Decolonising the church for sustainable development in Africa

Abstract

African ecclesiology and development have been highly influenced by the way White Missionaries Christianised Africa. Since Africa regained its independence, progressive scholarly attention was given to the decolonisation discourse, but ecclesial mission continues to bear retrogressive marks of colonial missiology. As Christianity has grown massively in Africa, while declining in Europe and the West, missionary trajectories have changed and a need for the African Church to contribute to integral mission, especially in relation to sustainable development in underdeveloped and developing Africa, has arisen. Therefore, the African Church ought to be interdependent, selfsustaining, self-governing and self-determining, while it appreciates and relates to Western churches as equal partners of the global Church. Problematically, countless African churches are still dependent on their Western mother churches, partners and donors to facilitate local ecclesiastic, leadership and followership development programmes, to the extent that some Africans provokingly infer that the God of the Church in Africa is White. As the gospel is inclusive, having White Westerners ministering to Black African ecclesial work is inclusionary and complementary. However, the failure of Africans to balance foreign support with contextualization hinders their integral mission and contribution to African sustainable development. The Church can only be transformative and relevant if it is well contextualised. Theoretically framed under decoloniality and based on a literature review, this study finds that the Church has not contributed much towards the African socio-economic and political development. It recommends the Church decolonises its sustainability, theological education, leadership development and mission to be contextually transformative.