Dr Harvey Kwiyani is a Malawian missiologist and theologian who has lived, worked and studied in Europe and North America for the past 20 years. He has researched African Christianity and African theology for his PhD, and taught African theology at Liverpool Hope University. Harvey is also founder and executive director of Missio Africanus, a mission organization established in 2014 as a learning community focused on releasing the missional potential of African and other minority ethnic Christians living in the UK. More recently he became African Christianity Programme Lead for CMS (UK) Pioneer Mission Training.
In the United Kingdom, a lot of evidence is confirming the existence of the so-called "quiet revival" but history tells us that new moves of the Spirit need new wine skins to help support and sustain metaphorical new wine. Church planters urgently need to be developed because church plants give structure to what God is doing outside the spotlight.
The Quiet Revival may speak of mostly young and white new Christians, but if revival theories hold true, this movement was prayed into being and more likely than not those prayers were from black, brown, and Pentecostal migrants to the UK. As growth continues, there is an urgent need to provide options for robust theological education to new leaders.
The United Kingdom is fast approaching a tipping point in terms of population diversity, which has influence on church growth and missions. Yet traditional global missions continue to struggle with accepting leadership from the Majority World. And now the question is asked, how influential will be the anti-DEI stance now politically vogue in the United States?
We are being tempted afresh to give our allegiance to men who wield great power and wealth in the hope that we will benefit from their rule over us. This is a temptation as old as humanity. The true follower of Christ should give no allegiance to anyone but Jesus.
Western expressions of our faith have dichotomized church and missions as different things. This should never be so. We can learn from the African Church that all believers carry a responsibility for missions-type of activities.
One hundred years ago, Europeans were trying to convert Africans to Christianity. Today, Africans are worried that Europeans will make their children convert from Christianity to secularism. The challenge is very real and not enough is being done to address it.
Around the world we seem to have an identity crisis in the language of missions as missions conducted by black or brown people adopts missions thinking originating from white Westerners. This remains evident in the African American and Afro Caribbean missions movements as seen through the eyes of a Malawian living in the UK.
In the context of the Roman empire, making disciples of all nations was never about sending out well-funded missionaries from Rome, but the work of migrant peasant migrant workers, traders, sea-farers, and others, moving from one part of the empire to another (and beyond). Is this model from the past also the future of Christian missions?
