Harvey C.Kwiyani. Sent Forth: African Missionary Work in the West. American Society of Missiology Series, No. 51. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014. 244 pp.

Abstract

Harvey C. Kwiyani. Sent Forth: Missionary Work in the West. American Society of Missiology Series, No. 51. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014. 244 pp. Why does individual and church-based mission to the West matter? The Malawian theologian Harvey C. Kwiyani, who epitomizes this trend in having served as a and scholar in several European countries and in North America, endeavours to answer this question in his stimulating book. In recent research, the shift from encounters in the global South to a reversed mission by Africans to countries of the northern hemisphere has received increasing attention, particularly for the intercultural dimension of practice. The founding of African-led churches in the West has even been designated as African reformation by some scholars. These churches constitute a profound transformation of the global ecclesial landscape, and even more so for the beginning of a new, cross-cultural conversation on the meaning of the Christian message in today's globalized world. Harvey Kwiyani invites the reader to take cognisance of this reality by building viable bridges of understanding for a practice crossing cultural boundaries. He begins his exploration by acknowledging the general transformation in global Christianity, which reposes on three main observations. First, Christianity has spread into all regions of the world and has thereby given rise to diverse cultural expressions of faith. Second, the movement from the West to the global South has come to an end due to mission led by Christians from these regions in all parts of the world. Last but not least, missionaries originating from Africa and other former fields enforce declining mainline churches within the context of an increasingly fragile plausibility of Christianity in many regions of the Western world. Kwiyani's central argument, unfolded in the seven chapters of the book, is based on the recognition of migration as a key motivating force for the missional enterprise in the West. It can be traced in the biblical narrative, through the early church and mission history to the present impact of migration on the Christian witness among all nations. By embedding enterprise in the West into the context of global migration, the author prevents a discussion of the topic as a marginal phenomenon in the history of contemporary Christianity. At the same time he succeeds in positioning it in the centre of the missiological debate by recalling the transitional existence of all Christians in the world, called into God's mission and on a journey toward his kingdom, regardless of their cultural ties and geographical location. The Genesis and Exodus stories, the Babylonian captivity, and the incarnation of Christ, according to Kiwiyani, can be read as universal Christian stories of migration, of which Africans have been part from the outset. What makes the monograph undoubtedly compelling to read also for an audience not acquainted with this domain of missiological conversation is its attempt to demonstrate in which way Christians have been, and still remain, what Lamin Sanneh called missionary agents of change within and outside their own lands. Harvey Kiwiyani offers ample illustrations of Africans adopting this role--and here the explicit mention of women missionaries would have been an asset--throughout the continent's history of Christianity. He shows how the missional character is important for understanding Christianity, even though the enterprise undertaken by Africans may have to be comprehended less in its professional-institutional than in its spontaneous-charismatic form. The author's observation that missionaries' contribution to the spread of Christianity has been largely underscored in the Western history of mission coincides with the internalization of the image of the white with far-reaching consequences for the self-perception of the churches. …