God’s glory. What is God’s glory on earth? Is it not his presence and grace made known in the World through his people? For me that is the presence and grace of God’s people in the World. Isaiah 43.7 says that we are created for God’s glory. The glory of God is the beauty of His Spirit, the beauty of his character as revealed by Christ’s presence and grace among us. God’s glory can be seen in us through his presence, love, faith, music, character and love for nature. The world around us reveals God’s glory. The psalmist wrote, “The heavens tell about the glory of God. The skies show that his hands created them. Day after day they speak about it. Night after night they make it known. But they don't speak or use words – no sound is heard from them”. Our actions, presence and nature reveal God’s glory in our universe.
This thought, and an earlier experience of a dream I had with the words “Jesus is your Friend”, has, over the years, shaped my ministry and mission in Nigeria as Mission Director (helping to facilitate the planting of churches and schools in rural areas in Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Ghana) and in London as an Associate Pastor in a Baptist Church in East London (a fellowship that was struggling to continue its mission in the area with a huge building located in an inner city neighborhood that was experiencing knife/gun crime), and presently in South London (as a Pastor of a Baptist Church, and Chair of the London Baptist Association Mission Strategy Forum).
Maintaining presence, building relationships and friendship across culture has defined my mission in London. Mission in London – “the global city” – for me means leaving my comfort zone. Though challenging, I have seen a move of God’s power, presence and grace as I make myself available in other cultures that are completely different from mine. Ministry in a multicultural environment means losing a part of yourself so that others can experience the presence and grace of God. It works, but it is hard. Jesus did not say it was going to be easy, but promised that the Holy Spirit will help us.
Cross-cultural mission and diversity are great; there are a lots of things to learn from each other. There are strengths and difficulties that go with it. For me the strength is not only in our differences or diversity (though they are very good), but our strength as Christians is our ability to come together with our differences/diversity around Jesus Christ as head of the body, thereby becoming one body with different parts. Without this common God agenda, we sometimes find ourselves with individual agendas that are too personal and confusing. As a result, the advantages of diversity are eroded and it becomes a burden.
What are the tensions involved in presence and building relationships/ friendships across culture? The tensions are many, but it is in overcoming this tension that God’s glory is revealed among us. Some of the tensions are:
The Background of my Culture
The way I understood life in Nigeria was completely different from what I was called to by God in London. The first thing that surprised me was the big differences with the way we all understand life and relationships. In this part of the World, life and relationships are shaped by the philosophy of “I am because I am”. Coming from a different perspective as Joe Kapolyo described in The Human Condition, through African Eyes, Traditional African Perceptions:
“In Africa it is impossible to reflect on human beings apart from their cultural surroundings and identity. The society-based existence is evident everywhere. Not for us any 'I doubt, think or buy, therefore I am'. Rather for us it is: 'we are, therefore I am. Africans find it difficult to conceive of a solitary or highly individualistic or isolationist existence. 'I am because we are' is a very African attitude to life. Culture therefore is the best milieu for understanding human beings in most sub-Saharan African contexts”.
This was the baggage I came with.
With this as my understanding of life and relationships, how was I to do mission cross-culturally, when the way I understood life was completely different from the way others understood it? Another thing I also found out was that these two perspectives determine how we live, do church and how we sometimes read and interpret the Bible, though this is not always the case. In the first church I was, I found it very difficult to understand why I would worship with some people on a Sunday morning and on a Monday afternoon when we meet on the street, it was as if they have never met me. This was a big issue in the area of fellowship for me. Is church only about worship without fellowship?
Apart from that, I thought I had a lot to offer until I was humbled to first learn from the other cultures around me. Time management is one area in which I have learnt a great deal from this culture. For our culture, an event starts personally for us when we arrive at the event not the set time, the event was scheduled to start. Some call it African time. Planning many months ahead is one thing I would hardly do before in ministry. But I have found that very helpful to do. I am still learning it and I am getting more organized in that area.
Tension between two extreme theologies of social action and prosperity
When you come from Africa, you are almost seen as somebody who needs help all the time by most people you meet in Christian circles and other circles. When you actually want to help people or organizations, you are seen as somebody who needs help. What you then experience is that you are only seen from the perspective of matter (physical). Do I have anything to offer emotionally, socially or spiritually? I am not sure some Christians think so. Why? Because the lens with which some look at the world is purely ‘matter’. When I was in East London during the time when there was an upsurge in knife crimes, I helped to set up an organization called Friendship Plus, an organization that was focusing on the value of adults, family and extended family in empowering and raising young people within the society.
