The Missionary Self-Perception of Pentecostal Charismatic Church Leaders from the Global South in Europe (Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies)

The Missionary Self-Perception of Pentecostal/ Charismatic Church Leaders from the Global South in Europe Global Pent...

Author: Claudia Währisch-Oblau

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The Missionary Self-Perception of Pentecostal/ Charismatic Church Leaders from the Global South in Europe

Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies Edited by

Andrew Davies, Mattersey Hall Graduate School William Kay, Bangor University Advisory Board

Allan Anderson, University of Birmingham Mark Cartledge, University of Birmingham Jacqueline Grey, Southern Cross College, Sydney Byron D Klaus, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, MO

Wonsuk Ma, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies Cecil M Robeck, Jr, Fuller Theological Seminary Calvin Smith, Midlands Bible College

VOLUME 2

The Missionary Self-Perception of Pentecostal/ Charismatic Church Leaders from the Global South in Europe Bringing Back the Gospel

By

Claudia Währisch-Oblau

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISSN 1876-2247 ISBN 978 90 04 17508 2 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Chapter One. Methodological reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2. The UEM Program for Cooperation between German and Foreign Language Churches, 1998–2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3. Other European Protestant church responses to migrant churches: A short overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4. Description of my research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5. Reflecting my own role as agent and researcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6. Interpretative paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter Two. The field of study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1. Terminology: “Migrant churches” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Delimiting “pentecostal / charismatic” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3. Constructing a pentecostal / charismatic discourse field . . . . . 2.4. Migrant churches: Categorizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5. Historical dynamics: Foundation and development of migrant churches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6. Migrant churches as part of a globalized discourse network. Chapter Three. The role of the pastor: The relationship to one’s own congregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. The pastor as father and shepherd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1. The shepherd: Mediator between God and the congregation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2. The authority of the shepherd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3. “To stay with God always”—The spiritual life of a shepherd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.4. Sacrificing oneself for the congregation and living as a role model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.5. Becoming a shepherd: Call, training, ordination and gifts of the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 8 12 18 22 25 33 33 36 39 47 53 56

61 62 62 65 70 74 77

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contents 3.2. Defending one’s call: Biographical stories as legitimation narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.2.1. Call narratives in a pentecostal / charismatic context 84 3.2.2. No legitimation narrative: Observations and possible reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 3.2.3. Legitimation narratives I: Called by a prophetic word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 3.2.4. Legitimation narratives II: Deciding for the ministry after a miracle experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 3.2.5. Legitimation narratives III: Called by visions and dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.2.6. Legitimation narratives IV: Woman pastors . . . . . . . . . . . 104 3.3. Mediators of divine power in a market situation: Observations and analysis of the pastoral role. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 3.3.1. The market situation: Undermining pastoral authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 3.3.2. Asserting pastoral authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 3.3.3. Growing into authority: Calling and ordination . . . . . . . 127 3.4. Summary: Mediators of divine power in a market situation . 130

Chapter Four. Following the call: Expatriation narratives . . . . . . . . . . . 133 4.1. Theoretical framework: Some considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 4.2. Intertwined call and expatriation narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 4.2.1. ‘Circular’ stories: How the call was realized after all . . 144 4.2.2. ‘Oscillating’ narratives: How the call became clear over time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 4.2.3. Called after expatriation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 4.2.4. Struggling to understand call and expatriation . . . . . . . . 172 4.2.5. Concluding remarks: Intertwined call and expatriation narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 4.3. Expatriation as consequence of the call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 4.3.1. Independent charismatic missionaries: Success stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 4.3.2. Missionaries sent by pentecostal churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 4.3.3. Concluding remarks: Expatriation as consequence of the call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 4.4. Pastoral call and expatriation not connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 4.4.1. V.K.: For me it was so wonderful to go to Germany . . 208 4.4.2. A.M., P.S., I.A.: Asylum in Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

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4.4.3. Spiritual interpretation instead of expatriation narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 4.5. Expatriation narratives: Some final observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Chapter Five. Being on a mission: The relationship to the outside world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 5.1. “What is your mission?” Observations from the short interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 5.2. Missionary practice: Evangelizing Germans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 5.2.1. Street evangelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 5.2.2. Tracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 5.2.3. Gospel music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 5.2.4. Other means . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 5.3. Conceptualizing evangelism in interdenominational dialogue: The long interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 5.3.1. Locating oneself globally: Sent to the world . . . . . . . . . . . 237 5.3.2. Describing one’s message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 5.3.3. Reflections on contextualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 5.4. Imagining Germany and Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 5.4.1. Restoring a ruined church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 5.4.2. “Bringing back” the Gospel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 5.4.3. The German nation in the economy of salvation . . . . . 262 5.4.4. Territorial spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 5.4.5. Summary notes: Imagining Germany and Europe . . . . 269 5.5. Conceptualizing evangelism in the global pentecostal / charismatic network: The ‘spiritual warfare’ paradigm . . . . . . 271 5.5.1. Evangelism in the framework of spiritual warfare: The anglophone West African Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 5.5.2. Evangelism in the framework of ‘spiritual warfare:’ Concretizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 5.6. Conclusion: Evangelism, inculturation and clashing paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Chapter Six. Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 6.1. The current situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 6.2. Dialogue fields: A description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 6.2.1. Ministerial authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 6.2.2. Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 6.2.3. Mission and evangelism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

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6.3. Ecclesiology and the politics of difference: Who defines Christianity in Europe? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 6.4. The functional question: Does a missionary self-image further or hinder integration? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 6.5. The theological question: Are European churches ready to be evangelized?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 Appendix. Expatriation narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Index of Names, Places, and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is an edited version of my doctoral dissertation, “Migrants with a Mission”, which was accepted by Heidelberg University in 2007. For publication, new material was added to give this study a perspective beyond Germany. A study like this one cannot be written without assistance and inspiration from many people. Here, I can just name those who were the most important. Michael Bergunder kept pressing me to do this study, and then became the best doctoral advisor I could hope for. His encouragement and critical feed-back during the process of writing were invaluable. The United Evangelical Mission and the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland allowed me to make the writing of this study part of my job description and therefore provided me with the necessary time and space. Pars pro toto, I want to thank Jörg Baumgarten and Wilfried Neusel for their support. Colleagues and friends from many places have shared their insights and research results. I immensely appreciate the advice, critique and support from Ursula Harfst, Werner Kahl, Jörg Haustein and the group of doctoral students involved in Pentecostalism studies at Heidelberg University. Exchanges with my Dutch colleagues (among others, Mechteld Jansen, Kathleen Ferrier, Sjaak van’t Kruis, June Beckx) were particularly helpful, as were long conversations with Kwabena AsamoahGyadu and Afe Adogame. Conversations at the yearly meetings of the interdisciplinary European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (GloPent) were also inspiring. Special thanks go to Cecil M. Robeck who graciously agreed to read the manuscript before it was submitted to Heidelberg University, and who gave some invaluable feedback from a Pentecostal perspective. Allan Anderson had plenty of excellent advice when it came to preparing the final manuscript. My thanks go to him as well as to Andrew Davies and William Kay for including this study in the Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies Series.

x

acknowledgements

To my husband and my two daughters: Thanks for bearing with me through the sometimes stressful times of finishing this study, for your listening ears, and your support! And finally, I want to thank the pastors who were willing to be interviewed for this study. I have learnt so much from listening to them. Their trust and openness made it possible to write what I have written, and I hope that their voices will be heard.

chapter one METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

1.1. Introduction When, in 1998, the United Evangelical Mission (UEM)1 started its “Program for Cooperation between German and Foreign Language Churches”, nobody involved had much of a clue about the field they were entering. The outline for this program had evolved over nearly two years and changed considerably in the process. UEM, a formerly German mission organization which in 1996 had restructured to become a mission community of 35 churches on three continents,2 wanted to become instrumental in starting one or more international congregations in its German region3 which would serve as symbolic representations of the international character of the body of Christ. When it was pointed out to the respective UEM committees that international and migrant churches already existed in Germany, the focus of the program was adjusted towards cooperation between German and foreign language churches,4 even though nobody was quite sure what kind of cooperation was necessary and expected. Consequently, the service instructions for the coordinator of the program described rather vague tasks: – Compile a list of all existing migrant churches within the UEM German region; – Make contact with existing migrant churches; 1

www.vemission.org/en. A detailed analysis of this process can be found in Kai Funkschmidt, Earthing the Vision—Strukturreformen in der Mission untersucht am Beispiel von CEVAA (Paris), CWM (London) und UEM (Wuppertal), Frankfurt / M.: Otto Lembeck Verlag 2000. 3 The UEM German region comprises six regional Protestant churches (German: Landeskirchen), namely The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau, the Evangelical Church of Hesse-Waldeck, the Church of Lippe, and the Evangelical Reformed Church, and the von Bodelschwingh Institutions Bethel. 4 For a discussion of terminology, see chapter 2.1. 2

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chapter one – Describe experiences and problems of cooperation between migrant and indigenous churches; – Work to improve the relationship between migrant and indigenous churches; – Examine structural and legal possibilities of establishing international congregations.

In April 1998, I became the first coordinator of the UEM program, a position I held until the end of 2006. As a trained theologian and ordained minister with more than a dozen years of experience of living and working in Asia, I was considered well-qualified for the position. But nothing I had seen during my work and travels in India and China and my involvement in international congregations in different places prepared me for what I encountered on the new job. I vividly remember my first visit to a West African charismatic midweek prayer service: About thirty men and women meeting in the small, modern sanctuary of the local Protestant church, ecstatically singing “Jesus is the winner man, winner man all the time,” all praying at the same time at the top of their voices, walking around, raising their arms, shaking, kneeling, screaming, crying; the pastor reporting several visions that seemed utterly strange to me—this was unlike any worship service I had seen anywhere before. I was asking myself whether what I saw was even Christian! Soon afterwards, I attended a big revival service at another West African led congregation. The predominantly black congregation of several hundred people packed the large hall of a German Pentecostal church. There were praise songs at a headache-inducing volume, prayer times during which everybody shouted at the same time, and a sermon by a rather stout Ghanaian guest preacher whose message basically was: ‘If you just pray enough and give tithes and offerings to the Lord, you will become a rich man like myself.’5 All of that might not have been so troubling, had it not been for the pastors of these two churches who explicitly called themselves ‘missionaries’, planning to reach out not only to their own nationals, but to Ger5 Much later I found out that the preacher that day was Nicholas Duncan-Williams, one of the most famous ‘charismatic’ Ghanaian mega-church leaders. Cf. Paul Gifford, African Christianity. Its Public Role, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1998, p. 77 ff.; Paul Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity. Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004, especially chapter 2.

methodological reflections

3

man society as a whole, and speaking about wanting to bring revival to the ‘dead’ German churches. The UEM program had been started with the unspoken assumption that migrant churches were formed as a kind of diaspora where people from a certain national or denominational background could find a ‘home away from home’, a place where they could sing and pray in their mother tongue, and in the ways to which they were accustomed. This was, after all, the reasoning behind the formation of congregations for migrant workers that were set up in partnership between overseas and German Protestant churches in the 1950s and 1960s.6 Ecumenical contacts between such congregations and German congregations were considered important in the framework of the UEM program. At the same time, it was expected that international congregations would be formed under German leadership and within German church structures. But here now were people who were doing what the UEM program intended to do, with a theology that seemed at least borderline heretical, and they were not even asking anybody for permission! I soon realized that these two pastors were not freak exceptions. They represented a large number of migrant church founders, all of them from a pentecostal / charismatic7 background. Neither I nor others in my church knew very much about them. We had no idea of their background or their theological and spiritual traditions; we did not know how they came here or why, and what they were actually doing. We did not know the driving forces behind the emergence of hundreds of new migrant churches within just a few years.8 The majority of the pentecostal / charismatic churches in the UEM database are less than ten years old. In contrast, most of the European Protestant migrant churches have been existing for 50 years or longer, while Asian Protestant churches were mostly founded about 30 years ago. If a program for cooperation with migrant churches was to include Pentecostal and charismatic churches which so far had been mostly ignored,9 it 6

E.g. the Hungarian Reformed Congregation, the Finnish Lutheran Congregation, and the Korean Reformed Congregation in North Rhine-Westphalia. See also: Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (ed.), Kirchen und Gemeinden anderer Sprache und Herkunft, Frankfurt / M.: GEP Verlag 1997. 7 More on definition and terminology in chapter 2.2. 8 The database comprised 340 congregations in 2002; 383 in 2003; 397 in 2004; 428 in 2005; 431 in 2006. Of course, some of the new churches were included years after they were established. But the database counts 26 congregations newly founded between October 2004 and February 2006. 9 By 1998, all cooperation between EKD churches and migrant churches had

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chapter one

was imperative to get to know how Pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches saw their own role, and how they formulated their vision. We needed to understand their theology and practice. We needed to hear what they expected from German churches, and what kind of cooperation with us they hoped to receive.10 The research that has, ten years later, led to this study, soon became an integral part of the program work. As the research started, it quickly became clear that we were not dealing with an exclusively German phenomenon, but rather with a fundamental change in the make-up of north Atlantic (i.e. European and North American) Christianity which was starting from the margins rather than from the centers. Travelling on public transport in any major city in Europe on a Sunday noon, one can observe dressed-up African or Tamil families clutching their well-worn Bibles, a serious Chinese student explaining the basics of Christian faith to her friends, Tamil teenagers practicing worship songs, or a Latin American reading a Christian book. All of them are on their way to church; to a Sunday service which will likely begin at noon or even later because the building they are using for worship is rented from an indigenous congregation which has to finish its own Sunday morning worship first. And while in London and Amsterdam, Cologne and Prague church buildings are being turned into shops, housing space or even pubs, new congregations started by migrant Christians have been setting up worship spaces in disused factory halls, car parks, or even converted cinemas. These Christians and congregations represent a Christianity that, if noticed at all, is mostly perceived to be foreign, transient, and diasporal, in short: a minority phenomenon which might need some protection and support, but nothing that would have an impact on majority Christianity. For centuries, European Christianity has been closely bound up with national and ethnic identities. The Reformation, with its emphasis on Bible translation and its introduction of worship services in the respective vernacular rather than in ‘globalized’ Latin may not have initiated this process, but certainly propelled it forward. Consequently,

exclusively centered on Protestant and Orthodox churches. International convents in Frankfurt and Berlin did not have Pentecostal member churches. 10 When it came to Protestant and Orthodox migrant churches, there had already been plenty of dialogue, and there was a much better knowledge about what they wanted and needed from the German churches.


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the northern European, overwhelmingly Protestant countries had their Lutheran state churches, and England the Church of England. In Holland, Germany and Switzerland, Lutheran and Reformed Protestant churches were ‘mainline’ along the Catholic Church which in Southern Europe as well as in Poland and Hungary comprised the large majority of believers. Eastern Europe was shaped by national orthodox churches. The emergence of the Moravian, Methodist, Baptist, and other ‘free’ evangelical churches did not change this picture much, as they remained small minorities and also organized themselves along ethnic and national lines as well. In the dominant European Christian perception, faith can only truly be expressed and lived in one’s mother tongue. Migrant Christians, consequently, have been encouraged to set up their own church structures which are supposed to “help them preserve their identity,” but rarely welcomed into existing congregations, as any ethnically or culturally mixed congregation would have been seen as forcing both indigenous and migrant Christians to “lose their identity.” As a result, migrant churches in Europe developed at the margins and have only recently become more visible. The World Council of Churches, together with the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe, has just published a study11 which attempts not only to map migration in and to Europe, but also its influence on churches there. It states that of the estimated 24 million migrants in Europe, about half belong to Christian churches which range from Oriental and Eastern Orthodox through Roman Catholic to Protestant, Pentecostal and Charismatic.12 Highlights from other studies can give a glimpse of what this means concretely: – In Amsterdam, an estimated 2,500 indigenous Dutch go to church as opposed to 24,000 migrants, who usually attend congregations founded and led by migrant pastors. About 1.3 million Christian immigrants live in the country, worshipping in more than 900 migrant churches and more than 200 indigenous churches with foreign language worship services.13 11 Darrell Jackson and Alessia Passarelli, Mapping Migration. Mapping Churches’ Responses. Europe Study, Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe / World Council of Churches, 2008, pdf downloadable from www.oikoumene.org/en/news/ upcoming-events/ev/se/article/1722/european-study-quotmapp.html, accessed 10 September 2008. 12 Ibd. p. 29. 13 Hijme Stoffels, A Coat of Many Colours, in: Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Münster: LIT-Verlag 2008, p. 21.

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chapter one – In Italy, almost two thirds of all Protestants are now of foreign origin.14 – In Paris alone, there are an estimated 250 African and Antillean Christian churches (this is a higher number than that of all congregation of the Protestant Federation), and 19 Chinese congregations (there are fewer French Reformed Churches in the city).15 – In the United Kingdom overall, 14 % of those who regularly attend church are not white;16 in London, this figure may be as high as 58 %.17 The directory of Black and Asian minority churches lists more than 1,300 of an estimated 4,000 ethnic minority congregations with more than half a million members.18 The fastest growing religious movement in the country is the Nigerianled Redeemed Christian Church of God.19 – The largest mega-church in continental Europe, The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations in Kiev, was founded and is led by a pastor from Nigeria, even though its membership is more than 90 % Ukrainian. – The largest mega-church in Western Europe is arguably Kingsway International Christian Centre in London, led by a pastor from Nigeria and attended mainly by migrants from more than 30 countries.20

Even though the general situation of churches in the USA is quite different from that of the European churches, similar developments 14 Benz H.R. Schär, Essere Chiese Insieme. Uniting in Diversity, downloadable from www.cec-kek.org/English/ciampino_languages.pdf, accessed 10 September 2008, p. 3. 15 Féderation protestante de France, Les Églises issues de l’immigration—Rapport proposé par le groupe de travail suscité par le conseil de la FPF, www.protestants.org/ textes/eglises_immigration/constat.htm, accessed 20 August 2008. 16 Tearfund (ed.), Churchgoing in the UK. A research report from Tearfund on church attendance in the UK, April 2007, downloadable from www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/uk_news/6520463.stm, accessed 21 September 2008. 17 Jehu J. Hanciles, Migration, Diaspora Communities, and the New Missionary Encounter with Western Society, in: Lausanne World Pulse, July 2008, pp. 5–9, downloadable from www.lausanneworldpulse.com/archives.php, accessed 1 September 2008, p. 7. 18 www.bmcdirectory.co.uk/index.php, accessed 3 September 2008. 19 Stephen Hunt, ‘Neither Here nor There’: The Construction of Identities and Boundary Maintenance of West African Pentecostals, in: Sociology, vol. 36 (I) 2002, p. 151. 20 www.kicc.org.uk/Church/History/HistoryToday/tabid/44/Default.aspx, accessed 27 October 2008.


