The Lord has also been using me to serve students at my former university Daystar as a lecturer and supervisor. My goal is to impact the lives of students, preparing them to become healers and caregivers in the world.
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is the second biggest (by area) in Africa and potentially a very rich country, has gone through many troubles since its independence from Belgian colonial powers on 30 June 1960. Analysts have shown that the number one cause of the country’s troubles is its natural resources, which attract the attention of nations vying for a share in the wealth, thus keeping the Congolese people in extreme poverty and ongoing conflict.
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When I started the journey in 2014, Burundi’s prospects were very good. Researching on reconciliation promised a huge contribution to the healing of the nation. In 2015, however, another violent political crisis erupted that seriously affected not the nature or orientation of my research, but the way I was going to collect data. Fear, suspicion, mistrust, etc. replaced the openness, and freedom of speech and movement people had been enjoying for the previous ten years. The accusations, counter-accusations, and the policing of speech and movement put my research on hold for a significant amount of time.
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The primary ongoing challenge faced by the Lutheran Church of Madagascar is the fight against syncretism within the Church. Although Christians come to church on Sundays, there are some who continue to visit witchdoctors, seeking help from ancestors on the other days. This is exactly why pastors need to be equipped with skills and tools in the field of Intercultural Studies to help them identify the problem, study the situation, and provide discipleship and teaching according to people’s needs.
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The Benin government has approved my arts and culture ministry for peacebuilding: Africa Sings. This phase comes after the registration of the organization and it is a crucial step. I am also delighted to inform you that Africa Sings was recently featured in the official journal of the Benin government.
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In Côte d’Ivoire, there are more than 60 ethnic groups, divided into four linguistic groups. From 1999 to 2011, Côte d’Ivoire has experienced deep sociopolitical crises as a result of ethnic tensions, sectarianism, and nationalistic and sometimes xenophobic behavior. Unfortunately, Christians in general and Evangelical Protestants in particular have contributed to these growing tensions.
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Pray for peace in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, and Eastern Democratic Republic). This region has been the territory of unending conflicts. Pray that people in East Africa will be able to move freely and that refugees will be able to return home.
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We ask for your intercession on behalf of Beni. Our town has been brutally attacked twice in six days. The armed group that has been killing civilians in the Beni territory since 2014 has made incursions into the town of Beni and into our neighboring town of Oicha, killing over 75 of the most vulnerable inhabitants over the last three weeks. On November 24, one of the members of our contractor’s construction crew, the son of one of our campus guards, was killed in his neighborhood near our main campus.
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The DR Congo has been affected for several years by social, political, and economic crises. In the last month the area around Bunia has experienced renewed conflict and the displacement of about 300,000 people. Many have again fled into Bunia.
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Continue to pray for peace and healing of the DR Congo at the spiritual, economic, political, health (Ebola), and security levels. The needs are still great at those levels.
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Cameroon is a Central African country with ten regions. There is an English-speaking Cameroon and a French-speaking Cameroon. In the past few years, there have been social and political crises in the Northwest and Southwest between the Ambazonian separatists and the government, and in the Far North because of the Islamist Boko Haram. These crises seriously affect peace in our country and the Church has suffered seriously. Churches are closed and pastors have run away. People live in very bad conditions.
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Suffering is the daily lot of many of the world’s Christians, particularly those in Western Africa. Unfortunately, churches give little heed to this reality in most Sunday services. Behind this lies a barely concealed apprehension Christians have with regard to the proper stance to adopt toward suffering. In the following reflection, I explore lamentation as …
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Introduction Since 9/11, hardly a day goes by without some religiously motivated act of extremism. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, religious extremism worldwide claims nearly 100,000 Christian lives annually. Since the 1980s, Sunni Islamic extremism has been on the rise in Pakistan, where the tiny Christian …
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Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.— Ephesians 5:15-16 (NRSV) The Crisis More than three years have passed since the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” a term that symbolized hope for the people of the Middle East. However, …
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Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue often raises the question: Do we worship the same God? The answer is usually colored by the preferences, presuppositions, or theological-doctrinal understanding of the individual. In this essay, I affirm the complexity of this question, explain some of the challenges, provide arguments Muslim and Christian scholars voice, and offer an understanding to …
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