Joseph Bosco Bangura is out to reshape how we take into consideration migrant churches.
For greater than 25 years, he has been exploring how recent Christian movements open up opportunities to interact with and transform societies. Bangura’s research on the growing Pentecostal movement in his home country of Sierra Leone revealed each its popular appeal and the creative ways charismatic and Pentecostal churches have accommodated indigenous African religious traditions.
Now he’s turning his focus to the impact of migrant churches in Europe. Bangura, who teaches missiology on the Evangelical Theological Faculty (ETF) in Belgium and Protestant Theological University (PThU) within the Netherlands and in addition pastors a migrant church, spoke with CT in regards to the opportunities and challenges facing migrant congregations in secularized European societies.
What motivated you to check migrant churches in Europe?
There is all the time a connection between people’s mobility and the spread of their faith. Any time the Jews migrated—the truth is, it’s from them that we’ve the term diaspora—something happened to their faith. The same was true within the early church. They didn’t go immediately; persecution led to their dispersal. Migration inevitably coincides with the spread of the gospel. It widens the potential for bringing recent elements of the religion to places where they weren’t initially known.
In Western Europe today, there’s a greater awareness amongst indigenous [i.e., white European] churches of the missionary implications of migrant communities. What can they do for the configuration of the church in a secular Europe? They is likely to be the lifeline for the survival of the religion in a secularized world.
Mission organizations are taking the presence of migrants seriously and are fascinated with find out how to engage them. Harvey Kwiyani, a scholar from Malawi who has written extensively on mission and migration, is working for the Church Mission Society. Leita Ngoy, a native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who teaches in Germany, is a consultant for Bread for the World, helping German churches change into more welcoming to migrants. The Bible Society for the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium) has appointed Samuel Ekpo, a Nigerian, as its relationship manager for migrant and international churches.
My own appointment as a professor of missiology at ETF, funded by a Dutch mission organization, and my teaching role at PThU also reflect what is going on. Westerners are realizing that in the event that they need to contribute to the event of worldwide Christianity, they have to allow their very own academic settings to reflect the variety in God’s church.
Could you describe what your individual congregation looks like?
As a pastor at Exceeding Grace Bible Church in Antwerp, Belgium, I shepherd migrants who need to share their faith. Our 70 attenders reflect a diversity of ethnicities. They are natives of the DRC, Chad, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. Many are naturalized Belgians. We are fully bilingual in English and French.
We may all be Africans in skin color, however the cultures are different. When we meet or make decisions, we’ve people representing each of those cultures, in order to present the view that in Christ we’re one. We even have various Christian backgrounds—charismatic, evangelical, Catholic. We try to construct bridges. It’s a piece in progress.
Irrespective of the interior cultural differences, all of us face the identical issues that migrants from in all places face in Belgium: social integration, language, and being considered outsiders who don’t quite belong.
What is the history of migrant churches in Belgium?
As the previous colonial power of the DRC, Belgium brought Congolese students to check at Belgian universities even before the DRC’s independence in 1960, desiring to send them back because the political elite who would shape the country. But some didn’t return. The first migrant church in Brussels was established within the Nineteen Eighties with support from Campus Crusade for Christ. Belgium subsequently attracted other African migrants—corresponding to Rwandans throughout the 1994 genocide or West Africans fleeing economic crisis of their home countries—due to its liberal policies for asylum seekers.
Migrant church leaders began to enter into various church organizations, corresponding to the Belgian Evangelical Alliance. More recently, an association was formed to supply fellowship and encouragement for pastors of African and Caribbean origin. Especially in northern Belgium, there are migrant churches in just about all the cities, generally affiliated with local evangelical and Pentecostal associations. The presence of migrant churches has revived the entire concept of Protestant Christianity on this predominantly Catholic country.
What are the different sorts of churches you see in Belgium?
In my teaching, I describe 4 categories. There is the migrant church, defined on the premise of the church’s ethnic composition and its difference from the host community. There is the indigenous church, in contrast—although I very rarely hear my Flemish colleagues call their church indigenous. To them, it’s just their home church.
Third, there are multicultural churches, where an indigenous church opens up its space to permit cultural fellowships throughout the church. You could have a white European pastor in charge, but there’s a Filipino fellowship that meets on Wednesday or an African fellowship on Friday. They do their very own thing throughout the week after which all come together on Sunday. That is sweet, nevertheless it raises questions on when the multiculturality of the church will probably be represented within the leadership structure. When will people of color find a way to talk apart from on a mission Sunday? The whole vision is usually undermined by the dearth of diversity within the leadership structure itself.