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can be observed there. A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Hispanic Center21 has found that Latinos now comprise about 6 % of all evangelicals in the US, and that Hispanic immigration is changing existing churches in profound ways. The foundation of churches by African immigrants has so far seen less publicity, though the plan of the Nigerian-founded Redeemed Christian Church of God to build its North American headquarters on 500 acres of recently acquired land not far from Dallas, Texas, made national headlines.22 Yang Fenggang and Helen Rose Ebaugh state that immigrants, rather than de-Christianizing religion in America, have in fact “de-Europeanized” American Christianity.23 They point to more than 3,500 Catholic parishes where Mass is being said in Spanish, 7,000 Latino Protestant (mostly evangelical or pentecostal) congregations, more than 2,000 Korean-American and more than 700 Chinese-American churches while stating that many immigrant Christian churches are incorporating people from diverse national origins.24 Actually, Korean churches are believed to be the fastest growing churches in the United States.25 But migrant missionary churches are not only a north Atlantic phenomenon. African, Korean and Indonesian pentecostal / charismatic churches can be found in many major cities in the People’s Republic of China as well as in Hongkong and Singapore. There, students and business people congregate, but also reach out as evangelists to local Chinese. In Hongkong, pentecostal / charismatic Filipinas who originally came to the city as domestic workers have also started a number of churches. Ghanaians and Nigerians have started churches in places as far apart as Johannesburg, Melbourne or Buenos Aires.26 21 The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life & Pew Hispanic Center (eds.), Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion, 2007, downloadable from www.pewforum.org/surveys/hispanic/, accessed 3 September 2008. 22 See Simon Romero, A Texas Town Nervously Awaits a New Neighbor, in: New York Times, 21 August 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/national/21church.html, accessed 28 October 2008. 23 Yang Fenggang and Helen Rose Ebaugh, Transformations in New Immigrant Religions and Their Global Implications, in: American Sociological Review, 2001, Vol. 66 (April), p. 271. 24 Ibd., p. 282. 25 Jehu J. Hanciles, Migration, Diaspora Communities, and the New Missionary Encounter with Western Society, in: Lausanne World Pulse, July 2008, pp. 5–9, downloadable from www.lausanneworldpulse.com/archives.php, accessed 1 September 2008, p. 6. 26 Own observations from travel and discussions with migrant pastors.

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The spread of Pentecostalism through migrant churches has become a truly global trend. This is the situation in which the UEM Program for Cooperation between German and Foreign Language Churches developed. In the following, we will take a closer look at this program as one example of a European response to the growing presence of migrant churches. 1.2. The UEM Program for Cooperation between German and Foreign Language Churches, 1998–2008 Before looking at the UEM program itself, a short introduction to the different players on the German church scene is necessary. The two main churches in Germany are the Catholic Church with about 25.6 million members of which approximately 2 million have a migration background,27 and the mainline Protestant28 Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) which is organized as a network of 23 regional churches, the so-called Landeskirchen, with around 25.4 million members.29 As the EKD churches define themselves as culturally German, they have not made any conscious attempt to integrate migrant Christians; and have few migrant members and only a handful of nonGerman speaking congregations. The EKD, though, has assisted a number of mainly Protestant migrant churches to establish their own structures in Germany, and has established the so-called “Conference of foreign pastors” (Konferenz der Ausländerpfarrerinnen und Ausländerpfarrer— KAP).30 In addition to these two mainline churches, there are 24 orthodox churches with a combined number of about 1.4 million members, all of them with a migrant background. On the Protestestant side, the so-called ‘free churches’ like the Baptist Federation, the Methodist Church, the Federation of Free Evangelical Congregations, the Federation of free Pentecostal Churches and many more, have a combined Cf. www.dbk.de/stichwoerter/data/01200/index.html, accessed 28 October 2008. In German, a difference is made between “evangelisch,” best translated as “Protestant,” and “evangelikal” which denotes evangelical in a more narrow sense. To avoid confusion, we have capitalized ‘Evangelical’ where it denotes the name of a Protestant church in Germany. Lower-case ‘evangelical,’ in contrast, denotes the narrower meaning. 29 For these and the following statistics, see www.remid.de/remid_info_zahlen.htm, accessed 28 October 2008. 30 Cf. www.ekd.de/migrantengemeinden/migrantengemeinden.html, accessed 28 October 2008. 27 28


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membership of roughly half a million members. Some of these churches have been very active in integrating migrant Christians and congregations, while others have remained ethnically German. There are no reliable statistics about Protestant and pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches; in 2005, I estimated at least 1,100 congregations with 55,000– 80,000 members.31 The Catholic and the Evangelical Church, as well as a number of orthodox and evangelical free churches are cooperating in the Association of Christian Churches (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der christlichen Kirchen—ACK ).32 To turn back to the UEM program: Its first year was mainly taken up by simply trying to find pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches within the regional realm of the UEM (mostly in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia) and establishing contact with them. Even though most of them were using buildings of the Protestant churches, no survey had ever been compiled, and few connections established. Contacts with and support for migrant churches had so far been limited to Protestant and Orthodox churches. It quickly became clear that the work of the program should concentrate on Protestant and pentecostal / charismatic churches since the Orthodox churches preferred to work with German churches through the Association of Christian Churches. In August of 1999, all known Protestant and pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches were invited to a workshop under the title “Together Building up the Body of Christ in Germany”. More than 40 representatives from 24 churches met for a weekend with high-ranking representatives of the Evangelical Churches in the Rhineland and of Westphalia and identified five prime areas of need for migrant churches in which they asked for support from German churches: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Financial support; Rooms for worship and activities; Recognition as churches; Contact persons in German churches; Theological and intercultural training for church leaders.33

31 Claudia Währisch-Oblau, Migrationskirchen in Deutschland. Überlegungen zur strukturierten Beschreibung eines komplexen Phänomens, in: Zeitschrift für Mission, Frankfurt / Basel: Basileia / Lembeck, 1–2/2005, pp. 19–39. 32 Cf. www.oekumene-ack.de/Mitgliedskirchen.42.0.html, accessed 28 October 2008. 33 Workshop materials have not been published; minutes of the workshop were circulated internally both in migrant and German churches.

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In response, German church representatives basically ruled out financial support beyond that given to a small number of established Protestant migrant churches. Recognition as churches, on the other hand, seemed a need that could be addressed. The workshop participants therefore decided to elect a “Committee of Foreign Language Churches” with representatives from African, Asian and European migrant churches to serve as their mouthpiece in their relationship with the Evangelical Churches. This committee, in close cooperation with the Ecumenical Desks of both Evangelical Churches, developed the so-called ‘list process:’ Migrant churches that fulfill five criteria (1. Adherence to the basic faith formula of the World Council of Churches; 2. Signatory to a commitment for ecumenical cooperation; 3. Organizational stability [e.g. registered as a society]; 4. Willingness to participate in ongoing education programs organized in Germany; 5. Two recommendation letters by other churches or church networks) were to apply to the Committee of Foreign Language Churches, which had added a representative from each of the two Evangelical Churches to its number, to be included in a list of churches regarded as ecumenical partner churches by the two Evangelical Churches. This would give pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches, many of which were not accepted as members into the local Associations of Christian Churches due to their small size, a more secure status as the Evangelical Churches promised to make the list known to government agencies dealing with migrants, so that the ‘list churches’ could benefit from regulations for ‘pastor visas’34 and eased travel regulations for asylum seekers to attend worship services. It took until 2001, though, until this process could finally be implemented, as the Church Commissioners for Sects and Worldviews in both Evangelical Churches raised strong objections. None of these objections were ever made public, but they were voiced in several internal meetings. Finally, it was decided that the commissioners should not have a right to veto the inclusion of churches into the list, and that they should direct all inquiries regarding migrant churches to the UEM program officer rather than handling them themselves.

34 The so-called “Arbeitsaufenthalteverordnung” (Decree for the Regulation of Work Stays) allows religious clergy to serve migrant workers in Germany without a work permit. (AAV § 5.6).


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In September 2008, the list had 137 member churches from four continents.35 The Committee of Foreign Language Churches has, in some ways, become a supervisory board for the cooperation program. Its migrant members are elected for a two-year term by their respective language / culture groups36 at annual meetings of list churches which also serve as important forums to voice needs, problems, and visions for cooperation. As many pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches were not registered bodies in 1998, the UEM program organized several workshops to train church leaders in legal and administrative matters. A large number of migrant churches registered as charitable organizations with the assistance of the program. The need for theological and intercultural training was also taken up immediately after the 1999 workshop. In the following years, a number of seminars and workshops were devised by an open working group of migrant and German representatives on topics ranging from “Intercultural Counseling” through “The Holy Spirit and the Pentecostal Movement” to “Knowing German Immigration Laws.” As particularly pentecostal / charismatic migrant church leaders continued to voice the need for more intensive education, a process was initiated in October 2000 to develop a curriculum for a 10-weekend course titled “Church in an Intercultural Context” (kikk).37 At two open meetings, more than 50 migrant church leaders collected their ideas and suggestions which were then put together by a working group of six migrants and three Germans. The first kikk course started in October 2001 with 16 participants who had been chosen from almost 50 applicants. Further courses with about 20 participants each have been running every year since. The need for rooms for worship and activities has been increasing as the number of migrant churches has grown. At the same time, the closure of German church buildings due to the financial problems of both the Evangelical and the Catholic Churches has begun to exacerbate an already difficult situation especially in some large cities, leading larger churches to rent commercial space, usually in disused factory halls, and forcing smaller churches to simply meet in private homes.

35 A current list is always available at www.vemission.org/fileadmin/Dateien/ Arbeitsbereiche/Fremdsprachige_Gemeinden/. 36 Currently: Anglophone African, francophone African, Korean, other Asian, European and Latin American. 37 kikk stands for ‘Kirche im interkulturellen Kontext’.

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My own role, during the nine years of coordinating the program, shifted significantly. While the first two years were taken up mainly by building trust on both sides, the years from 2000 to 2003 were shaped by assisting migrant churches in securing legal structures for their work, developing programs and activities of cooperation, and consciousness raising work within the German churches and German society. As German churches became more aware of the migrant churches, more and more local programs were developed. From 2004, one of my main occupations was advising both German and migrant churches in their existing cooperation projects, and occasionally mediating in conflicts. In early 2005 I began to work on this study, and research again became an important focus of the program. My successor, from 2007 to 2008, has concentrated on local projects of cooperation and theological dialogue between migrant and German Christians. As of October 2008, the future of the UEM program is unclear. UEM, due to financial constraints, has terminated the position of the program coordinator, hoping that the work will be taken over by the Evangelical Churches. 1.3. Other European Protestant church responses to migrant churches: A short overview In Germany, the UEM program has remained rather unique. A number of regional churches, though, have named persons responsible for establishing contacts with migrant churches and developing programs with them. Cooperation of the Landeskirchen with migrant churches is coordinated by the EKD, though each church is free to choose its own approaches. With strong support from the Protestant churches, ‘international convents’ of migrant churches were set up in the cities of Frankfurt, Berlin and Cologne; and a Council of African Churches in Hamburg. The Mission Academy attached to the University of Hamburg runs the African Theological Training in Germany (ATTiG)38 which is aimed at anglophone African church leaders in northern Germany, while the Bavarian Lutheran Mission has established a

38 See Freddy Dutz (ed.), Gemeinsam lernen in der fremden Heimat. Dokumentation des ATTiG-Pilotkurses, Hamburg: EMW 2004.


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training course for migrant church leaders in southern Germany under the title of “Mission South North” (Mission Süd-Nord).39 The strongest and earliest response to the establishment of migrant churches was clearly made in the U.K. Following the seminal research of Roswith Gerloff,40 the Centre for Black and White Christian Partnership was established in Birmingham in 1978, offering a Certificate in Theology Course at Selly Oak College by using a truly innovative approach which has remained singular in Europe.41 Already in 1977, the Black Christian Concerns Group had been set up by British Black majority churches. After both institutions closed down, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CBTI) formed the section of Minority Ethnic Christian Affairs (MECA) in 2003. “The work of MECA revolves around four main strategies: – Stimulating and facilitating networking between Christian communities in Britain and Ireland of African, Asian, Caribbean and other heritages. – Stimulating and facilitating networking between Black Minority Ethnic and mainstream Christian communities. – Providing a focus for resources for and about Christian communities of African, Asian, Caribbean and other heritages. – Focusing on six key issues: Economic, Environment, Media, Political, Social, and Theological.”42 Ethnic minority Christian agencies like the large African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance43 and many smaller ones44 have helped to give migrant Christianity a voice in Britain.45 Cf. www.evpfalz.de/migration/misueno_08.pdf, accessed 28 October 2008. Roswith Gerloff, A plea for British Black theologies: The Black church movement in Britain in its transatlantic cultural and theological interaction with special references to the Pentecostal Oneness (Apostolic) and Sabbatarian movements, Frankfurt: Peter Lang 1992. 41 Cf. http://birminghamblackhistory.com/religion/the-centre-for-black-and-whitechristian-partnership.html, and Walter J. Hollenweger, Umgang mit Mythen. Interkulturelle Theologie 2, München: Christian Kaiser Verlag 1982, pp. 181–188. 42 Cf. http://cte.churchinsight.com/Groups/42999/Churches_Together_in/ Our_work/Minority_Ethnic_Christian/Minority_Ethnic_Christian.aspx, accessed 28 October 2008. 43 www.acea-uk.org, accessed 28 October 2008. 44 See the listings in the Directory of Black Majority Churches UK, www.bmcdirectory.co.uk/agency_list.php, accessed 28 October 2008. 45 See also Joe Aldred, Minority ethnic Christianity in Britain and Ireland today, 2004, downloadable from http://cte.churchinsight.com/Articles/66817/Churches 39 40

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Indigenous churches in Britain have also taken up the issue of how ethnic minority Christians can not only be integrated into their existing congregations, but also be represented within the leadership. The Church of England operates a Committee for Minority and Ethnic Anglican Concerns which is directly responsible to the General Synod and works to encourage and engage participation from the Church’s black and minority ethnic populations at every level.46 In 2005, a clergy diversity audit was conducted, ascertaining that only 2.2 % of all clergy belong to ethnic minorities. Among them, though, is the archbishop of York, Rev. Dr. John Sentamu, a high-profile immigrant from Uganda. The United Reformed Church has both a number of single-ethnic minority congregations and a growing number of multicultural congregations.47 It also operates a Racial Justice and Multicultural Ministry Committee. In the Netherlands, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (Protestantse Kerk in Nederland—PKN ) and its predecessors, the Samen-op-WegKerken (Churches Together on the Way), have, since the 1990s, been very active in supporting migrant churches. In 1997, they helped establish, and have since continued to finance, Samen Kerk in Nederland—SKIN (Together Church in the Netherlands), an organization of now 67 different migrant churches48 which has assisted migrant churches in having a higher profile not only among indigenous churches, but also in society and politics. It certainly did this organization no harm that its first general secretary, Kathleen G. Ferrier, the daughter of the first president of Suriname, is now a parliamentary deputy of the CDA, the governing party in the Netherlands.49 Since 2001, the Hendrik Kraemer Institute in Utrecht which is run by the PKN has, in cooperation with SKIN, been offering training courses for migrant church leaders.50 A policy paper of the Samen-op-Weg-Kerken published in 2002, Born in Sion,51 called the indigenous churches to move from ‘missionary’ _Together_in/Our_work/Minority_Ethnic_Christian/Further_articles_available.aspx, accessed 28 October 2008. 46 Cf. www.cofe.anglican.org/info/cmeac, accessed 28 October 2008. 47 www.urc.org.uk/assembly/assembly2005/multicultural_urc.html, accessed 28 October 2008. 48 Cf. www.skinkerken.nl, accessed 28 October 2008. 49 Cf. www.cda.nl/ferrier/cv.aspx, accessed 28 October 2008. 50 Cf. www.pkn.nl/hki/default.asp?rIntNavStepMotherNavId= 0&rIntNavMotherNavId=415&inc=info&rIntNavId=415&rIntId=11545, accessed 28 October 2008. 51 MDO Binnenland (Sjaak van’t Kruis), Geboren in Sion. De relatie tussen de


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and ‘diaconal’ attitudes towards migrant churches to true ecumenical relations, encouraging them to see ecumenical diversity as an enrichment rather than a threat. A further booklet published in the same year, Relations with Migrant Churches,52 described different models of cooperation between migrant and indigenous churches and investigated possibilities in the area of mission. Regardless of the great commitment of the church leadership towards becoming a multicultural church, and successful projects of cooperation with migrant churches like the Kerkhuis in Amsterdam,53 though, many local Dutch congregations show a rather limited interest in cooperation with migrant Christians and churches. In June 2008, the outgoing Secretary General of the PKN, Bas Plaisier, publicly criticized his church as “far too white” in an interview published in the national church magazine.54 In France, the Projet Mosaïc of the Fédération Protestante de France, established in 2006, has been working together with Défap and CEVAA, two Protestant mission agencies, to create links between migrant churches and the congregations of the FPF and to help integrate migrant churches into the evangelical / Protestant French landscape. There are many joint activities in Paris, monthly meetings of church leaders in Lyon, an ‘African pastoral’ is about to be created in Marseille, and in Strasbourg, training is offered to migrant church leaders.55 In Italy,56 large numbers of immigrant Christians have been absorbed into the existing Protestant churches, particularly the Waldensian Church where city congregations are now often more than two Samen op Weg-Kerken, de migrantenkerken en organisaties van christelijke migranten / Born in Sion. Policy framework for the relationship between the Uniting Churches in the Netherlands (‘Samen op Weg’) inter-church ecumenical organisation and the immigrant churches and organisations of immigrant Christians in the Netherlands, 2002. 52 Pluim, Irene; Kuyk, Elsa; van’t Kruis, Sjaak, Relaties met Migrantenkerken. Ervaringen en perspectieven, Utrecht: Kerkinactie 2002. 53 www.kerkhuis.nl, accessed 28 October 2008. 54 Dirk Visser, Ds. Bas Plaisier: ‘Onze kerk is veel te wit,’ in: Kerkinformatie, no. 160 (2008), p. 4. 55 E-mail communication from Antoine Schluchter, 4 October 2008. See also www.protestants.org/textes/eglises_immigration/, accessed 20 August 2008. 56 Cf. Annemarie Dupré, “Being Church Together—Essere Chiesa Insieme.” The arrival of Christian migrants changed the Protestant churches in Italy, Document 12307, Third European Ecumenical Assembly, Sibiu 4–9 September 2007, downloadable from www.chiesacattolica.it /cci_new /PagineCCI /AllegatiArt /2843 /Dupre_EN.doc, accessed 28 October 2008.

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thirds black. In several cases, small and dying congregations were revived by this influx and have become lively and growing. Protestant Sunday worship in many places is now bi- or even multilingual. This simply happened spontaneously and was, at the beginning, neither planned nor reflected theologically or ecclesiologically. Newly founded migrant churches have also, in many cases, joined the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy, which consequently launched a process, “Essere chiese insieme” (Being Church Together) to reflect what has been happening and to look for ways forward. The large presence of migrant Christians within local congregations represents a major challenge to traditional Protestant Italian identities and forces the churches to fundamentally rethink their ways of worshipping and organizing their congregations. Conversations with Waldensian pastors quickly turn to the enormous practical difficulties which arise when newcomers in the church become the majority.57 In 2007, the Synod of the Waldensian and Methodist Churches discussed the following urgent questions: “aa) how to work with very different theological approaches and understanding of the Bible? bb) how to guarantee a correct balance between the needs and habits of migrants and Italians? How to handle this when many different nationalities are worshipping together. cc) what about different approaches to ethical problems: divorce, homosexuality, violence in the family, the role of women etc.? dd) what is the role of the pastor, the deacons, the church organisers? What about the church council or parallel decision making bodies? ee) migrant Christians are questioning our way of being church. The missionary process starts to be inverted. It is no longer going only from North to South. Christians from the Southern hemisphere often have a strong missionary attitude towards the secularised industrialised World.”58 The synod also discussed how Italian churches should relate to churches abroad which are sending migrants to Italy, and which congregational and federational models could be found to further integrate 57 Personal conversations with about 10 Waldensian pastors at an international seminar for pastors on “The Challenges of Migration for the European Churches”, organized by the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, the Protestant Federation of France and the Waldensian Church in Palermo, 24–31 October 2006. 58 Ibd. p. 5.


