UK: How African churches are booming in London's backstreets
On a cold, grey Sunday morning in London, songs of prayer in the West African language of Yoruba ring out from a former warehouse that is now a church. The congregation, almost entirely dressed in white robes, consists of approximately 70 people.
Today, around 250 black majority churches are believed to operate in the London borough of Southwark alone, where 16% of the population identifies as having African ethnicity. Southwark represents the biggest concentration of African Christians in the world outside the continent with an estimated 20,000 congregants attending churches each Sunday, according to researchers of the University of Roehampton.
Reflecting the different waves of migration to Britain in the 20th century, Caribbean churches began to appear in the late 1940s and 1950s as workers and their families arrived from Jamaica and other former British colonies. African churches opened their doors in London from the 1960s, followed by a second wave in the 1980s.
Migrants, many of them from Nigeria and Ghana, sought to build communities and maintain cultural connections with their home countries by founding their own churches, often founded in private homes, schools and office spaces. As the communities grew, the churches moved into bigger spaces in bingo halls, cinemas and warehouses, gathering congregations of up to 500 people. What these churches have in common is a drive for professional advancement, dazzlingly coloured African clothes, a commitment to spend three hours or more at Sunday service and typically very loud worship.
'That is how we express our joy and gratitude to God.'
“That is how we express our joy and gratitude to God,” Andrew Adeleke, a senior pastor at the House of Praise, one of the biggest African churches in Southwark, says. “The church is not supposed to be a graveyard. It is supposed to be a temple of celebration and worship and the beauty is to be able to express our love to God, even when things are not perfect in our lives.”
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Members of the Apostles of Muchinjikwa church conduct a mass baptism off the beach at Southend-on-Sea
There is a striking contrast with the empty pews at many traditional Church of England churches where congregations have dwindled for years. “We pray for this country,” says Abosede Ajibade, a 54-year-old Nigerian who moved to Britain in 2002 and works for an office maintenance company. “People here brought Christianity to Africa but it doesn't feel like they serve Jesus Christ anymore.” So Africa’s ‘reverse missionaries’ see it as their calling to bring Christianity back to the UK, but this is not an easy task in a secularized nation.
Nigerian Pentecostal megachurch Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), which already has more than 800 branches in the UK, has been planting new churches not in cities home to large Nigerian communities but places like York or Knebworth, a village north of London with less than 5,000 people. The church expects to have 100 new parishes before the end of the year. The church also runs several food banks.
'What worked in Lagos isn’t going to work in Oxford'
Every day at least one RCCG church in the UK has been assigned to pray for the country’s leaders. Its annual mega service, the Festival of Life, is a prayer meeting of tens of thousands of members calling for spiritual revival in the UK. The church is also grooming the next generation, British-born children of the African diaspora who have one foot in both worlds, to be leaders and help better integrate the church with its host country.
Andrew Rogers, who led the University of Roehampton researchers, said this is also the area where pastors have to juggle - retaining the churches’ African identity while appealing to children of first generation immigrants. “They typically have a more liberal world view which can be hard to reconcile with conservative Pentecostal teachings and religious miracles.”
Global migration has changed the face of mission. But so far, most African diaspora churches have failed to attract a large following among the English. Services are long and meandering, with heavy appeals to one’s emotions. Others are turned off by the ‘big man’ model of senior pastors who are often wealthy and respected for their success, which doesn’t transfer well to the UK. It’s clear that what worked in Lagos isn’t going to work in Oxford. As a Nigerian missionary discovered: “The English people might come, but they don’t stay. Probably they think church is a black thing.”
Source: Christian Today, Quartz Africa
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USA: How a dyslectic boy became a Bible translator
From a young age, Josh struggled with dyslexia and ADHD. It made school difficult for him and the learning process challenging. But his mum prayed and as he persevered he was able to make great progress in his reading abilities.
One day when he took a Latin class in high school, God began to speak to him and gave him an understanding of language. “I would feel the presence of God and He started teaching me things. He poured into me an understanding of language that I would have never had otherwise.”
Josh moved on to college where he studied linguistics and Greek. Then God called him to become a Bible translator with Wycliffe.
Watch his encouraging story in the video below (click to see).
Source: Wycliffe
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