Reverse Mission: Europe - a Prodigal Continent?

The religious ethnography that took me from Germany to Nigeria in the summer of 1996 led to a striking and unprecedented finding, an advertorial captioned 'Europe: A Prodigal Continent!...Europe: A Mission Field in Need of Church Attention' adorning the Missions Office notice board of the Redeemed Christian Church of God's (RCCG) International Headquarters. It retorted: 'Why has Europe's spiritual light grown dim? A mission force of years ago, becoming another missionary field at the moment!' Christians from the two-thirds world employ similar narratives of representation deploying the illusion of a 'Christian' Europe as 'the dark continent of Europe', or 'a dead and secularized Europe'. Controversial and puzzling as such assertions may be, they cast our minds and gaze to a new, emerging global religious phenomena.

 'Reverse mission' or 'reverse flow of mission' is increasingly becoming a buzz phrase in academia, mission circles, and among Christians from the 'two-thirds world'. The (un)conscious missionary strategy by churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America of (re)evangelising the 'West' is a relatively recent one. The enterprise was aimed at re-christianising Europe and North America in particular, the former heartlands of Christianity and vanguards of missionary movements from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The rationale for reverse mission is often anchored on claims to divine commission to 'spread the gospel'; the perceived secularisation of the West; the abysmal fall in church attendance and dwindling membership; desecralisation of church buildings; liberalization; and on issues around moral decadence.

It is so far unclear whether 'reverse mission' is simply operating as rhetoric, and or what shape, structure and dynamic will emerge through this process in the long run. It will suffice at this point to underscore a certain public ignorance and ecclesial conspiracy that has left unnoticed this emerging mission trend, partly characterised by church proliferation in the South and from there to the Northern hemisphere. Nonetheless, reverse mission as 'rhetoric' or 'an evolving process' is of crucial religious, social, political, economic and missiological import for the 'West' and the global church, as the non-western world were hitherto at the receiving end of missions till the late twentieth century. The emergence of the 'global South' as the new centre of gravity of Christianity provides the watershed for the reversal and/or multidirectionality of missions.

The initiative that entail sending African missionaries abroad came partly as a backdrop of the moratorium call by the Lutheran World Foundation, to awaken 'two-third world' peoples to their responsibility, creating new goals and of formulating a viable evangelical strategy towards Europe. In 1971, the Western missions circle was stunned when Rev. John Gatu, a leader of the Presbyterian Church in East Africa, called for a moratorium on Christian missions from the Western world to the twothirds world. This call which took a revolutionary stance generated heated conversation, rebuttals and criticisms from various quarters, particularly from the Western world. Legacies of the moratorium discourse eulogized by Gatu and his contemporaries are still fresh and resilient within world mission circles. Although the moratorium failed to produce a formal radical and systemic halt of the influx of Western missionaries and mission resources to Africa, it nevertheless raised a question mark that resulted in self-reflexivity and structural adjustment by Western missionaries and on their mission resources.

The moratorium also produced a new consciousness about dependence and strategies for self-reliance that has challenged definitions of mission but also altered the unidirectionality of missions that characterized earlier conceptions. This empowerment process of two-third world churches brought significant changes in mission praxis as issues of co-operation and partnership were promoted as new mission strategies at the International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland in July 1974 and in subsequent congresses. Southern Christians participated in these congresses and held continental/regional conferences, which provided those challenges and global opportunities.

The reverse-mission agenda is becoming a very popular feature among mission churches, African-led Pentecostal/charismatic churches, with pastors and missionaries commissioned to head already existing branches or establish new ones in Europe and North America. In the early 1980s, Tanzanian Lutheran pastors served in German parishes. African groups, clergy and laity existing within American and European Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran and Catholic churches now further characterise the religious mosaic. There are growing numbers of African Roman Catholic and Anglican priests in the USA, Ghanaian Methodist priests in England, South African Presbyterians in Scotland. In some cases, African priests are employed in and by host European churches, although they have African congregations as their primary constituency.

The implications of reverse mission for world Christianity are not far to seek. First, reverse mission has brought a major shift in mission understanding; provided better sensibilities to, and appreciation of the multi-cultural nature of Christianity in the 21st century. Two, new definitions of mission are emerging in which traditional 'missions fields' now form 'mission bases' of renewed efforts to re-evangelise Europe, North America. Missions changed to become multi-lateral rather than unilateral, itinerant missionaries grew, while missions moved from cultural transplantation to contextualization. Third, as European churches are declining in number and in missionary significance, the impact of non-Western missions looms large in the revivification of Christianity in Europe. Fourth, this trend helps in the deconstruction and demystification of ecclesiastical paternalism that characterise global Christianity. Lastly, the proliferation of priests/missionaries from the two-thirds world may help fill a spiritual/administrative vacuum that often occasion the dearth of European clergy.

Andrew Walls' remark: 'Europe needs immigrants but do not want them', aptly captures European public attitude towards immigrants in Europe. This reverse trend in missions now offers the 'old heartlands of Christianity' a model for renewal, and calls for a structural reform of the Church to grapple with the challenges of migration. In this vein I am persuaded to leave us with a question to think with: If and when European churches finally decide to 'see' or 'discover' the new Christians in their midst, what will be their attitude towards them: 'Fellow Labourers for Christ' or as 'Strange and Exotic Bedfellows?'

Dr Afe Adogame is a Lecturer in World Christianity at Edinburgh University. Until his appointment in 2005 to the Lectureship in World Christianity, he was Teaching and Senior Research Fellow at the Department for the Study of Religion and Institute of African Studies, Bayreuth University from 1995-1998 and from 2000-2005.