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…

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 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 Calf is Born with Ears

Two weeks ago — on the 26th of June 2015 — we had the main Missio Africanus Conference of the year at the Church Mission Society’s CMS House in Oxford. It was a great day with excellent attendance and brilliant conversations on emerging theological themes in African Christianity (both in Africa and in the Diaspora)….

Would you like to know us theologically?—John Mbiti

Theologians from the new (or younger) churches have made their pilgrimage to the theological learning of older churches. We had no alternative. We have eaten theology with you. We have drunk theology with you. We have dreamed theology with you. But it has all been, in a sense, your theology. We know you theologically. The…

A Journal of African Missiology

Last week, we published our first issue of the Missio Africanus journal … a journal that is dedicated to the field of missiology on the African continent … a type of missiology that is shaped by the African understanding of God’s mission — missio Dei — in the light of the African life and worldview. It…

Diaspora Theology and the Scandal of an Immigrant God.

I had a chance to teach a brilliant bunch of missional pioneers last week, and the subject was “Migration and Mission.” The lesson drew from the usual resources in the migration-mission-theology conversation. Using my own book as a resource, in which I have dedicated a few pages to a theology of migration and another to the…

Mission After Globalisation

Mission After Globalisation: The Problem of Race There is gnawing silence in contemporary missiological conversations on the subject of race and its implications on mission – or missio Dei – in this twenty-first century. I believe this silence is very revealing, especially about the way the unfolding story of God’s mission will be told and interpreted in…

Introducing “Sent Forth: African Missionary Work in the West”

For those interested in what has been (wrongfully) called “reverse mission,” (which should otherwise be called non-Western missionary work in the West) there is a new resource coming. It is a book that I have written with the purpose of beginning to build cross-cultural bridges between African Christians and the West. It has been published…

Missio Africanus: The Start of a Conversation

On the 27th of June 2014, some 75 Christian leaders from different parts of the UK met at the legendary Crowther Hall in Selly Oak, Birmingham, for seminar called Missio Africanus.[1] A third of the gathering were (white) British pastors and leaders of missions organisations, and the remaining two thirds were Africans from different denominations…