrust, and prejudice toward authors, leaders, and missional events among other Christian traditions can help us grow in areas that need improvement. Some Brazilian Churches of Christ have broken these barriers and reaped positive and transformative fruits. We always have something to teach and something to learn from others of different religious traditions. I would love to see more leaders reading good missional authors, attending missionally minded events (there are plenty in our country!), listening to podcasts, and watching free videos on related concepts.
  • A missional pulpit: Our missionally trained Brazilian ministers will be able to train the church through the Sunday sermon and weekly classes and especially through their personal example. I heard a Brazilian evangelical missionary at a conference say, “There is no missional church without a missional pulpit.” He explained that he did not mean that all preaching and teaching will be about mission but that the leader should mentor the church in order to create a missionary environment for the church to absorb and live. In Brazil I have noticed that our pulpits are very apologetic and doctrinal but not very missional. Our people know a lot about what they have to believe and how they have to answer but very little of how to live as salt and light in the world. It is time to change, and this change starts with the leadership.
  • Evangelism and missionary discipleship: I strongly believe that in addition to changing the way we learn and the way we teach, it is also essential to change the way we evangelize and make disciples. Much of our evangelization—and I am a guilty of this—focuses on baptism. We evangelize in order to lead the person to baptism and then disciple him to be a good church member, someone who attends the worship services, brings offering, and participates in church ministries. This is good, but there is a much better way! What if we evangelize people to become a member of the kingdom of God and not only a member of the local church? What if we make disciples who not only come to the church but who also go out into the world to be light and salt of the earth? What if we make disciples who not only receive and learn but who also teach and give to others? What if we make disciples who serve not only our church ministries and programs but who also work in the world in ministries of mercy? What would that be like? What difference would that bring to our congregations and cities? A transformative difference! Just as it was in the early church!

Conclusion

The present Christian generation is suffocated by many models and manuals of spirituality, but perhaps it still lacks a coherent and healthy model of spirituality—one that does not isolate itself or focus on itself but seeks the transformation and growth of its community and the loving practice of faith.

In the Bible, the numerical growth of the church was the fruit of the church’s healthy spirituality and community life (Acts 2:42–47). The Pauline missional model of spirituality is the most relevant to our generation because it seeks to rescue Christ’s authentic, empathetic, comprehensive, transformative, humble, and obedient model of spiritual living.

If the Brazilian Churches of Christ embrace and propagate this missional model, we will experience a healthy spiritual growth and a sustainable and contagious numerical growth, rather than the present steady decline.

Joncilei Mendes da Silva is a native missionary from Manaus, Brazil, serving the Church of Christ in Itu, Brazil, with his wife Kária since 2006. Today he serves the congregation as the Missions Efforts Coordinator and Teaching Minister. He recently finished his degree in urban missions at The South American Theological Seminary (FTSA). Joncilei and Kária have two sons, Joab, who is seventeen, and Joel, who is ten. The Mendes Family loves to serve the kingdom together.

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Hope Is a Place

The Hope Mission was planted in Mozambique 23 years ago. Its founders, Geraldo Borges, and Kleber and Juracema Ribeiro, were sent by the Christian Churches in Brazil to start a mission work in the northern part of the country. Throughout the years, the missionaries have planted more than 100 churches, trained indigenous leaders, started a Christian school in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood, and opened a house to take care of orphans and children at risk. In the school, more than a thousand kids receive free education that prepares them to go to high school afterwards. In the Hope Home, around sixty kids receive everything they need to thrive while living in a Christian environment. Kleber and Juracema Ribeiro were members of my home church in Goiânia, GO, Brazil, and I visited them for twenty days in order to learn about their work and to be a better advocate for them back in Brazil. As you can read below, I had a transformative experience, and I hope to give you a glimpse of what I saw.

To get there, first you need a visa to Mozambique. Then, you have to buy a plane ticket to Johannesburg or to another major city in South Africa. From there, you take another plane to a city called Nampula located in the northern part of Mozambique. While in the plane, you can see the so-called “square of asphalt” out the window—the only place in the city with paved streets. However, do not be so excited. You are not at Hope yet.

After becoming more familiar with the smell of the city, a mix of human odor and spice, you drive to a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. While crossing Nampula, you notice that the majority of its inhabitants are seated in front of their houses no matter what time it is. Some of them are talking, others are playing cards. Some just observe what is going on. You will soon discover they do not do it by choice. Just like Hope, jobs are a rare commodity in the city.

Still driving, you cross the railroad tracks. Next to the tracks, you see a bustling marketplace. Under the scorching hot sun, clothes are bought and sold. If you decide to stop and take a look at them, prepare to be surrounded by a great number of insistent sellers trying to convince you that they have the greatest deal to offer. However, do not be mad if they try to sell you used American clothes for an exorbitant price. Here, international visitors are like jobs and Hope: rare and valued.

Talking to some of the local people, you discover that the American clothes sold in the marketplace were sent to Mozambique for the purpose of being distributed to poor people. Unfortunately, you will realize soon that corruption has managed to transform charity into commerce. Probably hopeless at this point, you decide to get out of there. It is the perfect time to continue your trip to Hope.

Driving to your destination within the city, you ask yourself why you are here. Why have you decided to come? Why have you planned this trip? The dusty streets, the scorching sun, the strong odor, the unemployed people, and the busy marketplace have influenced all your questions. But do not allow them to stop you from finding Hope. You are almost there.

The gates are open and a thousand kids are playing among the trees. They are wearing uniforms: white shirts with purple skirts for the girls and purple shorts for the boys. You can feel the happiness in the air; it is contagious. While you are trying to decide what to do, one of them takes your hand and invites you to play. How can you say no? He points to the swing, hung from one of the trees. You swing him so high that he almost touches the sky. His laugh fills your heart with joy and Hope.

After the bell, you will see all of them entering their classrooms in a very organized way. To your surprise, warnings not to run are unnecessary. They know exactly what to do. It is lunch time. For most students, it will be the only meal of their day. Maybe, you imagine, this is one of the reasons why their Muslim parents allow them to attend a Christian school. The other reason, you know for sure, is the fact that the school also offers free quality education no matter the religious background of the child. This is Hope for you and for them.

Leaving the school, you will be invited to visit the orphanage located on the same property. There, forty kids receive three meals a day—something unimaginable in the reality of Mozambique. You will listen to some of their stories and discover that, in fact, the majority of them are not orphans. Their parents, in a desperate act, gave them to the missionaries. Hopeless, they decided to offer Hope to their kids.

With the faces of the kids in your mind, their laughter in your ears, and their stories in your heart, you will probably need a moment of silence—and so will I. Providentially, one of the workers will invite us to spend some time in the chapel located in the back of the lot. While going there, he will tell us his own story. He will talk about how the mission reached out to him in his remote village. He will tell us that he was one of the kids of the orphanage and one of the students at the school. With a smile on his face, he will tell us that he is now one of the teachers at Hope Mission. In that moment, looking at him, we will finally realize that Hope is real, and we have found it.

Renata Cabral Vicente is an ordained minister who works as Administrative Pastor at First Christian Church in Taguatinga Sul, Brazil. After working in advertising agencies in her hometown, Goiânia, for ten years, she answered her ministerial calling. She holds an MDiv in Theology from Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan College.

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Review of John Mark Terry and Robert L. Gallagher, Encountering the History of Missions: From the Early Church to Today

John Mark Terry and Robert L. Gallagher. Encountering the History of Missions: From the Early Church to Today. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017. 416 pp. Paperback. $25.60.

Teaching the history of Christian mission and expansion is a daunting task. Compressing two thousand years of Christian history from across the globe into one readable volume seems impossible. John Mark Terry, department chair and professor of missions at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, and Robert L. Gallagher, department chair and associate professor of intercultural studies at Wheaton College, take on this project in their book Encountering the History of Missions: From the Early Church to Today. As part of the Encountering Mission series published by Baker Academic, Encountering the History of Missions is a missions history textbook written from a conservative American evangelical perspective for students who desire to pursue a vocation in cross-cultural missions (vi, viii). Their goal in writing this volume is to help contemporary and future missionaries avoid the mistakes of the past while also inspiring them to imitate the passion and dedication of their predecessors (361). The result is an ambitious, yet flawed attempt to write a comprehensive and accessible history of Christian missions.

The book begins with a chapter on “Missions in the Early Church,” where Terry and Gallagher set out to show how the church grew from Jesus’s small group of disciples to a religion that spanned the Mediterranean world by the time of the council of Nicaea in the fourth century (1). They do this by exploring what they identify as the missionary methods used by the early church so that they can distill a clear and straightforward set of methodological lessons for their readers to imbibe. Terry and Gallagher end the chapter with a case study and a set of reflection questions that urge students to apply what they learned in their reading to contemporary situations or problems that arise in the mission field (20–22). This approach to exploring the history of Christian mission sets the pattern for the rest of the book. Each chapter in the first two-thirds of the volume highlights the history and methods of specific Christian traditions, ranging from the Church of the East and Celtic Christianity to Jesuit and Methodist missionary efforts, followed by a case study and discussion questions. The final third of the book follows the same pattern but primarily focuses on evangelical missions, including a chapter on the Church Growth Movement. Terry and Gallagher end the book with an evaluation of evangelical missions based on J. Herbert Kane’s 1978 edition of Understanding Christian Missions. Here the authors reproduce Kane’s assertions and analyze what past missionaries did wrong, what they did right, and the tasks that remain for contemporary and future missionaries (355, 358, 360).

Encountering the History of Missions has two strengths in particular. First, the case studies and discussion questions that Terry and Gallagher present at the end of each chapter are a creative way to help students critically process and apply the historical material to contemporary situations and questions. Second, the broad scope of Encountering the History of Missions is likely to introduce students to movements, characters, and stories of Christianity’s past that they have never encountered. Standard courses in church history rarely include, for example, the stories of the Church of the East and its encounter with Tang China or Orthodox missions in Japan and Alaska. The broad scope of the book will help students understand that Christianity has long been a global faith and not merely a Western one.

Attempting a project of this scope is going to have its drawbacks as the authors have to make difficult choices about what to include and what to leave out. Unfortunately, such decisions are overshadowed by three systematic faults that severely undercut the value of the book. First, Terry and Gallagher fail to set forth a clear and consistent definition of “mission” in their book. Rather, they take an approach that assumes such a definition is self-evident. This lack of definition becomes problematic when they choose what to include in their narrative and what they leave out. For example, chapter seven explores what they label “Reformation Missions” (130–149). Here, Terry and Gallagher portray the Reformed and Lutheran movements as self-conscious missionary movements spreading a biblical gospel throughout Europe to fight the corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church (149). Luther and Calvin, however, did not think of themselves in this light. They understood themselves as working within the framework and borders of Christendom, not crossing boundaries into non-Christian territories. This unique perspective on the reformations of the early modern period raises questions that Terry and Gallagher never answer: What is mission? When do Christians become missionaries in different cultural, geographical, and temporal contexts? The answers to these questions are undoubtedly complicated, especially in our contemporary context, but they deserve a thorough investigation, especially at the outset of a project as ambitious as Encountering the History of Missions.

Second, and related to a precise definition of mission, the singular focus on the individuals the authors identify as missionaries and the missionaries’ methods is problematic. Over the last forty years, scholars such as Andrew Walls and Lamin Sanneh have shown that the mission and expansion of Christianity throughout its history is a dynamic process that affects those who carry the message and those who receive it. Namely, while missionaries serve as cross-cultural gospel bearers, the successful inculcation and inculturation of the Christian faith into a specific cultural context depends on the creativity and activity of receiving peoples, often despite the best efforts of the missionaries themselves. By ignoring the story of peoples who receive the gospel in this book, Terry and Gallagher present a skewed narrative that ignores the importance of indigenous agency in the history of the mission and serial expansion of Christianity.

Third and finally, a cursory reading of Encountering the History of Missions reveals that the authors have not digested the critical scholarship on the issue and, as a result, they have not presented their readers with the freshest material. For example, the sole source for their small section on “The Women’s Movement in Mission” is two editions of the same source: Ruth Tucker’s 1983 and 2004 editions of From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions (265–68). While Tucker’s book is a fine popular overview of missionary biographies, it lacks reference to the scholarly work over the last three decades on the history of women in Christian mission. Careful, critical sources such as Dana Robert’s American Women in Mission: The Modern Mission Era 1792–1992, would have added depth and historical accuracy to their account. Indeed, throughout Encountering the History of Missions, this lack of reliance on critical scholarship often calls into question the assertions put forth in the book.

