The Vulnerable Mission movement grew first in the rich soil of rural Western Kenya, based in the deeply contextual insights of Jim Harries. Africa, however, is large, diverse, and changing. This article considers what Vulnerable Mission might look like in another corner of Africa: the cities of Angola. The contextual differences require that Harries’s proposals undergo considerable alteration. Vulnerable Mission strategies in Angola must recognize Portuguese as a truly local, African language and must take into consideration the globalizing changes that have redefined local identity and resources.

In its relatively brief existence, the concept of Vulnerable Mission has undergone a subtle but far-reaching seismic shift in its foundational assumptions—a shift which perhaps the seismographs of the movement have not adequately detected. This shift, in a word, is context. VM grew first from the fertile soil of the African continent, specifically in the life-experience and work of Jim Harries, long-term missionary to rural Zambia and rural Kenya. Harries’s writings draw deeply from local African culture and language, struggles in the African church, and pan-African philosophy. As a result, Harries’s strategic proposals are explicitly aimed at mission to Africa.1 However, his proposals struck a chord with mission practitioners from around the world, and in recent years his Alliance for Vulnerable Mission2 has attracted voices from Latin America and Asia and others who write on behalf of the “Majority World” at large.3

Without doubt, the VM discussion has much to offer non-African contexts. But I suggest that the shift in the discussion has happened so rapidly as to preclude careful reflection on the side effects of abandoning the contextual roots of the discussion.4 Therefore, in this reflection paper I intend to take the VM conversation back to its roots: I engage in an intra-African conversation with Jim Harries. Specifically, I will interact substantively only with Harries’s thought as canonized in his 2011 volume Vulnerable Mission, a collection of fourteen previously published articles written as early as 1997.5

Harries’s encapsulated strategic proposals—the use of local languages and local resources—are nothing novel to missiology.6 Rather, the strength of his contribution lies in his exposition and defense of those proposals grounded deeply in his personal and studied experience of Africa over the last two and a half decades. His writings are replete with references to Luo customs; linguistic comparisons of Dholuo, Kiswahili, and English; and ground-level assessments of “what is really going on” in African initiated churches. Thus he provides a refreshing and at times unsettling corrective to much current missiology that pays lip-service to contextualization but lacks the deep contextual grounding to substantiate its claims.

Unfortunately, Harries’s strength is also his weakness. From the vantage point of a Luo village in Western Kenya, he writes on behalf of plenary sub-Saharan Africa.7 In this tendency to gloss over significant contextual differences across the continent, Harries can claim a prestigious heritage of African scholarship. Classic studies of African culture such as John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy and Geoffrey Parrinder’s African Traditional Religion mix examples indiscriminately from West, East, and Southern Africa, yet still today are widely cited to substantiate missiological approaches in particular African contexts that may or may not fit the paradigms they espouse.8 Such generalization may have been justified in a fledgling field of study, but it is time for African missiology to come of age, resisting the temptation to paint with one brush a continent that incorporates 54 sovereign nations, over 1,000 languages, countless local histories, and a stunning diversity of current economic and social influences.

To highlight the need for contextual sensitivity, therefore, I bring to the conversation my local experience in another corner of Africa: the city of Huambo, central Angola. Through reflection on Angola’s context and an analysis of how Harries’s assumptions and proposals fit (or do not fit) this local setting, this essay will demonstrate the need for two key correctives to Harries’s proposals. First, the use of local languages in African missions may well need to include so-called “European” languages. Second, the identification of local languages and local resources may well be more globalized, even Westernized, than Harries is willing to admit. At stake in this discussion is our view of what Africa really is and our willingness to fearlessly contextualize the VM approach amidst the whirlwind of globalizing change on the African continent.

