Transforming Mission: Reflecting Together

Certificate of Integral Mission Training

Kigali, Rwanda

Learning together is at the heart of partnership. This week CBM's team and partners in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are learning together about the complex causes and experiences of poverty in central Africa. This is an important part of the certificate of integral mission program that is helping our partner churches enhance their ministry in Africa.

Reflecting together on our perceptions of poverty in rural and urban contexts helps us strengthen our understanding of poverty. It is a crucial part of the local church identifying how to better respond to the needs of its community.

 Association of Rwandan Baptist Churches

Worship Service in Gichiru, Kigali

Intergral mission seeks to move local churches beyond Sunday morning into their community where they encounter their neighbours in the market place, schools, streets and fields. 

It is the intentional witness of Christian faith that touches every dimension of life.

As Canadians, we have a lot to learn from the African church, which is far less individualistic and consumer driven than our North American culture. In places like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, people realize that communities are deeply interdependent. The idea of "family" is much broader and significant to one's own identity. 

Unlike Canadians, who tend to view family as the nuclear unit of parents, children and siblings. Most African cultures associate family with extended relatives that are united by a common clan or ancestor. This broader family matters a lot. This is why it is so significant for many African Christians to identify their church as a spiritual family. Family takes responsibility for one another. Together we are stronger.

Our friends the Gakwerere family

Rev. Gato Munyamasoko reading scripture and sharing

the opening devotion for the second CIM module

Given this highly relational context, the issue of poverty is extremely personal. Our African partners are keenly aware that the heath and well being of the community (and wider family) is directly tied to their own health and well being. In the words of the Rwandan proverb:

Umugabo umwe agerwa kuri nyina
A lone man is worth nothing

Rev. Andre Sibomana

During today's sessions, our colleagues Andre Sibomana and Polisi Kivava led us through reflections on the experience of urban and rural poverty in Central Africa. Together they helped us to understand the web of disadvantages that create poverty in their context. As part of our sessions, we divided into groups and visited urban slum areas in Kigali and later compared and contrasted our experience with the way of life for people living in Korogocho, Kenya.

At one level, poverty can be observed as a lack of material wealth. In the words of a man living in Kenya:

"Don't ask me what poverty's because you have met it outside my house. Look at the house and count the number of holes. Look at my utensils and the clothes that I am wearing. Look at everything and write what you see. What you see is poverty." 

But all poverty is not so visible. Material poverty is often coupled with social, mental and spiritual poverty that robs people of the life that they were created to live.

Polisi Kivava

Understanding African experiences of poverty also leads us to wrestled with the complex causes of suffering in society. Identifying the particular roots of poverty in a given context is essential to finding appropriate solutions and developing effective responses. 

We are so thankful for the incredible team of African colleagues that we serve with. Please keep us all in your prayers as we work together.

Dr. Rupen Das, Gato Munyamasoko and Ruth Munyao

Kigali, Rwanda

We are also thrilled to have our friend and colleague, Rupen Das, joining us as the keynote lecturer for these modules which are being held in Rwanda and Kenya. Rupen's generosity in sharing his expertise and experience in leading international relief and development is of great value. 

We are looking forward to continuing to strengthen our understanding and practice of transforming mission!