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migrant Christians and congregations. The underlying question was phrased by the synod as “How can we become Protestant churches in Italy and not only Italian Protestant churches?”59 A separate development of indigenous and migrant congregations, while technically the easiest, is not an option for the Waldensian and Methodist churches. As migration is not only a national issue, churches have also responded on the European level. In March 2004, the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe organized an international consultation in Ciampino, Italy, on the issue of “Being Church Together—Unity in Diversity.”60 After intensive exchanges between migrant and indigenous participants, the conference made a number of recommendations to European churches on the local, national, and continental level, stressing the necessity of developing multicultural ministries, two-sided learning processes, and adequate representation of migrant Christians in decision-making structures. The conference also stressed the importance of training for second generation migrant youth. Since then, the Conference of European Churches has continued to put strong emphases on migrant issues as well as issues of intercultural and interreligious communication, though its documents and statements basically ignore the presence of migrant churches and Christians and their contributions.61 In May 2004, the Conference of Rhine Churches and the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE) / Leuenberg Church Fellowship held a consultation on the challenges of migration and asylum in Europe. In its “Liebfrauenberg Declaration,”62 the conference clearly centered on diaconal and advocacy approaches towards migration, but basically ignored the ecclesiological challenges brought about by the mushrooming of migrant churches and Christian communities

Ibd. p. 6. Cf. Benz Schär, Essere Chiese Insieme. Uniting in Diversity. Summary report on the Conference “Essere Chiesa Insieme / Uniting in Diversity” (Ciampino-Sassone, Italy, 26–28 March 2004), downloadable from www.cec-kek.org/English/ciampino _languages.pdf, accessed 10 September 2008. 61 See the list of current issues at www.cec-kek.org/, accessed 29 October 2008. 62 Conference of Rhine Churches and Community of Prostestant Churches in Europe / Leuenberg Church Fellowhip, “Liebfrauenberg Declaration” of the Rhine Churches on the challenges of migration and asylum. Results of a consultation of the Conference of Rhine Churches and the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe / Leuenberg Church Fellowship from 10–12 May 2004, at Liebfrauenberg, Alsace, downloadable from www.cec-kek.org/English/LiebfrauenbergE.pdf, accessed 29 October 2008. 59 60

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in Europe, simply calling on local parishes to “make premises available for migrant communities,”63 and on local congregations and diaconal agencies to “open up to more intercultural exchange,” adding that “equal rights and equal participation presuppose that people with a migrant background can make their own contribution in the life of parishes and church organizations in the same way as local people.”64 A look at the materials currently available from the CPCE65 makes the Eurocentric outlook of this body glaringly obvious: Whether the Federation speaks on evangelizing, theology for Europe, or diversity of churches, the impact and contribution of migrant churches is almost completely ignored. 1.4. Description of my research After this general overview, it is now time to turn back to a description of the research which resulted in this book. Since 1998, I have been a participant observer at worship services, night prayers, pastors’ meetings, seminars, revivals, training meetings and crusades organized by more than 90 different migrant churches in North RhineWestphalia. In many cases, I have only been to one activity at a given church. But in the case of some larger churches or church networks, I have attended several activities over the years, and therefore I have been able to observe some developments. After most, but not all visits, I wrote down shorter or longer research notes. Most times, I was a just a visitor. Occasionally, I was a preacher or speaker—a change of perspective that also gave me new insights. Originally, I found the pentecostal / charismatic preaching style rather manipulative. I had the impression that the preacher did whatever he (there are very few woman preachers) could to get an emotional response from the congregation. Only when I started to preach myself, I realized that preaching in a pentecostal / charismatic setting is much more of a two-way street than preaching in a ‘mainline’ Protestant setting: A congregation that responds with shouts and Amens, with applause and Hallelujahs is able, especially when it is large, to push a preacher into a certain Ibd., no. 27. Ibd., no. 28. 65 www.leuenberg.net/side.php?news_id=68&part_id=68&navi=16&sys=, accessed 29 October 2008. 63 64


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direction. As pentecostal / charismatic preachers usually do not follow a written manuscript, it is easily possible to lose one’s planned outline due to the congregation’s responses. To me, preaching in a pentecostal / charismatic setting resembles a dance in which each side may lead for while and then allows itself to be led by the other. I also participated in meetings of networks of migrant churches: I regularly attended the gatherings of the African Council of Churches in Germany (Western Region)66 which I also advised on matters of legal structure and set-up. Since 2000, I was present at most meetings of the Council of Pentecost Ministers, an anglophone African network of predominantly male pastors and evangelists, the majority of whom come from Ghana.67 I was occasionally invited to the Council of Korean Churches in NRW, though, due to the necessity of translation, this only happened when the group felt the need to discuss some matters with me. I also participated in two events organized by Korean Churches Together in Europe. Between 1999 and 2006, I organized meetings of migrant churches at least once, and sometimes twice a year. These included local round tables as well as annual meetings of the ‘list churches’. I was also involved in planning and organizing a number of intercultural worship services in different cities, with as many as ten German and migrant congregations involved. Over these nine years, I established relationships with more than 100 pastors, elders, and founders of migrant churches, the majority of whom are pentecostal / charismatic. We have had formal and informal talks and discussions, they have asked me for help and I have asked their advice and feedback, we prepared joint activities, we discussed theology and spirituality, we shared our biographies, and we prayed and chatted. Whenever I felt that I had learned something of particular importance, I took notes after such encounters. During this period, I built an extensive database of Protestant and pentecostal / migrant churches in North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition to my field notes, I collected leaflets, flyers and tracts, videos and DVDs.68 I elicited and Founded in 1999, defunct since October 2004. According to its leaders, the CPM was highly active in the mid-1990s, then practically ceased to exist for several years until it was revived again in 2000. It remained a very small and marginal group until 2002, when attendance at meetings suddenly grew to about 40–60 persons. 68 Migrant churches tend to document special services, concerts, revivals etc. Videos and DVDs are then sold and circulate within informal networks mostly defined by language and cultural background. 66 67

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stored information about church activities, the number and nationalities of their members, and their contacts to churches overseas and in Germany. The degree of information about each church varies. Since all churches applying to be added to the list of recognized churches have to fill a questionnaire with their application, I usually know more about the ‘list churches’ and their pastors / leaders than about the other churches. Generally, my information about each church has come from the church leadership, i.e. the pastor or elders. I have had few close contacts with ordinary church members. With the beginning of the kikk course, other research avenues opened. From 2002, biographical interviews were conducted with all participants, and the notes on these interviews were made available to me by the course organizer, Gotthard Oblau. I also received written reports about each weekend course from him. As one of the examiners, I read all final papers by the participants which dealt with topics like “Barnabas as a missionary” or “Migrants in the Bible and what we can learn from them”. From October 2000 to March 2001, Ursula Harfst served as pastorin-training and from April 2002 to September 2005, as assistant pastor under my supervision. She shared with me her reports on her visits to worship services and other church activities, as well as notes on important conversations she had with migrant church leaders. All of the information she gathered also became part of the UEM database. In 2001, I took a one-month study trip to pentecostal and charismatic churches in Ghana and Nigeria, visiting mostly churches and ministries with either daughter churches or related churches in Germany. I was a participant observer in worship services, prayer meetings both in churches and in private homes, Bible studies, deliverance services, all night prayers, a Redeemed Christian Church of God Holy Ghost Night with more than 200,000 attendants, prayer camps, and street revivals. In 2002 and 2003, I had opportunities to return to Ghana and observe some more worship services and prayer camp meetings. My observations in Ghana and Nigeria have been invaluable in providing some background on African migrant churches in Germany, and have also helped to build trust with migrant church leaders here, several of whom helped to arrange my schedules and found hosts with whom I stayed. For this study, I have decided to focus on pentecostal and charismatic pastors and church leaders. Several reasons underlie this decision: First


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and very pragmatically, the pastors and leaders were the people whom I knew best, and with whom I interacted on a daily basis. I had built trustful relationships with them and could expect them to talk to me openly. My contact to church members was much more limited, and, due to my role in the UEM program, there was a clear status difference which would have made research very difficult. Secondly, the concentration on pastors and church leaders allowed me, within a manageable sample, to deal with a great variety of people from different ethnic, national and denominational backgrounds. As other studies tend to concentrate on one, two, or at most three congregations, I felt that I should make the most of the possibility to do a crosssectional study. And thirdly, with one exception, all of the interviewees were church founders, therefore key actors who could be expected to reflect and explain their missionary and pastoral motivation. I combined a qualitative, empirical approach with some quantitative elements. First of all, I conducted 24 extensive interviews with pastors and church leaders in an inductive process of theoretical sampling.69 With one exception, I had known my interview partners for several years, had had a number of informal talks with them over that period, and cooperated with them in one or more activities. This means that I knew them as people interested in cooperation, and I knew that a relationship of trust already existed, which I felt was necessary for the kind of interview I planned. All extensive interviews were done employing a loosely structured list of questions. They started with a broad question to generate a biographical narrative which lasted from about 3 minutes to more than 45 minutes, depending on the interlocutor. Then followed questions about how they understand their pastoral role and how they understand and practice their missionary vocation. In the last part of the interview, I asked about the ethnic / national composition of their churches, about their denominational identity, and about their sense of integration into the German church context. The interviews were recorded on tape, and later transcribed. For reasons of comparison, I then did 80 short telephone interviews, each lasting about 7–10 minutes, with both pentecostal / charismatic and ‘mainline’ Protestant pastors, following a set questionnaire. With these interviews, I had a double purpose: First of all, I wanted to see whether I could find a 69 Cf. Hubert Knoblauch, Qualitative Religionsforschung. Religionsethnographie in der eigenen Gesellschaft. Paderborn / München / Wien / Zürich: Schöningh/UTB 2003, p. 100 ff. For a list of interviewees, see Appendix II.

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distinct pentecostal / charismatic phrasing and understanding of mission. Secondly, I wanted to poll church leaders to find out about their expectations of the German churches in terms of their integration into German society. 1.5. Reflecting my own role as agent and researcher 70 As I have described above, this study is the outcome of an encounter. There was no research agenda before I got to know migrant churches, rather, the agenda was set by the encounter and the need to make sense of it. After all, the overall aim of the UEM program was to establish cooperation between migrant and indigenous churches—and true cooperation will not be possible without at least some understanding of both sides’ visions, aims and methods. Therefore, this study is action research,71 part of a political, consciousness-raising process in which I am involved both as an agent and as a researcher: My hope is that it will contribute to a better relationship between indigenous Protestant churches and migrant churches in Europe. The fact that UEM, which oversaw my work, and the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, which paid my salary, made this study part of my job description shows that there is a political interest in this kind of knowledge at least within the German church. Similarly, migrant pastors have agreed to be interviewed because they are hoping that the results of 70 For an overview of the recent discussions, within the social sciences, on subjectivity and reflexivity, cf. Breuer, Franz, and Roth, Wolff-Michael, Subjectivity and Reflexivity in the Social Sciences: Epistemic Windows and Methodical Consequences. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Online Journal], 4(2), May 2003. Available at: www.qualitative/research.net/fqs-texte/2–03/2–03intro-e-htm. Date of Access 20 February, 2006. For a reflection of being inside / outside, see also Ezra Chitando, The Insider / Outsider Problem in Research on Religion and Migration, in: Adogame, Afe und Weissköppel, Cordula (Eds.), Religion in the Context of African Migration. Bayreuth African Studies Series, No. 75, Bayreuth: Pia Thielmann & Eckhard Breitinger, 2005, and Afe Adogame, To be or not to be? Politics of Belonging and African Christian Communities in Germany, ibd. 71 Monica Colombo describes action research as follows: “It is a question of instituting a research context as a place in which it is possible to construct a program of analysis and reflection around the problems which are met in (work) practice with the aim of sustaining sense-making processes.” Colombo, Monica, Reflexivity and Narratives in Action Research: A Discursive Approach. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Online Journal], 4(2), May 2003. Available at: www.qualitative/research.net/fqs-texte/2–03/2–03colombo-e-htm. Date of Access 20 February, 2006.


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this study will have a positive impact on their situation. These agendas need to be understood, and the ensuing interactions to be analyzed. Therefore, this study was written from a constructivist perspective:72 This includes a relativist ontology—realities exist only as multiple constructions which are socially and experientially based; a subjectivist epistemology—research findings are created by the process of interaction between the researcher and the researched; and a hermeneutical and dialectical methodology—individual constructions are elicited and refined, and then compared and contrasted to generate one or more constructions on which there is substantial consensus. If it is agreed that every social science researcher is also an actor and influences the settings in his or her research, then my own role as an agent and researcher is just gradually, but not fundamentally different from someone who ‘only’ does research. Nevertheless, the intertwining of my roles as agent and researcher in this process needs to be carefully considered. I can see at least three different, but not always distinct levels on which I have related to pentecostal and charismatic migrant church leaders: First of all, most of my interlocutors got to know me as a contact person through whom they could establish a relationship with a dominant church in Germany. They contacted me because they expected help and assistance in establishing their own structures, recognition of their ministry, and a ‘point of contact’ through which they could reach out into German churches and bring them revival. Similarly, in my contact with them I was hoping to establish a relationship that would make cooperative projects possible. This is what I would call the ‘political level’. There was a certain way of mutual instrumentalization involved: each side needed something from the other side, but was also willing to give something in the hope of making some gains later on. Secondly, over the years, I established close, trusting, personal relationships with many pentecostal and charismatic pastors and church leaders. We talked about our experiences of the Holy Spirit, we prayed together, and I worshipped and preached in their churches. They knew that I am not a Pentecostal in the denominational sense of the word, but they nevertheless claimed me as one of their own, as a “woman of God” through whom the Holy Spirit speaks. For years, I have been

72 For the following cf. Guba, Egon C., The Alternative Paradigm Dialog, in: Guba, Egon C. (ed.), The Paradigm Dialog, London etc.: SAGE 1990, pp. 17–27.

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considered a full and respected member of the Council of Pentecost Ministers, an anglophone African network of about 40 pastors; even though I keep insisting that I do not fulfill the membership criteria. I was asked to participate in blessing, anointing and deliverance rituals, and even to assist in the ordination of two pastors. This is what I would call the ‘spiritual level’. On this level, my interlocutors have had a deep, personal impact on me. They have challenged and enriched my faith and the ‘mainline’ protestant, somewhat pietistic spirituality in which I was reared. They have taught me about the power of prayer and the power of a faith that trusts in God alone, without any institutional security. They have taught me that faith is a matter not only of the mind, but also of the body, and that emotions may be expressed during worship. I will never forget the elder who approached me after my first sermon in an African charismatic church. He put an arm around my shoulder and said: “Pastor, I can see that you have the love of Christ in your heart. But you don’t show it in your body!” In that process, though, I have also come to value the riches of my own tradition. I have changed a lot through this encounter, but I have not ‘gone pentecostal’. The question to what an extent a researcher can and should ‘go native’, or reversely, how strictly the researcher should demarcate him- or herself from his or her objects is particularly important when it comes to research on Pentecostalism.73 On the other hand, on this level a degree of trust was built that was enormously helpful both for the political level as well as for my research. Thirdly, I became a researcher. I went to worship services and listened, sang and prayed with those present, but I also took notes that I expanded into thick descriptions afterwards. I preached, I blessed, I anointed—and at the same time I observed, made mental notes, analyzed what was happening and what I was doing, and, on a meta-level, even reflected what was happening with me while doing all of this. Coleman aptly describes this “split” between the participant and the observer. It cannot be bridged, not even by conversion to Pentecostalism, and remains an inherent contradiction.74 This is what I would call the ‘academic’ level. On this level, there is a danger of instrumentalizing the other levels for research ends, of reducing the people with

73 See Simon Coleman, Studying ‘Global’ Pentecostalism: Tensions, Representations and Opportunities, in: PentecoStudies vol. 5 no. 1, 2006, pp. 1–17. 74 Ibd., pp. 5–7.


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whom I related to objects of my observation. On the other hand, on the political level my interlocutors also had an interest to let me see and understand certain things, while trying to hide others. Time and again, I was faced with suspicion and mistrust because I was asking so many questions. Without the spiritual level, a lot of my research would not have been possible. But on this level, there have also been numerous attempts to convert me. Of course, both the political and the spiritual levels influenced how I observe and analyze, what I perceived and what I might have overlooked. But because they exist, I was able to share my research results with some of my interlocutors and get feedback. My approach is discursive; my research is dialogical and can therefore be validated both communicatively and argumentatively.75 1.6. Interpretative paradigms I have already stated that this study follows a constructivist approach. My interest is to understand how pentecostal / charismatic pastors and church leaders interpret themselves. I will not discuss whether their biographical narratives are ‘true’ in the sense that they told me what happened historically; rather, I want to understand how my interlocutors construct their biographies, and what kind of meaning they themselves give to events in their lives. Similarly, I look at how they construct and describe their roles as pastors and leaders, and then how they discursively construct their role as evangelists. These constructions occasionally clash with conclusions that I have drawn from my observation of their practice—where this happens, how these different constructs came about needs to be analyzed very carefully. In transcribing the interviews, I decided not to follow the transcription rules widely used within ethnographic and anthropological research.76 First of all, I do not believe that any number of written

75 Cf. Hubert Knoblauch, Qualitative Religionsforschung. Religionsethnographie in der eigenen Gesellschaft. Paderborn / München / Wien / Zürich: Schöningh/UTB 2003, p. 166 f. 76 See, for example Hubert Knoblauch, Qualitative Religionsforschung. Religionsethnographie in der eigenen Gesellschaft. Paderborn / München / Wien / Zürich: Schöningh/UTB 2003, Uwe Flick, Qualitative Forschung. Theorie, Methoden, Anwendung in Psychologie und Sozialwissenschaften. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995, or Peter G. Stromberg, Language and self-transformation. A study of the Christian conversion narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press 1993.

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symbols can come close to representing spoken language. Transcription turns the spoken word into written word, into something different altogether. Written language follows different criteria than spoken language, and what can be heard and understood well may become unintelligible by transcribing it closely. Therefore, my transcripts were slightly edited by eliminating ehs, ohs, and stutters, making them more ‘readable.’ Secondly, all interviewees were non-native speakers, regardless of whether German or English was used during the interviews. They were struggling to express themselves in an unfamiliar idiom. Generally, those speaking in English showed stronger language skills and better grammar than those speaking in German. Both in transcribing and in translating the German interviews into English, obvious grammatical mistakes were corrected, again to allow for better readability. To make sure that such editing did not misrepresent what the interviewees wanted to say, each of them was given the transcript and asked to make changes to it if necessary. Interestingly, while several interviewees insisted on authorizing the transcripts even before I had started to explain the process to them, none of them suggested any alterations to the transcripts they received. I believe that this is due to the fact that they wanted to tell their story, be understood and taken seriously. Transcripts which would have shown their inadequacies in expressing themselves in a foreign language would have been seen as humiliating and belittling their mission. In a sense, the interviewees entrusted me with their message, giving me the role of an interpreter. The ‘polished’ end product of the written interview, then, was closer to what they wanted to project than was the raw material. In this study, I have no interest in understanding my interview partners better than they understand themselves by focusing on inadvertent or unconscious utterances.77 Rather, I treat the interviews in their written form as literature which can be analyzed hermeneutically. To give readers the possibility to test my analysis against the interviews, the biographical narratives from all interviews have been appended to this study.78 When it comes to rescripting and interpreting the words and actions of pentecostal / charismatic church leaders, great caution is necessary.

77 This is clearly the attitude of Peter G. Stromberg in his analysis of conversion stories. See note 76 above. 78 See Appendix.


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In a recent paper,79 David Martin has issued strong caveats for the researcher in Pentecostalism. He warns of silent ontologies “which determine what is to count as real, primary and consequential and what is to be discounted as epiphenomenal, secondary and of no consequence.”80 Such ontologies could be expressed in “the higher status accorded to ‘the political’ by comparison with ‘the religious’ ”,81 or in according rationalization “a central place in determining what is to count as real change and significant development.”82 Instead, Martin suggests, “people have to be allowed to speak on their own account . . . Initially a message needs receiving in its own terms as though it made natural or, at any rate, adequate sense.”83 Martin calls rescripting a “precarious business . . . above all not to be conducted as though what believers say is fantasy waiting for analytic solvents to transfer it to some more basic category.”84 Pentecostalism is not a “diverted and neutered social protest”,85 and the power of faith is not an illusion, as it can, for the most part, “bring about the transformations it promises.”86 Rescripting therefore needs to be done “with respect to the messages received”;87 and both in the use of metaphors and rhetorical framing, the researcher needs to be aware of underlying, reductionist ontologies. What Martin suggests, here, is to look at religion as, first and foremost, religion. This is not as simple as it sounds. Social science, and even science of religion, is about the rational explanation of phenomena. But what happens when religious science is confronted with tales of miracles, with prayers that clearly expect God to act in this world, and with consequent behaviors that do not make sense in a Westernized, rational logic (like, for example, praying for business success to such an extent that there is not enough time to work for it)? In rejecting reductionist ontologies, Martin refuses any kind of an interpretation of religion that would assume that while expressing certain views or sentiments in a religious way, or while worshipping and 79

Martin, David, Undermining the Old Paradigms: Rescripting Pentecostal Accounts, in: PentecoStudies, vol. 5 no. 1, 2006, pp. 18–38. 80 ibd. p. 18. 81 ibd. p. 19. 82 ibd. p. 29. 83 ibd. p. 20. 84 ibd. p. 20. 85 ibd. p. 32. 86 ibd. p. 20. 87 ibd. p. 20.