Introduction to Modern Angola9

To say that Angola is a former Portuguese colony is true but insufficient to convey the depth of impact the Portuguese had. A quick contrast with the British colonization of Kenya may at least provide some idea. The Portuguese arrived in Angola in 1483; within a decade they had built their first Catholic mission and begun their cultural expansion, and within three centuries they had militarily and economically subjugated the vast majority of what is today Angola.10 The British, on the other hand, arrived in Kenya with cultural impact only in the 1880s—a difference of 400 years. The Portuguese founded Luanda, Angola’s capital and largest city, in 1576; the British founded Nairobi, Kenya’s capital and largest city, in 1899. At the height of colonial occupation, more than 335,000 Portuguese called Angola home;11 fewer than 56,000 British lived in Kenya.12 From early days Portuguese colonists intermarried with black Angolans, creating a large and influential mestiço population;13 interracial marriage in British Kenya was rare. The Portuguese settled widely across Angola, founding cities as they went; in Kenya a large segment of the British population attempted to isolate themselves in the “White Highlands.” The British began pulling out of power in Kenya in 1959, granting full independence in 1963.14 At that time, Portugal was busy redoubling their presence in Angola; independence would come only in 1975 after an intense and prolonged military struggle. In short, compared to other colonial powers in Africa, the Portuguese arrived much earlier, dug in deeper, and stayed longer.

Even before the Portuguese left Angola, a civil war erupted that would dominate Angola’s existence for twenty-seven years, devastating the country until 2002. The war shaped modern Angola in many ways, but three are especially relevant to our study. In all three cases, the war continued and substantially accelerated trends that were already in progress from colonial times:

1. Intermixing of ethnolinguistic groups. After the abolishment of the slave trade, a widespread colonial system of forced labor caused large-scale internal displacement and thus intermixing of Angola’s tribal groups.15 But the civil war intensified this displacement many times over. People fled to other regions to escape the violence and destruction and then would flee again when war arrived at their new location. In addition, both government and rebel forces pressed any available men or children into military service, taking them to every corner of the country, many never to return home. This intermixing resulted in the breakdown of tribal barriers. In some cases whole tribal societies were broken down by the war, to be replaced with the national identity-shaping experience of civil war.16
2. Urbanization. In 1960, before the war for independence and the civil war, urbanization in Angola reached 11% as a result of normal push/pull forces.17 The wars, especially the civil war, created massive internal displacement as villagers fled the war, often being uprooted two or three times before finally “settling” in the relative safety of a provincial city such as Malange, Benguela, or Huambo.18 But they were not safe even there when the war reached the cities in 1993 and 1994—wave upon wave made their way to Luanda, bloating the capital’s population many times over.19 The result: by the end of the war well over half of the country’s population lived in urban areas.20 Contrary to Western assumptions, they would not return “home” to the rural areas. The only “home” they had was the city. Current estimates place Angola’s urban population at 59% of the total population.21
3. Use of the Portuguese language. The colonizers mandated education in Portuguese, and mission schools across Angola provided the means for the goal.22 But the war succeeded beyond the colonizers’ dreams. Precisely through the processes of urbanization and intertribal mixing, Portuguese became the only viable means of communicating on a daily basis. In addition, because the UNITA rebels championed the use of Bantu languages, the MPLA (government) forces that controlled the cities outlawed use of indigenous languages, allowing only Portuguese. As a result of this confluence of factors, an entire generation of Angolans that function primarily in Portuguese has reached adulthood. Tony Hodges relates the stunning statistics of a 1996 survey:

No less than 42 per cent of children under 9 years of age and 34 per cent of those between 10 and 19 speak Portuguese as their first language. . . . It is now common to find young Angolans, especially in Luanda, who do not speak any African languages at all—a situation which has no parallel elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. The implication is clear: almost half of today’s children are being brought up to speak Portuguese as their first language, and Portuguese seems set to outstrip all the African languages.23

That was 17 years ago. Those “children under 9 years of age” are now parents of a second generation of Angolans who speak Portuguese as their mother tongue—and often as their only tongue.

The war ended abruptly 11 years ago, but its impact remains. Angola today is an urbanized nation where tribal identities have been blurred and a national identity has grown strong, epitomized by the use of the Portuguese language as the language of Angola. Mission in Angola, even Vulnerable Mission, must take account of this reality. In the following section I will share our mission team’s attempt to engage with this bewildering context that is Angola. In the process, the reader will get a glimpse into what these national statistics look like from ground level.