Encountering the History of Missions provides its readers with a wealth of information while also presenting a series of case studies that pushes them to consider critically the Christian missions history. Students who encounter this book in the classroom will find multiple launching points for a more in-depth study of the history of missions. The lack of a precise definition of mission, indigenous voices, and knowledge of critical scholarship on Christian missions, however, call into question the reliability of the book to provide a fresh and balanced narrative. At best, Terry and Gallagher’s volume is a bold but flawed attempt to provide a sweeping account of the history of Christian Missions. At worst, the authors imply that the conservative American evangelical missionary movement is the zenith of the missionary movement in Christian history.

Jeremy P. Hegi

PhD Candidate, Church History and World Christianity

Boston University

Boston, MA, USA

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Review of James L. Gorman, Among the Early Evangelicals: The Transatlantic Origins of the Stone-Campbell Movement

JAMES L. GORMAN. Among the Early Evangelicals: The Transatlantic Origins of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2017. 240 pp. $22.99.

In his book, Among the Early Evangelicals, a revision of his dissertation at Baylor University, James Gorman, Associate Professor of History at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee, argues “that the Campbell Movement in the United States emerged from transatlantic evangelical missions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The earliest Campbell tradition, as articulated in the Christian Association of Washington and its 1809 Declaration and Address was more indebted to the evangelical missionary movement than it was to the fertile frontier and democratic soil in the United States” (23). The Campbell Movement is part of the Restoration Movement or the Stone-Campbell Movement—a tradition that consists of three distinct denominations: the Churches of Christ, the Church of Christ/Christian Church, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He unpacks his thesis in eight chapters and a postscript.

Gorman’s chapter titles give the reader a glimpse into the book’s contents. For example, chapter one, titled “Reframing the Religious and Historical Context of the Campbell Movement,” describes how “the influences of the evangelical missionary movement that emerged throughout the transatlantic region in the 1790s was the clearest and most comprehensive context that produced the earliest manifestation of the Campbell Movement” (15). In chapter two, “The Rise of Transatlantic Evangelical Missions in the Eighteenth Century,” Gorman argues that before the end of that century evangelicals were deeply interested in missions. He concludes that, “They believed that denominationalism and confessionalism often provided criteria for the essence of Christianity that focused on the intellect but neglected new-birth experience”(53). Along the same lines, in chapter four, “Thomas Campbell’s Formative Background in Irish Evangelical Missions,” Gorman maintains, “the story of the evangelical missions in Ireland . . . shaped the theology and practices of Thomas and Alexander Campbell” (95–96). Chapter six is titled “From the British Isles to the United States: The Christian Association of Washington.” In this chapter, Gorman gives the historical background for the Declaration and Address, one of the two most important documents for understanding the Stone-Campbell Movement. Gorman states, “Traces of evangelical missions exude from nearly every page of the Declaration and Address. The plan of the Christian Association of Washington resembles the plans of the Evangelical Society of Ulster, London Missionary Society, Society for Propagating the Gospel at Home, and other evangelical societies” (161–2). The last chapter is entitled “The Campbell Movement’s Roots in Transatlantic Evangelical Missions.” In this chapter, Gorman’s conclusion, he reiterates his argument that “the Campbells’ [Thomas and Alexander’s] early ideals and practices, as expressed in 1809 [in the Declaration and Address], were not unique among transatlantic evangelicals of the era” (209).

Stone-Campbell Movement historians acknowledge Thomas and Alexander Campbell—father and son—together with Barton W. Stone, as the chief architects of the Stone-Campbell Movement; but they have conventionally identified “two” Alexander Campbells. In this book, Gorman argues for a “third” Campbell, if not “the earliest Campbell who, with his father, supported missionary societies for two decades; a ‘second’ who opposed them in The Christian Baptist; and a ‘third’ who eventually affirmed them” (197).

Among the Early Evangelicals revolutionizes Stone-Campbell historiography, and this “third Campbell” is one of the significant contributions that can be appropriated by Stone-Campbell Movement historians, because the three major branches of this fellowship “have constructed entire traditions based upon one or the other of these [“two”] Campbells” (216). For example, “the Churches of Christ, found a usable history in the ‘first’ Campbell, who was right to oppose missionary societies because they represented extra-congregational cooperation that was unbiblical in origin and denominational in direction” (216).

Although Gorman is concerned with the Campbells, his inclusion of Walter Scott’s contribution to the success of Campbell’s movement enriches the fellowship’s theological history. Scott’s “evangelistic tool, the five-finger exercise, was influential on missions practices, overall expansion, and soteriology in the Campbell Movement” (204–5). His five-finger exercise, also known as the “plan of salvation”—“have faith, repent, be baptised, receive remission of sins, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and eternal life” (205)—is still the revered “plan of salvation” in Churches of Christ in the Global South, especially sub-Saharan Africa, where the movement is experiencing exponential growth.

Among the Early Evangelicals unshackles Stone-Campbell Movement historians from ungrounded ecclesiastical traditions. Stone-Campbell historians frequently argue that Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address was influenced by his education in Glasgow and involvement with the church in Ireland. Gorman acknowledges these facts but argues audaciously that “Thomas’s Christian Association of Washington and its Declaration and Address were reproductions of other evangelical missionary society charters, plans, organization, ideals, and means of evangelization” (209–10). In Ireland, Thomas Campbell cooperated with other denominations for missions, and the “first” Alexander espoused that belief. Gorman then urges “segments of the [Stone-Campbell] Movement who have completely rejected cooperation with other denominations, or even with other Stone-Campbell Movement congregations, to reconsider their own historical development and how they got to a place so different from anything Thomas Campbell envisioned at the beginning of the Movement” (216). If Thomas Campbell worked with other denominations, what is the origin of exclusivism and sectarianism, two significant characteristics that identify the Churches of Christ?

As an indigenous African, I highly recommend this book, which is not an easy read for the typical person in the pew, to every lecturer or teacher in Bible schools, preachers’ training colleges, and Christian colleges in sub-Saharan Africa, and anybody serious about the historical background of the Stone-Campbell Movement. It will unsettle our understanding of Stone-Campbell Movement history because “the earliest documents and actions of the Campbell Movement reveal its roots in evangelical missions . . . [through] pragmatic primitivism” that nurtured ecumenical cooperation (187). Pragmatic primitivism uses “the Bible generically (rather than a legalistically defined pattern) as a shared foundation on which denominations could unite for ‘simple evangelical gospel’ missions” (188n86). The Movement left pragmatic primitivism for patternist primitivism, which holds that the “New Testament contains a ‘pattern’ for worship. This primitivism focuses on identifying, extracting, and applying that primitive pattern in modern times” (188n86).

Therefore, historians need an informed understanding of these “vibrant roots [that] provide a corrective to old narratives, ones that embraced exclusion and sectarianism, as the original vision of the Campbells” (217). Regrettably, exclusivism and sectarianism, which were bequeathed to us in the Global South, with good intentions by our missionaries, are too often the hallmarks of the Churches of Christ.

The book has an extensive bibliography useful for Stone-Campbell historians, but one hopes that Gorman will include an index in the second edition.

Paul S. Chimhungwe

Lecturer

African Christian College

Manzini, Eswatini

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Review of Bryan Stone, Evangelism after Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness

Bryan Stone. Evangelism after Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018. 151 pp. Paperback. $14.65.

You might not have heard the good news: we have reached the moment after pluralism. That, at least, is the provocative possibility that Bryan Stone’s new book Evangelism after Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness entertains. Stone, who continues to write at the cutting edge of evangelism studies, unfurls an exciting argument. The new volume recapitulates and extends his Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness. In addition to being more accessible than the previous work, Evangelism after Pluralism focuses more sharply by framing major dimensions of the post-Christendom context—Western imperialism, nationalistic militarism, violent politics, consumerism, and religious relativism—in terms of the metanarrative of pluralism. Furthermore, Stone foregrounds the extent to which the Christian practice of evangelism calls for an ethics shaped by a social imagination that moves beyond pluralism:

My ultimate hope is to identify a conterimagination that habituates the practice of evangelism in rather different directions and refuses the temptation to secure a space in the world for the good news. Within that alternative imagination, evangelism is the noncompetitive practice of bearing faithful and embodied witness in a particular context rather than an attempt to produce converts by first safeguarding the credibility or helpfulness of the good news. Shaped ecclesially through distinctive social practices, evangelism is the offer of beauty rather than an exercise in positioning the good news within a crowded marketplace in an attempt to fight off the competition. (13)

The problem that Stone takes up, then, is not simply how best to evangelize in a pluralistic or post-pluralistic context but how to free evangelism from the ethical limits of pluralism.

Stone launches the argument in ch. 2 by contrasting evangelism and proselytism ethically, identifying the latter with the competitive logic of pluralism. “Our evangelism is our ethics” (17), contends Stone, indicating that by standing in contrast (competition?!) to the ethics of pluralism, the way that the church bears witness to, embodies, and performs the gospel is itself the gospel. One might say that the communication of the gospel is compromised when the ethics of pluralism reigns, but that claim risks essentializing the gospel in abstraction from the life of the church in the way of Jesus. The gospel is not merely communicated by means of but, more profoundly, is manifest as the church’s alternative ethics. Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum, “The medium is the message,” seems to echo from the pages of Evangelism after Pluralism.

Chapters 3 and 4 finish framing the discussion by addressing notions of empire and salvation respectively. The book’s key concept is that pluralism, “the story we tell about plurality,” is actually “about how we are to comprehensively comprehend and make sense of the many” (10). The question remains: Whose comprehensive logic plots the story of pluralism? Stone’s answer is the piercingly insightful twist at the heart of the book. He first reaches for a postcolonial trope, reminding us that “empires expand and maintain their power by the homogenization of place through the imposition of a unified and totalizing ‘order’ that erases difference” (30). Then he identifies this imposition of unity as the plot of pluralism’s story! Thus, one of the shackles from which Stone would loose evangelism is the naïve postmodern imagination in which the logic of imperialism is only at work in Christianity’s religio-political acquisitiveness (read: “evangelistic” fervor), which pluralism purportedly subverts. The truth, rather, is that contemporary empire is “far less interested in securing and defending a single official religious sponsor or chaplain and more adept at domesticating all religions equally as purveyors and administrators of essentially private experiences” (32). By imposing the unifying category “religion” on diverse experiences and then defining religion as “private,” empire operates another mechanism of control. Therefore, following theological ethicists such as John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, Stone contends that the answer is not to beat empire at its own totalizing game but to understand the church as a “rival” politics (34). This leads directly into his brief discussion of “the ecclesiality of salvation” (ch. 4), whose premise is that the church’s alternative political, economic, ethical life is the embodiment of the gospel and, therefore, is not an optional instrument for or accompaniment to some other, churchless “salvation.” Indeed, “salvation is a way of naming our life together as Christians” (44).

With these basic claims established, Stone moves on to the meat of the book in chs. 5 to 8. These chapters thicken the ideas already introduced, now systematically addressing key themes: the civil religion of the nation-state, the utilitarian violence of empire, the competitive practice of consumerism, and the globalizing gaze of shallow religious pluralism versus the political imagination, pacifist ethics, and alternative economics of Christ’s way and the theological vision of God’s universal grace. In all of these discussions, Stone’s framework of pluralism, ethics, empire, and salvation holds the argument together, generating a variety of incisive insights. The final chapter, “Evangelism and Beauty,” takes an unexpected turn toward the aesthetic dimensions of the ethics of evangelism: “An ethics of evangelism for which beauty is central is not an ethics that identifies ahead of time some end at which we aim (the conversion of our neighbor or church growth, for instance). . . . The ethics of evangelism is instead an ethics of response and witness to a beauty that interrupts and lays claim on us, inviting us outward. It is an ethics of participation in a beauty that sanctifies and transforms” (122). Here as well, Stone gestures toward significant insights, if only in germinal form. The chapter ends appropriately with a discussion of beauty’s plurality. The book concludes with a Barthian epilogue on the meaninglessness of apologetics in view of a post-pluralistic ethics of evangelism. A reference list and index round out the volume.