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praying, people were actually meaning or doing something else that, in reality, was more important than the religious interpretation they were giving to it. A case in point would be Paul Gifford’s suspicion that the majority of pastors of new pentecostal and charismatic churches in Africa have become pastors not because of a call, but rather because founding a church provided them with a career opportunity.88 This means that, above all, the inherent logic (and possibly also the inherent contradictions) of pentecostal / charismatic utterances needs to be teased out. Therefore, I will analyze my interviews first and foremost as religious texts that make religious sense. This interpretation process takes place within the general debate about the role of religion and integration in Europe, which, particularly after 9/11, concerns itself almost exclusively with Islam.89 As far as I can see, there is a basic, underlying question that openly or hidden shapes much of the current discourse: What makes ‘good’ religion? 90 At a time when different religions and different ways of living religion are competing on a ‘religious market’, that question becomes ever more important. When the issue at stake is integration, then ‘good’ religion is whatever is compatible with European basic liberal and democratic values, while anything that questions or challenges these values is at least suspect, if not outright ‘bad’.91 When it comes to Pentecostalism, the question of whether and in which ways it constitutes ‘good’ religion is also commonly asked, though rarely openly admitted to within the research community. The answer to this question depends on research and political paradigms: For example, as Simon Coleman92 suggests, anthropology with its 88

See Gifford, Paul, African Christianity. Its Public Role, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1998, p. 345. 89 See, e.g., Jonathan Birt, Good Imam, Bad Imam: Civic Religion and National Integration in Britain post 9/11, in: The Muslim World, vol. 96, issue 4, pp. 687–705. As far as could be ascertained, Christian religion has only become an issue in cases of fundamentalist ethnic German resettlers from Russia who have refused to send their children to school. 90 See also: U.J. Wenzel (ed.), Was ist eine gute Religion? Zwanzig Antworten, München: C.H. Beck Verlag 2007, and Peggy Levitt, God needs no passport: Immigrants and the changing American religious landscape, New York: The New Press 2007, who discusses this question in a US-American context. 91 Cf., for example, the radio interview with Suffragan Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschke, Deutschlandfunk, 9 February 2006, documented at www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/ interview_dlf/467413/, accessed on 27 February 2006. 92 Coleman, Simon, Studying ‘Global’ Pentecostalism: Tensions, Representations and Opportunities, in: PentecoStudies, vol. 5 no. 1, 2006, pp. 1–17.


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binary paradigm of “local good, global bad” tends to subsume Pentecostalism under the “polluting aspects of modernity,” and therefore as ‘bad’. Where political paradigms are of primary importance, Pentecostalism will be constructed as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to whether it furthers or hinders sought-after political processes, i.e. it is understood within a functional perspective. When Paul Gifford93 concludes that the new, charismatic Christianity in Ghana is “dysfunctional” when it comes to bringing Ghana “into the world’s modern political and economic system,” he implies that he is dealing with ‘bad’ religion, even if he does not say so explicitly. Similarly, the ongoing debate over whether Latin American Pentecostalism should be considered liberating or oppressive94 is, at its base, a discussion about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion. When it comes to a journalistic treatment of these issues, the answers seem fairly unequivocal: Pentecostalism is subsumed under American right wing influenced fundamentalism and therefore ‘bad’ religion.95 The popularity of functional approaches in research on Pentecostalism can be attributed exactly to the kind of rationalizations David Martin has so aptly criticized. Whether a certain religious approach functions politically in this or that way can be observed empirically, though any interpretation as to what is the exact cause of that particular function remains open: “A religion has consequences without being the creature of what it in fact creates.”96 93

Gifford, Paul, Ghana’s New Christianity. Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004, p. 191 ff. 94 Just as two examples, see Schäfer, Heinrich, Protestantismus in Zentralamerika. Christliches Zeugnis im Spannungsfeld von US-amerikanischem Fundamentalismus, und Wiederbelebung “indianischer” Kultur, in: Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft Vol. 75, Münster 1989, pp. 138–145; and Shaull, Richard and Cesar, Waldo, Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches. Promises, Limitation, Challenges, Grand Rapids (MI) / Cambridge (UK): Eerdmanns 2000. More material on this debate can be found in Evangelisches Missionswerk in Deutschland (ed.), Pfingstbewegung und Basisgemeinden in Lateinamerika, Weltmission heute 39, Hamburg 2000, which contains an extensive bibliography. For a somewhat different construction of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion, see Corten, André, Pentecostalism in Brazil. Emotion of the Poor and Theological Romanticism, London / New York: Palgrave MacMillan 1999, who states that glossolalia as the religious discourse of the poor is “unacceptable” in the political sphere. (pp. 92–97) 95 See, for example, the series by Deutschlandradio, “The New Christianity,” broadcast from 27 December 2006 to 4 January 2007. www.dradio.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/ 576849/. The broadcast on Nigerian Pentecostalism was especially critical, accusing Pentecostal / charismatic evangelists of exploitation. 96 Martin, ibd. p. 21.

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Looking at pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches, a functional approach is also rather attractive. From a political viewpoint, it is important to understand whether the theology and practice of these churches helps or hinders integration, whether it motivates people or paralyzes them, whether it gives them a voice or takes it away, whether it allows them to function in a secular society or leads them into ghettoes or parallel societies. It is not surprising that a number of large research projects have recently been started to explore exactly these issues.97 Depending on the answer to these questions, pentecostal / charismatic theology and practice is then assessed as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. This has immediate consequences in the process of cooperation: ‘Good’ practices will be encouraged and supported, while ‘bad’ practices will be criticized, and their perpetrators isolated. With my interest in cooperation, I have been tempted time and again to construct migrant Pentecostalism as ‘good’ religion in the framework of the above-mentioned questions. This has included arguing that pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches were actually fitting the German Protestant churches’ agenda on integration. But through my interviews, this construction has proven questionable. Pentecostal and charismatic pastors and church leaders talk little about integration, social projects and political action. At the same time, they claim that they are “not the problem, but rather the solution.” But when describing the problem and the solution, they do not use political, but rather religious categories: Europe has moved away from God, and therefore God has brought them here to help bring about a return of the continent to God. The questions asked by social sciences researchers are not the questions migrant pentecostal and charismatic pastors ask themselves. Migrant pentecostals and charismatics ask what God is doing in and through their lives, how and where they are being led, and how they can be blessed and bless others. They ask how their prayers can be efficacious so that revival will actually happen. They ask how they can reach out, with their religious message, beyond language and cultural barriers.

97 See, for example, the research project “The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities” by the Social Science Research Council, www.programs.ssrc.org/intmigration/ migrant/, or the project on the participation of immigrant churches into Dutch society, http://www.immigrantchurches.nl/wordpress/about/research-design/, accessed 19 August 2008.


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My interlocutors have their own understanding of what makes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religion, following a religious and ethical paradigm. ‘Good’ religion is a faith that shapes and permeates one’s every action and word. It shows itself in time-intensive religious practices—e.g. a longer worship service is better than a shorter one, the more time one prays the better etc.—and in clearly demarcated personal ethics. For an example, see the ethical guidelines in the Lighthouse International Christian Fellowship Church Handbook:98 “I pledge myself to the following lifestyle commitments: 1. Strive for excellence in my Christian life. 2. Submit to authority [sic] of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct and to the control of the Holy Spirit. 3. Co-operate respectfully with the Pastors / Leadership of the Church. 4. Participate actively in promoting the cause of Christ, including endeavouring to win others for Christ. 5. Refrain from activities such as profanity, gambling, dishonesty, substance abuse (drugs, alcohol, tobacco), all immoral activity—including the reading and viewing of pornographic literature, homosexuality, lesbianism, or any other sexual activity outside of marriage and also any other behaviour that might cause Christ to grieve. 6. Maintain a personal appearance and dress which would honour Christ. Refrain from behaviour which would bring discredit upon the Lord or offend a weaker Christian brother or sister.” When it comes to the question of cooperation, they will decide how deeply to get involved according to whether they see their partners as practicing ‘good’ religion. My encounters confirm David Martin’s suggestion that the life world of pentecostals and charismatics is “a complex giving and making of moral account,”99 and that life stories are told as “moral tale.”100 This is important: Though often marginalized, migrant pentecostals and charismatics do not see themselves as victims. They may have no political influence, but they pray for changed government policies and even confront the “demon of racism” in their spiritual warfare.101 Problems that are constructed as political in a Western rationalized framework are defined as spiritual in a pentecostal / charismatic religious paradigm. And while they may not be agents in the political arena, 98 Published privately by Lighthouse Christian Fellowship, 2005. No page numbering. 99 ibd. p. 35. 100 ibd. p. 35. 101 I have witnessed this during several all night prayers in Anglophone African churches.

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they are definitely agents in the spiritual arena. Not surprisingly, pentecostals and charismatics recount their life stories in the horizon of the “sacred narrative”102 of the Bible, they “script their own autobiography out of Scripture. Like Scripture itself, their autobiographies are testimonies.”103 It should have become sufficiently clear that even where cooperation is happening, European and migrant churches are each constructing an image of the other that is quite different from how each side sees itself. In consequence, a guiding question behind this study is whether each side will be able to have it’s own image of the ‘other’ challenged and changed sufficiently so that more than superficial cooperation is possible.

102 103

ibd. p. 36. ibd. p. 36.

chapter two THE FIELD OF STUDY

2.1. Terminology: “Migrant churches” The first chapter applied the terms ‘migrant churches’, ‘migrant congregations’, and ‘foreign language churches’ interchangeably. At this point, some terminological considerations are necessary, because the terminology used has theological and political implications.1 First of all, the term ‘church’ needs to be clarified. Within the migrant church scene, there are organized denominations with clear decision-making hierarchies as well as congregationalist networks in which local congregations are fairly autonomous; there are mega-churches with attached satellite churches as well as local, independent churches not affiliated with any denomination or network. In Germany, terminology is not unified. Within the German Evangelical Churches, migrant churches are usually referred to as “Gemeinden anderer Sprache und Herkunft,” congregations of another language or origin. This implies, from the viewpoint of a large denomination, that all migrant churches are also part of a denomination. Independent local churches are simply ignored, because they cannot be ‘church’. This has immediate implications as most German local Associations of Christian Churches will only accept congregations affiliated with a denomination as members, thereby effectively excluding many migrant churches. Within the framework of the UEM program, it has therefore become important to speak of “Migrations-kirchen”, ‘migration churches’, when referring to these churches within a political framework. When it comes to local cooperation however, we speak of cooperation between congregations. For a long time, migrant churches were termed “Ausländergemeinden” (Congregations of / for foreign citizens) or “ausländische 1 These terminological considerations are based on my 2005 paper, WährischOblau, Claudia, Migrationskirchen in Deutschland. Überlegungen zur strukturierten Beschreibung eines komplexen Phänomens, in: Zeitschrift für Mission, Frankfurt/Basel: Basileia / Lembeck, 1–2/2005, pp. 19–39.

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Gemeinden” (foreign congregations). This is no longer the case within the Protestant churches, taking into account the fact that many of the members of these churches now hold German citizenship. Evangelicals, on the other hand, still comfortably use these terms.2 In the vernacular however, “fremdsprachige Gemeinden,” foreign language congregations, is also often heard. While the different / foreign worship language and the foreign origin of many of their members is indeed an important characteristic of migrant churches, both terms have been criticized because they classify these churches as other, implying that what is ‘normal’ is defined by the indigenous churches. Consequently, a slow movement towards the term “Migrationskirchen” (migration churches) could be observed in the last few years. In the Netherlands, the term Migrantenkerken (migrant churches) seems to be most common, though “immigrant churches” is increasingly used.3 The churches organized in SKIN (Samen Kerk in Nederland) also refer to themselves as migrant churches, though the current general secretary, June Beckx, prefers the term “immigrant churches” to stress that these churches are there to stay.4 “Immigrant churches” is also the preferred term within the USA.5 In Britain, “Black-led / black majority churches” is a common terminology—the term ‘Black’ here understood as comprising all ethnic minorities.6 The term “ethnic

2

For an example, see the interview with the new chair of the Coalition for Evangelism, Birgit Winterhoff, in: EINS! Das Magazin der Evangelischen Allianz in Deutschland, Bad Blankenburg: Deutsche Evangelische Allianz, 1/2006, pp. 16–18. The Arbeitskreis für Ausländer (Working Group for Foreigners) of the Evangelical Alliance speaks of “Christian congregations of foreign citizens” (christliche Gemeinden ausländischer Mitbürger), see its website www.ead.de/afa/welcome.htm, accessed on 3 March 2006. 3 See, for example, MDO Binnenland (Sjaak van’t Kruis.), Geboren in Sion. De relatie tussen de Samen op Weg-Kerken, de migrantenkerken en organisaties van christelijke migranten / Born in Sion. Policy framework for the relationship between the Uniting Churches in the Netherlands (‘Samen op Weg’) inter-church ecumenical organisation and the immigrant churches and organisations of immigrant Christians in the Netherlands, 2002, and Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels, Introduction, in: Jansen / Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Münster: LITVerlag 2008, p. 4. 4 Personal communication from June Beckx. 5 Cf. Helen Rose Ebaugh, Jennifer O’Brien & Janet Slatzman Chafetz, The Social Ecology of Residential Pattern and Memberships In Immigrant Churches, in: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 39, issue 1, 2002, pp. 107–116. 6 See Joe Aldred, Minority ethnic Christianity in Britain and Ireland today, 2004, downloadable from http://cte.churchinsight.com/Articles/66817/ Churches_Together _in/Our_work/Minority_Ethnic_Christian/Further_articles_available.aspx, accessed 28 October 2008.

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minority churches” can also be found. In France, the term “Groupes et Eglises issues de l’immigration” (flashily abbreviated as GE2i) seems to be the agreed expression at least among Protestants.7 Generally, when dealing with the phenomenon in continental Europe, the term ‘migrant churches’ is the most used. It is a sociological description, but it has severe theological drawbacks. As the Anglican Bishop of York, John Sentamu, has pointed out,8 all Christians are migrants because they have no lasting city on earth, but rather belong to the wandering people of God. Paroikia, the Greek root for the term parish now used for geographical congregations within the German Protestant churches, originally denoted the part of town where migrant workers settled. Nobody belongs to the church because of his place of residence or his origin—all are invitees called from the hedges and fences by Christ. The term ‘migrant church,’ as it is used now, blurs this theological insight and unquestioningly accepts the current definitions of ‘migrant’ and ‘indigenous.’ The same considerations hold true for the term ‘immigrant churches.’ Representatives of Pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches have suggested that they be called “new mission churches.” This is also a theological term, and one that would not stress their foreignness, but rather the reason for their existence, namely their missionary calling from South to North and East to West.9 While theologically attractive and meaningful, this expression is of limited usefulness for this study because it is too broad to be used as a sociological category: New mission churches are also being founded by German Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Evangelicals as well as by overseas (usually American or Korean) missionaries reaching out primarily to indigenous Germans.10

7

See Antoine Schluchter, Accueillir les Eglises issues de l’immigration—Enjeux et Perspectives. Exposé donné au synode national des Eglises réformées évangéliques indépendantes, à Plan-de-Cuques le 17 mars 2007, dans le cadre d’une réflexion sur les questions d’immigration, downloadable from www.defap.fr/rubrique.php?id_rubrique =74, accessed 4 September 2008. 8 Cf. Sentamu’s speech at a conference co-organized by the UEM program in 2002, quoted in Oblau, Gotthard, Rassismus in der Kirche überwinden, in: Transparent. Zeitschrift für die kritische Masse in der rheinischen Kirche, 16. Jg. Nr. 67, December 2002. 9 Cf. Währisch-Oblau, Claudia, Mission und Migration(skirchen), in: DahlingSander, Christoph; Schulte, Andrea; Werner, Dietrich; Wrogemann, Henning (eds.), Leitfaden Ökumenische Missionstheologie, Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser / Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2003, pp. 363–383. 10 Typical examples for such ‘new mission churches’ are the Evangelical youth church e/motion in Essen (www.emotion-online.de, accessed 7 March 2006), the

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Therefore, I see no viable alternative to using the terms ‘migrant churches’ or ‘foreign language churches’ in a strictly sociological sense for churches and congregations which have been founded by people with a recent migration background, are led by them, and have a majority of members from such a background. Such churches and congregations may have a number of indigenous German members, and may even conduct some of their worship services in German. This is becoming more common as a second generation is growing up in these churches, which is far more fluent in German than in the language of their parents. 2.2. Delimiting “pentecostal / charismatic” What is Pentecostalism? And what is denoted by the term ‘charismatic’? The answers to these questions define the scope of the study I am undertaking here. And they are anything but easy. Recent discussions11 in research on Pentecostalism have centered on a basic methodological alternative: Is the movement being defined by essentialist categories, or is a non-essentialist approach used which maps the movement along historical and synchronous connections? Essentialist categories can come from a variety of fields, among them theology, religion, sociology, ethnology and anthropology. Donald Dayton, in his groundbreaking book Theological Roots of Pentecostalism,12 basically describes Pentecostalism as ‘Evangelicalism plus speaking in tongues’.13 Dayton’s definition of pentecostal dogmatics, while precise,

Christus Centrum Ruhrgebiet in Duisburg, a German Charismatic foundation (www .ccr-net.de, accessed 7 March 2006), and the Christliche Gemeinde Köln in Cologne which was founded and is being led by North American missionaries, but consists almost exclusively of German members. Cf. http://cgk-online.de/1.html, http://cgkonline.de/5.html, accessed 3 March 2006. 11 Especially at the Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism on ‘What is Pentecostalism? Constructing and Representing Global Pentecostalism in Academic Discourse’, Birmingham, January 19–20, 2006. 12 Dayton, Donald, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, Peabody (MA): Hendrickson Publishers 1987. 13 Ibd., epilogue, pp. 173 ff. In a similar vein, Csordas defines as members of the Catholic charismatic movement those who attend prayer meetings and speak in tongues. Cf. Csordas, Thomas J., Language, Charisma and Creativity. The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley (CA) / London: University of California Press 1997, p. 49.