Introduction to Our Ministry in Angola

In July 2011, our mission team of six adults and four children moved to Angola for the purpose of long-term church-planting ministry. Though we are the first long-term missionaries from the Stone-Campbell Movement to Angola, we did not come with a pioneering mentality. Rather, we took seriously the Christendom context: 95% of Angolans claim to be Christian,24 and churches are ubiquitous but proverbially shallow in biblical knowledge. Rather than create more division within this “Christian” context, we accepted the invitation to work with the Igreja de Cristo em Angola (ICA), an indigenous Angolan church movement. ICA began as an interdenominational association of Angolan Christians praying for peace in Angola, and in 1974 they adopted the name Igreja de Cristo, meaning “Church of Christ.” In the mid-1980s ICA first learned about “Churches of Christ” in other nations, specifically Brazil and Portugal, and over the next two decades had sporadic interactions with these churches. For the most part, however, ICA continued to make its own way forward, isolated from the world by the same factors that kept Angola as a whole isolated during many years. As a result, the dreaded dependency disease has not afflicted ICA—what they’ve accomplished, they’ve accomplished without outside assistance—and their theology and church practice are characteristically Angolan. When we arrived, ICA comprised about 36 congregations, mostly in Luanda and the northern regions of the country. They asked us to help in Bible teaching, church planting, evangelism, and social outreach ministries.

Our team was determined not to make a mess of the promising situation into which we stepped. So as not to introduce dependency, we have very carefully avoided the use of Western resources in ministry.25 Also, we have been careful to avoid stepping into positions of power—but that has been easy. In the existing ICA systems of power and influence, we young missionaries are welcome participants but decidedly low on the totem pole!

After surveying many possible locations, we settled in Huambo, an urban center of perhaps 350,000 in one of the hardest-hit regions during the civil war.26 Huambo’s geographic centrality makes it an ideal strategic base for ministry with a nationwide focus; indeed, our team has already visited churches in 16 of Angola’s 18 provinces. We are currently gaining experience in church planting in the Huambo area in a variety of settings: urban, peri-urban, and rural.27 We pray that in the future this experience will be useful as we mentor Angolans in planting and maturing healthy churches with a nationwide scope. In all we do we try to partner with Angolans rather than working alone. This is not the financial “partnership” oft glorified and much maligned in missiological literature, but the daily camaraderie of getting our hands dirty together in the labor of church planting and maturation. God heard our strategic plans as prayers, and he has graciously allowed our team to participate in the planting of four new churches in the past year, all initiated by our Angolan coworkers.

I live with my family in an Angolan-style house in the bairro (low-class high-density peri-urban neighborhood) of São Luís on the outskirts of Huambo city.28 Day after day I walk fifteen minutes through the labyrinth of narrow dirt alleyways to the area of the São Luís ICA church plant, where I devote the bulk of my ministry efforts. In the bairro my interaction with Angolans is ground-level, devoid of grandeur. I drink kissangwa in their homes; I overhear drunken brawls in nearby courtyards; I sit in solidarity with family members at their funeral wakes; I join in arguments about the local football scene; I stumble over my phrases of Umbundu, the predominant Bantu language of this area, which I am in the throes of learning. And in all of this, I try to bring God’s word to interact with their lives at their level.

The point of this somewhat extended introduction to our ministry in Angola is simple: that the reader may understand that our mission team shares the values of Vulnerable Mission, and that we are struggling to apply these values and principles to the particular Angolan context in which God has placed us. In the process, we have learned that several key assumptions of VM as espoused by Harries simply do not fit the Angolan context. If we cannot say “Amen!” to Harries’s proposals for mission in Africa, it is not because we differ in strategic goals; rather, it is because the “Africa” of urban Angola is a world away from the “Africa” of rural Kenya.29

VM Assumptions that Do Not Fit Angola

If I were to list the VM assumptions that do apply well to the Angolan context, the list would run to pages and pages. Harries is correct in saying that there is much in the African mentality that is common across Africa.30 However, the following assumptions that do not hold true in Angola are foundational enough to Harries’s proposals that they must be addressed:

European languages are not local, and thus should be avoided in mission.