Evangelism after Pluralism is a vital, innovative contribution to the study of ecclesiology, evangelism, and ethics alike. It is well-written and concise and will likely prove indispensable to teachers of evangelism in the American context for the foreseeable future. A few critical issues are especially noteworthy, however. First, Stone needs to address the tension that arises from the fact that his non-competitive ethics is in competition (“rivalry”) with the plurality of alternatives. Second, the argument needs to deal more thoroughly with the dimensions of the gospel that touch upon personal reconciliation with God. Stone’s critique of individualistic, spiritualized notions of salvation treads near caricature, but more importantly it subdues elements of evangelism that are in need of ethical mediation, not least the prophetic call to personal repentance that is ineradicably part of Jesus’s way. Finally, the reader may naturally wonder whether Stone’s ethics itself becomes a totalizing story about the way the church’s embodiment of the gospel relates to the politics, economics, and religions of the pluralistic empire. Can the practice of evangelism be contextualized in a variety of ways, or does Stone’s understanding of the way of Christ exclude other possibilities? Granting that, in the absence of competitiveness or coercion, the logic of Stone’s ethics is not totalizing in the proper sense, nonetheless the postliberal sensibilities that underlie the argument suggest that his ethics is potentially insular—bound to an internal logic that is not subject to extra-systemic influences and therefore resistant to contextualization. While Stone addresses some of these matters in other writings, and he need not say everything here, the book’s modest page count leaves room to expand on these important points in a second edition. Then again, perhaps the ability to provoke readers’ plural answers to such questions commends the volume more than would a single attempt to answer them.

Greg McKinzie

PhD Candidate

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, CA, USA

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Two Types of Discipleship: On Matthew 8:18-22

Xi Li

When scholars discuss the identity of the two inquirers in Matt 8:18–22, they have an either-or position on discipleship, tending to hold that these two inquirers are either already or not yet disciples. Such a position has led to ambiguous understandings of both the identities of these two inquirers and the nature of Jesus’s teaching in this passage. This paper proposes a different approach to discipleship, arguing that the two inquirers in Matt 8:18–22 represent two types of discipleship: the wandering disciple and the domiciled disciple. This approach indicates that the first inquirer is a domiciled disciple but wants to wander with Jesus, whereas the second is already a wandering disciple but wants to stay at home.

The identity of the two inquirers in Matt 8:18–22, especially the first, has long been controversial. While most scholars acknowledge the discipleship of the second inquirer, it is highly controversial whether the first is a disciple. The ambiguity of his identity also makes unclear the nature of his contrast with the second inquirer and the nature of Jesus’s responses to both. This paper proposes that the two inquirers in Matt 8:18–22 represent two types of discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew: the wandering disciple and the domiciled disciple. Accordingly, the first wants to wander, therefore Jesus explains to him what it means to be a wandering disciple; by contrast, the second inquirer wants to stay at home, so Jesus reminds him of his duty as a wandering disciple.

In the first section, I argue for the discipleship of the second inquirer. In the next section, I analyze the strongest arguments for and against the discipleship of the first inquirer. I argue that both sides of the arguments have their problems, and a theory of two types of discipleship is a possible approach. In the final section, I provide textual evidence for the theory of two types of discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew and show that this theory may lead to a different understanding of Matt 8:18–22.

The Identity of the Second Inquirer

He Is Already a Disciple

The pericope under consideration starts, “Jesus, seeing many crowds around him, ordered to depart to the other side” (8:18).1 Although the verb “ordered [ἐκέλευσεν]” has no object and, thus, it is unclear to whom Jesus is speaking, v. 23 indicates that the implied object is Jesus’s disciples. According to v. 23, Jesus’s disciples follow him when he embarks in the boat. The action of following Jesus and getting into the boat looks like a response to his command of departure in v. 18. Therefore, it is highly possible that in v. 18 Jesus orders his disciples to go to the other side. If so, the second inquirer’s request to first bury his father in v. 21 is a negative or reserved response to Jesus’s command in v. 18. The desire to delay for a while sets him apart from other disciples who respond positively to Jesus in v. 23.2

A stronger argument for the discipleship of the second inquirer comes from the expression ἕτερος τῶν μαθητῶν (8:21a). Grammatically, this expression can be translated in two ways. First, it might be literally translated as “another of the disciples” (NRSV, KJV); second, if we separate ἕτερος from τῶν μαθητῶν, we may have “another man, one of the disciples” (NEB, NJB) or “another, a disciple” (NAB).3 Both ways of translation support the discipleship of the second inquirer, although they may have different connotations.

He Is Not a Disciple

W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann are the only scholars I have found who argue against the discipleship of the second inquirer. Emphasizing the difference between Luke 9:57–62 and Matt 8:19–22, they claim, “Alongside the Lukan narrative, this verse [Matt 8:19] as it stands in the Greek in Matthew is odd.”4 They explain why “this verse” (Matt 8:19) is odd: “The legal requirement of burial within twenty-four hours would not have posed an intolerable delay in the following of Jesus, and the third inquirer in Luke [9:61] is obviously not of the inner circle of the Twelve.”5

Albright and Mann assume that the request of burial is not an intolerable delay for disciples, and so they infer that the second inquirer in v. 21 is not a disciple. However, the text is unclear regarding why a disciple should not request a delay in following when he is commanded by Jesus to depart. It is possible that the urgency of leaving everything for the kingdom of heaven makes the delay of the second inquirer intolerable for a disciple. It is also possible that this inquirer’s father is not yet dead but close to death, and therefore the delay is intolerably more than twenty-four hours. Neither possibility proves that the second inquirer is not a disciple, although they may suggest that this inquirer is not a good disciple.

Nor is it clear what the third inquirer in Luke has to do with the discipleship of the second inquirer in Matthew. To be sure, the comment of Albright and Mann might make sense of the second inquirer in Luke, who is not called a disciple. Yet their comment does not apply to the second inquirer in Matthew, for whether this inquirer is a disciple or not is at least an open question in Matthew and, as discussed above, the context of Matthew shows that this inquirer is a disciple.

In conclusion, it is more likely than not that the second inquirer is already a disciple. By contrast, as I will argue below, it is unclear whether the first inquirer is a disciple or not. As a result, it is hard to know the nature of Jesus’s responses to both.

The Identity of the First Inquirer

He Is Not a Disciple

Scholars’ arguments against the discipleship of the first inquirer focus on three factors: his identity as a scribe, his calling Jesus “teacher,” and his statement that he will follow Jesus wherever Jesus goes. My examination below reveals that none of these arguments is decisive.

The Title “Scribe”

Matt 8:19 states that the first inquirer is a scribe (γραμματεύς), a title that leads to a controversy over his discipleship. According to W. D. Davis and Dale C. Allison, “The man in 8.19–20 bears a title (‘scribe’) which often belongs to Jesus’ opponents.”6 However, in Matt 13:52 and 23:34 the title “scribe” is not negative. In the words of Pierre Bonnard, “mais ici, comme dans 13.52 et 23.34, rien n’apparaît de ce rôle négatif.”7

Robert Gundry argues that Matthew prefers “their scribes” for the opponents of Jesus, and that “Matthew’s not calling the man one of ‘their scribes’ ” favors this scribe’s discipleship.8 Jack D. Kingsbury argues against Gundry, pointing out, “If in two instances the first evangelist does describe followers of Jesus as ‘scribes’ (13.52; 23.34), in at least nineteen others he utilizes the term in strictly negative fashion to denominate enemies of Jesus.”9

Kingsbury is correct that we cannot infer the discipleship of the first inquirer merely from the fact that he is not called “one of their scribes.” However, neither are we able to conclude thereby that he is not a disciple. We can revise Gundry’s view to a weaker position, arguing that the point is not that this scribe is a disciple of Jesus because of the absence of the title “one of their scribes,” but that it is uncertain that this scribe is not Jesus’s disciple because the title “one of their scribes” is not used. According to this revision, Kingsbury’s comment results in uncertainty. On the one hand, we are not sure, as Davies and Allison attest, that the title “scribe” shows that the first inquirer is not a disciple. On the other hand, neither are we certain, as Gundry suggests, that since the title “one of their scribes” is absent, this inquirer is a disciple.

Matthew’s use of γραμματεύς, which occurs twenty-three times, including 8:19, also supports my conclusion above. In the twenty-two other occurrences, two are certainly positive, as pointed out (13:52; 23:34). There are three unclear cases (7:29; 9:3; 17:10). Matt 7:29 explains why the crowds are surprised by Jesus’s sermon: “for he was teaching them as one having authority, but not as their scribes.” It is not clear that “their scribes” here means the enemies of Jesus because we do not know to whom “their” refer. In 9:3, “some of the scribes” think Jesus is blaspheming. The reaction of these scribes is negative, but it is hard to say that they are enemies of Jesus; the use of “some” also suggests that even here not all scribes have a negative attitude towards Jesus. Matt 17:10 tells us that the disciples asked Jesus why “the scribes” said that Elijah must come first. The context does not suggest these scribes are the enemies of Jesus.

In the remaining seventeen instances, γραμματεύς clearly refers to the enemies of Jesus. However, in all these cases the scribes stand with the obvious enemies of Jesus. In eleven cases, they are with the Pharisees (5:20; 12:38; 15:1; 23:2, 13, 14, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29). In three cases, we have “the chief priests and scribes” (2:4, 20:18, 21: 15); in another three cases, the scribes are with “the elders and chief priests” (16:21, 17:41) or “elders and the high priest” (26:57). In other words, when Matthew mentions “scribes” as the enemies of Jesus, he never uses the word independently; he uses it with the terms that clearly refer to the enemies of Jesus.10

In 8:19, the “scribe” is not with either the Pharisees, the chief priests, or the elders. Therefore, it is uncertain that he is an enemy of Jesus. As a result, we cannot infer that this scribe is not a disciple because he is Jesus’s enemy. Nevertheless, neither are we sure that he is a disciple of Jesus, for the fact that he is not Jesus’s enemy does not mean that he is a disciple. Matthew’s use of the term “scribe” cannot help us to determine the discipleship of the scribe in 8:19.

The Title “Teacher”

The first inquirer comes to Jesus and calls him “teacher” (διδάσκαλε), which is often treated as another piece of evidence against his discipleship. Davies and Allison claim, “Although Jesus is, for Matthew, the teacher par excellence . . . the disciples . . . never employ it.”11 Kingsbury also highlights, “Persons of faith and true disciples never address Jesus as ‘teacher’ or ‘rabbi’ but always call upon him as ‘κύριε’.”12 Craig L. Blomberg, Daniel J. Harrington, and J. C. Fenton emphasize that the title “teacher” is usually used by either Jesus’s enemies or unfaithful persons.13

Although the evidence above is strong, it does not prove that a person who calls Jesus “teacher” cannot be his disciple. The noun διδάσκαλος occurs twelve times in Matthew, one of which is 8:19. In four cases (12:38; 22:16, 24, 36), it is used by the enemies of Jesus to label him. In 19:16, it is used by a young man who wants to have eternal life. It is also used by the Pharisees (9:11) and a tax collector (17:24) who call Jesus “your teacher” when they question the disciples of Jesus. In the remaining four cases, it is used positively by Jesus as a self-reference (10:24, 25; 23:8; 26:18). Thus, διδάσκαλος in Matthew is not always used negatively. Walter Grundmann is reasonable to claim that the first inquirer recognizes in Jesus the dignity of a teacher.14 Moreover, in 10:24–25 Jesus is teaching the relationship between a teacher and a disciple in general; the con-occurrence of μαθητής and διδάσκαλος here suggests that the Matthean Jesus accepts an internal and positive relationship between the titles “disciple” and “teacher.”