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is limited to North American white ‘classical’ Pentecostalism, as Walter Hollenweger has convincingly shown. In a complex theological model, Hollenweger14 demonstrates how Pentecostalism developed from roots in black oral religion, Catholicism, the Holiness Movement, and was also shaped by political criticism and ecumenism. Using the Azusa Street Revival as paradigm, Hollenweger constructs a Pentecostalism that is a border-crossing movement15 shaped by an oral liturgy, a narrative theology, maximal (lay) participation, acceptance of dreams and visions, and a deeper understanding of the unity of body and soul. Hollenweger’s contribution has been invaluable in that he has not only shown Pentecostalism as a global movement, but also as a specific way of living and practicing faith and theology: Oral rather than written, narrative rather than systematic, experiential rather than doctrinal. Within a definition this broad, though, Hollenweger includes within Pentecostalism a number of non-Western churches which themselves would firmly reject the label ‘pentecostal’ and which are rejected as false churches by churches which define themselves as pentecostal. Cases in point would be the Kimbanguist Church16 or Aladura Churches like the Church of the Lord Brotherhood17 which met with strong rejection from pentecostal / charismatic members of the Committee of Foreign Language Churches when they applied for membership in the list process. Of course, there have been cases where one pentecostal church labeled another one as false or even anti-Christian, so this criterion needs to be used with caution. But it does seem counterintuitive to include distinct groups of churches into one category when both the groups to be included and the groups within that category reject such a categorization. Though Hollenweger’s call to pay attention to oral liturgies and narrative theologies needs to be heeded in the research on Pentecostalism where written theology or confessional statements (if they

14

Hollenweger, Walter, Charismatisch-pfingstliches Christentum. Herkunft, Situation, Ökumenische Chancen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997. 15 Borders in the sense of all human deliminations: Azusa Street crossed borders between Black and White, poor and rich, men and women, clergy and laity, and geographical boundaries. 16 For a self-introduction of this church, see www.kimbanguisme.net, accessed 8 September 2008. Cf. also Benjamin Simon, Gemeinschaft und religiöse Praxis im diasporalen Kimbanguismus—die Situation in Deutschland, in: Zeitschrift für Mission 1– 2/2005, pp. 40–53. 17 www.clbrotherhood.com, accessed 8 September 2008.

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even exist) often contradict the theology present in Sunday sermons and testimonies,18 his construction of Pentecostalism generates a picture too wide-ranging to be of much definitory use. With more research into the globalized nature of Pentecostalism, the question becomes more urgent as to how this extremely multi-faceted movement can still be represented as a single global phenomenon, even if it has neither a common dogmatic basis nor a universal institutional framework. Harvey Cox’s ingenious definition that Pentecostalism is the ‘sibling’ of jazz which is different everywhere but still immediately recognizable as jazz19 leaves us with a beautiful metaphor, but no real answers either. According to Michael Bergunder, an essential definition of Pentecostalism is impossible. This leaves scientists with only one route: The mapping of Pentecostalism according to diachronous and synchronous connections.20 A church or a movement can only be labeled as ‘pentecostal’ if there is a historical connection to the “vast and vague international network”21 surrounding the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 as well a synchronous interrelatedness with other groups, churches or individuals which similarly can be traced back to the beginnings of the movement. Only if these connections have been firmly established, a discussion of what actually makes up the distinct pentecostal identity can follow. Bergunder’s criteria, at least in theory, provide the tools to actually delimit ‘Pentecostalism’ and to decide once and for all whether a certain church or ministry can or cannot be labeled ‘pentecostal / charismatic’. But in practice, problems remain.

18

Though this is only too true also for Lutheran and Reformed Churches! Cox, Harvey, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century, Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994, p. 143. 20 Cf. Bergunder, Michael, Crossing Boundaries: Issues of Representation, Identity and Postcolonial Discourse in Pentecostal Studies. Paper for the Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism on ‘What is Pentecostalism? Constructing and Representing Global Pentecostalism in Academic Discourse’, Birmingham, January 19–20, 2006. Bergunder, Michael: Constructing Indian Pentecostalism: On Issues of Methodology and Representation, in: Anderson, Allan and Tang, Edmond, Asian and Pentecostal. The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies Series 3, Oxford: Regnum and Baguio City: APTS Press 2005, pp. 177–186 and 205–209. 21 Bergunder, Constructing Indian Pentecostalism, p. 186. 19

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In a critical response to Michael Bergunder, Allan Anderson22 has pointed out that it is difficult, if not downright impossible, to establish diachronous links to the first stage of Pentecostalism for all ‘third-world’ pentecostal movements and churches. The criteria, while clear, cannot always be operationalized in practice. This is especially true in the case of independent migrant churches where historical connections are often impossible to verify. I would want to add a definitional concern: What exactly establishes a ‘connection’, both synchronously and diachronously? Is it a visit by a missionary fresh from Azusa Street, an exchange of letters, a subscription to The Apostolic Faith?23 In the case of the migrant churches studied here, the diachronous links are often extremely tenuous, especially in cases where a local independent church was founded by someone originally affiliated with a non-Pentecostal church. And how do we define synchronous connections when most migrant churches are not organizationally affiliated to either a denominational pentecostal church or any international pentecostal or charismatic body? Do organizing a revival with Morris Cerullo, subscribing to Kenneth Hagin’s “Believers’ Voice of Victory,” traveling to preach in other independent churches around the world constitute a sufficient connection? I myself have plenty of such diachronous connections, but would state that those do not necessarily make me a Pentecostal. 2.3. Constructing a pentecostal / charismatic discourse field I believe that my research is not possible without a kind of hermeneutical circle: Even if a migrant church does not call itself pentecostal or charismatic—and quite a number of churches avoid these labels— 24 there have often been certain markers or characteristics that made me look for diachronous and synchronous connections to the pentecostal movement. Once I established such connections, I could then

22 Cf. Anderson, Allan, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Issues of Representation, Identity and Postcolonial Discourse in Pentecostal Studies.’ A Response to Michael Bergunder. Paper for the Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism on ‘What is Pentecostalism? Constructing and Representing Global Pentecostalism in Academic Discourse’, Birmingham, January 19–20, 2006. 23 The journal of the Azusa Street Revival. 24 For reasons, see the discussion below.

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look at the identity markers of this particular church to refine my own understanding of what a pentecostal or charismatic identity might possibly include. Because I started into this circle through my encounters with African and Asian Pentecostal and charismatic churches, my understanding of Pentecostalism varies significantly from those whose paradigm of understanding has been shaped by classical white American Pentecostalism. Before I turn to the markers or characteristics that I used as indicators for a possible pentecostal or charismatic identity, I want quickly to discuss descriptions of pentecostal identity given by several other researchers whose insights I found helpful in looking at migrant churches in a German context. Allan Anderson suggests using the term ‘pentecostal’ “for describing globally all churches and movements that emphasize the working of the gifts of the Spirit.”25 More precisely, Pentecostalism should be seen “as a movement concerned primarily with the experience of the working of the Holy Spirit and the practice of spiritual gifts.”26 This is a very broad, theological definition, but it is useful in constructing a difference between pentecostal / charismatic and ‘mainline’ Protestant as well as evangelical27 churches, both of which have been shaped by a dialectical theology that is very suspicious of the religious value of any kind of experience.28 Still, I believe that Anderson’s definition is too broad to give more than a starting point, and could be further specified. Droogers29 gives three common characteristics of Pentecostalism from an anthropological perspective:

25 Anderson, Allan, An Introduction to Pentecostalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 13. 26 Ibd. p. 14, quoting Robert M. Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism, Peabody (MA): Hendrickson Publishers 1979, p. 4. 27 Evangelical here in the narrow sense, “evangelikal” rather than “evangelisch”. 28 Just as an interesting observation: The German version of the “Four Spiritual Laws”, a kind of Christian-theology-in-a-nutshell devised by Campus Crusade for Christ, has a chapter on how not to depend on one’s feelings. Several of the English versions of the same text omit this chapter. Cf. www.greatcom.org/laws/german/ and www.greatcom.org/laws/english/, respectively, both accessed on 14 March 2006. 29 Droogers, André, Globalisation and Pentecostal Success, in: Corton and MarshallFratani, Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2001, pp. 41–61.

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– A central place given to the presence of the Holy Spirit in worship, – A conversion experience which leads one into the church as an alternative community, – A dualistic world view.30 The sociologist Frans Kamsteeg31 also names a conversion experience as an important identity marker for pentecostals. While all of these can be shown as pentecostal identity markers, they are, perhaps with exception of Droogers’ first point, shared by evangelicals, too. I would claim that despite many overlappings, there is a distinct difference between Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. Michael Bergunder suggests that a distinctive pentecostal identity would have “something to do with a certain spiritual praxis (intuitive, experiential Spirit-centered devotion; oral liturgy; firm Biblical orientation; narrative theology and testimonies; strong lay participation; healing and so on),”32 even though this praxis would be subject to constant change and dependent on mutual affirmation. André Corten,33 a political scientist, uses a discourse theoretical approach to come up with four important characteristics of pentecostals: – The discursive category of the ‘poor’ which in Pentecostalism are those who, through their religious emotion, have an immediacy to God and the Bible that needs no theological training; – Emotion as basis of the religious discourse, enacted and exteriorized in glossolalia, singing, free speech and gestures; – Praise as an illocutive ‘original’ or ‘primary’ utterance which is neither true nor false, but ‘unacceptable’ within the political discourse; – Organization within a ‘sect’ as the ‘anti-politics’ of the poor (though this may change as a church develops). This last characteristic has also been stressed by the sociologist David Martin who talks about the pentecostal “walk-out” from society.34 Ibd., pp. 44–46. Kamsteeg, Frans, Prophetic Pentecostalism in Chile. A Case Study on Religion and Development Policy. Studies in Evangelicalism 15, Lanham (MD): The Scarecrow Press 1998, p. 25. 32 Bergunder, Crossing Boundaries, p. 10. 33 Corten, André, Pentecostalism in Brazil. Emotion of the Poor and Theological Romanticism, London / New York: Palgrave MacMillan 1999. 34 David Martin, Undermining the Old Paradigms. Rescripting Pentecostal Ac30 31

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For this study, I can describe certain worship practices and discourse fields that led me to inquire whether a particular migrant church could be placed within the synchronous and diachronous networks of the pentecostal movement. This was particularly important as many churches try to avoid denominational labels and therefore would not denote themselves as either ‘pentecostal’ or ‘charismatic,’ preferring the term ‘non-denominational’, sometimes coupled with ‘full-Gospel’. In several cases, when asking for a denominational label, I was told that the church in question was, for example, “evangelical, Bible-believing, Spirit-filled, and baptist.” Another pastor told me: “If I am in Nigeria, I will call the church pentecostal, because I will expect every Nigerian to know what pentecostal means. In Germany, I will not call it pentecostal, because Germans will not understand what it means. So I rather call it evangelical.” I believe that the avoidance of denominational labels has at least two reasons: One is that, especially in more international churches, members tend to come from a variety of denominational backgrounds to which they still claim a sense of adherence. To make all of them feel at home, a church calls itself ‘non-denominational.’ The other reason is a political one: Migrant church leaders have picked up very quickly on the fact that the label ‘pentecostal’ or ‘charismatic’, in Germany, may lead to one’s church being suspected as a ‘sect’ or even ‘cult’. Few German pentecostal and charismatic churches are part of the local Associations of Christian Churches (ACK),35 and none of the pentecostal denominations participate in the national ACK. Eager to be accepted and not marginalized, migrant churches, especially when not connected to a mother church overseas, rather try to develop a relationship with the Protestant Churches which they rightly perceive as the dominant church organization in Germany. But such a relationship is only possible if they downplay their pentecostal or charismatic identity.36 So what then are indicators that a migrant church could be part of the pentecostal network? As my encounters usually started by participant observation in worship services, certain worship practices have counts, in: PentecoStudies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2006, pp. 18–38. Also, by the same author: Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 2002. 35 ACK—Arbeitsgemeinschaft christlicher Kirchen. 36 This need to downplay ‘stigmatizing’ identity markers to be accepted within mainstream society has recently been described by Kenji Yoshino as ‘covering’, following Erving Goffman’s 1963 study on stigma. See Yoshino, Kenji, Covering. The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights. Random House 2006.

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shown themselves as suggestive of a pentecostal / charismatic identity. The elements below are not meant as definitional, but have been collected through observation. They include the following: – Oral liturgy and an absence of ‘formed’ elements like the Lord’s prayer or a confession of faith; – Absence of liturgical clothing / vestments; – ‘Praise and worship’ as a distinct liturgical element; – Gestures, movement, dance, and openly shown strong emotions, especially during praise and worship times, but also at other times during the worship service; – Communal prayer times during which everybody may pray aloud at the same time (with possible speaking in tongues); – A practice of sharing testimonies within the worship service; – Congregational participation in the sermon through calls, shouts, songs and gestures (“call and response”); – Prayers for healing and deliverance (possibly with laying-on of hands, falling down of the person prayed for, and other manifestations); – Prophecy; – Strong lay participation in leading the worship, preaching sermons, and conducting prayers; – Evangelistic altar calls or a call to rededicate one’s life to Christ. These practices in themselves are expressions of certain discourses which are circulating globally within the pentecostal / charismatic movement, both through mass media and through the varied and international personal contacts that this network provides. At the same time, local churches and movements appropriate and adapt such discourses into their cultural and spiritual frameworks, making Pentecostalism a true example of a “glocalized” movement,37 in which individuals can combine both global and local forms of identity into a “globalized cosmopolitanism.”38 37 Cf. Marshall-Fratani, Ruth, Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism, in: Journal of Religion in Africa, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1998, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 278–315; Corten, André and Marshall-Fratani, Ruth, Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2001. 38 Roudometof, Victor, Transnationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Glocalization in: Current Sociology, London / Thousand Oaks, CA / New Delhi: SAGE Publications, January 2005, Vol. 53 (1), pp. 113–135. It should be noted, though, that African theologian

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The discourse fields enumerated below were encountered in migrant churches in Germany which are linked to the pentecostal / charismatic movement at least through synchronous connections. None of the individual fields alone would suffice as a pentecostal / charismatic identity marker, but combinations of the fields below are being used in this way, both by pentecostals / charismatics themselves, and by outside observers. These, sometimes overlapping, discourse fields include: – Constructing a biography which defines a conversion experience as the clear starting point of one’s Christian life; – Recounting one’s life as a moral tale: Moving from sin and wickedness in the past into holiness today (consequently, no weekly confession of sins during the worship service!); – A constant spiritual, narrative (and often quite unsystematic) interpretation of even mundane experiences, reading positive events in one’s life (e.g. physical healing, a visa for stay in Germany, financial prosperity) as God’s answer to faithful prayers, and, conversely, negative events as satanic attack, possibly due to a lack of faith or sufficient prayer; – A spiritual interpretation of the ‘political’, describing the world as a battlefield between the life-affirming power of God and the lifedestroying powers of demons / the devil, necessitating acts of spiritual warfare to protect oneself and one’s church, and to further certain political agendas (a typical example would be the exorcism of the territorial ‘demon of racism’ I have witnessed in several African all night prayers); – A clear delineation between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’, with a consequent assignment of ‘supernatural’ manifestations to the Holy Spirit (“signs and wonders”, “power encounters”, glossolalia, gifts of prophecy, of the discernment of spirits, of healing etc.);

Ogbu Kalu rejects the term “glocal” to describe African Pentecostalism, opting instead for “globecalisation” to “explore the interior dynamics and process of culture contacts in contexts of asymmetrical power relations.” Ogbu Kalu, The Pentecostal Model in Contemporary Africa, in: in: Cox, James L. and ter Haar, Gerrie (eds.), Uniquely African? African Christian Identità from Cultural and Historical Perspectives, Trenton (NJ) / Asmara (Eritrea): Africa World Press 2003, pp. 215–240.

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– The claim to be ‘operating in the power of the Spirit’, with an expectation that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, one can confront the ‘powers of darkness’, work miracles etc.; – An interpretation of dreams, visions, auditions, inner urges, intuitions etc. as the speaking of the Holy Spirit; – A literal, Biblicist reading of the Bible that treats individual verses (often without any regard to the context of that particular verse) as speaking directly to the reader, providing guidance and answers to concrete questions; – The claim that the Bible can be understood without any theological training, simply through guidance by the Holy Spirit; – A definition of the pastoral role in terms of the five-fold ministry, a calling by the Holy Spirit, and charismatic giftedness (“anointing”), disregarding any kind of theological training; – An understanding of salvation that is tied to a ‘decision for Christ’ based upon one’s free will, and a consequent baptism by immersion, rendering infant baptism invalid; – An expectation of the imminent second coming of Christ for a final judgment which strengthens the urge for evangelism so that as many as possible are ‘saved’ beforehand. This does not mean that a pentecostal or charismatic identity is limited to these discourse fields. Pentecostalism is a movement without clear borders, and its identities will be defined differently by different people in different contexts, and are constantly being negotiated and re-negotiated within the movement. Identities are constructed and reconstructed according to the need of delimiting one’s own against ‘the other’.39 In the encounter between migrant and indigenous churches in Germany, both sides are engaged in this dialectic process of constructing their own identities as well as those of ‘the others’. The issues named above are not just seen by me as differentiating pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches from German Protestant churches (as well as from African Aladura churches!), they are also being stressed by my interlocutors as fields where they see their theology and practice as ‘different’ from what they perceive in terms of theology and practice within the Protestant church.

39 Cf. Reuter, Julia, So nah—und doch so fern. Soziologische Beobachtungen des Fremden, in: nah & fern. Kulturmagazin für Integration und Partizipation No. 31, Karlsruhe: von Loeper Literaturverlag 2005, pp. 33–37.

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So far, I have been using the terms ‘pentecostal’ and ‘charismatic’ together. I have done this on purpose as the definitory difference between these two seems to become ever more blurred. The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements40 makes a threefold distinction between “classical Pentecostals”, namely American pentecostal denominations tracing their roots back to the revivals in Topeka and Azusa Street, the “Charismatic Movement” defined as the charismatic renewal within the Catholic and Protestant churches in the US, and “Neocharismatics”,41 defined as “18,810 independent, indigenous, postdenominational denominations and groups that cannot be classified as either pentecostal or charismatic but share a common emphasis on the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, pentecostallike experiences (not pentecostal terminology), signs and wonders, and power encounters.” The vague vastness of the third category shows that this categorization really comes down to something like American denominational pentecostals, charismatics in the American mainline churches, and everything else, which is not very useful. Nevertheless, for the sake of communication I find it helpful, when thinking globally, to make a rough distinction between two freely floating categories, keeping in mind that there are mutual influences and blurry borders: – “pentecostal” denotes the historically older, established denominational church structures which use the theological teaching about the baptism in the Holy Spirit with initial evidence of speaking in tongues as an important identity marker; – “charismatic” denotes the historically newer movements which stress non-denominationalism, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, prosperity teaching and spiritual warfare. Keeping in mind that all such categorizations are just constructs to help systematize a very amorphous, fluid phenomenon, I will now proceed to attempt a description and categorization of pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches in Germany.

40 Burgess, Stanley M. and van der Maas, Eduard M. (eds.), The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Revised and expanded edition, Grand Rapids (MI): Zondervan 2002, Introduction pp. xviii ff. 41 The term Neopentecostals is also commonly used.

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2.4. Migrant Churches: Categorizations A statistical overview of migrant churches in Germany, or anywhere else in Europe, relies to a large extent on estimates and educated guesses.42 Therefore, this study will limit itself to the data collected in the UEM database for the regions of the Evangelical Churches in the Rhineland and of Westphalia, comprising the area of North RhineWestphalia, plus some smaller areas of neighboring states in the south. When migrant churches are described from the outside, two categories are usually applied to ascribe identity: Nationality of the members, and denominational identity of the church, though newer research has shown that this is inadequate.43 Such outside descriptions fit with Protestant churches which display a national-denominational identity, like the Finnish Lutheran Church. They are questionable, though, when it comes to categorizing a church like Lighthouse Christian Fellowship which has members from more than a dozen countries and calls itself non-denominational. Nevertheless, a very broad categorization which uses the denominational markers “pentecostal / charismatic” and “Protestant/evangelical”44 can be useful to catalog migrant churches. Using these markers, 291 of the 431 migrant churches recorded in the UEM database can be labeled as pentecostal / charismatic, and 130 as Protestant / evangelical. Grouping migrant churches by the country of origin of their members is a much more difficult proposition: While some churches are clearly mono-cultural and mono-national, others are multicultural and multinational. Of the 291 pentecostal / charismatic churches in the

42 Cf. Darrell Jackson and Alessia Parelli, Mapping Migration. Mapping Churches’ Responses. Europe Study. Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe / World Council of Churches, 2008, pdf downloadable from www.oikoumene.org/en/news/ upcoming-events/ev/se/article/1722/european-study-quotmapp.html, accessed 10 September 2008. For more details on the situation in Germany, cf. Währisch-Oblau, Claudia, Migrationskirchen in Deutschland. Überlegungen zur strukturierten Beschreibung eines komplexen Phänomens, in: Zeitschrift für Mission, Frankfurt / Basel: Basileia / Lembeck, 1–2/2005, pp. 19–39. 43 Cf. Hijme Stoffels, A Coat of Many Colours, in: Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Münster: LITVerlag 2008. 44 “Protestant” denoting European churches founded during the Reformation period, and “evangelical” denoting later foundations like the Baptists, Methodists. The distinction is definitely a European one, where some Protestant churches used to be state churches, while the evangelical churches are so-called “free churches.”