Harries argues strongly that European languages, though widely used in Africa, are so disconnected from the daily life and thought processes of Africans as to preclude helpful communication, especially as regards a topic so intimate and far-reaching as the gospel. European languages are foreign, based on vastly different cultural foundations, and instruments of dangerous cultural imperialism.31

In response, allow me to introduce some of the members of the São Luís ICA church, still less than one year old, planted in the bairro by an Angolan.32

• Jeremias was one of the first baptized and is growing by leaps and bounds in his Christian life. His father is Chokwe by tribe, from Lunda Norte province, more than 700 km away from Huambo. His mother is Ovimbundu33 by descent, but spent most of her life in Luanda and some in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where she learned Lingala. Jeremias only speaks Portuguese; he cannot even greet in Umbundu.
• Gideão’s parents were both Ovimbundu. They died when he was eight. For the last eight years he has been raised by extended family, also Ovimbundu. His life is only in the bairro; rarely does he venture more than one kilometer from his house. Yet Gideão neither speaks nor understands Umbundu. Portuguese is his first and only language.
• Nanda is a grandmother and a faithful Christian. She is fluent in Portuguese and Umbundu and truly enjoys worshiping in Umbundu. She is semi-literate in Portuguese, but cannot read a word of Umbundu.
• Mama Chinha is a young mother who sells tomatoes in the local market. Her parents from Kwanza Sul Province speak Kimbundu, which she partially understands. She speaks only Portuguese. I often forget and greet her in Umbundu—I always receive a Portuguese response.
• Avelino is a father who struggles with alcoholism. Umbundu is his first language, but he is also completely comfortable in Portuguese. He can read relatively well in Portuguese, but not at all in Umbundu.
• Moisés lives in Luanda but works in Huambo. Portuguese is his first language, and he also learned Kikongo at an early age, since he is Bakongo by tribe.
• Pedro, fourteen, speaks Portuguese as his first language. He also speaks Umbundu, but often struggles over vocabulary since he uses it much more rarely than Portuguese.
• Paulo, eighteen, is one of Pedro’s close friends. He is Muila by tribe, but speaks Portuguese as his first language. He has learned enough Umbundu to communicate when needed.

About half of the church members speak Umbundu. Half don’t. Not a single member is capable of reading Umbundu. Every single member is comfortable speaking Portuguese, and the vast majority can read (to some extent) in Portuguese. None speak English or other European languages, though the youth would like to learn English.

To put this in context, Umbundu is the most widely spoken Bantu language in Angola, and Huambo province is one of the most ethnolinguistically homogeneous regions of the country. Here, in the heart of Ovimbunduland, I listen to children playing on the streets in Portuguese, drunks cursing the world in Portuguese, churches worshiping in Portuguese, people in the market buying vegetables in Portuguese, and family members engaging in chores at home in Portuguese. Huambo, like Angola in general, functions in Portuguese.34

European languages remain rooted in foreign cultures; they do not become Africanized.

Harries admits that some of his linguistic argument would not apply “if European languages were allowed to become African”:

Should communication with European originators of the foreign languages used in Africa suddenly cease, then the very languages will become Africanised. This is not currently happening, because (at least in East Africa) Northern languages are valued exactly because of the links that they enable with the North, and are assessed using foreign standards.35

Angolan Portuguese stands as a counter-example to Harries’s assumptions. Since a majority of people in Angolan cities function primarily in Portuguese (in all contexts of life, even home life), and since a sizeable minority speak no other language besides Portuguese, it is clear that they have found a way to Africanize the Portuguese language—to root it in the Angolan context and adapt it to fit Angolan life. A hypothetical glimpse at the vocabulary of an Angolan morning may illustrate the case:

Paizinho wakes up before the sunrise and immediately goes outside for his matatino (morning run), a typical Mwangolé (Angolan) morning routine. Back at home he draws water from the cacimba (well) to take a bath, conserving the water bué (very) carefully since it is August, near the end of cacimbo (the dry season). Clean and refreshed, he takes a few moments to matabichar (eat breakfast) before heading out for the day. Normally Paizinho works doing candongueiro (informal business that involves buying, transporting, and selling), but today he must visit the soba (local authority figure) to discuss some makas (problems) regarding his family in the kimbo (rural area). Before going to the jango (meeting hut), he winds his way through the beko (alleyway) to the market to buy a gift to present to the soba. He knows which sellers will give him eskebra (a little extra for free); perhaps today someone might even give him kilapi (informal credit), since he is short on cash.

