Luz, aroma e calor

Succession is particularly a challenge in African independent Pentecostal churches (AIPCs),
\nbecause unlike traditional churches, they do not have a rotation system, which transfers
\nministers from one congregation to the next after a specified period. AIPCs refer to churches
\nthat are led by Africans, for Africans, in Africa. Pastors in AIPCs are mostly founders or
\nlong-term serving pastors. The only time they will be succeeded is when they retire, die or
\nare removed because of a moral failure or incompetence. Succession by death is most
\nprominent in independent churches, especially in the case of founders. Most founders in
\nAIPCs do not retire even if they fall sick or fall into moral sin; they remain at the helm of the
\nchurch until their last breath. This makes succession difficult especially after the death of
\nthe founder or long-term serving pastor, as a result, succession becomes contentious and
\nends up tarnishing the image of the congregation when not properly managed. The aim of
\nthis article is to highlight the challenges of succession in AIPCs and make recommendations
\nthat can help them find solutions to these challenges. Most African independent churches
\n(AICs) in the South African context fall within a category of churches that Anderson calls
\n‘African initiated Churches (AICs)’ and the ‘Newer Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches
\n(NPCs)’. This article will be focusing on those AICs who are Pentecostal in nature, including
\nNPCs. An interpretive pastoral care methodology of describing, interpreting, normative
\nformation and practical application is proposed for this article.
\nCONTRIBUTION: This article’s contribution is to propose to African independent Pentecostal
\nchurches (AIPCs) a pastoral succession model that will enhance a smooth transition from a
\npredecessor to a successor. The model will also benefit other church groups in their pastoral
\nsuccessions, particularly when using the proposed pastoral care approach for practical ministry.

�This article presents a brief overview of the historical development of the missional church from the understanding of the missio Dei. From this perspective, it attends to the African context. With regard to African children, the African independent churches are looked at from a missional church perspective. The nature of the missional church is described as being a Biblical, Trinitarian, discerning, evangelistic, hermeneutic and agogic community. The implication of being missional in accordance with the mentioned characteristics is then linked to the five solas of the Reformed tradition. It is concluded that the African independent churches and the mainline missionary churches need each other in order to be truly missional in Africa and to reach the children of Africa.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Children and Youth Ministry is challenged by the context of Africa, when some relevant characteristics of the African independent or initiated churches (AICs) are described and related to the Reformed tradition. The (missional) ecclesiology of the AICs and the Reformed tradition is challenged by children�s ministry

Pentecostal fervor has rapidly spread throughout central and southern Mozambique since the end of its protracted civil war in the early 1990s. In the peri-urban bairros and septic fringes of Mozambican cities African Independent Churches (AICs) with Pentecostal roots and mainstream Pentecostals can now claim over half the population as adherents. Over this same period another important phenomenon has coincided with this church expansion: the AIDS epidemic. Pentecostalism and HIV have travelled along similar vectors and been propelled by deepening inequality. Recognising this relationship has important implications for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment strategies. The striking overlap between high HIV prevalence in peri-urban populations and high Pentecostal participation suggests that creative strategies, to include these movements in HIV/AIDS programming, may influence the long-term success of HIV care and the scale-up of anti-retroviral treatment (ART) across the region. The provision of ART has opened up new possibilities for engaging with local communities, especially Pentecostals and AICS, who are witnessing the immediate benefits of ARV therapy. Expanded treatment may be the key to successful prevention as advocates of a comprehensive approach to the epidemic have long argued.

Opening ParagraphSampling provided the rationale of my previous account of ‘Dreams in an Independent African Church’ (1973). I took a set of ninety-five dream reports, and a handful of visions, as individual events which could be summed and categorised in a variety of ways. I had been able to garner these over a period of five months' study, from the services of this ‘Independent African Church’ (IAC). Beyond considering in general terms the part played by dream-telling and its accompaniments in the services of the Church and in its life more generally, in that article I worked out patterns, categorising the individual dreams in relation to their tellers, to the way they might implicate other named people, to whether they depicted IAC activities, to their apparent location, and so on. I sought to explain the patterns in terms of leadership and its interests, and of the idea that dream-telling was a kind of ‘bidding’, ‘to contribute valuably to the life of the group, and through this for status within it’ (op. cit.: 256). This article moves on from that analysis.