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UEM database, at least 190 are international (defined as having members from at least three different countries) and / or internationalizing (defined as engaged in a conscious process of internationalization even if membership is overwhelmingly from one ethnic group or nationality), while of the 130 Protestant and evangelical churches, only about 20 are not organized along national-denominational parameters. A categorization of pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches along cultural, ethnic or national lines, therefore, is a construct that re-ethnifies churches most of which would reject any ethnic or national label for themselves. Nevertheless, a rough continental categorization of membership majorities is a possible way of establishing classifications. Multi-ethnic and multicultural churches are dominant among the African-majority churches, with a very small minority limited to members of only one ethnic group. The reverse is true for Asian churches: Here, only a very small minority has members from more than one nationality. Language is most likely the main reason for this phenomenon: Most African-majority churches use English and French (occasionally also Lingala or Portuguese) as their worship languages, sometimes with translation into an ethnic language45 and / or German, while Asian churches normally use a national or ethnic language like Korean or Tamil. Internationalizing Asian churches tend to switch to German and / or English as their worship language. Looking at the nationalities of the members of migrant churches, it should be noted that members in anglophone African churches mainly come from Ghana and Nigeria,46 with smaller numbers from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Togo, and Kenya, and the occasional person from Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, South Africa, Zambia and Uganda. Members of francophone African churches are predominantly from the

45

This would predominantly be Twi, an Akan language from Ghana. The large majority of anglophone sub-Saharan African immigrants in Germany seem to be Ashanti from Ghana. As far as I know, there are no statistics to prove this claim, but Ashanti are definitely the most visible group within anglophone African migrant churches. 46 According to official statistics, 23,963 Ghanaians and 16,956 Nigerians lived in Germany on 31 December 2003. Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration, Bericht der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration über die Lage der Ausländerinnen und Ausländer in Deutschland, Berlin August 2005, p. 567. There are estimates, though, that the number of undocumented Ghanaians may be almost as high as the number of those with a legal stay permit.

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DR Congo and Angola (even though Angola is Lusophone),47 but also from Ivory Coast, Togo, the Congo Republic or Cameroon. Clearly, the large majority of African migrant church members come from West and Central Africa, while East and South Africans are a very small minority. Almost all anglophone and many francophone African churches also have a small minority of non-African members, both indigenous Germans and migrants from other countries. Among the Asian churches, the Korean48 churches make up the largest group, followed by churches of Tamils49 from Sri Lanka. There are several Chinese, Indonesian and Vietnamese churches, but very few churches with members from Japan, Thailand, Nepal and India. Most Asian churches have a very small minority of German members, in almost all cases spouses of a migrant church member. Among the European / North Atlantic churches, Italian churches make up the largest group, closely followed by Anglo-American English speaking churches. The Finnish Lutheran Church, the Hungarian Reformed Church and the Dutch Protestant Church also have a number of congregations recorded in the UEM database. Fewer in number are Spanish, Latvian, Estonian and Polish churches. There is only one French church. Near and Middle Eastern Protestant and Pentecostal churches make up a very small but distinct group. It includes Turkish speaking churches (often also with Kurdish members), Arabic speaking, and Farsi speaking churches. Latin American churches are overwhelmingly Brazilian and Portuguese-speaking. Brazilians, who can travel to Germany without a visa, constitute the largest Latin American immigrant group.50 47 No official statistics are available of the number of migrants from these countries. Most migrants from Congo and Angola came as asylum seekers, and large numbers of them have been deported over the last few years. (No statistics on deportation are available, but I have seen several large congregations of francophone Africans dwindle to very small numbers due to deportation.) At the same time, anecdotal evidence points to the fact that at least some Congolese seem to have been able to gain German citizenship, but again no statistics are available. 48 According to official statistics, 23,979 Koreans lived in Germany on 31 December 2003. As many Koreans have already opted for German citizenship, the number of Korean migrants is considerably higher. Bericht der Beauftragten, . . . ibd. 49 41,062 citizens from Sri Lanka lived in Germany on 31 December 2003. Again, many Tamils have already taken German citizenship, so their number is considerably higher than these statistics show. Bericht der Beauftragten, . . . ibd. 50 On 31 December 2003, 28,557 Brazilian citizens were recorded in Germany. Bericht der Beauftragten . . . , ibd.

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As the table below shows, African and Latin American churches are overwhelmingly pentecostal / charismatic, while slightly more than half or the Asian and European / North Atlantic churches are Protestant or evangelical. Table 1. Migrant churches by origin of members and denominational family (Source: UEM database, 27 March 2006) Protestant / evangelical churches

Local Congregations of African Instituted Churches51

Pentecostal / charismatic churches

Anglophone Africa Francophone Africa Africa: bi- or multilingual churches Africa, other languages

4 4 6

1 7

97 41 58

4

1

4

Africa total 227

18

9

200 (app. 18,000 members)

Sri Lanka (Tamils) Korea other Asia / Asian international

7 31 16

23 13 12

Asia total 102

54


Italy Other Europe / North Atlantic / international

– 45

20 13

Europe / North Atlantic total 78

45


Latin America

3

8

Area / Country of origin of majority of members

Near East

10

2

Total 430

130 + 9 (app. 16,000 members)


Congregations vary in size from very small, with less than a dozen members, to very large, with more than a thousand members. European Protestant congregations have the highest membership figures,

51 African Instituted Churches like the Kimbanguist Church or the Celestial Church of Christ can neither be grouped with the pentecostals nor with the Protestants / evangelicals, and therefore make up a category of their own.

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while pentecostal / charismatic congregations tend to be smaller. The average membership of the latter is estimated at 80 members, though few churches actually have this number: Most churches consist of about 20–50 members, while a smaller number have more than 150.52 We have already stated that categorizing migrant churches by denominational markers and the country of origin of their members forces them into a framework which often does not correspond to how these churches would identify themselves: Most, if not all of the churches listed in the pentecostal / charismatic column would describe themselves as “New Mission Churches” with an international outlook and mission, even if they predominantly reach out to migrants from a certain language group. In this, they clearly differ from the churches in the Protestant / evangelical and AIC columns which tend to share a more ‘diasporal’ outlook, focusing on keeping alive the faith tradition and culture of a certain group defined by ethnic and narrower denominational markers, and limiting possible evangelistic activities to this group.53 While 130 of the 291 pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches in the UEM database are locally independent and do not have any denominational association, 161 have affiliated with a “non-German” denomination. Looking at church names, we can identify two different affiliation fields: Affiliation with a ‘mother church’ overseas (or origin-oriented affiliation); and affiliation with a migrant mega-church or other migrant churches in a purely ‘diasporal’ denomination. The term ‘denomination’ here was chosen to denote an organized church structure which should be distinguished from more loosely ordered networks. Churches affiliated with an overseas ‘mother church’ either belong to a pentecostal denominational church, or to large charismatic ministries which have planted branches in different countries. Several overseas

52 The UEM database records membership figures for 147 churches which represent a cross section of different types, nationalities, denominations, and sizes. In cooperation with a research project on the religious landscape in North Rhine Westphalia, average membership numbers were estimated at 160 for Protestant churches, and 84 for evangelical churches. A description of the project (in German language) can be found under www.ruhr/uni/bochum.de/relwiss/RP/Beschreibung.pdf, accessed 28 September 2005. 53 This could clearly be established from the short interviews, see also chapter 5.1.

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pentecostal churches with a larger number of congregations in Germany (e.g. the Church of Pentecost)54 have established a national or Continental European diasporal structure which functions with a certain degree of independence even though the leadership has to answer to the headquarters abroad. Within diasporal denominations, two distinct patterns of internal structural organization can be distinguished: One is what could be loosely termed a centralized structure which is built around a central, charismatic leadership figure (usually called ‘head pastor’, ‘apostle’, or ‘general overseer’) who has the final say on all important matters, and organized within a ‘lead congregation—satellite congregations’ model. I call such structures “diasporal mega-churches”. The other form of diasporal organization could be called ‘congregational’ or decentralized, with each congregation within a denomination being fairly independent, and all congregations equal. Neither a single leadership figure nor a ‘lead congregation’ is visible. These structures can be defined as “diasporal congregational denominations”. Both denominational fields described here are “non-German,” i.e. either having their headquarters in another country, or being led by immigrants. But migrant churches do not only affiliate with overseas or other migrant churches: In early 2006, forty-nine pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches in the UEM database were affiliated with a German denominational network, most of them with the Federation of Free Pentecostal Churches,55 but some also with the Baptist Federation,56 or the Federation of Free Evangelical Churches.57 Of these, 14 congregations were also affiliated with an overseas denomination and 16 congregations also with a diasporal denomination, therefore display-

54

This church is now the largest non-Catholic denomination in Ghana. Personal communication from Cephas Omenyo, University of Ghana, Legon. 55 Bund freikirchlicher Pfingstgemeinden (BfP), the largest German Pentecostal denomination. See www.bfp.de., accessed 12 September 2007. 56 The Baptist Federation in Germany has a strong charismatic renewal movement, and a number of its local congregations are clearly charismatic in character. For more information, see the website of the movement, www.ggenet.de, accessed 10 September 2007. 57 Like all free churches in Germany, the FEG also has struggled with challenges and influences from the charismatic movement, and cautiously opened towards it. See www.feg.de/uploads/media/Charismatisch_oder_anticharimatisch.pdf, accessed 10 September 2007.

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ing what could be called “denominational hybridity.” Denominational affiliations are obviously not seen as mutually exclusive, but as overlapping. It should also be noted that we are not looking at a static field, but a very dynamic one: Most migrant churches are young and developing, and may move from no affiliation to different affiliations over time. In the next chapter, we will look at some examples of such movements. 2.5. Historical dynamics: Foundation and development of migrant churches How are pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches started? From my own observations and from personal communications with church founders and leaders, the following ways have been identified: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of churches were established diasporally by students, refugees and other migrants who, after coming to Germany, found it difficult to integrate into existing German churches. They got together with others from a similar theological and / or cultural background and started Bible study groups that eventually grew into organized churches. Some of these groups crystallized around a person who came from abroad with a clear pastoral call, but no official mission from an established church. Somewhat later, a few established overseas pentecostal denominations sent a small number of missionaries with the particular assignment to found churches in Germany, or to consolidate and pastor small groups that already existed. Once a number of churches had come into existence, the most common way of starting new churches was either by a hostile split, an amicable separation, or by conscious planting. As far as I have been able to observe, splits seem to occur especially when more than one person claims leadership within a congregation. Pastors within pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches have a strong understanding of their own authoritarian role,58 but at the same time they believe and teach that the Holy Spirit can gift and prepare anybody for ministry. In many cases, local churches do not have structures for the sharing of authority once a person besides the pastor claims a call for a pastoral role. Bitter conflicts which result in hostile splits are often the con-

58

See chapter 3.

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sequence, with the challenger taking a part of the congregation with him / her when he / she leaves. In some cases, the officiating pastor and the challenger have been able to work out their conflict in such a way that it resulted in an amicable separation, usually with the challenger setting up a new ministry in another city so as to not take members away from the existing congregation. Over the past few years, churches affiliated with overseas denominations and diasporal mega-churches have become increasingly active in planting new congregations. Generally, the genesis of a church says very little about how this church develops and affiliates later on. This is clearly shown by the two following diagrams which map the genesis of a number of African churches in the Rhine-Ruhr area: Genesis of African Pentecostal / charismatic churches in the Rhein-Ruhr area Sources: Personal communication by several African pastors, own observations

Diagram 1

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Diagram 2

These diagrams show how, in the first case, a diasporally founded independent local church could bring forth, through splits and separation, three local independent churches, two of which then developed into mega-churches and established a number of daughter churches, and one church that eventually affiliated with an overseas ‘mother church’ and afterwards planted further congregations for that mother church. In the second case, a church founded by a missionary assigned for that purpose by a Ghanaian church saw several congregations split away, one of which became a mega-church by bringing forth daughter churches on three continents, while the other three affiliated with overseas ‘mother churches’. From one of these overseas denominational churches, a new independent local church then split away. It should be noted, too, that the congregations of the Church of Pentecost in North Rhine-Westphalia, though founded through two different splitting processes, now belong to the unified organizational structure of the Church of Pentecost / Germany. From their perspective, possibly, this diagram would look quite different, with different churches as precursors from which the unified Church of Pentecost then flows.

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chapter two 2.6. Migrant churches as part of a globalized discourse network

Above in chapter 2.3, we have described a pentecostal / charismatic discourse of which migrant churches are an important part. This discourse is enacted in sermons and Bible studies, in printed and electronic media, and, particularly, in pastors’ meetings which regularly take place within different networks shaped by language, ethnic59 or cultural background.60 This discourse is not limited to certain migrant subsets. It is bound into international and transnational networks of exchange and discourse which make up the global pentecostal / charismatic movement.61 “P / c Christians are a far-flung network of people held together by their publications and other media productions, conferences, revival meetings and constant travel.”62 Their exchange and theologizing is, therefore, by and in itself also intercultural. “The self-understanding as a Spirit-baptized Christian turns into a global trade mark that becomes transnationalized through discursive networks.”63 It should be noted that while there has been some research on the discourses which circulate within this movement,64 the role of migrant churches in this circulation process has not received much attention. This is somewhat surprising as it is likely that, in addition to satellite TV, printed materials, and international conventions and crusades, the migration of pentecostals and charismatics would be one of the factors driving the international circulation of certain topics and ideas within this globalized discourse.

59 According to a Congolese informant, all Congolese pastors’ networks have a strong ethnic or regional identity. 60 In the region of the UEM program, three Congolese, two Korean and two Tamil networks could be identified in addition to a large Anglophone West African network, the Council of Pentecost Ministers. 61 See Joel Robbins, The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, in: Annual Review of Anthropology, 2004, pp. 117–134, and also, Afe Adogame, The Quest for Space in the Global Spiritual Marketplace, in: International Review of Mission, Vol. LXXXIX No. 354, July 2000, pp. 400–409, and Sebastian Schüler, Unmapped Territories. Discursive networks and the Making of Transnational Religious Landscapes in Global Pentecostalism, in: PentecoStudies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2008, pp. 46–62. 62 Robbins, ibd. p. 125. 63 Sebastian Schüler, Unmapped Territories. Discursive networks and the Making of Transnational Religious Landscapes in Global Pentecostalism, in: PentecoStudies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2008, pp. 46–62, p. 53. 64 See, for example, André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani, Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington:

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Observations over the past nine years have shown that migrant churches regularly invite preachers and evangelists from the home countries or regions from which their members come. In the case of international churches, preachers will come from the different home countries of the members, since contacts are usually made along lines of personal acquaintance or relationship. Occasionally, preachers from other countries will be featured during special festivals or revivals. We have seen a Brazilian speak at a Francophone African festival, a Hongkong Chinese at the anniversary of a Nigerian church, and the occasional (Black) American at crusades or revivals. Preachers from the country of residence are also invited fairly regularly, even if they do not belong to a pentecostal or charismatic network. Observations also back up the assumption that in pentecostal / charismatic migrant households, Christian satellite TV programs like God TV,65 Trinity Broadcasting66 and numerous others67 are regularly watched. In terms of print media, books and magazines by US American Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal authors like Kenneth Copeland or Maurice Cerullo (to name just two famous and influential ones) as well as lesser-known writers like Dave Roberson68 circulate and are being read and discussed. The German Pentecostal evangelist Reinhard Bonnke69 is also popular particularly among African migrants, many of whom own and circulate books, DVDs, and video tapes made by his organization, Christ for all Nations. Similarly, books and DVDs of prominent preachers and evangelists from Africa, Asia and Latin America also circulate, though they remain, with few exceptions (like Paul Yonggi Cho from Korea) limited to their own language and therefore to certain subsets of the pentecostal / charismatic migrant scene. While Myles Munroe70 and Chris Oyakhilome71 are popular

Indiana University Press 2001, and Murray Dempster et al. (eds.), The Globalization of Pentecostalism. A Religion Made To Travel, Oxford: Regnum 1999. 65 www.god.tv, accessed 22 June 2007. 66 www.tbneurope.org, accessed 22 June 2007. 67 For a listing of stations receivable in Germany, see www.christtv.de, accessed 22 June 2007. 68 His book, The Walk of the Spirit—the Walk of Power. The Vital Role of Praying in Tongues, Tulsa (OK): Dave Roberson Ministries 1999, was given to me by one migrant pastor as a “must read.” 69 www.cfan.org, accessed 22 June 2007. 70 www.bfmmm.com, accessed 22 June 2007. 71 www.christembassy.org/english/profile.htm, accessed 22 June 2007.

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among English-speaking African migrants, Latin Americans will know Cesar Castellanos72 and Tamils D.G.S. Dhinakaran.73 Pastors in particular, but also church members make use of Christian websites like Crosswalk,74 share links with each other, and forward to all of their contacts e-mail newsletters from such organizations containing sermons, Biblical reflections, debates on political issues and even jokes. I regularly received such forwarded newsletters from pastors to whom I had a closer relationship. Most of such materials were in English, but some also in French. They also exist in other languages like Korean or Tamil. The discourse on evangelism among pentecostal / charismatic migrants is also influenced by theological training. Some pastors have been trained in seminaries in their home countries (or return for such a period of training after some time abroad); others spend time in pentecostal, charismatic or evangelical seminaries or Bible schools in Germany or Europe. International ministries like Rhema have also set up Bible schools and training centers.75 It should be noted here that pentecostal / charismatic migrants also attend evangelical courses and training programs like the Emmaus Bible School administered by the Central Africa Mission,76 or Protestant intercultural training programs like the kikk course organized by UEM. The kikk courses have shown that participants will choose what they accept and retain, and which content they reject. But migrants are not only recipients of this discourse, they are also producers. Pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors regularly travel to preach and evangelize, not just to their home countries and churches, but also to other places, following invitations based on personal acquaintances through informal networks. While pastors of smaller churches are usually limited to travel in Europe due to financial constraints, pastors of larger churches also engage in intercontinental travel, speaking in places as far apart as Korea and South Africa, Colombia and Australia. Many migrant pastors, particularly those with larger churches, also produce their own booklets or books77 which are sold after Sunday ser72 73 74 75 76 77

www.mci12.com, accessed 22 June 2007. www.jesuscalls.org/profile/dgs.asp, accessed 22 June 2007. www.crosswalk.com/pastors/, accessed 13 September 2007. www.rhema-germany.de, accessed 11 September 2006. http://zamonline.de/dt/emmaus.php, accessed 11 September 2006. Two examples from my collection are Sarpong Osei-Assibey, Going The Extra

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vices, at conventions, and when such pastors speak in other churches. They likely also circulate in the writers’ home countries, especially when printed there. Pastors from larger churches also use mass media, having regular spots on private, satellite or internet-based radio and TV stations.78 Furthermore, almost every church produces their own DVDs featuring conventions, seminars, or teachings, both with their own pastors and with guest speakers.79 Such DVDs circulate beyond the producing church through individual contacts and exchanges. In recent years, larger churches have set up their own websites which are also used to publish sermons and teachings.80 Last but not least, pentecostal / charismatic migrant church networks have set up their own theological training facilities81 in addition to numerous seminars and workshops organized locally, regionally, nationally or even internationally.82 Whatever can be said about the theology of pentecostal / charismatic migrants living in Germany needs to take into account that these migrants are part of a global, diffuse, informal and multi-focal discourse network. As Sebastian Schüler has noted, “in Pentecostalism everyday religious practice can be seen as ‘glocal’ acts that link religious agents to an imagined global community.”83 Schüler adds that “religious agents in Pentecostal communities often represent themselves as members of a global godly family [ . . .] The imagined global Mile. The Secret To Your Blessing, privately published 2007 (ISBN 978-3-00-021573-5), and Bosun Ajayi, Return to the Narrow Path, Lagos: Ibunkun Alafia (Nig.) Co. 2006. 78 For example, the Tamil pastor interviewed for this study produces two 30-minute broadcasts per week for Holy God TV (for more information, see www.christtv.de/ neuigkeiten.html, accessed 6 August 2007), while a Nigerian pastor based in Oberhausen has a weekly sermon hour Reborn Radio (“Station for African Diaspora”), see www.rebornradio.com/pastorjeremiah.asp (accessed 6 August 2007). 79 A number of such DVDs are in my collection, including footage of deliverance and healing sessions, preaching, Bible studies, and teachings on issues like “successful marriage.” 80 See, for example, www.houseofsolution.org (even featuring video!), www.faithcentre.de, www.wolic.de, all accessed 6 August 2007. 81 E.g. the Institut Biblique et Théologique in Bochum, www.ibtb-online.de, accessed 11 September 2006, Excel College of Ministry in Essen, or the discipleship school at Evangelische tamilische Maranatha-Gemeinde Schwerte. See also the list of UK institutions at www.bmcdirectory.co.uk/institute_list.php, accessed 30 October 2008. 82 For just one example, see www.womenofpurpose.de, accessed 8 August 2007. 83 Sebastian Schüler, Unmapped Territories. Discursive networks and the Making of Transnational Religious Landscapes in Global Pentecostalism, in: PentecoStudies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2008, pp. 46–62, p. 47.