A comparison of the use of διδάσκαλος in Matthew and Mark is helpful. In Mark, this noun occurs twelves times, in four of which the disciples use it to label Jesus (4:38; 9:38; 10:35; 13:1). Three of these four cases have parallels in Matthew (Mark 4:38//Matt 8:25; Mark 10:35//Matt 20:20; Mark 13:1//Matt 24:1), and in all these cases διδάσκαλος disappears in Matthew. In Matt 20:20 and 24:1, διδάσκαλος disappears because the two dialogues between Jesus and his disciple(s) in Mark are changed into two narratives. The dialogue in Mark 4:38 is kept in Matt 8:25, but the title for Jesus is changed from διδάσκαλε in Mark to κύριε in Matt. Because such a change happens only one time in Matthew, it is hard to know the motive of Matthew’s change. Whatever the motive is, it is unlikely that Matthew uses διδάσκαλε to indicate a person’s non-discipleship because, as pointed out, Jesus’s teaching in 10:24–25 suggests his acceptance of a positive connection between the titles διδάσκαλε and κύριε. Thus, we cannot conclude that a person who calls Jesus “teacher” must not be his disciple.

“I Will Follow You Wherever You May Go”

The first inquirer comes to Jesus and states, “I will follow you wherever you may go” (8:19). Regarding this statement, Kingsbury claims, “According to the Matthean conception of discipleship, the point at which a candidate first evinces his willingness (or unwillingness) to commit himself to Jesus and to ‘follow’ him is at the moment of his initial summons (4.18–20, 21–22; 9.9; 19.21–22).”15 Harrington also proposes that the “statement ‘I will follow you’ is the equivalent of ‘I wish to become your disciple.’ ”16 According to both views, the statement “I will follow you wherever you may go” shows that this inquirer is not a disciple. Such a view has three difficulties.

First, how do we know that this scribe is initially evincing his willingness to commit himself to Jesus? As discussed above, Jesus’s command to go over to the other side is given to his disciples. If so, is not this scribe answering Jesus’s order? Second, although the term “follow” usually indicates a first commitment of discipleship, in other places it also means “go/walk behind.” For instance, in 9:19 “Jesus got up and followed him.” Third, there is a crucial difference between 8:18–22 and Jesus’s initial summons in 4:18–22 and 9:9. In the latter cases Jesus states “follow me” to would-be disciples. As argued above, however, the correspondence between 8:18 and 8:23 shows that in 8:18 Jesus orders his disciples to depart. This difference makes it implausible to parallel the first inquirer with the would-be disciples in 4:18–22 and 9:9.

He Is a Disciple

The above discussion shows that main arguments against the discipleship of the first inquirer are not decisive, thus the identity of this inquirer is debatable. I will now argue that the main arguments for the discipleship of this inquirer are also problematic.

“The Crowds”

Returning to v. 18, we have Matthew’s narrative, “seeing many crowds around him.” Who are those crowds? According to Gundry, the crowds here are Jesus’s disciples and, therefore, “Both of those who speak to Jesus in the next verses represent the crowd of disciples.”17 Gundry argues that the phrase “great crowds around him” is drawn from Mark 3:32, “A crowd was sitting around him,” and that the crowd in Mark is identified by Jesus as “his true family, those who do God’s will.”18 If Gundry is correct that the crowd in Matthew is Jesus’s family and that Jesus’s family consists of his disciples, then the crowd consists of the disciples. However, in Matthew there is a clear distinction between the crowd and the disciples.19 For instance, Matt 5:1 indicates that the crowd and Jesus’s disciples are two groups of people; the crowd in 13:2 is obviously distinguished from the disciples in 13:10. Hence, we are not able to establish the discipleship of the first inquirer from Matthew’s use of the phrase “the crowds.”

“One and Another”

A stronger argument for the discipleship of the first inquirer involves the use of εἷς in v. 19 and ἕτερος in v. 21. According to Gundry, the pair of “εἷς . . . ἕτερος” is in support of the first inquirer’s discipleship.20 Gundry’s general idea is this: “A genitive added to a noun previously mentioned without a qualifying genitive fails to reclassify a noun previously mentioned. . . . Thus it is probable that in 8.21 the addition of τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ to ἕτερος implies the discipleship of εἷς γραμματεύς in 8.19, too.”21 He discusses twenty examples in Matthew to prove how the genitive added to modify a noun does not change the reference of the same noun mentioned earlier.22 However, a closer examination shows that these examples do not help to draw a decisive conclusion on 8:21.

One of Gundry’s examples is “the resurrection of the dead” in 22:31. He argues that the genitive “of the dead” does not change the reference of the noun “resurrection” previously mentioned in 22:23, 28, 30, and that this is Matthew’s way of using the genitive. Nevertheless, it seems that the reason why the reference of the noun “resurrection” is not changed by a genitive is not Matthew’s use but the definition of “resurrection,” which means the rising of the dead. In other words, the definition of “resurrection” already suggests its reference, and it is this fact, instead of Matthew’s special use, that explains why the genitive “of the dead” in 22:31 does not change the reference of “resurrection” previously mentioned.

Another of Gundry’s examples is “Galilee of the gentiles” in 4:15, where the genitive “of the gentiles” does not change the reference of the noun “Galilee” mentioned in 4:12. However, Matthew’s original reader might have known what “Galilee” meant, and it is this knowledge, rather than Matthew’s special use, that explains why “of the gentiles” does not change the reference of the noun “Galilee.” Similarly, the reason that “of the Jews” in 2:2 “does not imply that Jesus was the king of the Jews whereas Herod was the king of others” is because the original readers knew that “King Herod” was the King of the Jews.23

In the above examples, the reference of the noun modified by a genitive is identified not through Matthew’s way of using a genitive but through the definition or context of that noun, or the knowledge of the original audience. In other examples, it is not clear that the use of the genitive does not change the reference of the noun which it modifies. These examples include “blasphemy of the Spirit” in 12:31, “the sign of the prophet Jonah” in 12:39 (also in 16:4), “the parable of the sower” in 13:18, and “the parable of the weeds of the field” in 13:36. Gundry argues that the genitives in these passages do not reclassify the nouns previously mentioned. His idea is partly right in the sense that “blasphemy of the Spirit” is still a “blasphemy,” “the sign of Jonah” is still a “sign,” and “the parable of the sower” is still a “parable.” Nevertheless, in some examples the genitives do narrow down the references of the nouns modified, though the “kind” of the nouns is not changed. For instance, although the “sign of Jonah” is still a “sign,” it refers to a specific sign, a different thing from the reference of “sign,” a general concept.

Turning to 8:19, 21, we can see how the observations above make Gundry’s general argument for the discipleship of the first inquirer problematic. First, since in some cases a genitive may narrow down the reference of a noun, ἕτερος modified by τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ in 8:21 may refer to a narrower type of thing than εἷς γραμματεύς in 8:19. Accordingly, ἕτερος τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ may refer to a specific type of scribe, a scribe who is Jesus’s disciple, and εἷς γραμματεύς may refer to a general scribe, who may or may not be a disciple. Second, in other cases it is because of the definition or context that a genitive added to a noun does not reclassify that noun. Regarding 8:19–22, the only fact we know about the first inquirer is that he is a scribe. Neither the definition of the term “scribe” nor any context or knowledge about it may indicate that ἕτερος τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ refers to the same thing as does εἷς γραμματεύς.

A Different Solution

After an examination of the main factors invoked by scholars to argue for or against the discipleship of the first inquirer, his discipleship is still unknown. This uncertainty turns out to make unclear our understanding of Jesus’s response to him. Some scholars believe Jesus turns down this would-be disciple’s request for discipleship,24 but the possibility that this inquirer is already a disciple makes such a belief problematic. Others emphasize Jesus’s teaching on discipleship, but most of them do not explain what leads Jesus to offer such a teaching. Regarding this issue Harrington suggests, “In response to the scribe whose occupation would have demanded the stable lifestyle of a home, Jesus offers only the life of a wandering preacher.”25 However, if the scribe is already a disciple and knows the wandering nature of discipleship, Jesus’s teaching seems to be redundant.

Scholars who hold that the first inquirer is already a disciple face a different difficulty: Why is this inquirer, a disciple, so eager to express his commitment to follow Jesus? Gundry’s answer to this question is interesting: “Throughout his gospel Matthew emphasizes proof of genuineness among professors of discipleship.”26 However, throughout Matthew’s gospel we see only Peter’s intention to prove his genuine discipleship (26:33). More importantly, Peter’s case is different from the current one in that his proof is a defensive response to Jesus’s statement, “You will all become deserters because of me this night” (26:31). In the current case we see Jesus’s order to go over to the other side, which seems not to be a cause for the scribe to prove the genuineness of his discipleship. This scribe is indeed responding to Jesus’s order, but what exactly is the intention behind his response?

The existence of these difficulties suggests that it might not be appropriate to have an either-or position on discipleship. Whether arguing for or against the discipleship of this inquirer, scholars tend to hold that he is either a disciple already or not yet a disciple. No middle way has been tried, perhaps because scholars do not think there is a middle way. However, there is a middle way: This inquirer is a disciple but not the type of disciple who wanders with Jesus to preach. Put another way, the two inquirers in 8:18–22 represent two types of discipleship: the wandering disciple and the domiciled disciple.

This middle way is implied in a debate over the historical Jesus. On the one hand, Gerd Theissen and John P. Meier view the earliest disciples of Jesus as wandering charismatics, and Matt 8:20 is taken as one piece of evidence for their view.27 On the other hand, Richard A. Horsley argues, “There must already have been a more concrete ‘community’ than a vaguely conceived group of ‘followers’ during the ministry of Jesus.”28 This debate calls for an eclectic solution; that is, historically Jesus had two types of disciples: the wandering disciples and domiciled disciples. Turning to Matthew’s narrative, we will see that it does indicate or imply two types of discipleship. But note that I am not going to use a debated point to solve a different debated point.29 Rather, I am going to argue that a solution to a debate about the historical Jesus indicates a similar solution to the debate concerning the identity of the two inquirers in Matt 8:18–22. The fact that both debates involve the issue of discipleship explains why these two debates call for a similar solution.

Two Types of Discipleship in Matthew

Wandering Disciples

Theissen defines “wandering” as homelessness, lack of family, lack of possessions, and lack of protection.30 In this paper I accept the first three features of Theissen’s definition of “wandering” because they are sufficient for distinguishing the wandering disciples from the domiciled ones. In addition, given the narrative of sending out the Twelve, I add that wandering disciples are disciples who are doing missionary work.31 In Matthew’s Gospel, we can discern three passages supporting the wandering discipleship.

First, according to the calling story in 4:18–22, “Immediately leaving the boat and their father they followed him” (4:22); this narrative suggests that these disciples give up their home, family, and possessions to follow Jesus. Horsley thinks this narrative only implies a temporary abandonment of home and family, but he does not explain why.32 Possible evidence for his view is the statement in 8:14 that Jesus enters Peter’s house, which suggests that Peter abandons his house temporarily in 4:22. Nevertheless, the phrase “Peter’s house” does not necessarily mean that Peter still owns the house; it could be a convenient way to identify the house. Peter’s statement in 19:27 that “we left all and followed you” shows that he has given up his house.

Second, the narrative of sending out in Matt 10 also suggests a life of wandering for some disciples, at least the Twelve. Regarding this narrative, Horsley argues that it does not mention abandoning home and family but merely suggests that no possessions are to be carried during the missionary journeys.33 However, Peter’s statement in 19:27 indicates that the wandering disciples lack possessions not only during the missionary journeys but also throughout their life with Jesus so far.

Third, as mentioned above, Peter’s statement in 19:27 is good evidence for the wandering life of some disciples. Peter’s use of “we” indicates that these wandering disciples are the Twelve. Jesus replies to Peter by stating, “everyone who left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold” (19:29). This statement also indicates a wandering life for at least some of Jesus’s disciples. Horsley argues that Jesus here “promises full restoration to a new ‘home’ and the broader ‘family’ . . . hardly the homeless wandering of the supposedly itinerant charismatics.”34 Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Jesus’s promise involves a “home” as a building. It seems confusing that abandonment of physical home would result in “a hundredfold” new physical ones; we should rather understand the houses as spiritual. Furthermore, when Jesus continues to say that his disciples will receive eternal life in the age to come (Matt 19:29; see also Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30), the “eternal life” sounds spiritual, which implies that the “new houses” are also spiritual.