The African Independent Churches (AICs) are a major form of Christianity in Africa. The largest phenomenon of the rise of the AICs was experienced in Southern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa and Eastern Africa. Many studies and researches have been done covering the AICs in the whole of Africa. Barrett has made an overview of the rise and the causes of the rise of the AICs in Africa with a focused study on Luo Independency. Turner has made a good study of the Aladura in West Africa with emphasis on the Church of the Lord. Martin made a detailed study of Kimbanguism in Central Africa. The study that has great relevance to Botswana is the one made by Sundkler in South Africa and a number of other studies by Daneel and a study by Oosthuizen. Studies in Botswana have been done by Amanze and Kealotswe. The common characteristic of all these studies is that the AICs arose as a protest to the Western forms and expressions of Christianity. Their major concern was to develop an indigenous expression of Christianity. The study of the AICs in Botswana should be viewed from this general perspective.

This article examines the way the Old Testament (Jewish Bible) play,} a major role in the African Independent Churches. Many of these churches are founded following the publication of the whole Bible in local languages. The founders and followers see numerous points of contact between the life of Jewish people in the Bible and their own. They identify themselves in and through the Bible. It forms the authority by which they teach and live the Christian life. Consequently, they direct their church life according to insights that they derive from the Jewish Bible, whilst, at the same time, they hold firmly on to Jesus Christ.Examples of church life with roots in the Jewish Bible include taboos and customs connected with food, worship and death. The churches also use the Jewish Bible in matters connected with health, sickness and wellbeing. Healing activities feature prominently in many of the churches, and the Bible is the guide and authority for them. The churches have sacred places (mountains, beaches and villages), where members go for pilgrimage and special worship. Some are given biblical names. The land is very significant for them, but in South Africa some members were slaughtered in, and others forcefully thrown out of the land of their churches. African Christianity needs a theology of the land.

This paper focuses on the opposition to, and survival strategies of, African Independent Churches (AICs), which emerged in Mbeya region in the 1920s. These churches were against historical churches and colonialism because historical churches would not incorporate African traditional beliefs in Christianity and the colonial government exploited Africans, which led to the AICs experiencing opposition, resulting in their decline in other places in Tanzania. In Mbeya, AICs remained and continued to flourish in the post-colonial period, contrary to people’s expectations, which prompted the researchers to carry out this study, drawing on oral interviews, archival documents and secondary sources. This article examines the opposition to the growth of AICs and their various strategies for surviving the opposition. It argues that post-colonial opposition emerged from different spiritual doctrines, the disturbance to historical churches’ economy, the failure to abide by government laws and the lack of direct impact on the community in areas with established AICs. Regardless of the opposition, AICs spread their teaching intensively, which comprised giving people the opportunity to overcome some psychological problems; combining faith and culture; and women being given opportunities in the churches that operated independently. Hence, AICs flourished in Mbeya and Christianity kept on growing.

Most of the literature on African independent churches (AICs) in South Africa has not paid much attention to their economic and developmental role. In contrast, this article will show how AICs are involved in important economic activities such as voluntary mutual benefit societies, savings clubs, lending societies, stokvels (informal savings funds), and burial societies that control millions of South African rand. In light of firsthand empirical research, this article investigates these kinds of activities, and analyses independent churches’ developmental role. This will allow us to better understand how these communities play a strong and supportive function among Africans in a deprived economic situation. In a period of socio-political transformation in South Africa, AICs are able to answer the needs of the people and their hunger to rebuild an identity. My major critique of classical research on AICs is the failure of the literature to address ‘social change’ in a theoretically adequate way, as something more than just descriptions of ‘traditional’ social structures away from interpretations of modernity.