The italicized words above are purely Angolan. Native speakers in Portugal may not have a clue what they mean, except the few words that have come to Portugal as slang. Moreover, these words are not Bantu. They are Portuguese. Though some have etymological roots in Kimbundu, Umbundu, or other Bantu languages, they made their way into Angolan Portuguese generations ago and are now used widely across the nation of Angola, from Cunene in the south to Cabinda in the north. They are used daily by Angolans who speak only Portuguese. And many Angolans would be quite surprised to hear that citizens of Portugal don’t even know how to communicate with these basic Portuguese words. “Do people in Portugal not eat breakfast?” they might ask.36

Adaptation of the language has enabled Angolans to use Portuguese effectively in even the most traditional African settings. Last year I had the opportunity to be a bystander in a sensitive situation where a church leader was accused of using witchcraft to possess a teenage boy with his spirit, resulting in debilitating madness. The case was handled by the soba (traditional communal leader) and included input from the traditional herbal healer who was watching over the boy in the far-flung rural area of his home. The process lasted parts of three days—and all of it was conducted in Portuguese. The only times someone broke into Umbundu were when they wanted the opinion of the boy’s grandmother, who was not comfortable in Portuguese. Immediately after hearing her opinion, the participants would switch back to Portuguese.37 Portuguese is Angola’s medium of choice to handle the intricacies of African life.

Portuguese today belongs to Angola as much as it belongs to Brazil or Portugal. Each country has its version of Portuguese; the differences reflect the variations in culture, and the similarities foster fraternal connections between the three continents.

Ethnolinguistic ancestry is the key identity for Africans.

Harries relates the unwillingness of the Luo people to accept him, a white man, as part of their tribe. The reason is simple: “in much of Africa, unlike in the West, someone’s key identity is rooted in their ancestry.”38 I suggest that this observation forms a defining assumption that undergirds the whole of Harries’s thinking. For example, he makes much of the cultural roots of language, and his (usually unspoken) assumption is that in Africa, cultural means tribal.39 I concur. In my experience in many parts of Africa, tribal (ancestral) identity is key.

Angola is not, in this sense, like “much of Africa.” The two-sided sword of ethnolinguistic mixing and urbanization has pierced deep. In our local church this intermixing has already been noted. The church, which averages fewer than 20 adults on a typical Sunday, includes not only Ovimbundu but also Kimbundu, Bakongo, Chokwe, and Ovamuila persons—here in the most ethnically homogeneous region of the country. In the cities of Lubango and Luanda the situation is even more pronounced. Paul Robson and Sandra Roque conducted an excellent ethnographic study among migrants to the cities and found that the exigencies of internal displacement have created a pervasive heterogeneity:

People end up renting or building a house wherever they can. This is one of the main reasons why the peri-urban bairros are so heterogeneous. People go to live where it is cheapest or where there is space, and this is not necessarily in the bairro where they first went to or where live their relatives, friends and other people originally from their area. [This has] important consequences . . . for the social dynamics of the peri-urban areas.40

Among the important consequences is the disappearance of ancestral traditions. “Nowadays few traces of rural traditions remain in the social life of Luanda’s peri-urban areas.”41 Even in Huambo, “traditional festivals like ovinganji, olundongo, and evamba are almost non-existent.”42

The question remains: despite changes in language, customs, and urban heterogeneity, do Angolans still hold ancestry as their key identity? For many, the answer is no. One may catch a glimpse of this in their conversations with each other. When making a new acquaintance, Angolans do not typically ask, “What tribe are you?” as might be common in other nations. Rather, they ask, “What area are your parents from?” The answer often shows that the choice of phrasing is not superfluous. “I was born in Moxico while my mother was fleeing the war, but she is originally from this area (Huambo). Her father was from Malange. My father grew up in Luanda, but his family is originally from Uíge. . . .” Moreover, the rhetoric of ethnic rivalry was used by government and rebel forces to perpetuate the civil war. Angolans of today explicitly shun such rhetoric; they want no part in undoing the peace they have gained at such great cost.