One may argue that without a strong economic basis the wandering life is impossible. However, if the number of the wandering disciples is limited, as with the Twelve mentioned above, then finances are not a serious problem. More importantly, many scholars believe that the context of the Gospel of Matthew is Antioch, the capital of Syria, a well-to-do city.35 Accordingly, Matthew’s narrative indicates that his communities are wealthy.36

The wealth of Matthew’s communities leads Kingsbury to argue that these communities have not “practiced literally the itinerant ethic of renouncing home, family, and good.”37 While Kingsbury is right that Matthew’s communities might not lead a wandering life, it is possible that these communities send out missionaries. For instance, Matthew’s communities, which are in a city, might send out missionaries to villages or other cities, and the narrative of sending out supports this possibility.38

Domiciled Disciples

The above discussion shows that in Matthew there are some wandering disciples, the number of which is limited, probably twelve. I argue below that there are two pieces of evidence supporting the existence of a distinct, domiciled discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew’s use of ἐκκλησία

The term ἐκκλησία occurs 114 times in the NT but only three times in the four Gospels, all in the Gospel of Matthew (16:18, 18:17 [2x]).39 While in the first-century Graeco-Roman world the term ἐκκλησία did not necessarily mean a religious body,40 it has an obvious religious sense in Matthew. In 16:18, after Peter’s confession, Jesus points out that he will build his church (ἐκκλησίαν) based on a rock; it is unimaginable that Jesus is talking about building a non-religious assembly.

The other two occurrences of ἐκκλησία in 18:17 further confirm the religious sense of ἐκκλησία in Matthew. The broad context of 18:17 is Jesus’s teaching to his disciples, because 18:1 states that “the disciples came to Jesus.” Matthew 18:15 points out a more direct context of 18:17: “a brother of you sins.” The “you” obviously refers to the disciples who come to Jesus in 18:1 and, thus, “a brother of you” is also a disciple. Therefore, when Jesus teaches in 18:17 that the disciples should report the sin to the church if the sinner, another disciple, refuses to listen to two witnesses, Jesus means the church of the disciples.

Scholars have noticed that the churches of Matthew are house churches.41 If so, these churches must have fixed places for their members to meet and those members are more likely to be domiciled disciples than wandering disciples.42 Furthermore, the existence of churches means a relatively large number of disciples. As argued above, the number of wandering disciples must not have been very big, due to limited finances. So, it is unlikely that all the members of Matthew’s churches are wandering disciples. In other words, at least some disciples of Matthew’s churches are domiciled disciples.

Some Individuals

There are two special cases which point to domiciled discipleship in Matthew. Matthew 27:57 mentions Joseph who “was discipled” (ἐμαθητεύθη) to Jesus. Albright and Mann argue that Matthew uses μαθητεύω to avoid the misunderstanding that Joseph is a disciple,43 but other scholars believe that Joseph is already a disciple.44 I agree with the latter view, because it is in line with Matthew’s other two uses of μαθητεύω. In 28:19, Jesus commands the eleven disciples to “make disciples of” (μαθητεύσατε) all nations; the term μαθητεύσατε here must mean “make disciple” rather than “instruct.”45 In 13:52, therefore, it is not unreasonable to render πᾶς γραμματεύς μαθητευθείς as “every scribe being made a disciple,” especially given the modification “for the kingdom of heaven.”

Joseph does not appear as a disciple in any other passages of Matthew. Given the import of his role, namely coming to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus (27:28), it is hard to imagine that he is wandering with Jesus but Matthew does not mention his name. The narrative also indicates that he is a new character not mentioned earlier. It is very likely that Joseph is a domiciled rather than wandering disciple of Jesus.

It is important to note that the verb μαθητεύω, used to describe the identity of Joseph in 27:57, is also used to identify scribes in 13:52: “πᾶς γραμματεύς μαθητευθείς τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν” (every scribe who has been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven).46 The use of μαθητεύω in both 27:57 and 13:52 indicates that some scribes are domiciled disciples like Joseph. In my discussion of the use of the noun “teacher” in Matthew, I have argued that we cannot conclude that a person who calls Jesus “teacher” must not be his disciple. Therefore, the use of μαθητεύω in Matthew supports identifying the first inquirer in Matt 8:19, a scribe who calls Jesus “teacher,” as a domiciled disciple.

Another example of domiciled discipleship involves a group of persons. In 12:49, when Jesus replies to the notice that his mother and brothers are waiting for him, the Matthean Jesus “stretched out the hand upon his disciples and said, ‘behold, [here are] my mother and my brothers.’ ” As E. Anne Clements emphasizes, the Matthean expression “stretching out the hand upon his disciples” does not occur in parallel synoptic passages (Mark 3:31–35; Luke 8:19–21).47 This difference suggests that in Matthew, women might be included among the family of Jesus’s followers. However, in Matthew there is no narrative about female disciples wandering with Jesus. Matt 27:55–56 does state that some women follow Jesus from Galilee, but it is not clear whether they are disciples or not. The whole group of female disciples in Matthew might be domiciled, staying at home to support wandering disciples, while “the worldwide mission is reserved for males only in the story.”48

Differences Made by the New Solution

Cumulative evidence supports the theory of two types of discipleship in Matthew. Accordingly, this theory suggests a reading of Matt 8:18–22 from a new perspective. According to this perspective, Jesus calls his wandering disciples to go over to the other side to do missionary work (8:18), but a domiciled disciple, a scribe, wants to go with Jesus (8:19). Since he is already a disciple, he is not called “one of their scribes” but “one/a scribe.” He is also different from the second inquirer, who should have been a wandering disciple as I will discuss below. In addition, since the request of this scribe involves wandering discipleship rather than discipleship per se, Jesus’s reply to him in 8:20 is not a denial of discipleship, as some scholars argue.49 It is more likely that Jesus is explaining the nature of doing missionary work to remind this disciple to have a second thought about his decision.

As to the second inquirer, he might be considered a wandering disciple because his request to bury his father first in 8:21 is likely a response to Jesus’s order in 8:18, a call to continue the journey of doing missionary work as indicated above. In other words, this inquirer’s request to bury his father first turns out to be his response to Jesus’s order to continue their journey. If he is not a wandering disciple already, it is hard to explain why he responds to Jesus’s order to wander. In contrast to the first inquirer, who wants to be a missionary instead of staying at home, this second inquirer might not want to wander but to stay at home. It is also possible that he misunderstands the meaning of wandering and thus asks for a delay, while the wandering discipleship requires an urgent commitment, as the calling stories in 4:18–22 and 9:9 indicate. Whatever his intention is, my argument suggests that this second inquirer is not struggling with discipleship but with wandering discipleship. Therefore, in 8:22 when Jesus says “follow me” he is not calling a new disciple but reminding a wandering disciple of his responsibility or explaining it to him. It might be wondered how the second inquirer, if he is already wandering, gets the news about the death of his father. While it seems that he might be domiciled and thus know that his father is dead, two possibilities support his identity as a wandering disciple. One is that he happens to be passing through town in his wanderings with Jesus when his father dies.50 The other is that the crowds bring the news about his father, who lived nearby.

Conclusion

To sum up, this paper deals with the identity of the two inquirers in Matt 8:18–22. I argue that while the discipleship of the second inquirer is certain, all current solutions to the discipleship of the first inquirer have flaws. To solve this problem, I propose a theory that Jesus has two types of disciples, the domiciled and the wandering disciples. This theory is supported by textual evidence and provides a new perspective on Matt 8:18–22. According to this perspective, the first inquirer is a domiciled disciple but wants to be a wandering missionary, whereas the second is already a wandering missionary but wants to stay at home. This perspective also offers a different explanation of Jesus’ responses: Jesus is explaining to the first inquirer the nature of wandering and reminding the second of his own wandering duty.

Xi Li is currently a third year PhD student in the field of biblical studies at the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America. His research interests include trauma studies, the Deuteronomistic History, and the issue of discipleship. Xi received a PhD in the field of Ethics from Peking University in 2005 and an MDiv from Milligan College in 2017. He has served as an associate professor at Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics since 2011 and was a visiting scholar at Baylor University from 2012 to 2013.

1 In this paper, all translations of the Greek New Testament are mine.

2 The meaning of his request, “allow me to go first and to bury my father” (8:21), is unclear. Kenneth E. Bailey argues that it means to “serve my father while he is alive and after he dies I will bury him and come” (Kenneth E. Bailey, Through Peasant Eyes [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 26; E. P. Sanders connects this request to the Jewish obligation to bury dead relatives (E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], 253); Byron R. McCane argues that the burial here refers to the Jewish practice of secondary burial (Byron R. McCane, “Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead: Secondary Burial and Matt 8:21–22,” HTR 83 [1990]: 31–43); Geza Vermes claims that this disciple uses the filial duty as an excuse for procrastination (Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993], 29). These controversies do not influence the identity of the second inquirer.

3 See Jack Dean Kingsbury, “On Following Jesus: The ‘Eager’ Scribe and the ‘Reluctant’ Disciple,” NTS 34 (1988): 53.

4 W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann, “Matthew: Introduction, Translation, and Notes,” AB 26 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 96.

5 Ibid.

6 W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, vol. 2, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 39.

7 Pierre Bonnard, L’Évangile Selon Saint Matthieu, 2nd ed., CDNT 1 (Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1970), 118: “but here, as in 13.52 and 23.34, no negative role comes out of it.”

8 Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 151.

9 Kingsbury, “Following,” 48. Both Ulrich Luz and Donald A. Hagner agree that Kingsbury’s view in “Following” is correct (Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, HermCHCB, trans. James E. Crouch, ed. Helmut Koester [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001], 17n16; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, WBC 33A [Dallas: Word Books, 1993], 216).

10 This use supports Chris Keith’s distinction between scribal-literate authorities and scribal-illiterate manual laborers (Chris Keith, Jesus against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014]) and David E. Orton’s distinction between Pharisaic scribes and other kinds of scribes (David E. Orton, The Understanding Scribe: Matthew and the Apocalyptic Ideal, JSNTSupp 25 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989]). According to their distinctions, the enemies of Jesus are scribal-literate authorities and/or Pharisaic scribes instead of all scribes.

11 Davies and Allison, Commentary on Matthew, 41.

12 Kingsbury, “Following,” 51.

13 Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture, NAC 22 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), 146; Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, SP 1 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 119; J. C. Fenton, Saint Matthew, WPC (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 128.

14 Walter Grundmann, Das Evangelium Nach Matthäus, THNT1 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1972), 258.

15 Kingsbury, “Following,” 48.

16 Harrington, Matthew, 119.

17 Gundry, Matthew, 151.

18 Ibid.

19 Michael J. Wilkins points out that Mark also makes such a distinction (Michael J. Wilkins, Discipleship in the Ancient World and Matthew’s Gospel [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995], 137).

20 Kingsbury, “Following.” Gundry, “On True and False Disciples in Matthew 8.18–22,” NTS 40(1994): 433–41. Alan Hugh McNeile proposes that the use of “εἷς . . . ἕτερος” suggests the discipleship of the first inquirer (Alan Hugh McNeile, The Gospel according to St. Matthew: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes and Indices [London: Macmillan, 1915], 108). For a similar view, see Heinz Joachim Held, “Matthew as Interpreter of the Miracle Stories,” in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew, ed. Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, NTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963), 203.

21 Gundry, “True and False Disciples,” 435.

22 Ibid., 440–41.

23 Ibid., 440.

24 Kingsbury, “Following,” 51.

25 Harrington, Matthew, 119.

26 Gundry, “On True and False Disciples,” 437; Matthew: A Commentary, 151.

27 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 3 (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 50; Gerd Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 10.

28 Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1994), 210.

29 I am thankful to an anonymous reviewer who raises this question.

30 Theissen, Palestinian Christianity, 10–13.

31 There might be disciples who stayed at home most of the time but went out to another church or city to preach occasionally. I see them as domiciled disciples because they were not without home, family, and possessions.

32 Horsley, Jesus, 210.

33 Ibid.

34 Horsley, Jesus, 229.

35 See, for instance, Donald Senior, What Are They Saying about Matthew? (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 14; Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier, Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 22–27; Jack Dean Kingsbury, Matthew as Story (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 121–26; Rodney Stark, “Antioch as the Social Situation for Matthew’s Gospel,” in Social History of the Matthean Community, ed. David L. Balch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 189–210.