The African Independent Churches Association (AICA) holds a unique place in the contribution of South African theological education. The AICA established the AICA Theological College; however, later on it initiated a theological negotiation with the Umphumulo Lutheran Theological College (ULTC) to train its students. The African Independent Churches (AICs) are seriously concerned with theologically training their church leaders. The vision and mission of the AICs are to sustain and grow the quality of their doctrine. This is to ensure that the significant connection between theological training and their own churches’ life experiences are encouraged. The role of theological training has much potential to train theological students of pastoral leadership. Thus, theological training and the church have always taken a rightful place to serve communities. This article explores why the AICs are training their theological students at the ULTC. The article focuses on four areas. Firstly, it discusses an early partnership between the ULTC and the AICs. Secondly, it offers some reasons why the AICs initiated the process of training their theological students at the South African theological institutions of the mainline churches. Thirdly, it discusses the establishment of the AICA Theological College and its success and challenges. Fourthly, it outlines the theological curriculum challenges offered to AICs theological students and the Lutheran support initiatives to the AICs.

Engaging Modernity contains a collection of essays by four different authors who purport to open up new perspectives in the study of African Independent Churches (AICs) in South Africa. This is done largely by providing a detailed discussion of research methodologies and established theories. This methodological approach is supported by extended case studies, offering conceptual, community, national, and global perspectives. The book concludes with an epilogue about the possible future of AICs in South Africa. Engaging Modernity seeks new ways to resolve the modernity/tradition dilemma that has long beset the academic debate on AICs. The question is how successfully this is done. Although the book contains a lot of useful information, especially for those who want to familiarise themselves quickly with AICs and the difficulties in studying them, what we get is a rather disparate set of research stories, themselves interesting but not really advancing existing scholarship on AICs much beyond what we know already. Rather than helping overcome the tradition versus modernity debate, this volume perpetuates it, with different authors coming to contrasting conclusions. This seems largely due to the fact that there is no overarching or unifying approach that drives the argument and no consensus on how to operationalise the concept of modernity. Naturally enough, we therefore get very different answers to the question of whether and how AICs engage modernity. It also raises the question of how useful ‘modernity’ is as an analytical concept.

This article examines the influence of the thesis of the American medieval scholar Lynn White that Christianity is responsible for environmental injustice and which has become a trigger for the formation of a new discipline in Christian theology - environmental theology and a new Christian environmental consciousness on the activities of African Independent Churches (AIC). On the African continent, it is the AICs who have made significant contributions to the development of contextual theology and environmental awareness. The main tenet of the African Independent Churches (AIC) after liberation from colonial dependence was that countries that received political liberation were to receive ecological liberation. However, it should be noted that still the main emphasis was placed on environmental action, which was an expression of the environmental consciousness of members of African independent churches. Attempts by African Independent Churches (AICs) to construct a system of ecological theology within contextual theology have relied on attempts to fit Christianity with the traditional African view, which traditionally defined certain trees, rivers, or animals as sacred or taboo. There are few such approaches in the literature on theological justification of ecology in churches initiated by Africans, but the ecological consciousness based on action has a well-rooted history in African independent churches and is, in fact, an Afro-Christian response to the challenge posed to Christianity by Lynn White.

The name African Independent Churches (AICs) refers to churches that have been independently started in Africa by Africans and not by missionaries from another continent. There has been extensive research on (AICs) from different subjects in the past. There is, however, a research gap on the subject of leadership in the AICs, especially with reference to women leaders. To address this gap, this article discusses leadership in the AICs with special reference to the leadership of Christina Nku in St John’s Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM). A historical examination of Christina Nku’s leadership is studied by looking at her roles as a family woman, prophet, church founder, faith healer and educator in St John’s AFM. The aim of this article is twofold. First it is to reflect on gender in the leadership of the AICs. Second it is to apply the framework of leadership in the AICs to Christina Nku’s leadership in St John’s AFM. Consequently, the article is an interface between gender and leadership in an African context. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that Christina Nku was a remarkable woman in the leadership of the AICs.

