Issues
Facing Missions Today 33: Jettisoning the Leadership Paradigm for Ministry in
Africa
Three challenges to ministry posed by certain
concepts of leadership are: (1) ministry from a position of power; (2) elitism;
and (3) personal rule. The present post
examines these three points with respect to Africa through three authors. Clearly, certain people rise to positions of responsibility and have to exercise
certain duties in the course of their
ministry, but understanding this in terms of ‘leadership’ rather than
‘ministry’ seems to open Christian mission and ministry up to various
abuses. Perhaps, I would argue, it is
time to return to the simple notion of ‘ministry’ and drop the language of
‘leadership’ altogether.[1]
Ministry
from a Position of Power
In 1990, Gottfried Osei-Mensah warned of a
connection between power and Christianity in Africa. He wrote,
The
entrance of the Gospel in Africa through the modern missionary movement
coincided with the spread of western colonial power and commerce in the same
regions. It is not difficult therefore
to see how Christianity came to be identified in the minds of many of our
people with western culture, power and money….
Western culture, power and money seemed to be necessities if you were to
take up the work of an evangelist.[2]
Osei-Mensah further notes that the spread of Christianity
in the early Church did not come through money and power, and he asks whether
it is not possible for Africans to do so as well:
We who
by historical circumstance have been servants, former colonial servants, who
still today have no economic power, no influence in the councils of the world,
but who have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, can we not prove again in this
generation that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone who will believe?[3]
Modern missionary work in Africa by missionaries
from the West, Osei-Mensah notes, also was not undertaken by the wealthy:
Many
of the missionaries who brought the Gospel to Africa so many years ago set out
with only a oneway [sic] ticket for the ship on which they travelled. They did not have bank accounts. All they had was faith in the One who was
accompanying them. We are the products
of that kind of venturesome faith, and the Lord did not disappoint them or we
would not be here! That we are powerless
materially is no disadvantage; it is in fact a qualification.[4]
However, he warns, ‘Because of their resources,
missionaries today from the west are often not taken seriously. People attribute mixed motives to their
efforts.’[5] The paper concludes with examples and
statistics regarding African efforts in missions, particularly back to the
West.
Elitism
Also in 1990, Isaac Zoukwe warned against elitism
among leaders in the Church.[6] He says that Africa in particular has a
propensity for elitism among theological educators and educated ministers in
general because the literacy level of the population is lower than
elsewhere. Education becomes a means to
elitism, which is unbecoming of the minister of God. He observes the danger that education poses
for meaningful, Christian ministry:
Certain
aspects of African culture tend toward domination. The priority due to the oldest person, the
fear of the sorcerer, the servile submission to the chief, and the power of the
healer are values that are projected onto the pastor or leader. In the majority of our churches the pastor is
considered to be the one who simultaneously plays the roles of elder, chief,
healer, etc.[7]
Zoukwe is obviously not opposed to education or to
educated ministers in the Church. His
warning is not about education but the use of education as a power in a culture
ready to succumb to the abuses of leadership.
One might add that, in any culture, the educated might assume an air of
elitism and disparage others for their lack of theological sophistication or
institutionalization. This has been a
problem where more philosophical expressions of Christian faith encounter more
experiential expressions, or where Western theologians and churchmen dismiss
the orthodox faithfulness of believers in the non-Western world.
Zoukwe further notes that celebration in African
cultures also involves the exhibition of titles and receiving of honours.[8] Honouring elders and leaders is considered a
virtue, and disloyalty and dishonor by Westerners is shocking to African
culture. Therein lies a challenge: not
to promote elitism through African culture while still showing loyalty and
respect to those in authority.
Personal
Rule
Samuel Decalo examines the nature of leadership in
African contexts.[9] He argues that leadership is understood in
terms of personal rule, which works through patronage and reward. Servant leadership can easily be construed as
personal power (and not only in Africa): ‘give me the authority, and I will do
good things for the people.’ This is one
reason that ‘servant leadership’ is an inadequate concept for Christian
ministry. As personal power, servant
leadership easily devolves into nepotism, fraud, bribery, dictatorships, and
psychoses of power. Decalo writes,
Political
power is highly personalized in Africa, and personal rule is virtually the
norm…. The specific style of governance
adopted by the personal ruler—whether active or passive, open or
authoritarian—reflects his personality, thus allowing for a variety of possible
typologies of personal rule, even though the centrality of the personal basis
of power is common to all…. Personal rule can thus be seen as a fundamentally
elitist style of governance that trades off patronage and societal rewards to
other political aspirants or socially influential figures in exchange for
personal support and political quiescence….