Angolans have had to forge new identities and new sources of identity. The central worldview question “Who are we?” is always rooted in a story, and when the story changes, so does one’s key identity. Traditional Bantu myths emphasize the cyclical nature of life: we are a community composed of members from the past, present, and future. Ancestors play a vital role in the continuity of life, and numerous community rituals (birth rites, circumcision, funerals, libations and sacrifices, etc.) function to reinforce the communal and cyclical coherence of life together with the ancestors.43 This story defines each tribal social grouping in contradistinction to others.

The continuing importance of ancestors has waned significantly in peri-urban Angola,44 and many other elements of the traditional story, including rituals, have been removed or replaced, as noted above. Perhaps it is not too bold to say that peri-urban Angolans explain their place in the world not primarily in terms of the traditional story, but in terms of the story of how they have survived the war and rebuilt since the war. It is this story that has redefined the social groupings. For some, such as the returned refugees from Kinshasa, their new community is not their tribe but the people who accompanied them in their journey of survival. Thus this group does not speak Kikongo (their tribal language) but Lingala (the language of their refugee story). They feel a unique solidarity with each other, but not with other Bakongo.45 For other residents, their social group is their immediate family. They are the only ones who have stuck together through thick and thin—there is no story which binds them to their neighbor, regardless of ethnicity. One of the most important social groupings, by the assessment of several independent observers, is the church community. Fellow church members are the people who have endured the struggles of the story together and hence share a solidarity that is not found in the larger peri-urban population.46 But for many, key identity has shifted to the national level: an individual is, first and foremost, an Angolan, regardless of region, social class, language, religion, or race. A national identity has been forged in the furnace of the nation’s story of struggle, a story that binds Angolans together and distances them from surrounding peoples, many of whom used to be family. For many Angolans, a redefined story has redefined communal identity.47

Perhaps the illustration of this reformation of communal identity that would most surprise Harries is Angola’s breakdown in racial division. As he notes, where tribal identity is key, whites must necessarily remain foreigners in black Africa. So great is the racial divide of his Kenyan context48 that Harries naturally adopts the racial divide into his own terminology:

Use of the term “black” . . . is applied to people of African origin wherever they are now living. The term “African” is reserved for those black people who are living in (and are assumed to have been born and raised in) Africa.49

Thus Harries concurs with the assumption of his Luo neighbors that a white person cannot be African.50

My thoughts turn to Alexandre, Huambo’s local veterinarian. He was born, raised, and educated in Huambo. His parents, too, are from Huambo. But he is white. Alexandre says he is Angolan, and his passport agrees. Through his paternal grandfather he can trace ancestry back to Portugal; but his identity is formed by his story, not by his ancestry. At the end of the work day, Alexandre walks home with his black receptionist who shares his story, for she is also his wife. It would never occur to their two mestiça daughters that a white man cannot be Angolan.

The racial divide runs so deep, writes Harries, that “for a white man to become a leader in black Africa in other than an ‘oppressive’ way, is almost impossible.”51 But no one informed José Luís de Melo Marcelino, Huambo’s municipal administrator, that such was the case. Marcelino is white, Huambo born and bred, and in a government position of great responsibility. He is also respected by the people of Huambo: black, white, and mestiço. From an elevated vantage point, he shares the people’s identity because he shares their story.

Examples could be multiplied. The point is simple. Through ethnolinguistic and even racial integration, Angolan identity has shifted from its roots in tribal ancestry toward new roots in the shared national story of struggle, survival, and rebuilding.

Westerners maintain economic and cultural hegemony over Africa.

The last of Harries’s assumptions with which I will contend is that, because of the great economic gulf between rich Western nations and poor African nations, Africans are forced to follow Western leading, hoping for a handout. This particular strand of the dependency virus, he maintains, has infected Africa at the national level, the institutional level, the communal level, and the personal level.52 His analysis is perceptive and convincing; it rings true with much of what I have seen in other parts of Africa.