36 As Kingsbury points out, the Matthean Jesus blesses “the poor in spirit” (5:3) instead of “the poor” as the Lucan Jesus does (6:20), and the Matthean Jesus commands his disciple to take no “gold, nor silver, nor copper coin” (10:9) but the Marcan Jesus commands them to take no “copper coin” (6:8) (Kingsbury, “The Verb Akolouthein [‘to Follow’] as an Index of Matthew’s View of His Community,” JBL 97 [1978]: 56–73[67]).

37 Kingsbury, “The Verb Akolouthein,” 67.

38 There is a gap of time between Jesus’s sending out and Matthew’s communities and, thus, it seems illegitimate to use the sending out to infer the situation of Matthew’s communities or vice versa. However, as Luz’s idea of “transparence” indicates, “past and present, the history of Jesus and the community’s own experiences, constantly intermingle” in Matthew (Ulrich Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew, trans, J. Bradford Robinson, NTT [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 33. Thus I do not distinguish Jesus’s disciples and the disciples in Matthew’s communities/churches.

39 There are two variants of ἐκκλησία in Matt 18:15, 21. If we count them, this root occurs in Matthew five times.

40 BDAG, 303.

41 Michael H. Crosby, House of Disciples: Church, Economics, and Justice in Matthew (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books), 1988, 49–76; Brown and Meier, Antioch and Rome, 66.

42 Robert Banks claims, “a moderately well-to-do household could hold around thirty people comfortably” (Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community: The Early Churches in Their Historical Setting [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 41).

43 Albright and Mann, Matthew, lxxvii.

44 Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 858; Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading, JSNTSup 204 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000), 538; Gundry, Matthew, 580. Wilkins, Discipleship, 161.

45 Albright and Mann argue for a translation of “teach all nations” (Albright and Mann, Matthew, lxxvii). Just as Benno Przybylski points out, however, “when v. 19 is seen in conjunction with the verb διδάσκοντες in v. 20, this translation is not possible” (Benno Przybylski, Righteousness in Matthew and His World of Thought, SNTSMS 41 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], 110). Moreover, the participle βαπτίζοντες that follows and modifies μαθητεύσατε also suggests rendering μαθητεύσατε as “make disciple.”

46 For the opinion that the μαθητεύω in Matt 13:52 should be translated by a phrase which has the meaning of disciple, see also Albright and Mann, Matthew, lxxvii.

47 E. Anne Clements, Mothers on the Margin? The Significance of the Women in Matthew’s Genealogy (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014), 249.

48 Talvikki Mattila, “Naming the Nameless: Gender and Discipleship in Matthew’s Passion Narrative,” in Characterization in the Gospels: Reconceiving Narrative Criticism, ed. David Rhoads and Kari Syreeni (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999): 153–79 (168).

49 Kingsbury, “Following,” 51; Harrington, Matthew, 119; Ben Cooper, Incorporated Servanthood: Commitment and Discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew, LNTS 490 (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 119.

50 I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer who pointed out this possibility.

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Majority World: A Minority Report (Editorial Preface to the Issue)

Mine is not a Majority World voice. Indeed, the preface of this issue was meant to be written by a Majority World scholar. These things do not always unfold as planned, so I find myself pondering the most useful—and briefest—way to frame the articles marshalled under the heading “Majority World Voices.” My suspicion is that the title of the theme itself needs a comment or two.

From the perspective of an editor, the terminology is an interesting question. Third World was once in vogue, but it refers to a Cold War division of the world into First World (NATO countries), Second World (Communist Bloc countries), and everyone else.1 Aside from the fact that the Cold War ended some time ago, the numerical preeminence of the First World is a not-so-subtle hint as to the bias built into these categories.

Furthermore, the economic nature of the battle between capitalists and communists quickly led to a characterization of the Third World primarily in terms of “development” rather than geo-political alignment.2 The presumption of labeling the Third World as “underdeveloped” or “developing” (where “developed” refers largely to Western bourgeois lifestyle) has become clear.3 Yet, despite the problems of developmentalism, many persist in referring to the Developing World. I consider that categorization a nonstarter.

Others have hitched their jargon to roughly geographical designations. It turns out that many economically poor countries are south of the Equator, so Global South has gained currency. This has some merit, since East and West are widely used conventions. (Of course, on a spherical planet, those designations are not only arbitrary but say a great deal about who established the conventions: the East is only east of the West from the West’s perspective.) Frequently, however, non-Western also sneaks in, suggesting clearly the notion of Western normativity: there is Western culture and there are those that lack the quality of Westernness—non-Westerners. And, as it happens, some not-so-Western (and economically “developed”!) cultures are located north of the Equator. It seems to me that Global South is the sort of generalization that ends up being uselessly inaccurate.

Majority World, however, possesses the qualities of both accuracy and irony, the latter of which I find especially endearing. As a matter of mathematical fact, ostensibly Western cultures are a minority. Among Christians, especially those who attend to missiology, this fact accompanies another of great contemporary significance: the majority of the church now lives amidst the global majority. The irony, of course, is that the West is historically marked by a democratic ethos that grants the majority significant privilege. In view of these observations, Missio Dei prefers the terminology Majority World above other options (including similar contenders such as Two-Thirds World and Three-Fourths World, which seem pointlessly specific). For our purposes, the phrase Majority World appropriately touches upon the historic, joyous reality that the world church’s majority is now to be found among countries once called Third World, underdeveloped, and non-Western.4 Thanks be to God!

This issue seeks to amplify the voices of Majority World mission practitioners and scholars who identify with the Stone-Campbell Movement. These perspectives deserve special attention. Despite the numerical reality of the Majority World church, there are few in it who articulate their views according to the conventions that constrain Missio Dei, much less who can do so in English. We recognize, therefore, both the weakness and vulnerability of our position as publishers of English-language perspectives and the great privilege of hearing even a few voices of our sisters and brothers from Eswatini, South Korea, China, Nicaragua, Botswana, and Brazil.

No doubt, some things are lost in translation. And perhaps some are gained. In any case, our job as readers is to listen carefully, openly, and generously. To this task I commend our readers, with hope.

Soli Deo gloria.

1 For a thorough analysis, see B. R. Tomlinson “What Was the Third World?” Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 2 (2003): 307–21.

2 A thick, if technical, discussion of the evolution of development language and theory can be found in Bengi Akbulut, Fikret Adaman, and Yahya M. Madra, “The Decimation and Displacement of Development Economics,” Development and Change 46, no. 4 (2015): 733–61.

3 Immanuel Wallerstein, “After Developmentalism and Globalization, What?” Social Forces 83, no. 3 (2005), 1264, states that by the height of developmentalism in the 1970s, “the term and the objective seemed virtually a piety.” As in the complex intertwining of Christian mission and the “civilizing mission” (1263) of colonialism, the moral dimensions of development have often obscured the (in retrospect) obviously imperialist assumptions about human good and social wellbeing, to say nothing of the rapacious interests of many who called for and invested in the development of economically weaker countries. So Wallerstein can claim without irony, “The whole discussion from 1945 to today has indeed been one long effort to take seriously the reality that the world-system is not only polarized but polarizing, and that this reality is both morally and politically intolerable” (1265). The broad ascription of these relatively noble motives does little, however, to mitigate the presumptuousness of defining the majority of the world by identifying it with is failure to achieve the West’s level of economic “progress.”

4 In this, Missio Dei follows a convention established at the The 2004 Lausanne Forum for World Evangelization. Timothy Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is Influencing the Way We Think about and Discuss Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), xix, writes: “The 2004 Lausanne Forum for World Evangelization, which I attended in Pattaya, Thailand, dedicated an entire working group to the theme, ‘The Two-Thirds World Church.’ It included participants from across the world, and one of their formal actions was to vote unanimously that the phrase ‘Majority World Church’ be used. This is the best phrase currently available.”

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Unintentional Contextualization in the Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe: A Case Study of the Premillennialist Branch’s Organizational Structure

This paper describes the organizational structure of the Ruwa-Premillennialist branch of Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe, contrasting it with congregational autonomy that was championed by the majority of missionaries from Churches of Christ. This structure was developed by two premillennialist missionaries and is headed by a board of trustees without usurping the powers invested in congregational autonomy. These two missionaries, by default, contextualized an organizational structure that serendipitously suits the indigenous African leadership environment and psyche. Congregations in the Global South can adopt it with modifications.

S. Dewitt Garrett and Robert L. Garrett—father and son respectively—contextualized an indigenous church polity that espoused ownership, partnership, and transparency while retaining congregational autonomy, in their quest to spread premillennialism in Zimbabwe since the early forties.1 The older polity of strict congregational autonomy was transplanted by Euro-American missionaries associated with the Stone-Campbell Movement who arrived in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1896. They taught that congregational autonomy was the only biblical ecclesiastical structure and leadership format acceptable in their sending congregations.2 Proponents of congregational autonomy insist that this structure is based on NT teachings where each congregation was led by a plurality of elders/bishops/presbyters with the assistance of deacons (cf. Phil 1:1; Tit 1:5).3 For them, this is one of the sine qua non marks of the true church, and any deviation from this structure is considered heretical. Congregations of the same faith, however, can cooperate without forming a hierarchical decision-making body.4

The Need for a Different Organizational Structure

After spending decades planting churches in Kenya as a missionary from the Churches of Christ, Monte Cox questions the traditional structure.5 He contends for “replacing the concept of ‘local church autonomy’ and its negative connotations of separateness and isolation with a healthier understanding of the interdependency of churches in Kenya and beyond. To do that, those involved must ask hard questions about their commitment to strict congregational polity. Is this commitment rooted more in the democratic spirit of the founders than in clear biblical teaching? Does Scripture really prescribe only the sorts of interchurch cooperative efforts that are accepted by Churches of Christ in the United States? Is there any room for innovation on the mission field?”6 His hard questions, which can be viewed by others in Churches of Christ as the introduction of false teaching, have been answered pragmatically by the premillennialist branch of Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe. This branch contextualized its organizational structure to suit Zimbabwe’s economic, social, and legal context, which is diametrically opposite to the supposedly scriptural North American model that has been transplanted to every country by missionaries from this fellowship.7 Who are the premillennialists in the historical context of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Zimbabwe?

History of the Premillennialists in Zimbabwe

John Sherriff, the stone-mason-cum-missionary, laid the foundation of the Stone-Campbell Movement churches in Zimbabwe with his arrival in 1896. Sherriff was from the Associated Churches of Christ in New Zealand. After working for almost twenty years, he was joined by W. N. Short from the Churches of Christ in the USA, with S. Dewitt Garrett joining the team in 1930. Garrett was briefly stationed at Wuyu Wuyu Mission, where his son Robert was born in 1931.8 He openly taught that baptismal candidates must believe premillennialism when he started working with the Harari (Mbare) congregation after shifting to Salisbury from Wuyu Wuyu around 1931. In Salisbury, he was working with Goliath Nchena, the founding preacher of the Harari congregation.9 Around 1949, Nhowe Mission—one of the Churches of Christ owned boarding schools—was rocked by this doctrine, with Vernon Lawyer as its chief proponent. William Leslie (W. L.) Brown had left Lawyer as the acting superintendent in 1949 when he went to fundraise in the USA. In turn, Lawyer invited Arthur Phillips in 1949 to deliver lectures on premillennialism, a doctrine that was unacceptable to the majority at the mission.10 It ended with the resignation of Brown while traveling from the USA to Rhodesia.11 His supporting congregation, Central Church of Christ (Nashville, Tennessee), requested that he resign in December 1949, paving the way for Boyd Reese, who was in Northern Rhodesia, to become the superintendent of Nhowe Mission in 1950.