Such a system of governance rests, as one scholar has put it, on
‘mercenary support’ for the personal ruler who acquires ‘instrumental
allegiance from influential individuals and groups through patronage.’ [10]
… Personal rule need not be authoritarian, although, by definition, it is
autocratic and inimical to the development of a completely open and competitive
political system…. It opens the door for
significant social waste, graft, and corruption (the necessary prices of
securing the allegiance of the ruler’s cohorts) and thus inevitably serves the
personal and sectional interests of the ruling group first and the wider
society last. When such a system of
personal rule is headed by a totally illegitimate or venal leader, by an
individual with headstrong paternalistic inclinations, or by one suffused by
millennial or visionary goals, it may evolve into an autocracy (as in Samuel
Doe’s Libera or Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire), a benevolent personal dictatorship
(as in Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi), or a highly idiosyncratic authoritarian regime
(as in Qadaffi’s Libya).
Personal rule potentially involves several other
abuses: inertia; bureaucracy; lack of creative problem solving; and stagnation
of social change.
Decalo did see the beginning of change in Africa
at the time of writing (1989), but the issues he identified then are still
present today throughout Africa. Where
change from personal rule is coming in Africa, according to Decalo, is through
a growing
intelligentsia, the glaring inconsistencies of widening class cleavages and
income disparities, the burdens of servicing onerous national debts with the
dwindling resources of often shrinking or flagging economies, the rural-urban
drift of an often nihilistic age-group of unemployed youth, and the
increasingly coercive measures adopted by insecure leaders facing waning
systematic legitimacy—all of these factors sap the founts of personal power in
systems that are inherently ossified, where prospects of political choice,
change, and peaceful transition from one set of rulers to another is precluded
except through cou d’etat.[11]
Conclusion
A robust missionary effort by those with resources
to accomplish it, a highly educated clergy, and persons in leadership positions
motivated to serve others might all sound like good things for Christian
ministry. The notion of a ‘servant
leader’ could easily include all three of these. However, significant dangers lurk in the
shadows of each one: power, elitism, and personal rule. The switch to notions of ‘leadership’ have a
way of cloaking these dangers in appealing ways. Perhaps what is needed is to drop the term
‘leadership’ altogether—and the theories that surround the notion—when speaking
of Christian ministry.
[1]
This is not to argue that we cannot learn some helpful things from sociology
about leadership. It is, however, to
challenge the notion of ministry that arises from either position or power.
[2]
Gottfried Osei-Mensah, ‘The Challenge of Christian Leadership in Africa Today,’
East Africa Journal of Evangelical
Theology 8:2 (1989): 1-10. Here , p.
6.
[3]
Gottfried Osei-Mensah, p. 7.
[4]
Gottfried Osei-Mensah, p. 8.
[5]
Gottfried Osei-Mensah, p. 8.
[6]
Isaac Zoukwe, ‘Educating for Servant Leadership in Africa,’ African Journal of Evangelical Theology Vol.
9.1 (1990): 3-13.
[7]
Isaac Zoukwe, p. 4.
[8]
Isaac Zoukwe, p. 5.
[9]
Samuel Decalo, Psychoses of Power: African
Personal Dictatorships (London: Westview Press, 1989).
[10]
Richard Sandbrook, The Politics of
Africa’s Stagnation (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 83.
[11]
Samuel Decalo, Psychoses of Power:
African Personal Dictatorships (London: Westview Press, 1989), p. 188. Decalo offers several reasons for coups:
absence of political legitimacy, failures of institutionalization and
leadership, economic stress, corruption, ethnicity, etc.—but especially the
coup leader’s personal ambition to gain power (and with it wealth) (pp.
189-191). The same issues, we might
note, may arise in churches, theological colleges, mission agencies, and other
Christian ministries—they are neither unique to governments or to Africa. See further: Ronald Enroth, Churches That Abuse (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1993); David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse (Bethany Pub. House, 2005).
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