We observed that there were many organizations that wanted to help people with this situation, but they did not have a clue about who these people were or what their values are. The motive to help was good, but there was no friendship or relationship to know and understand the people. We held two conferences to help organizations and people understand where they are coming from, such as the sense of family or the presence of an adult in a teenager’s life. We set up the Plus Centre and Street Pastors in Newham in an attempt to solve this problem.
There are some Christians who think they can change the world by their power and energy, but what they soon find is that the more they try the more it appears nothing is done. The theology of feeding the poor does not put a particular people in the box. The poor can be found anywhere in the world, just as the rich can be found anywhere. I believe that placing value and honour on people comes first before anything else. Extreme Social Justice theology can sometimes devalue people. Can we change the world by our giving? I do not know. Can we build genuine relationships that respect and value people? Yes, I believe we can.
On the other hand, you also have the extreme theology of prosperity. The poor who have accepted the label of poor and want to depend on God to prosper them may take it to the extreme of exploiting others around them. While the theology of prosperity is good for empowering people to learn to catch fish rather than wait for somebody else to give them a piece of fish, it needs to be said that the exploitation of others to gain wealth is very wrong. When you meet Christians from different cultures, these thought processes sometimes run through discussions and the way we think of others.
Sometimes it is as if the two theologies are saying: “I will change things for you” (social action); and “I want to depend on God to change this for me” (prosperity). Both statements are good, but when we take them to the extreme, it becomes a problem. I would not want to be seen as somebody who needs help all the time. I want to be valued and seen as a spiritual, social and emotional person with value before material.
Another tension is that of comparing, measuring and competition as against complimentary and community.
One struggle I have found in ministry is that of comparing, measuring and competition. In the economic world these are very helpful to business people, but in spiritual and social circles they mean different things. When you come from an environment where the community see their strengths and weakness as something to share together, ministry can be difficult. You can be easily rejected or turned down without proper listening to understand. It becomes “I am more intelligent than you” “He is not smart”. After Sunday sermons you hear a lot of feedbacks based on how people have compared you to others or what they wanted to hear.
Another tension is the issue of stereotyping.
I remember joining a church that was struggling to keep its doors open and was considering selling their building. I suggested that we introduce prayer and Bible Study days as one of the ways forward. I was told that was African spirituality. It took me days to try to figure out what that meant. However, we started prayer and bible study meetings after some time, we experienced a move of God’s power by the transformation and growth. Was that luck or God’s intervention? The church grew in number. When things became better, I was invited to become the church’s African Pastor, a position I refused. I was not quite sure what that position meant in a multi-cultural church setting.
Finally, another struggle is the use of language.
What is said and what I think it means can be two different things. I remember when I first arrived working in a multicultural church, I thought I understood statements that were made only to discover that what was said was different from the message I got out of it. After that I spent time figuring out what people meant when they make certain statements. That was hard work if you have to do that many times. Most people do not want to hurt you with what is said, so they use nice words, but the message from the nice words does not communicate the true picture to another person outside the culture. Thank God for my training in Spurgeons College – our dear principal solved this problem for me during a lecture unknowingly. That lecture is one I cannot forget.
Factors that prepared me for cross-cultural mission and ministry
I grew up in a country with many diverse cultures and also an educational experience of attending a catholic school in Nigeria with Christians from other denominations and Muslim students. These experiences encouraged me to build friendship across culture. We were allowed to practise our different faiths in secondary school. We would all go to Mass and sometimes our Moslem classmates would invite us to the mosque, we would go without really understanding anything that was said in Arabic - likewise in the Catholic Church where Latin was used. My understanding of a church was that Roman catholic, Pentecostal, Baptist, Anglican and African Churches was one church.
In view of the above, coming to the “Global City” of London, attempts have been made to build true friendship within my culture and across cultures in East London and South West London. Getting to London, my first response was to find a place of comfort with people of the same culture. Hence, Newham was my entry point into London – an interesting place with many minority ethnic groups. I decided to worship with a fellowship that had the same culture with me. After a few months, God reminded me about the calling to build friendship across culture. I was then led to another Baptist Church with a very different culture from mine, where we enjoyed a move of God’s power and glory. As I worked cross culturally, I found problems from my culture that needed attention.