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community of Spirit-baptized Christians creates a third space that functions as an idealized space of migration. [ . . .] The third space serves as a reference point for everyday practices. As an imaginative place of affiliation it becomes a predisposition for real transnational networks of discourse and practice.”84 This basically means that we can expect pentecostal / charismatic migrants anywhere in Europe or Northern America to have been shaped by this imagined—and, as we will see, often very real—global community. Consequently, the interviews analyzed in the next three chapters can be read as broadly representative not only for pentecostal / charismatic migrants in western Germany, but for all of those who are engaged in South—North migration. We need to keep this in mind as we move on to explore, in the next three chapters, the theological self-interpretations of pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors.

84

Ibd., pp. 52 f.

chapter three THE ROLE OF THE PASTOR: THE RELATIONSHIP TO ONE’S OWN CONGREGATION

The ordination service at the Congolese charismatic church was in full swing.1 Testimonies had been given by several people about the suitability of the person being ordained: “He has been like a father to me and my family.” The pastor responsible for the ordination, a Congolese pentecostal, had preached a sermon about the calling of Elisha. He had likened the throwing of Elijah’s mantle over Elisha to the ordination ceremony, but stressed that the ministerial anointing had to come from the Holy Spirit. Such anointing could only be had by tirelessly walking in the ways of the Lord, as far as “across the Jordan”.2 And it was this anointing of the Holy Spirit “that makes the difference in the ministry.” He had pointed out that to follow the call of the Lord, one literally had to give up one’s means of support: As Elisha had slaughtered his oxen and burned his plow,3 the pastor-to-be had to give up his worldly profession and lead a sacrificial life in the ministry. He would have to live for his congregation first and foremost, concentrating on them and turning his back to the world, like a conductor turned his back to the audience and concentrated on his orchestra only. Now, the pastor-to-be was kneeling on the floor in front of the congregation. Several invited pastors of different denominations and nationalities were anointing his forehead with oil and praying for the man being ordained to be filled with the Holy Spirit. In his final prayer, the pastor responsible for the ordination asked for the anointing of the Holy Spirit to come upon this new minister. He enumerated every gift that should be bestowed upon him: “The gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy, the gift of teaching, the gift of miracles, the gift of healing—let all of them come upon your servant, for his ministry in this congregation.”

This ordination service reveals, in a nutshell, a perception of pastoral ministry which is common among pentecostal / charismatic migrant

1 Ordination Service at the Ministère de Sénévé, Düsseldorf, June 18, 2006. Quotes taken from field notes. 2 See 2. Kings 2: 1–15. 3 1. Kings 19: 21.

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pastors. A certain understanding of pastoral ministry is regularly expounded in sermons, it comes across in informal exchanges between pastors, and it informs the interactions between pastors and their congregation members. In the following chapter, this study will provide an attempt to describe this discourse systematically. It is based on extended interviews with 20 male and two female pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors from three continents who were asked to recount how they had become pastors, and how they defined and lived their pastoral role. The answers showed both striking commonalities and notable differences, all of which will be delineated below. 3.1. The pastor as father and shepherd A pastor is like a father, who, when the child does something good, he praises the child, and when he does something that is not so good, corrects the child.

When asked to define the role of the pastor4 in relationship to his congregation, almost all my male interlocutors used the same imagery: The pastor is a shepherd and father to the congregation. Of the two female interviewees, one also used the image of the shepherd, while the other portrayed herself as a friend and mentor, but at one point in the interview also described her congregation members as her children. Like all metaphors, the images of shepherd and father / mother are open to interpretation, and different people will stress different aspects and dimensions of these metaphors. In the following chapters, these interlocking aspects and dimensions will be described and analyzed in greater detail. 3.1.1. The shepherd: Mediator between God and the congregation One dimension of the shepherd imagery used so frequently in the discourse about the pastoral role is what could be termed a ‘mediatory’ self-understanding: The interlocutors described their role as mediators

4 Actually, three of the interviewees identified themselves as apostles, and two as evangelists, even though all said that they also function as pastors. The distinction between the different offices is based, in Pentecostal / charismatic discourse, on Eph. 4:11 and known as five-fold ministry. In addition to apostles, evangelists and pastors, this passage mentions prophets and teachers.

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between God and the congregation, a position into which they had come by divine calling, and which gave them great authority. It is interesting to see that this concept is shared by African American preachers: “When the African-American preacher assumes his pulpit, he reaffirms for himself and his congregation his ‘chosen’ role as God’s messenger. He is the intermediary between God and the congregation.”5 In some of the interviews, this self-concept came across explicitly and clearly, while in others, it was stated more subtly. The more explicit statements came from African interviewees, regardless of their nationality, while the Asian interviewees were more indirect. One, the pastor represents God before the people. And two, he represents the people before God. That’s the first thing, he stands between God and his people, and he stands between the people and God. In a way, the pastor has been ordained, and has been authorized by God to mediate for the church, and there is a need for the members of the church also to recognize this authority, and give the due respect to the pastor. Otherwise, my understanding is, that if you are a member of the church, and you don’t respect the authority of the pastor, you might not get the blessing that you need. I think that the pastor is representing God. So God has given him [sic] this authority.

These three statements by West African pastors contain the most pointed wording of all the interviews. Here, the pastor clearly stands far above and outside the congregation, and is much closer to God than his members. It is implied that the people cannot access God directly— the pastor stands in ‘between’. The pastor’s place is God-given, and can therefore not be questioned. Furthermore, non-acceptance of the pastor’s role will result in a lack of ‘blessing’: The fullness of life, prosperity, the solution of problems can only be attained by subordinating oneself to the person God has put in a place of authority. How does a pastor represent God to his congregation? Most interlocutors described the mediatory role as a prophetic one: A pastor needs to discern what God wants to say to the congregation, he needs to receive guidance and revelations, and he has to impart them to the church which has to listen and to follow.

5 Gerald L. Davis, I got the Word in me and I can sing it, you know. A Study of the Performed African-American Sermon, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1985, p. 69.

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chapter three The spiritual father, you are intermediate between the congregation and God. So you receive from God, and you give it to the congregation. God runs his church on ‘Thus sayeth the Lord!’ It is his will that must be done. And the pastor must be positioned in a way to correctly discern what God is saying. And be strong enough to follow it and to lead the people. A pastor must learn how to pray every day, and also, a pastor must learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit, because people will come to you from time to time, they will come with many things to you and God’s leadership is very important. [. . .] People will come with very good ideas, but it’s up to the pastor to know whether all good ideas can be helpful for the church. So we really need God’s idea, and God’s idea comes as you spend much time in prayer and also in study the word of God.

Clearly, the idea behind these statements is that God will reveal his will to the pastor rather than to mere congregation members. But to receive such revelation, pastors need to position themselves—they need to lead an intensive spiritual life.6 Another aspect of this representation of God to the congregation was unfolded by two other interviewees: You know, sometimes they [i.e. pastors] are referred to as ‘Daddy’ or ‘Father’, because they see them as—we cannot see God, but we can see this man. Every pastor should have God’s nature. God’s nature, God’s number one nature is love.

In the fatherly love of the pastor, the congregation members can see the loving character and nature of God himself. God does not remain invisible and abstract; he is mirrored by his representative and ambassador. Such wording seems to suggest that a pastor is by nature different from his congregation members. His representation of God is not just functional, by transmitting God’s will to the congregation, it is literal: he is like God, he makes God visible in the love that he shows to the congregation members. The pastor represents God to the people through his words, his nature and his actions. At the same time, he also represents the people before God. He is the one who has to constantly pray and intercede for his congregation and its members.

6

More on this in chapter 3.1.3.


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The pastor is a shepherd, like a shepherd who cares for the sheep. That means, first of all, that the pastor must pray for the congregation, must have much time to pray for the congregation. I need to try to pray more, pray more, I have more responsibility. A brother, perhaps, just prays for himself, perhaps also for the congregation, but I as a pastor, [. . .] I find it my duty to get to know each and every one of our members, so that I can pray precisely for everyone, and this is what I do. You [as a pastor] should aim to be very, very prayerful, because you have a duty, you have a sheep to take care of, you have a sheep to intercede on their behalf to God—so you should be very prayerful.

Care for the congregation members is here first and foremost defined as a spiritual task. The pastor is not characterized as a professional who counsels and advises, but rather as a kind of amplifier who transmits people’s needs to God who is then expected to act and help. Whether the pastor is simply someone who has more time to pray, or whether his prayers are seen as more efficacious remains open here. What is clear, though, is that as the mediator between God and the congregation, the pastor has great authority. 3.1.2. The authority of the shepherd From where does the authority of the pastor come? All interviewees agreed that their authority comes from God. Because of their calling and close relationship with God, pastors receive divine guidance and revelation. This means that in relationship to the congregation, they speak with an absolute authority and expect obedience. They are the shepherds, the members are only sheep. My authority? God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. [. . .] The spiritual father, you are intermediate between the congregation and God. So you receive from God, and you give it to the congregation. So all your life must be different. The pastor must be authoritative. God did not call us to be Lords and masters, at the same time, God is not a democrat. And God did not call us to run the church by consensus of opinion. God runs his church on ‘Thus sayeth the Lord!’ It is his will that must be done. And the pastor must be positioned in a way to correctly discern what God is saying. And be strong enough to follow it and to lead the people. The authority we have is from God. [. . .] When it comes to the church, the pastor has absolute authority. Authority in the sense that he should decide what happens [. . .] And so his authority, I would say God gave

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chapter three him that authority, and he exercises this authority in whichever area he is. [. . .] Nowadays, the congregation or the important elders, they are more powerful than the pastors, and which is, in my own opinion, it’s not well, it’s not okay. The reason why I say this: If someone is given a position of authority, he should be given that absolute authority to be able to function. And for him to be able to function effectively, he must be able to say: ‘this we will do, that we will leave for later. This, I will pray about it, and whatever the Holy Spirit reveals to me, that’s what we will do.’ [. . .] While the congregation, in the other sense, he’s not to lord over them, or be boss over them, rather to be a father to them, and the congregation to be able to listen to him: ‘Oh, you are the pastor, that’s okay, let’s go ahead’.

Clearly, these pastors see themselves as mediators of divine authority: They pass on to the congregation what God wants to tell them, and therefore cannot condone any questioning or disagreement. There is no room for any kind of consensus-seeking or democratic decision processes: The church is not governed by majority, but by divine fiat, and only the pastor knows what this is. This opinion was not only held by the male interlocutors. Both interviewed women pastors explicitly voiced the necessity that congregation members had to accept the authority of the pastor, because any disrespect or disobedience would cause problems in the congregation: I think, first of all, the pastor should know that he [sic] has special grace. And the people also, they must be . . . they have to see the grace that God has given the pastor and accept the leader. Because if the people don’t accept him [sic] as the leader, then there’s going to be problems in the church. Authority—okay, anyway comes from God. [. . .] But people need to recognize your authority. If they don’t recognize, hmmm, it’s very difficult to go ahead with them.

Again, these statements leave no room for a democratic style of church government. But while clearly supporting the suspicion often held by Protestants that pentecostals and charismatics have a very authoritarian understanding of the ministry, the interviews and also field observations show that in practice, things are not so simple. For all interviewees, the authority of the pastor is basically a deducted authority. It does not belong to the person of the pastor, but to God, and depends, as will be shown, on proper spiritual practice. First of all, we should not forget: The congregation does not belong to the pastor, it belongs to Jesus. [. . .] Authority comes from God. Therefore, we must not abuse this authority. [. . .] But through prayer,


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through the Bible, and especially through the Holy Spirit [. . .] we can get the right direction from God. The authority as an apostle or pastor does not come from people, but the authority comes from the Holy Spirit. I can give an example: A pastor, an apostle, must watch over his church in the Holy Spirit. [. . .] So many things happened in our congregation because of my prayers. Why that? A pastor or apostle, in front of his congregation, has to be holier, he has to have a very strong faith, because all of those problems in the congregation, we can’t solve them with our flesh, our intelligence, or our science. No, we only have a solution if the leader of the church remains properly before God. Therefore, this is a great task.

Both these statements claim a God-given authority for the pastor, but immediately qualify this in such a way that the authority is seen as a great responsibility and burden. Pastors are not dictators who impose their own ways and ideas, but just mediators of a power outside of themselves. To be able to access that power, they need to do hard spiritual work. One interviewee’s statement shows, though, that many might easily misunderstand what pastoral authority is all about: Many pastors think this is a great job: ‘We can sit in an office and have a few servants, and we tell them do this or that.’ But this is not my opinion. In my position as a pastor, I start from cleaning toilets to office work. Because Jesus has said we must be servants, therefore, we as pastors must take care of our sheep, these sheep, what they need, and there are sick sheep too, and handicapped sheep, and all kinds of problems and difficulties which need to be solved. That is our important task [. . .] We have an authority that is given by God. And this authority has to remain even though we are servants. We cannot just let go of this authority, because then we cannot serve God. This authority has been given by God, and we must understand, this is our calling, and we work for the people. I, for example, am a pastor, and I have to watch carefully about what is happening in the church.

Obviously, this pastor suspects that some other pastors might have chosen the ministry to attain a position of power. He himself may have been criticized for being too authoritarian, as his emphasis on being a servant does not deny the fact that he strictly controls what is going on in his church. But this statement shows that the great authority of the pastor is intimately tied with his hard work for the sake of the congregation members. Other interviewees similarly qualified their statements about pastoral authority by pointing out that they had to be humble servants of their congregations:

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chapter three When we say ‘I am the pastor’, the Lord himself must have called and anointed us. That gives the authority, and the congregation should accept and recognize this. Not use our fist and say ‘I am the pastor, you must submit etc.’ No. And I believe authority also comes by serving. So the members should humble themselves and respect the pastor, and the pastor should also humble himself and respect the members.

Furthermore, some of the interviewees explicitly limited the pastoral authority to spiritual questions, while describing other matters as being subject to discussion of the whole congregation. And even in spiritual questions, there was a clear expectation that revelations might not solely be made to the pastor, but that elders and other leaders could experience similar guidance from God, so that they would more easily follow the leadership of the pastor. It depends on what is in question. But the pastor plays a significant role. In spiritual things, I would say the authority lies with the pastor. It is very simple, God gives authority. [. . .] I don’t mean I decide everything by myself. Sometimes I do, but we also discuss. [. . .] Sometimes, we need to wait until God has convinced the others, too.

Again, the qualification is evident: A pastor can only push authoritatively in a certain direction if he is sure that he is following divine directions. But if he is sure, no more discussion is possible. With pastors claiming such a kind of divine authority in a situation where there are many competing churches and pastors,7 the problem of how to assess somebody’s claim to authority is a burning one, and came up in many interviews even though it was not asked for explicitly. Several pastors stated that any pastoral claim to authority had to be backed by a certain lifestyle, thereby developing some kind of criteria for such an assessment: Before you can really say someone is a pastor, you need to watch him, his character: Does his character reflect that of God, or what the Bible teaches? So all these things must be put into consideration before you can really say that this person is a pastor. If all those things apply to his life, then he should be given the absolute authority to be able to function! A real pastor gets his authority from God. [. . .] I mean if [someone] says he is called, if he says he has the backing of God, I can’t question that. But you know, the Bible tells us that we will know, from the fruits, what the person is.

7

More on this in chapter 3.3.


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These statements suggest, at least indirectly, that congregation members and pastoral colleagues have the right and the duty to assess and evaluate any pastor claiming divine authority to see whether he or she does indeed speak what God has said, and lives a lifestyle that would be considered biblical. Here, possibly, is one of the causes of member migration from one church to another: A pastor who does not show the characteristics expected of someone truly living a spiritual life does not need to be followed. That such considerations may indeed play a role can be seen from the following statement by one of the interviewed pastors: If you don’t accept the authority of the pastor, you better leave to another church where you will respect the authority of the pastor; otherwise you will not get the blessing!

Here again, the mediating function of the pastor comes into play. The blessing that church members wish to receive is tied to their obedience, their submission to their pastor, but not to their membership in a certain church or congregation. Switching congregations will not take away the blessing, only disrespectful behavior against a particular pastor. This interviewee, while claiming an extraordinary authority of the pastor, also conceded that congregation members had the right to assess whether this claim was substantial or not. While what has been described above could be seen as the majority discourse, it is by no means uncontested. One interviewee explicitly tied the pastoral authority to the office of a pastor rather than to the call or anointing of a particular person. He also stressed that pastoral authority was not just given by God, but also acceded to the pastor by the congregation members: We know that God gives us power and authority, but obviously, the Bible did not say he gives only the pastor authority. The pastor stands in an office, not a position. According to Ephesians 4, he is in an office, that means if this personality is not in that office, another personality can fit in there. So it’s not a position, it’s an office or it’s a function. Therefore, his authority, actually, doesn’t come from his position, his authority comes from the people. The acceptance of the people, the people, the people that he leads will give him his authority depending on how he discharges his duties.

Two of the interviewed pastors explicitly rejected the idea that pastors had a special authority: Any pastor say he have authority over his church, I think he is not yet saved, he is not born again. That’s the way I feel it. [. . .] The church is

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chapter three not mine. [. . .] It’s Jesus that owns the church. Because the people in the church are God’s people, they are not mine. [. . .] So I’m not superior, I’m not the authority over the church. I’m only a servant. All members have the same Holy Spirit; no one has more or less. The difference is in the responsibility [. . .] Many pastors think they are top, or the first, or different from other people. No! We must understand that we are all the same, there only is the problem of different responsibilities. [. . .] Sometimes I visit a church and the pastor sits on an extra chair in front, like a chief—that is not appropriate in the church, we only have one chief, Jesus Christ. [. . .] I am not of the opinion that the pastor must be an ‘extra man’.

