The Pastor in a Changing Society

Effects of Social Change on the Role of the Pastor in Africa

Kinyamagoha

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781498200530
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book examines how social change affects the role of the pastor in an African context. Through field study in African churches, author Zawadi Job Kinyamagoha explores how pastors work amid the tensions of rapid social change and suggests how pastors can constructively respond to social change by using it as an opportunity in their pastoral ministry.Contemporary society is characterized by three cultural spheres: the economic sphere, the public sphere, and the democratic or self-governance rule, the realities of which many pastors seem to overlook. Church authorities seem to adhere rigidly to strict principles and rules without accommodating the realities of society. Conversely, a changing society demands that pastors work with the reality at hand, leaving pastors caught between two conflicting tensions: the pressure from church authorities and from a changing social reality.The Pastor in a Changing Society seeks to help Tanzanian and African pastors rethink existing doctrines and practices in order to better respond to the reality of a changing society.

1

INTRODUCTION

Aim and Objectives

The purpose of this book is to bring alive some ‘lived-experiences’6 regarding social change in relation to the role of the pastor. The book studies and puts forward the characteristics of the contemporary society pertaining to its demands, its expectations, its strengths, pressures, and weaknesses or problems those pastors encounter as they perform their pastoral ministry. It is my belief that social change has some intense effects and challenges on the Church and on pastoral ministry in this postmodern era. To reach that purpose I have developed the following objectives:

1. To examine the context in which the pastor lives and performs his or her roles. I examine the contemporary social setting and its social changing trends.

2. To survey some church documents that regulate the roles of the pastor.

3. To explore how pastors implement the prescribed roles and some practical consequences they encounter due to social changes.

4. To assess the present context of the Church that emanate from the people that I interviewed. This assessment of social change would help bring out two pictures: first, of the changing face of the Church from one stage or phase to another and, second its implication on the role of the pastor.

5. To identify the challenges and suggest some possibilities to respond to the changes and challenges that pastors are facing in both, their individual life, and in their ministry.

Background and Statement of the Problem

Tanzanian theologians and pastors Peter A.S. Kijanga, George M. D. Fihavango and Solomon Y. Swalo, acknowledge that like in any other society in the African continent, the Tanzanian society has been undergoing fast social changes. For example, Kijanga states that changes that happen nowadays affect and far more will continue to affect both, the secular part of society and also the Christian Church. He declares:

Priests and pastors serve in Ujamaa villages. . . . And as many Tanzanians move . . . many things will probably change. The changes may in turn affect the ecclesiastical structures. The fact that priests and pastors serve congregations . . . indicates the extent of that change in the Tanzanian society. . . . What will be the role of priests or pastors . . . ? . . . priests or pastors . . . do . . . ministries . . . in a changing society. In the eyes of many missionaries, Christianity brought to a Tanzanian Christian ‘good’ life. The argument is that social change . . . made possible the development of . . . societies.7

Kijanga is pointing out to the introduction of ‘Ujamaa villages’ that implies the change of many things that in turn affects the ecclesiastical structures of the Church. The exercise of Ujamaa greatly includes the movement of people from one area to another. Ujamaa brought people close to each other. As a result, congregations also had taken a new face. Pastors had to serve in new contexts that hold on the Ujamaa ideology. This had become a collective and open social change to the Tanzanian society. That change brought some effects on pastoral roles. The roles of ‘priests or pastors,’ to use his words, were in questions. Kijanga notes that now there was a need to rethink the role of the pastor in the changed and changing society. Kijanga’s ideas imply that the development emerging due to social change pushes, both the pastors and Churches to change certain things in order to go well with the active context. He envisions that “priests or pastors . . . do . . . ministries . . . in a changing society.” My questions to the statements of Kijanga are these: What are those “many things [that] will probably change”? What are those effects that pastors and the Church should expect to encounter? How will they affect the ecclesiastical structures? How should the pastors and the Church respond to them in order to cope with the changing society?