What makes Angola different? In a word, petroleum. Crude oil. As Africa’s second largest producer of oil, Angola has no shortage of cash.53 On the contrary, the nation has emerged from its war years to find itself in a position of considerable economic clout in the global arena. It did not take long for Angolan politicians to discover the ease with which petroleum dollars can overturn American idealism, French justice, and international armament embargoes.54 With its pockets lined, Angola wasted no time becoming bedfellows with the superpower that is China.55 But perhaps the most poetic twist in the international plot was when Portugal, the former colonial power, came on its knees begging for a financial bailout from Angola, its former colony.56 Of course Angola condescended to open its purse! Who could pass up the chance to reverse history, to rise from slave to master with all the world watching?

What does this look like at street level in Angola? There is lots of money floating around in this country. As “wealthy Westerners” in Angola, we find ourselves consistently unable to afford the exorbitant prices that wealthy Angolans throw money at. We stay as guests in homes in Luanda that would rent for $20,000 a month. There are also many poor Angolans who live on just a few dollars a day; the lifestyle gap between rich and poor is astounding!

So what does this mean for dependency issues in Angola? Angolans, like other Africans, will take a handout no matter who it comes from, but most of the time in Angola it comes from wealthier Angolans. International aid dependency, whether from the IMF, NGOs, or churches, is still a problem in Angola. But it is dwarfed by the issues of internal dependency. A church here might ask us missionaries for funds to build a new building, but when we don’t prove golden, they waste no time in turning to their list of Angolan donors, who consistently prove much more generous than the stingy foreigners who keep mumbling on about missiological ideals. In this context, the all-important purse strings are held not by Westerners, but by wealthy Angolans who walk in the age-old African paths of patronage.57 This pattern holds true at levels from the individual to the national. The result is that in Angola, Westerners are seen as potential donors, but their influence is not dominant because they do not carry the biggest wallets.58

One final note regarding the dynamics of wealth in Angola is important. Wealthy Angolans serve as a wide-open door between Angola and the globalized world. Many Angolan businessmen make their millions internationally; not through aid, but through trade. As such, they swim in the urban currents of New York, São Paulo, and Beijing, drinking from the global fountains of politics, materialism, and religious pluralism. These ideas (and things!) flow steadily into Angola down the patron-client canals, eventually inundating even the lowest socio-economic rungs of Angolan society. Whether we missionaries want to participate in this globalizing current is a moot point. Angola is already there, with or without us.

Implications for Vulnerable Mission in Angola

If these assumptions that are at the heart of Harries’s contextual concept of Vulnerable Mission do not hold true in Angola, how are we to move forward? VM’s key principles, the use of local languages and local resources, remain missiologically sound, but they must be radically adapted for use in the Angolan context. I suggest that the following five alterations to Harries’s recommendations do not require a lengthy defense, but rather emerge naturally from the above analysis of Angolan culture.

1. Mission in Angola should be primarily in the Portuguese language, with secondary usage of Bantu languages to the extent they are used among the target population. Missionaries’ fluency in Portuguese should be honed in the Angolan context, so as to reach Angolans in the local flavor of their heart language. Angolan Bantu languages should not be neglected, since they provide an important window into Angolan culture and thought, but should not be imposed as the primary means of communication.
2. Mission in Angola should strongly consider a nationwide strategic focus, since Angolans increasingly define their own storied identity at a national level.59 To missiologically target an ethnolinguistic group is to recreate historical divisions that Angolans do not embrace. More importantly, it is to misjudge the identity-shaping story of the Angolan people. There are contextual exceptions to this rule: small homogeneous ethnic groups that survive on the peripheries of Angolan culture.60 Mission to these particular groups should closely follow Harries’s original proposals.
3. Mission in Angola should train some Angolan Christians to function missionally as a cultural bridge from the urban and peri-urban to rural environments. The urban-rural divide plagues many aspects of Angolan life, and the church should be at the fore in bridging the divide: helping urbanites relate to their uneducated rural neighbors and helping rural Angolans know how to cope in the whirlwind of globalizing change. Rural areas should not be approached in isolation, since they yearn to share in the national Angolan identity; neither should they be neglected in favor of greener urban pastures, as many Angolan churches already tend to do.
4. Theological education in Angola should include training in how to translate theological concepts between Portuguese and Bantu languages. Portuguese should be the primary vehicle for theological education, but teachers should ideally be conversant enough in Bantu languages to model healthy translation processes. This dual-language approach will (1) mimic the translation processes already in use in daily Angolan life, (2) open Angolan church leaders to the published resources of the Lusophone world, especially Brazil and Portugal, (3) enable nation-wide networks in which Angolans can mature theologically together, and (4) facilitate the urban-rural bridge mentioned above.
5. Mission in Angola should use the resources that Angolans typically have at their disposal, whether local or global, giving preference to the local. In an urban environment, local must be understood as an ill-defined range in the graduated spectrum from individual to global. To the extent that Angolans customarily call on resources from other neighborhoods, cities, or countries, missionaries should be willing to follow suit, while always being vigilant to watch for signs of dependency that may catch Angolans unaware, and while consistently reminding Angolans not to undervalue local small-scale resources. Moreover, foreign missionaries should avoid introducing external resources that are not already a well-integrated part of Angolan culture.

