KwiyaniFiles

Place and mission from an African immigrant perspective

By Harvey Kwiyani and Alan Roxburgh In this interview, Alan Roxburgh introduces Harvey Kwiyani, a scholar and an African immigrant to the UK, now based at Liverpool Hope University. Harvey comes from Malawi, and left in 2000 at a time of revival. When he first came to the west he found himself in Switzerland where…

Can the West really be converted?: A Non-Western Reflection on the Newbigin Question (Part 2 of 2)

Can the West then be converted? So, back to Newbigin’s question, “Can the West be converted?” My answer is that it is possible that we will see the West embrace Christianity again—though it maybe later rather than sooner, and if it happens, it will not be a straight forward endeavour. The confidence that many have…

Can the West really be converted?: A Non-Western Reflection on the Newbigin Question (Part 1 of 2)

In 1987, Lesslie Newbigin published an essay in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research in which he reflected on a question that was raised by General Simatupang at a conference in Bangkok in the 1970s. The discourse at the conference had turned to the need to rethink evangelism in the West, and Newbigin notes that…

Mission-Shaped Church in a Multicultural World

Well, my contribution to the Grove Booklet Series entitled “Mission-Shaped Church in a Multicultural World” is out now. It joins many other resources that are available on the market exploring how we as sons and daughters of God can live together in the kingdom. Often, we tend to hang out with people that are…

Of Colonialism and Mission

I continue here to reflect on Andrew Walls’ presentation at Missio Africanus. Somewhere in his first session, he made a bold suggestion that the process secularisation (possibly that of the West and/or that of the West’s relationship with Africa) was initiated or, at least initially, enhanced by colonialism. When asked to clarify this point, Prof…

Come Over and Help Us

Prof Andrew Walls spoke at our recent Missio Africanus conference on the subject of “Migration, Mission, and African Christians in Britain.” As those who know him have come to expect, his speech was excellent and powerful. He spoke in a way that only Prof Andrew Walls can speak. In a 2007 Christianity Today article…

African Church Planting in Europe: State of the Conversation

For four times in the past two years, I have taught a term-long Church Planting module at two colleges in England. The students taking this module have been exclusively African—from many countries, denominations, networks, and movements across the continent. The question that shapes the module—and the conversations thereof—has always been “how can African Christians plant…

African Diaspora Christianity and Its Problem of Nationalism

It bothers me to some extent that almost all the boundaries that shape most African countries – or better, nation-states – were not made in Africa but in Europe, not by Africans but Europeans, in Berlin, Germany, in 1884. The boundaries were designed to serve the interests of Europeans, and were created with no regard…

The Faith of the Second Generation 2

I have wrestled with this post for a while because I started something in this line in a post the was published in August, and when I did that, even though I knew there is a lot to talk about concerning the faith of second generation African immigrants in Europe, I thought I should not…

A Wandering Syrian Was My Father: The Scandal of an Immigrant God (Part 2)

And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous …. Deuteronomy 26:5 KJV This little confessional statement of faith that appears at Deuteronomy 26:5-10,…