Similarly, Fihavango argues that the changes that are taking place in Tanzania are also in the African continent as a whole. He states that, to the years of 2000, the whirl of change in all spheres of life was already in rapid rhythms and beats in the African continent. That is why he is confident to declare that throughout the continent, all people and social institutions are “in the changing Africa.”8 For Fihavango, all people living in Africa are entirely controlled by change. If his argument is true, pastors are no exception. As he confirms the dominance and rapid social change in Africa today, Fihavango goes further to describe:

The dominant feature of life in Africa today is change. Whilst it is true that everywhere modern man is living in changing times, yet the essential difference between life in the west and life in Africa is the faster tempo of change in our continent. This whirl of change in all spheres of life: social, economic, religious and political, has created tremendous problems for the church which are, at the same time, both a challenge and an opportunity for it to life and growth of the new nations . . . concerning Christian responsibility toward areas of rapid social change. . . . There are great waves or storms of change going through Africa in all spheres of life . . . People seem to take different steps in reaction to these waves. Some attempt to resist, and they are swept or carried away. Others are carried away with these changes unknowingly. The right way of reaction is to learn the behavior and patterns of these changes and follow their rhythms and beats without being carried away. May be there are people who hope that the waves of change will stop and the situation will return and be like in the past. This is a dream. Today and tomorrow will never be like yesterday. From now on, “nothing will be as earlier anymore.”9

In the quotation above, Fihavango notices that as Africans and shepherds, pastors have to realize and become aware of the challenges and opportunities that social and other factors bring onto life and ministry in Africa. He suggests that the best reaction toward social change and all other change factors “is to learn the behavior and patterns of these changes and follow their rhythms and beats without being carried away.” For him, life in Africa is in daily change. There is no turning back. Each day remains unique from the other. This is the contemporary context in which African pastors live and serve. However, what and how should African pastors learn from those behaviors and patterns of changes so that it becomes easy for them not to be away?

Furthermore, supplementing to his statements above, in the same article, Fihavango illustrates that the contemporary society is causing some dilemma to the Church and its leaders even in the learning institutions. Once in one of his e-mails to his friends and colleagues world-widely, Fihavango shares the dilemma occurring at Tumaini University Makumira University College (TU-MUCo) in Tanzania. This university is the most prominent religious institution in training pastors. It trains both, Tanzanians and non-Tanzanians from different Churches within and outside Tanzania. Fihavango describes how trainers, theology students and other new trainees are in dilemma due to the complex mixture of students who study theology and those studying secular courses in that institution. At that time, MUCo had just established other secular programs that include students who are not for church ministry as pastors. There were new programs being introduced at bachelor’s level in the fields of law, languages, music, and education, to mention but a few.

As a lecturer, a pastor, and Dean of Faculty of Theology in that university at the time he was writing that e-mail, Fihavango wanted his fellow Tanzanians, friends, and other colleagues in the African context become informed on how life at that university had and was rapidly changing into complex and challenging situation. In that e-mail, he calls an attention to all contemporary church ministers and leaders, especially theologians to be aware of and take hold of constructively coping with the challenges and influences made by the secular disciplines. He insists pastors in Africa to have enough, both theological and secular education for meeting numerous questions and challenges that the contemporary society was posing.10 But, what evident long-term training strategies are both, the teachers and the university as an institution doing for Church ministers toward curbing and coping to the situation they encounter as it is being revealed while in the process of training?

As we have seen above, the above quotations show that African pastors have been undertaking their roles being trained within various circle of rapid changes, amongst them is this of social change. Both quotations and descriptions regarding the arguments of Kijanga and Fihavango highlight that social change has been bringing some effects or problems and challenges in and outside the Church. Together with the challenges and problems, however, social change provides some opportunities for people to stay stab...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Forward
• Acknowledments
• List of Acronyms
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Tanzania
• Chapter 3: Pastoral Ministry in the Perspective of the ELCT/SD
• Chapter 4: The Social and Cultural Context in Which Pastors Work
• Chapter 5: The Pastor in a Cognitively Changing Society
• Chapter 6: In the Name of Social Change
• Chapter 7: Responses Toward Social Change
• Bibliography