Friendship Plus
Some years back there were series of events where many young people in Newham lost their lives because of knife/gun crime. This moved me to contact a number of adults within my community to take action to challenge the attitude among young people that says that it was acceptable to carry and use knives. The concerned adults were drawn from different Newham African churches. Our USP (Unique Selling Point) was that we would first work with adults in the same communities, and then young people. we believed that statutory and many voluntary services do not have the level of contact those parents, uncles and aunts, cousins or family friends have with young people. The problem, as we identified it, was not that these young people have no adults in their lives – it was that the adults often do not know how to confront these violent behaviours, or feel isolated and unable to change them. Sometimes they feel afraid.
Many organizations and individuals from different cultures were ready to help, but not able to work or partner with parents to understand the issues and problem from their perspectives. I felt the need to work with some of these organizations to help build bridges across culture to young people from African families. The reason I chose to act and respond was the personal struggle and challenges I went through during the period. The thinking was that if this was very hard for me, it would be harder for parents who did not understand how the system works. I was faced with the decision to either choose to react with bitterness, resentment and anger, or respond with love, friendship and build bridges across cultures. I also observed that the decision I make would affect my three children, as they were aware of what was going on. That would mean they would be angry and resentful, which can sometimes lead to anti-social behavior. I decided to respond positively.
As a result of the above problems, we resolved to meet as a prayer group for a year to seek the face of God. We began the Plus Centre and facilitated the setup and early beginnings of Street Pastors in Newham. The immediate main objective of the Plus Centre (funded by Baptist Union Home mission small grants) was to create a safe environment for young people and adults alike to build friendship and to easily and conveniently access available information, using the latest Information Technology (IT) computer systems that would enable mentoring and supportive relationships to develop. It is indeed an amazing transformation for young ones who also use the centre with other adults. Parents have testified to seeing marked improvements in their children’s performances at school since they began attending the Centre. What has been most rewarding and inspiring is that the Plus Centre has attracted people of all different races, colour, cultures, background and faiths. They have all found comfort and security in learning together under the very welcoming and friendly environment that the Centre offers. We trust that by our genuine disposition and aura which the Centre radiates, the love of Christ Jesus will be gently ministered in a very special way to ALL who come through its doors.
In my present church there are other issues we struggle with. In view of the long history of the church, power and control (the fact that members have been around for over 50 years in one congregation) traditions as a result of long history are problems that need to be constructively handled with love. Intentionally building friendship across cultures has helped us move into a new phase in the life of the church. The tension of moving the church forward and also holding people with love and care where they are has been the key to my ministry here – moving people to where God wants them to be in love. We have spent time focusing on building relationships with God’s love.
Recently we held a three-day community festival to celebrate our 131 years anniversary, with many organizations partnering with us. It was a great experience to share God’s love with our community, with two days of fun and one day of worship. We saw the joy, laughter and excitement in people from different cultures, religion, races, sex and ages. We saw a growing hunger for social connection within our community. There was everything for everybody to do at the Park where we had the Saturday family festival. Our local MP, who is not a Christian, was invited to open the festival His comment was that “the News of the World will not be on our streets again, but the News in the World will continue to be there”. There is good news in the world and we are sharing it by our actions. During the festival, it did not matter to people in our community whether they were Christians or not – they wanted to connect socially, and it is from here that relationships and friendship developed. I would call that God’s glory and presence revealed.
In conclusion, friendship across culture would mean more than planning deliberately to be friends. It would take a lot of openness to really make it work. God is love, and when we find this love in God, we are called to share it and not store it away. We may sometimes connect with one another, but we do not relate with one another. When we pray for God to make us loving Christians the only way we can know if we have received it is when we meet other people that are different from us. My work as the chair of LBA Mission Strategy Forum and as a Trustee for Share Jesus International, which involves strategizing and planning for mission in London and the Pentecost Festival, are great jobs I love and enjoy. I give glory to God for it.
Selected further reading:
Balckaby Henry & Richard, Spiritual Leadership, Nashville, Tennessee 2001.
Joe M Kapolyo. The Human Condition, through African Eyes Traditional African Perceptions.
Rick Warren, Building Relationships with God’s Love, CPI William Clowes Beccles
You are reading Revealing God’s Glory and Cross Cultural Mission by Osoba Otaigbe, part of Issue 53 of Ministry Today, published in November 2011.
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