Conclusion: What Does Angola Have to Do with Africa?

If the contextual situation of urbanized Angola contrasts so dramatically with that of rural Kenya as to necessitate such significant revisions to the core strategies of VM, then perhaps Angola should simply be treated as an outlier—noted and ignored—in matters related to African missions. Perhaps missiologists in sub-Saharan Africa should embrace and advocate Harries’s approach while including a footnote that says, “except in Angola.”

Angola is indeed exceptional in some aspects. I know of no other sub-Saharan nation, for example, where the colonial language has become the first and only tongue of so great a segment of the population. The historic moment when the former colonizer, Portugal, entreats the former colony, Angola, for financial assistance is perhaps unprecedented. But it would be a mistake to equate “unprecedented” with “won’t happen again.”

Africa is changing. In some aspects, Angola is not exceptional but rather simply ahead of the curve. Urbanization is the obvious example. The pull of the city is relentless across Africa: urbanization is expected to march forward at about 1% per annum,61 which is among the highest rates on the globe. Thus Africa as a whole will pass the 50% urban mark by 2035,62 and will triple its urban population by 2050.63 Already thirteen sub-Saharan countries are at least 50% urban.64 Even among those nations with lower urban percentages, Christian mission cannot afford to overlook the cities.

Urbanization will continue, across Africa, to increase the percentage of Africans who speak trade languages, including former colonial languages, as their first language. Urbanization will continue, across Africa, to bring people of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds shoulder to shoulder as neighbors. And above all, urbanization will continue to open doors to the already pervasive influence of globalization. Whether we like it or not, global languages, global resources, and global thinking styles are irreversibly becoming a part of the local African scene. In these aspects, Angola is not exceptional but rather ahead of the curve. Perhaps we should see it as a preview of coming attractions.

Moreover, Angola is not the only African nation whose national story has been so intense, so epic, as to forge within its flames a new national sense of identity. In this globalizing world, Africans across the continent are being challenged to rethink tribalism’s place as key identity. If missiologists are to exercise diligently our anthropological duties, we must be ever bold enough to probe the worldview questions of Africans as they are becoming, not simply as they were.

The vital lesson in all this is beautifully simple: each local context demands that we approach it with fresh eyes, ready to see it for what it is, not what we remember from another context. Local stories are unique; local mission strategies, too, must be unique—even in Africa.

I close with a few words from a project manager, a foreigner, living in another city in Angola. He was asked to do a radio interview about Africa “in general,” but when time and again his down-to-earth Angola-specific responses did not live up to the preconceived notions of the interviewers, “they cut me short and decided instead to interview someone in Cameroon, where they must have a much better idea of what Africa really is.”65

May God grant us the ever-renewed vision to see what Africa really is and the ever-increasing wisdom to reach Africa with the word of his saving grace!

Danny Reese delights in the maturation of God’s church on the continent of Africa, the continent that witnessed both his physical birth and his spiritual birth. He lives with his wife and daughters in Huambo, Angola, serving as part of the Angola Mission Team (http://angolateam.org). Danny holds an MDiv from Harding School of Theology. You may contact him at danny@angolateam.org.

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