Between 1950 and 1960, S. D. Garrett was privately indoctrinating his followers, leading to the genesis of the Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure that was initially implemented in Southern Rhodesia in 1961.12 His son strengthened it when he arrived during the last quarter of 1961. Both father and son viewed premillennialism, in spite of its divisive effects, as essential for salvation. After his father’s death in 1972, Robert Garrett wrote:

But I want to reveal a significant part of his character and faith in Christ. Considerable pressure was put on him many years ago by personal friends and brethren to renounce the 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth. One church somewhere in Kentucky which had been contributing to him stopped their support in 1945 and urged him in two letters as well as personally to change his views and premillennial associates and if he did, then they promised to gain for him ‘more hearty support.’ But he was a servant of Christ and was not for sale.13

S. D. Garrett died as a premillennialist, and his son has continued teaching this doctrine. In a recent interview, he said, “Some people from your branch [pointing to me] might believe that we will one day join and become one group. That is false; I will die a premillennialist and nearly all the Christians that work with us believe that doctrine. Christ’s reign on earth for 1,000 years is central in what we teach and preach.”14

Garrett got most of his theology from his father whom he worked with for twelve years in Southern Rhodesia, although he also went to college in the USA. After his father’s death, he became the sole leader and missionary for the premillennialists, strengthening the Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure. Churches of Christ in Salisbury (now Highfields and Mufakose) were and still are divided because of premillennialism.15 Robert Garrett worked harmoniously with the Board of Trustees of the premillennialist Churches of Christ, leading to the construction of that branch’s “head-office,” Rockwood Bible Camp in Ruwa, about thirty kilometers east of Harare.16 The camp comprises a church building that can accommodate eight hundred people, a well-equipped kitchen with a cold room, six classroom blocks that double as sleeping houses, and bathrooms. It also has a full-fledged functioning mechanical workshop.17

The camp is used to host retreats for youth, men, and women from the premillennialist congregations.18 In addition to that, it is an income-generating project, raising money from rentals to other Christian groups like Scripture Union and university students that hire it for their religious functions. Garrett said, “Rockwood Camp was financed from the Churches of Christ in the USA, and my brothers and sisters in this country contributed most of the labor. Therefore, I can proudly say this project is a partnership between the Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe and those in the USA, and it is led by local Christians.”19 The establishment of Rockwood Bible Camp is a success story because the Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure operates through the Board of Trustees of the Churches of Christ.

The Constitution

Although the indigenous leadership is not privy to the amount of money that the North American congregations contribute through Garrett, the premillennialists, as already pointed out above, have a legally binding constitution, registered with the Zimbabwe Government, that guides the leadership of the Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe to control, supervise, and own immovable property. Its preamble reads: “The CHURCHES OF CHRIST BOARD OF TRUSTEES was formed on July 29, 1961, being a joint effort of a number of independent congregations of the Churches of Christ to establish a means of joint ownership, especially of immovable property. As the acquiring of stands [plots to build church buildings] and financing of construction and the protection of property was difficult or beyond the individual capabilities of many congregations, it was felt that by working together we could accomplish much more for the kingdom of God.”20 According to Garrett, premillennialist congregations were prompted to form this body after dividing with the mainstream Churches of Christ over eschatology. Individuals like Fred Mupfawi from Highfields and Simon Nheweyembwa from the Harari congregation, who had worked tirelessly with S. D. Garrett, joined hands with R. L. Garrett to pull together congregations in Harari, Mufakose, and Tafara, and others around the capital city (then called Salisbury, now Harare), forming the nucleus of the premillennialists in Southern Rhodesia (Harari is now Mbare, while Salisbury is now Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe.). The establishment of a board of trustees was not acceptable to those in the mainstream Churches of Christ, but in hindsight, it has functioned well for the premillennialists, especially regarding the security of their church buildings.

The sale of immovable property, such as church buildings and preachers’ houses, was a thorny issue during the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (1976–1990). Some missionaries left church buildings in the hands of supposed church leaders who ended up selling them to other denominations. It was therefore prudent of Garrett to incorporate an institution called the Churches of Christ to stabilize the situation. Independent congregations have proven able to work voluntarily with this incorporated body and still retain their autonomy. Garret claims, “Congregations retain their complete autonomy—independence—they are are not governed by the Board of Trustees, but the board can guide congregations on their properties. To show this autonomy—congregations can hire, pay, fire preachers; they can voluntarily contribute to the activities supervised by the Board of Trustees like evangelism and so on. No one is forced, but we now have close to forty congregations that make up our group. This is what we call growth.”21 A typical case is that of the Waterfalls Church of Christ building that was sold to the United Methodist Church. Nyakudya narrated the story of how they nearly lost the Waterfalls church building after it was sold to the United Methodist Church by one individual who had the title deeds. After selling the building, he left the country. The following Sunday there were two groups: the Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. After some discussion they repurchased the building.22 Fortunately, the church managed to repurchase it, and it was such cases that encouraged Garrett and the board of trustees to strengthen the Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure. The constitution safeguards immovable buildings from those who have departed from the premillennialist faith. It reads, “If in the opinion of the Board, any congregation has departed from the faith and practice of the New Testament, that congregation may be barred from the use of any church property under the control of the board.”23

Leadership

The Ruwa-Premillennialist structure is made up of thirty-three congregations and “the board of trustees is made up of members from all congregations.”24 The constitution stipulates, “Each member congregation . . . of the Churches of Christ is entitled to elect and send two representatives to the Board who shall serve as Trustees for the time being.25 These Representatives must be members in good standing within the congregations they represent.”26 This functional organizational structure allows each congregation to operate independently of other congregations but cooperate towards maintaining a united body of Christ and the perpetual existence of the church in Zimbabwe. The ownership of church buildings is vested to the board of trustees because it is responsible for drawing the architectural plans, constructing the steel structures, providing roofing material, and supervising the phased construction of buildings. In turn, the congregation is, in some cases, responsible for providing bricks and partially paying the building contractor and maintenance. At the church’s annual general meeting, the board announces locations that need church buildings and lays out a strategic construction plan.

Although Garrett is the linchpin of this model, his role has been gradually diminishing over the last ten years. He permanently stays in the USA raising funds and travels to Zimbabwe twice a year for periods not exceeding two months. He is being replaced by what Cox suggests as “the church-centered organizational” structure instead of a “missionary-centered model.”27 For years Garrett and his father, worked under a missionary-centered model that was fraught with challenges, while the Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure “minimizes the risks of a loss of trust between missionaries and nationals over various decisions which nationals often think the missionaries make on their own.”28 The structure is not only concerned with physical matters, but spiritual issues are at its core.

Spiritual Matters

The board strategically plans the planting of new congregations through deliberations at the men’s monthly meeting and the annual general meeting. The church will identify an area in need of a new congregation and the executive will deliberate on the logistics: funding for the preacher/evangelists’ upkeep, temporary meeting shelter, and other ancillaries. The board of trustees, with the support of elders from congregations, deliberately plans church programs and, without denying the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, does not “believe the Holy Spirit will eventually resolve . . . [spiritual] issues.”29 This strategy has resulted in the Ruwa-Premillennialist structure planting Church of Christ congregations in rural and remote villages like Binga, Zimbabwe’s most underdeveloped district. In addition to this, the board advises and assists congregations in the hiring and deployment of ministers. A preacher is deployed to a specific congregation after being vetted by the board of trustees even if the congregation is solely responsible for paying his salary. Lastly, the board plans annual lectureship retreats for men, women, and the youth and coordinates lectureship themes, lessons, speakers, and accommodation. These examples show that the nurturing of souls is pivotal for the board of trustees. This model is a success story because congregations contribute funds that are administered by the board for shared benefit.

Funds Controlled by the Board of Trustees

As the legal custodians of church property, the board is responsible for the building fund. Nyakudya explains that “small congregations pay US$25 for the building fund and big congregations pay US$50 every month.”30 The board receives, banks, and disburses the funds on behalf of congregations. To increase transparency “the Treasurer . . . prepare[s] Monthly Financial Reports. These are to be presented to the General Meetings of the CHURCH OF CHRIST MISSION, and an annual Audited Report shall be prepared by [external] Auditors and presented to the A.G.M of the Board.”31 (I had the privilege of seeing the board’s detailed monthly financial statements, including bank statements and board minutes that are filed and kept at Rockwood.)32

In addition to building fund contributions, the board receives financial contributions that are categorized into four significant areas:

  1. An evangelism/gospel fund that is used to pay preachers and evangelists who are working for congregations that cannot afford to pay. Currently, the board is responsible for three preachers.
  2. A funeral fund that provides for expenses connected with the burial of preachers and their immediate family members who are not covered by funeral policies.
  3. A transportation fund that takes care of evangelists’ traveling expenses.
  4. A widows’ fund. Most preachers do not have an adequate pension fund, and the board augments it with the widows’ fund that caters for preachers’ wives after the death of their husbands.33

Since the board handles substantial amounts of money on behalf of congregations, accountability and transparency are imperative.

Annual General Meeting

The board is accountable to congregations through monthly meetings and at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) that are held either at Rockwood Bible Camp, Ruwa, or at the Mbare congregation, in Harare.34 The constitution stipulates that “most business meetings shall be at the premises of the Church of Christ . . . Mbare.”35 It empowers the board to expedite decisions by having “a Standing EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE which shall have power to deal expeditiously with any matter arising which cannot wait for a full Board meeting. It shall have power to deal with any task which the Board may delegate to it from time to time. All decisions taken by the Executive Committee must be subsequently approved by the Board unless the Board previously grants full authority to the Executive Committee to act in its place in a particular designated task.”36 According to Nyakudya, “the Executive Committee meets once every month unless there is an emergency case that warrants meeting more than once, to discuss the business of the church.”37

Funding from Overseas

The Ruwa-Premillennialists raise their funds for the construction of church buildings, preachers’ salaries, development projects, and other activities. Garrett, through his fundraising activities overseas, finances some of their major projects. In a recent interview, Garrett said, “I do raise substantial amounts of money from congregations in the USA, and this finances some of the church programs in Zimbabwe.”38 Unfortunately, as expected, the board is not privy to the dollar figure, yet it is a partnership between Churches of Christ in the USA and Zimbabwe. Garrett alone reports to the benefactors—overseas congregations—and this is one of the significant challenges of the Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure.

For that reason, in his call for a healthier financial partnership between North American congregations and congregations in the Global South, Cox suggests, “The financial partnership is best served if the missionary is not the middleman receiving and disbursing funds.”39 The missionary should, if possible, not handle funds because, according to Cox, “It is better for national church leaders to deal directly with their counterparts in the churches that send them funds. In the case of Churches of Christ, that means African elders should deal directly with American elders in discussing these matters.”40 Gradually, the Ruwa-Premillennialist model will likely implement some version of Cox’s suggestion, but in the meantime, this organizational structure still has some practical benefits for both Zimbabwean and North American Christians.

Practical Advantages of the Ruwa-Premillennialist Model

The Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure has real practical advantages over strict congregational autonomy. The overarching benefit is that this model promotes a healthy symbiotic relationship between indigenous leadership in congregations located in the Global South and their brothers and sisters in the West. Other advantages follow.

First, there is a cross-fertilization of ideas and exchange of best practices. If ordained leaders or, where necessary, their representatives come together as equal partners and learners they will share experiences that will create confidence in nurturing souls. Spiritually, nationals and internationals enjoy contextual diversities that enrich worship since, as anthropologist Paul Hiebert argues, “the gospel must not be equated with any particular human context, not even the biblical cultural context. . . . The gospel was revealed in the historical and sociocultural contexts of the Old and New Testaments, but those contexts are not normative for Christianity around the world.”41

Second, this model limits the duplication of programs and projects in a specific area. In this way, the Ruwa-Premillennialist Organization overcomes a significant drawback of congregational autonomy where different congregations working in the same area often replicate the same work without cooperation. In contrast, the board coordinates work and channels both human and financial resources where they are needed.

Third, the board implements the planned construction of enduring, strategically located infrastructure.42 For example, the premillennialists, with their fully equipped and functional workshop in Ruwa, construct and erect steel structures for all their church buildings utilizing money from their centralized building fund. To promote ownership, congregants of a particular congregation where a church building is under construction mold or provide bricks, labor, and roofing material. Although congregations contribute towards the building fund, “all congregations donate labor and time to make sure that a building under construction is finished in time.”43 All their church buildings are insured, and the board can negotiate better premiums because of the number and size of their buildings.