Finally, there are international churches, which use English exclusively and attract primarily professionals related to NATO, the European Union, Western embassies, or major corporations. Since they’re economically independent and in a position to support themselves, they don’t prioritize integration with local Christian communities. The leadership is exclusively white. They too serve a selected group of people that got here here as migrants, but because they got here as diplomats or corporate elites within the high echelon of society, they should not called migrants.
Image: Courtesy of Joseph Bosco Bangura
Joseph Bosco Bangura teaching on the Evangelical Theological Faculty (ETF) in Belgium.
Why is it so difficult for multicultural churches to have multicultural leadership?
The idea of getting leadership that represents the church’s multiculturality is a wonderful goal. I would really like to think that such a church can be a very good example of what we’ll experience in heaven. But getting there is kind of complicated, with many issues to deal with.
About 20 years ago, the International Baptist Church in Antwerp was doing well when led by its European founders. When the church was transferred to African leadership, the variety of Europeans slowly ebbed away as a consequence of concerns that the biblical teaching wasn’t theologically sound enough.
Currently, the entire query of migration could be very polarizing within the political sphere. This affects the perception of normal Christians and due to this fact their ability to collaborate with one another.
Migrant churches are sometimes criticized for focusing only on people of their very own ethnicity and keeping the body of Christ segregated. What are your thoughts about this critique?
In 2003, Jan Jongeneel argued that when communities of religion migrate, the initial step, especially with the primary generation, is to look inward and meet the needs of members of that community. You will need to have a base from which to start missions. We need to present recent migrant churches a while to redefine their identity relative to their status in the brand new society.
The migrant churches are attempting to deal with a missional need. It doesn’t do justice to their cause if we give attention to contrasts with other churches. Let’s look as a substitute at how several types of churches can collaborate toward the goal of reaching Europe for Christ.
How do you encourage migrant Christians to integrate effectively with their surrounding culture?
In my church, we encourage families to have their children take an elective subject called PEGO—Protestant evangelical religious education—taught in primary and secondary schools across Belgium. It gives them an idea of how Protestants in Belgium take into consideration faith. Increasingly, individuals who appear like me are teaching this subject. In April, I will probably be holding a seminar for 400 teachers, talking about African religiosity and the way it could actually help to revitalize religious education in schools. This is a crucial opening.
I also encourage my African colleagues to take part in local evangelical or Pentecostal fellowships. We may not agree on the whole lot, but we’re a minority and can’t afford to remain alone. We must be coming together to share resources and encourage one another. This could help mission not only in Belgium but additionally from Belgium to the countries we come from. For instance, if a neighborhood Belgian church desires to do missions in Sierra Leone, I can provide helpful insights before they get to the mission field.
How do you see the secularity of Belgian culture affecting the second generation of African migrants?
In 2020, I published a chapter reflecting on this issue. Migrant children don’t all the time appreciate the spirituality of their parents. They are also coping with an identity crisis. Their parents don’t consider them Africans at home, but they’re considered Africans at college. Collaborating with indigenous churches will help to deal with a few of their needs and provides them a possibility to make a choice for Christ.
First-generation migrant parents are sometimes unable to know the challenges faced by the second generation, because they still carry with them the spiritual formation they received in Africa. For example, a young lady who had accomplished secondary school felt the pressure of educational life—from each her peers and her parents—and desired to take a yr off from study. She just desired to refresh her mind and avoid burnout, but her parents concluded that the devil was interfering along with her. How can such parents interpret psychological phenomena in ways which are useful to their children? This is a struggle. I hope we are able to give you solutions.
Can you summarize how Christians must be fascinated with the role of migrants within the church’s mission?
For a protracted time, migrant Christian communities have been described through the lens of others—of indigenous local communities that also hold cultural dominance. But we ourselves are energetic mission agents, helping to shape the trajectory of mission in a secularized culture. I appreciate that ETF is invested in recent approaches to mission.
When I began studying theology in 1993, the connection between migration and mission was not on the agenda. As a result, I used to be not well prepared after I needed to migrate. We must be preparing people in order that wherever the Lord takes them, for whatever reason, they’ll consider their migration as God allowing them to spread the gospel to places and amongst individuals who have left the religion or should not Christians.
Since you’re employed to bring together Christians of multiple cultures, what would you serve if I got here to your own home for dinner?
We’d begin with Belgian soup, then have a spiced African rice and cassava leaves dish, and finish with classic Belgian chocolate pudding, all served on a dinner table decorated with braided African tablecloth.
