In a presentation to the North American Regional Consultation at the LWF 60th Anniversary meeting, Dr. Kjell Nordstokke, challenged the North American churches to begin to share our “colonial” mission experience with the African churches. They were colonized with European expansion and have had to move to more self sustainability when the colonizers left or were removed.
Dr. Nordstokke suggested that those in rural north American communities can probably relate to the African churches today. Missionaries came to the continent and built mission outposts. These outposts were managed by colonial structures. Then liberation left the mission centres in the hands of the African people. Now they must find ways to sustain these centres, in a world where maintenance structures were not in place for the long term, where jobs were few and most migrated to the urban centres in order to sustain a livelihood
Small rural Canadian parishes experience the same. With immigration, small parishes arose all over the prairie. But as depopulation continues in the rural areas, self sustainability is increasingly becoming the focus. It is becoming harder and harder to maintain so many small parishes.
What can we learn from the African churches? What could we teach them about transformation? What is it that both contexts could be doing to revitalize the rural churches?
-Bishop Elaine Sauer, Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Synod of the ELCIC