Fourth, although North American churches are shrinking, they still have abundant financial resources. As Justo González suggests, “From the point of view of vitality, missionary and evangelist zeal, and even theological creativity, the centres have been shifting south for some time.”44 González is arguing for churches in the West to assist in financing Christian activities in the Global South, and Cox suggests that such funding “should only be given for projects that can be maintained locally. . . . Aid given by foreign partners should be tied to what locals have already given.”45 This situation is partially happening at Ruwa where Garrett assists in funding projects that are jointly owned by the board and individual congregations. This healthy partnership promotes growth, ownership, interdependence, and unity, which are embedded in this model.

Fifth, Nyakudya points out that “this organizational structure promotes transparency” because “each time we meet, either as the board or men’s monthly meeting or during the AGM, we receive financial reports, business narrative reports, over all the projects that the board is supervising.”46 The Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure is a clear answer to Cox’s argument that “missionaries and nationals must clarify the relationship between churches, replacing the concept of ‘local church autonomy’ and its negative connotations of separateness and isolation with a healthier understanding of the interdependency of churches.”47 In the case of Zimbabwe, this paper argues that congregational autonomy, which is predicated on individualism—the seedbed of the Western psyche—undermines communalism. Laurenti Magesa writes, “The principle of individualism and self-interest as the sole criteria of autonomy fails to satisfy the African communitarian psyche.”48 The Shonas of Zimbabwe say “gunwe rimwe haritswanyi inda”: one thumb does not kill lice. The tested philosophy that each person has to identify with the community because, “a person is a person only with other persons, alone one is an animal” grounds the African communalism known as Ubuntu.49 Accordingly, a person functions fully in a community, and this can be extended to societal organizations like Churches of Christ congregations. A single congregation, as premised by congregational autonomy, a concept rooted in individualism, cannot function without the support of other congregations. Churches of Christ congregations can form a community that is a “social group whose members live together or share common property and interests,” as exemplified by the Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure.50

Sixth, adopting this model—with modifications to suit the contextual environment of a particular culture—will reduce financial and material misuse, which is common among those who claim the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Todd M. Johnson et al. argue, “Ecclesiastical crime, amounts embezzled by top custodians of Christian monies (U.S. dollar equivalents, per year) [was close to] 59 billion.”51 There are no documented cases of misuse of funds by missionaries from the Ruwa-Premillennialist Churches of Christ, but this model increases transparency since leaders from both sides of the oceans will share information at the regional and national levels because every leadership structure has some challenges.

One Challenge of the Ruwa-Premillennialist Model

The Ruwa-Premillennialist model has aided in stabilizing this branch of the Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe, but it does not adequately address the role of women whose voices are silent in all the decision-making meetings, yet they are the majority of the membership. Garrett is convinced that God has kept women on the leadership periphery for reasons better known to him.52 Ladies can immensely contribute if the executive incorporates them in their decision-making bodies. My description of the problem is not a call for women elders or deaconesses but reflects a desire to empower them by tapping into their God-given wisdom and intellect.

Conclusion

This paper briefly unpacks the history of the premillennialist branch of the Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe, zeroing in on its nuanced organizational structure, which can be used as a model by other Churches of Christ in the Global South where the church is enjoying phenomenal growth.53 The adoption of this model will stimulate healthy ownership of churches by the indigene in the case of sub-Saharan Africa and a stronger partnership between indigenous Christians and North American Christians. Of course, this adoption requires variations to suit specific geographical contexts. This assertion reflects Cox’s argument: “A church can be both ‘owned’ by nationals [indigenous] and partnered with internationals. A key ingredient in such a partnership is ‘participation,’ which inspires ownership.”54 Adopting this model will breathe “fresh air” into Churches of Christ in the Global South, whose spiritual and numerical growth has been stifled by the implementation of a congregational autonomy that functions well in the West where congregations can afford to hire or fire ministers and construct their own church buildings. Congregational autonomy thrives in the West because individualism is embedded in society, while communitarianism is the fulcrum of indigenous African communities. The Ruwa-Premillennialist organizational structure has some challenges, but its advantages outweigh these challenges and deserve further studying.

Paul S. Chimhungwe received his PhD in Christian Theology (Church History) from McMaster Divinity College. He teaches at African Christian College in Manzini, Eswatini.

1 Premillennialism ‘teaches that Christ will return to reign on earth for a thousand years before history is brought to a close.” R. Chia, “Eschatology.” in Global Dictionary of Theology, ed. William A. Dyrness and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (Downers Grove, IL.: InterVarsity, 2008), 277–82.

2 In this paper, congregation means, “a group that possesses a special name and recognized members who assemble regularly to celebrate a more universally practiced worship but who communicate with each other sufficiently to develop intrinsic patterns of conduct, outlook and story.” James F. Hopewell, Congregation: Stories and Structures (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 12–13; emphasis original.

3 This is the leadership at congregational level according to the NT—each congregation was led by a group of elders. We first read of “a clearly defined threefold church order in which monarchical episcopacy is the most important element. Center stage stands the bishop, the unquestioned leader of the Christian community in a given city, who presides over a council of elders and is assisted by deacons.” K. N. Giles. “Church Order, Government,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Marin and Peter H. Davids (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997), 219–226. In support of congregational autonomy, Everett Ferguson writes: “As presented in the New Testament, each local church [congregation] is the church, complete in itself. The ekklēsiai are not a splitting into parts of the universal ekklēsia, nor is the ekklēsia a sum of the ekklēsia. Each church [congregation] is the whole in miniature, a manifestation of the whole in a given locality.” Everett Ferguson, The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 344; emphasis original.

4 In a theological essay, Ferguson argues: “The Restoration Movement was in part a revolt against creeds, denominational structures, and human organizations. The apostles left no hierarchy to replace their presence but commended local elders to God and his word. . . . The local church [therefore] should be free under Christ to conduct its work, worship, and life according to the instructions of the Bible. There is voluntary cooperation in all areas of concern among believers and churches of the same faith. But they do not create new decision-making organizations.” Everett Ferguson, “Four Freedoms of the Church,” Restoration Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1993): 67.

5 Monte B. Cox, “Finishing Well: Phase-Out or Partnership?” in 100 Years of African Missions: Essays in Honor of Wendell Broom, ed. Stanley E. Granberg (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2001), 291–320.

6 Cox, 303–4.

7 Contextualizing “means articulating biblical faith using vernacular terms and engaging local issues.” T. G. Gener, “Contextualization,” in Global Dictionary of Theology, ed. William A. Dryness and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 192–96.

8 Robert Garrett was born in Harare (then Salisbury), although his parents were based at the Wuyu Wuyu Mission.

9 In addition to the usual work of a missionary, S. D. Garrett established Arcadia Children’s Home in Arcadia, Harare. The home is still in existence, although the congregation severed its relationship with the board of trustees. It received its title deeds for the church building. This shows that congregations have the freedom to leave the Ruwa-Premillennialist structure. Nevertheless, the Arcadia congregation remains premillennialist in faith.

10 Since the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe has two branches, the premillennialist and the mainstream (postmillennialist), I need to point out that in 1949, this doctrine was fully supported by W. L. Brown, as well as S. D. Garrett, who was based in Salisbury. Garrett had taught this doctrine during a gospel meeting at Wuyu Wuyu Mission, with George Hook opposing him. During those years, some of the outstanding missionaries based in the Rhodesias who did not support this doctrine were W. N. Short, J. D. Merritt, and J. C. Shewmaker. In 1950, however, J. C. Shewmaker’s $5 monthly support from Springfield Church of Christ was terminated after he was requested in writing to explain his position over this doctrine.

11 Ndhlukula, interview by author, Marondera, Zimbabwe, August 15, 2011. Although Eldred Echols, who worked at Nhowe Mission under Brown, wrote that Brown, the missionary-in-charge, was forced to resign because of the poor treatment he gave to the natives. Eldred Echols, Wings of the Morning: The Saga of an African Pilgrim (Forth Worth: Wings, 1989), 50.

12 During colonialism, only whites, Euro-Americans were allowed to start and register Christian churches with the colonial government; Africans could be arrested for starting a church.

13 Robert L. Garrett. “S. D. Garrett: His Works Do Follow Him: Tributes from the Field,” The Mission and the Work (November 1972): 318–19.

14 Robert L. Garrett, interview by the author, Ruwa, Zimbabwe, June 3, 2016.

15 From 2010 to 2016, unity initiatives between the premillennialists and the mainstream Churches of Christ have seen partial success. Some congregations have united, and both men and women from the divisions have held joint retreats since 2016.

16 The Premillennialists are pejoratively called in the Shona language “Chechi yaGarret” (“Garrett’s church”), and the Premillennialists call Robert Garrett “mukuru” (“the elder”).

17 The workshop has equipment used to construct steel structures for church buildings and steel window frames; they store construction machinery including a concrete mixer, scuff-folding and welding machines.

18 In 2017 and 2018, other non-premillennialist congregants have organised their retreats at Rockwood Bible Camp. This is a direct consequence of the unity initiative.

19 Garrett, interview.

20 “Constitution of the Churches of Christ,” prepared by representatives of the premillennial Churches of Christ in Southern Rhodesia, July 29, 1961, preamble, copy in possession of the author. (Garrett’s lawyers drafted the constitution, whose signatories are the chairman and secretary of the board of trustees. A duly constituted annual general meeting selects board members. Church representatives, that is, elders, deacons, preachers, or ordinary Christians, attend the AGM as voting delegates.)

21 Garrett, interview.

22 G. Nyakudya, interview by the author, Ruwa, Zimbabwe. September 1, 2017.

23 “Constitution of the Churches of Christ,” art. III, § d.

24 Nyakudya, interview. As already pointed out, Garrett says there are over forty congregations.

25 Appendix A of the constitution has a list of member congregations.

26 “Constitution of the Churches of Christ,” art. IV, § b.

27 Cox, 305–6.

28 Ibid., 306.

29 Cox, 302.

30 Nyakudya, interview. Any congregations with a membership of less than fifty adult members is defined as small, and those congregations with a membership above fifty members are classified as big. Since January 2009, Zimbabwe has been using the US Dollar as it major currency. Its own currency was eroded by hyperinflation resulting in the country printing a one trillion note in January 2009.

31 “Constitution of the Churches of Christ,” art III, § g.

32 Garrett, interview. He gave me the following:

  • A copy of the “Constitution of the Churches of Christ.”
  • Financial accounts for the month ending 31 May 2016.
  • A spreadsheet for gospel fund collections listing all the congregations in Zimbabwe that contributed to the fund.
  • A building fund spreadsheet that has a section for rentals that are received from the hire of church buildings and other properties like classrooms that are used as nurseries.

All title deeds for property owned by these premillennialist Church of Christ are kept in a safe at Ruwa.

33 This fund, although not substantial, gives widows dignity in the community because they are not abandoned by the church. This is one of the significant weaknesses of the strict autonomous organizational structure. At the demise of a preacher, the congregation will give the widow a small amount of money to cater for immediate needs, and after a few months, she will be struggling. All associated premillennial preachers, as employees of the Church of Christ Board of Trustees, are registered with the National Social Security Authority (NASSA) in Zimbabwe. The disbursements are a pittance, hence, the board established the widows’ purse to augment NASSA.

34 Harari is now Mbare, while Salisbury is now Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe.

35 Churches of Christ, Constitution of the Churches of Christ, art. II.

36 “Constitution of the Churches of Christ,” art. V, § 5.3.j.

37 Nyakudya, interview.

38 Garrett, interview.

39 Cox, 312; emphasis original.

40 Ibid.

41 Paul G. Hiebert, The Gospel in Human Contexts: Anthropological Explorations for Contemporary Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 31.

42 A term borrowed from Cox, 308–19.

43 Nyakudya, interview.

44 Justo González, The Changing Shape of Church History (St. Louis: Chalice, 2002), 43.

45 Cox, 311–12; emphasis original.

46 Nyakudya, interview.

47 Cox, 303.

48 Laurenti Magesa, What is Not Sacred? African Spirituality (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 45.

49 Magesa, 12.

50 Soro Soungalo, “Family and Community” in Africa Bible Commentary, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 1204.

51 Todd M. Johnson, Gina A. Zurlo, Albert W. Hickman, and Peter F. Crossing, “Christianity 2017: Five Hundred Years of Protestant Christianity,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 41, no. 1 (2017): 41–52.

52 Garrett, interview.

53 Johnson, et al., “Christianity 2017,” 15.

54 Cox, “Finishing Well,” 308–9.