The religious transnationalism evident in the 21st century has heralded a new paradigm of religion ‘made to travel’ as adherents of religions navigate various cultural frontiers within Africa, Europe and North America. The role of Africa in shaping the global religious landscape, particularly the Christian tradition, designates the continent as one of the major actors of the Christian faith in the 21st century. The inability of European Christianity to address most of the existential realities of Africans and the stigmatisation of African Traditional Religion mainly contributed to the emergence of African Independent Churches in the 19th century in Africa. The emergence and proliferation of African Independent Churches in Africa was Africa’s response to Europeanised Christianity with its imperialistic doctrines and practices that negated expectation of its new context – Africa. Despite the declining fortunes of Christianity in the West, African Christianity, which includes the African Independent Churches and African Pentecostal traditions, is now a major non-commodity export within Africa and North America. Apart from their rituals and peculiarities, African Independent Churches like other faith organisations are development actors. Although notions about the role of religion in development amongst some social scientists are mainly negative, African Independent Churches over the years are actively involved in various human and community transformation initiatives. This study argues that the transnational status of African Independent Churches has led to the emergence of developmental ideals that defy territorialisation. The collaboration with some Western development agencies by some of the African Independent Churches in Diaspora further blurs the concept of diaspora as the members of this Christian movement are active development actors in the receiving nations and their former home countries. This study argues that the role of religion in development in any context cannot be overemphasised. As a result of the globalisation of African Independent Churches, the United Kingdom and Nigeria will serve as our case study using historical survey and descriptive analyses to highlight African Independent Churches as development actors.

Healing ministry is becoming more prominent in many different Christian traditions in Southern Africa. In the past, however, it was largely confined to the Spirit-type African Independent Churches, where it was (and still is) used as a recruitment technique par excellence. For these denominations healing is central to mission, and the church is seen primarily as a healing institution. In the Western-initiated churches, healing was earlier seen as peripheral, but has become more central in recent years. This book presents four case studies of the healing ministry in Zimbabwe, based on research by Dr Tabona Shoko and Dr Lilian Dube, synchronised into a single volume by Stephen Hayes. The case studies examine aspects of the healing ministry in four different denominations: The Zvikomborero Apostolic Church, the St Elijah Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. By way of introduction, the authors firstly provide insights into the historical setting and the background to Christianity in Zimbabwe. In Part I, the religious background is further outlined, especially traditional religion among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, and healing in African independent churches in general. In the second part, the focus is on the case studies of healing in two African independent churches, and two Western-initiated churches (Roman Catholic and Anglican). Part III consists of conclusions drawn from the case studies, while the Epilogue looks at the wider application of the case studies, and the implications for Christianity in Africa in general. The core of this book is four case studies of the healing ministry in Zimbabwe, based on research by Dr Tabona Shoko and Dr Lilian Dube. The case studies examine aspects of the healing ministry in four different denominations: The Zvikomborero Apostolic Church, the St Elijah Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. These case studies show that healing ministry is becoming more prominent in many different Christian traditions in Southern Africa. In the past, however, it was largely confined to the Spirit-type African Independent Churches, where it was (and still is) used as a recruitment technique par excellence. For these denominations healing is central to mission, and the church is seen primarily as a healing institution. In the Western-initiated churches, exemplified in the case studies by the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, healing was earlier seen as peripheral, but has become more central in recent years, as the case studies show, though it is still not as prominent as in the prophetic-healing ministry of the Spirit-type AICs. The book is arranged into three main sections, with an introduction and an epilogue. The introduction deals with the historical setting and the background to Christianity in Zimbabwe. Part I deals with the religious background, especially traditional religion among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, and healing in African independent churches in general. Part II consists of four case studies of healing in different Christian denominations in Zimbabwe, two African independent churches, and two Western-initiated churches (Roman Catholic and Anglican). Part III consists of conclusions drawn from the case studies. The Epilogue looks at the wider application of the case studies, and the implications for Christianity in Africa in general.

African Independent Churches (AICs) have been studied by scholars from various disciplines, especially Missiology and Anthropology, making use of various methods including participatory observation. In Ritual and Liturgical Studies, AICs and their abundance of rituals is still a rather under-explored field of research with several reasons making it a difficult area to access. In this article, one aspect of participatory observation in researching ritual action in AICs will be explored, namely the initial phase of entering the field. Real examples from a current South African National Research Foundation (NRF)-funded research project as conducted by a team of scholars including some from the field of Ritual and Liturgical Studies will first be described and thereafter discussed. Diachronically, the initial phase stretching from a pre-proposal workshop until the first attendance of a worship service in a local congregation is sketched and commented upon.