While the first interlocutor makes it clear that he expects to mediate divine guidance to the church, he also expects that members of his congregation can be mediators like himself. The second interlocutor again has a more functional understanding of the pastoral role—not the spiritual gifts or power are different, only the responsibilities of a pastor or a member. By ceding all authority to Jesus Christ alone, both interviewees open up the possibility of a more democratic way of assessing divine guidance within a church. But even the interviewees who denied a special authority of the pastor stressed that whatever pastors said and did hinged on their spirituality. We shall therefore turn next to what pastors had to say in the interviews about their spiritual lives. 3.1.3. “To stay with God always”—The spiritual life of a shepherd With many of the interviewees claiming a special spiritual authority as pastors, one question immediately suggested itself and was put explicitly to all interviewees: Do pastors have to lead a spiritual life that is more intense, more time-consuming, in short: superior to that of their congregation members? Interestingly, the answers given varied widely. On the one hand, a majority of both male and female interviewees insisted that their spiritual life had to be quantitatively more intense than that of their congregation members: As they were leaders, they had to give, but they could not give what they have not received before. If a pastor is like a member, one cannot call him a pastor. A pastor who just prays one hour, half an hour, I cannot call him a pastor. [. . .] That means as pastors we need to learn more, pray more than the others. If people pray for two hours, members of the church, the pastor should


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pray four. If people fast once every week, pastors should fast more. He should study the Bible more, and he should read more. [. . .] You can’t lead anybody who knows more than you know. Also, pastors need to be able to position themselves that God can give them wisdom, and God will give them knowledge. When I was a Christian, I never fasted. As a Christian, I came to pray on Sundays, and afterwards, I forgot. But today it is not so, I must pray, fast, I must always search the face of Jesus Christ.

These statements show a somewhat mechanistic and quantitative understanding of spirituality: Only those who pray longer, fast more often, and read the Bible more than all others will truly be able to be leaders, to receive revelation and guidance from God. It is their spirituality that sets pastors apart, and that enables them to maintain their authority. Such a quantitative concept has, of course, the advantage that it gives one a relatively easy method to assess the claim to pastoral authority. On the other hand, a minority of interviewees refused the notion that they had to live a more intense spiritual life than their congregation members: It is very, very important for every Christian to have spiritual nourishment in the morning, from the father, to read his word, to pray and ask and praise and ask, it is very, very important, not only for me, but for all who have been born again. The task for the pastor is to not be alone. He must always walk together with his people. I think the people need to learn how their pastor prays and understands the Bible, and then walk together. I am not of the opinion that the pastor should be an extra-man.

These two pastors clearly disagreed with a view that sets pastors apart from their congregations as spiritual super-humans. But the fact that the second speaker explicitly repudiated any position of a pastor as “extra-man” suggests that this understanding is actually common among pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors. One interviewee, while agreeing to the fact that a pastor should lead a more intense spiritual life than his congregation members, at least acknowledged that a strong, prayerful spirituality was not limited to pastors: Generally, yes [the pastor should pray more than his congregation members]. But not absolutely, no. [. . .] Some old women, they have much time, they pray much more than pastor, that’s right. So not absolutely, no.

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Regardless of whether or not they believed they had to have a stronger spiritual life than their members, all interviewees expressed the thought that they could not function properly unless they kept a very close relationship with God. I must always settle it within myself that nothing will be able to separate me from the love of God. [. . .] If one wants to stay connected to God, one must continually stay within the realm of the Holy Spirit, to lead and guide and console. This is why I always encourage myself, each day when I wake up, that I pray: ‘God, teach me what to say today.’

In all interviews, the pastors described their work as basically spiritual, and therefore in need of being nurtured and nourished by spiritual means. These were clearly seen as far more important than any kind of professional training or scientific knowledge which could not touch the spiritual realm. The interviewees stated that there was a spiritual reality behind the visible reality, and that this spiritual reality influenced everything from one’s individual life to the political scene. Therefore, they did not describe themselves as powerless and marginalized even though they lived in Germany without a secure visa status, but rather as people who, through their spiritual life, tapped into a source of power that was stronger than anything the political or social world could give them. In the life of Jesus Christ, his strong side was prayer, was prayer. We could see that when Jesus did miracles, when Jesus did miracles, that was: Jesus had had much time in prayer. And I believe a pastor has to do this, to pray much. And secondly, to read the Bible.

Prayer was named by all respondents as extremely important in the spiritual life of pastors, not only as intercession for the congregation, but also as a kind of ‘listening prayer’, a prayer that ended with receiving guidance, vision, revelation from God. Many interviewees stated that they prayed until they had received what they called “an answer” from God to their questions. A pastor must learn how to pray every day, and also, a pastor must learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit, because people will come to you from time to time, they will come with many things to you, and God’s leadership is very important. [. . .] So we really need God’s idea, and this God’s idea comes as you spend much time in prayer, and also in study the word of God. I always depend on the Holy Spirit, or Jesus Christ. I pray a lot to receive something from him, before I take a step, yes. Because if you didn’t pray more, and you didn’t read more, you can never receive something from


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God. And to give to the congregation. [. . .] So it’s up to you always, wait upon the Lord, and God to give you something. Because the Bible says Moses always waited upon the Lord to receive something from him and give the Israelites.

Prayer and fasting were also described as tools which equip the pastor with spiritual armor and weapons for a spiritual battle. Some interviewees explicitly described a world which was ruled by demons and devils against which theological knowledge and professional training were worthless. They saw themselves and their congregations under attack by demons and devils, and stated that in these battles only spiritual strength could give them an upper hand: [The pastor] needs to have time to pray, needs to have time to set himself apart, and wait upon God in fasting, because in every area you can go— maybe coming from the Evangelical circles, you don’t know this!—but every area has got some certain types of spirits, and you need to be able to break through to be able to have a ground to establish everything [. . .] And you need the strength from God to be able to pray through these things, to be able to establish anything, to be able to get anything going. And so, you need to maintain a consistent holy life. You need to maintain a consistent prayer life. You need to maintain a consistent reading and studying of the word. A spiritual pastor needs to take care that no demons or devils destroy our thoughts. One must really remain in God; stay more, better with more prayer and word of God. Need, need [to have a special spiritual life]! Because as a leader, you get all the attacks. It’s much—you are much more vulnerable to be attacked and to fall. Because anybody is watching you. We need special protection from God, special protection!

Asked about their spiritual practices, the interviewees described the great lengths to which they go to maintain their spiritual strength. I pray at least once every hour, and read at least 50 chapters of the Bible every day. Fifty, otherwise I cannot get through. That is my task. I get up at 4 a.m., and then I first read the Bible, then three hours of prayer, and in the evening, I and my family [pray] for two hours, and the rest, my wife and I. So we pray about seven hours every day. [God said]: ‘You begin to pray at 12 midnight every day.’ And that’s why till today, my alarm is permanently set to a quarter to 12 at night. I try to go to bed earlier, and even when I don’t go to bed earlier, I still will go by 12 midnight. [. . .] I could pray for one hour, for three hours, for four hours, it depends on how alert and awake I am. Mostly, every week I set a day apart, and then, in every three months, a

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chapter three week. There are times also that I am led by the Holy Spirit to fast for 21 days. [. . .] But in between, the pastors—if I’m in Ghana, we go on a retreat on a regular basis. We go to the mountain. [. . .] So that has been my practice. When I’m led by the Spirit, I go to the mountain. Even when I’m here, I go to somewhere in Solingen, there is a place there, [. . .] I go there, hide myself.

Even if the concrete practice varies, a spiritual discipline is described by all the interviewees quoted above. Regularity seems very important to them, though there may also be occasions to put in a special effort: “When I’m led by the Spirit, I go to the mountain.” In the interviews and also in informal conversations, pastors talk freely about their spiritual practices. Pastoral spirituality is not a private matter, it is public and of concern for the congregation. As pastors describe their own role and function, a regular spiritual discipline becomes the most important tool to enable them to do what they actually expect to do. Spiritual discipline is more important that theological or managerial training, and prayer and Bible reading are seen as the most important task of the pastor. Without such spiritual discipline, the pastor will not have spiritual power, and therefore no authority. 3.1.4. Sacrificing oneself for the congregation and living as a role model The passages above aimed at describing and analyzing how pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors understand their own authority and spirituality. Interestingly, in the interviews, these aspects had to be teased out by explicit questions. But when first asked to describe their position as pastor in relationship to the congregation, most interviewees started out explicating the image of the shepherd or father / mother in terms of the sacrifice it demanded of them, or in terms of the love and service they were rendering to their congregation. They made it very clear that being a pastor did not mean looking out for oneself, and that the profession was not an easy one. Unspoken, there may also have been the rejection of the common premise that many of these pastors entered the ministry for personal gain, and came to Germany for ‘greener pastures’.8 It is not surprising that the strongest statements in this vein came from pastors who do not receive a fixed salary from 8 See Gifford, African Christianity, 345 ff., and also Nsodu, Mbinglo, Black Angels in the White Man’s Country, Legon / Accra 2004, which has been quite influential in the debate about migration of pastors from Ghana to Europe and Northern America.


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their congregations, but live from (often small) donations and the salary their wives draw, often from unskilled labor. Clearly, the Johannine imagery of Jesus as the good shepherd who sacrifices his life for his sheep informed this kind of understanding. . . . a pastor should be like a father and a nursing mother.9 And . . . sensitive to this role. Even Paul said in 1. Corinthians: ‘Many want to be teacher, but not many are fathers.’ Fathers, not only do they give life to the children, but they take care of their whole life. That’s why I want to always be like a father and like a mother with love. They feed them, they love them, they sacrifice their lives. Personally, I also think good shepherd. That came from St. John’s Gospel. [. . .] A Pastor must sacrifice his life to the congregation, for the congregation. [. . .]. The pastor must be sacrificial. The work we are called to do does not give much room for personal convenience. [. . .] The pastor has to be compassionate, like Jesus Christ, and he has to show a good example of compassion. A pastor has to have a very wide heart; he has to be able to bear so many things. I cannot tell these stories of what we go through, but it’s like . . . you need a very big heart, the heart of a father. This is where we know these who are pastors and these who are not.

According to the interviewees, shepherding and fathering / mothering a congregation far exceeds holding worship services, preaching rousing sermons, and even working miracles: What makes a man of God is the way you relate to the people. [. . .] Everybody can do miracles, everybody can preach a great sermon, it’s— in fact, preaching is one of the easiest things every pastor or every Christian leader can do [. . .] but that is not enough. What is enough is, after the preaching, after everything, the people watch you, they watch how you relate to them.

It is evident from the interviews that the self-definition as shepherd and father puts enormous expectations and pressure on the pastors. They describe themselves as living for their congregation members, sacrificing themselves for their gain. In this again, they see themselves as fulfilling a mediating role, making God visible to the people. 9 This Korean pastor was the only one to also use the image of a mother. All other pastors remained within the father imagery. This may be due to cultural factors: In Chinese and Korean Buddhism, the figure of a female Boddhisatva, Guanyin, is very important in popular religiosity. This has had some clearly discernible influences on Christianity, and popular sermons have been stressing motherly images of God, which in turn would encourage motherly images for pastoring.

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chapter three Every pastor should have God’s nature. God’s nature, God’s number one nature is love [. . .] Love can make you touch everyone’s life, love can make you touch all nations, love can make you touch the sick, the prisoner, the depressed, people with all kinds of problems . . .

The interviewees described themselves as comforters, challengers, advisors, counselors, social workers, helpers with bureaucratic procedures, interpreters—often accessible around the clock10 and always expected to have advice and a solution for whatever problem. Well, the pastor is a shepherd. You know, the shepherd is supposed to care for the sheep. He is supposed to be able to understand the sheep, know their problems, know how to cater for them, know how to feed them, know how to console them when they are hurting, know how to relate to them, know how to communicate with them. But in a nutshell, he is supposed to be the shepherd, the caretaker, so to say, of the flock. We help in every kind, regardless of what situation we are faced with. As pastor, we really have to have a position as servant, not a director, that is not a calling. As a servant, that means regardless of the situation, being ready, 24 hours, with these members, or a Christian who comes with problems, then go there directly to solve these problems. There is sickness too, and family problems, and all needs to be properly taken care of. A pastor is a servant. [. . .] Sometimes I come to the church at ten o’clock in the morning, and I get home at 1 a.m., I get home at 1 a.m., so it is over 12 hours. On Sundays, sometimes I forget to eat, even, I make sure that I, I call out my whole life for the people [. . .] Throughout weekdays too, I have counseling sessions, but I make sure that the people see and know that I love them, and they see and know that I have time for them.

It is not surprising in such a context that a number of the pastors interviewed explicitly talked about being role models for their congregation members. The shepherd-father does not just preach and counsel, pray and perform miracles. He—and his family!—live an exemplary life which is a challenge and a comfort to the congregation. He [the pastor] needs to be an example, more than any other leader. He must try to be an example. [The pastor] must try to be an example for his congregation. He must take great care, because he is a public man.

10 “I always sleep with my mobile phone right next to me on the bed, so that people can always reach me.” A Nigerian Pentecostal pastor, talking to German pastors-intraining about his work, 13 June 2006.


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I see the role of the pastor as a model, being an example for the people. [. . .] And for me, it’s a motto, that a pastor should study the word, practice it, do what the word says, before he teaches it. And being a model for the people—the people should see you practicing what you are telling them. You should be an inspirer! A pastor should aim high! You should have a goal, you should be in a position where people find you attractive, something that I want to be, I want to be like my pastor, I want my marriage to be like my pastor’s marriage, I want my children to become like my pastor’s children. That is how I see the role of the pastor, to be a model in everything, to be an example for the people of God to follow. For you to be an effective leader, you must always be an example, be an example in serving others, be an example—you need to be an example of forgiving others! People watch you. [. . .] They, they study and they watch the pastor, someone will not read the Bible but they read the life of the pastor as, as the Bible! So they will do what the leader does.

It is obvious that within this discourse about the pastoral role, there is no distinction whatsoever between the office and the person. Being a pastor does not just mean to perform certain functions, but rather to become a totally changed person, somebody who through one’s life inspires, encourages and challenges all congregation members. Being a pastor is not a profession, it is a calling: A calling into a totality of service, into a life that is qualitatively different from one’s former life. 3.1.5. Becoming a shepherd: Call, training, ordination, gifts of the Spirit All interviewees agreed that a pastor can only be a real pastor, a proper shepherd if he or she has been called directly by God, through the Holy Spirit, to be a pastor. Being a pastor is a ministry, a gift, an office that is bestowed by God. Nobody can be a pastor that hasn’t been called. A pastor must be called, because the Bible let us know, in Ephesians, that when Jesus Christ went to heaven, he sent some gifts to earth, and so he gave some to be apostle, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be teachers, some to be pastors and overseers and so on. And so, if he doesn’t get the call, he cannot be a pastor. Or you can be a pastor, but it’s not from God. If we look into the Bible . . . all people who have started to work for God, it began with a call from God! I think anybody who is a pastor must first, only have the call.

The question how a call is experienced and assessed will be dealt with in chapter 3.2. Here, we will just look into the more formal aspects of

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becoming a pastor, specifically how the interviewees talk about training and ordination. Unlike the conformity about a divine call as the prerogative of becoming a pastor, the general discussion about the way to become a pastor does not show much agreement. The question whether a pastor needs professional training seems secondary. Of the 22 pentecostal / charismatic interviewees, eight have not even had any kind of informal theological training, ten have had some kind of Bible school education reaching from correspondence and weekend courses to one year at a full-time Bible school, and only four had more than one year of formal theological training. Most of the interviewees did not discuss theological or professional training at all as a necessity on one’s road to becoming a pastor. Those few who did made it clear that informal training and mentoring were considered as least as important as a formal education. I also think that every pastor must have some training, whether formal or informal. Once he wants to do it as a profession, obviously, a pastor’s work is a calling, but, apart from the fact that it’s a calling, if he, if anybody want to lead a church and take it as his profession, or, what do you say, as his vocation, then he must get a professional training. It could be formal or informal, but that is necessary. So that he can do his pastoral duties.

Several pastors described ways of informal training as very important, either in addition to formal training, or as the sole route. This would usually consist of working under the authority of an experienced pastor. Both of the following quotes come from pastors who mostly had informal training themselves: If somebody just comes up and says ‘I’m a pastor, God is calling me to be a pastor!’, and the person does not belong to a church, he is not under authority, he is not under a spiritual head, somebody who is training you, somebody who is disciplining you, somebody who can straighten you up—then I don’t think that person has a calling! When the calling comes from the Lord, you need to be equipped, of course. The Lord can train you, but also as a pastor, it is necessary that you understand the process [. . .] so I believe also the process goes on with training. Bible school or whatever theoretical education, and also to be mentored by an elderly pastor, by guidance, because it is not the book knowledge, and it is not only the Spirit direction, but it is also by getting experience imparted in you.

Ordination was not a big topic in the interviews. Only two of the respondents, both from denominational churches, when asked about


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the basis of the pastoral authority, mentioned recognition by a congregation or a church organization as a prerogative: Spiritually, [the authority of the pastor] must come from Jesus, trinitarian God, through anointing or through calling. A pastor must be called. I want to emphasize this very much! Innerly, personally, . . . vertically must be very conscious that he was called by Jesus to be a pastor. And horizontally must be recommended and called by congregation and other people. [. . .] But first thing is anyway, pastor must the authority come from God. [. . .] This authority from God must be materialized, criticized, through congregation and people. This is also very important. Some say: ‘Oh, I have been called by God, and I have all authority, but people don’t accept it!’ [. . .] So both, I think. It cannot be separated; it must come together, both sides. I believe that the authority comes from the calling by the Lord. But in this world, if we are an organization here, it also comes from the leadership of the church.

One of the female interviewees, when asked about her ordination, recounted that she was ordained three times, by different people, within different networks, but she was unable to put these ordinations into a temporal order. As she told a very elaborate call narrative, it can be assumed that for her, an ordination is not the basis of pastoral authority. After listening to the interviewees’ statements about their calling and authority, questions about the necessity of certain spiritual gifts suggested themselves: Would one have to have specific gifts of the Spirit to qualify as a pastor? The answers show clearly that within this reasoning, the answer is no. For most of the respondents, gifts are tied neither to the pastoral office nor to the call. The Holy Spirit has been poured out over everybody in the congregation; and anybody can display great and miraculous gifts. The gifts do not make the pastor; they are something he or she shares with the congregation members. These gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to each believer. Therefore, a pastor also has these . . . I am using the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. But that does not mean that the qualification of the pastor consists of the gifts, no. Conversely, each believer can be used by the Holy Spirit for the manifestation of new gifts, yes. To be a pastor, the more important thing really is the calling by the Lord. And then God will equip that.

Like the congregation members, the pastor is equipped with spiritual gifts when the need for them arises: But that does not mean that, before you be a pastor, you need to have all these gifts, to be a pastor. [. . .] So I believe that, as you go on with your ministry life, different gifts can show up in your life.

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Here, the gifts are not seen as ‘belonging’ to a certain person, or even as adhering to a certain person for all times. Rather, they are an equipment given by the Spirit to deal with certain situations, and are given as the need arises. For the pastor, the call is important, not the gifts. A somewhat different view was voiced only by the pastor from the Church of Pentecost. This is not surprising, as in the context of a hierarchically organized church, the freedom of action of the Holy Spirit and the authority of the instituted leadership need to be reconciled. This pastor described the way from the calling to the ordination so: First of all, the Spirit acts by calling a certain person into the ministry, and at the same time letting that person’s superiors know about this call. In a second step, the call is assessed by the church hierarchy. Then, the person is sent for at least some months of training, both in Biblical theology and also in pastoral practice. After that training, ordination takes place. And during the ordination act, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are passed on from specially gifted persons in the church hierarchy to the newly ordained pastor: If they pray for you [the pastor], or they ordain you, the apostles or prophets will impart gifts in you. The Holy Spirit gifts: The gift of wisdom, the gift of knowledge, the gift of discerning the spirits, working of miracles, faith, the gift of prophecy, interpretation of tongues.

No other interviewee, though, voiced this particular concept. They rather stressed that gifts might be given at a certain time, for a certain situation, i.e. these gifts might be “operating through” a pastor, or be “exercised through” him. They remain gifts of God, something the pastor or a church hierarchy does not control. Nevertheless, all interviewees agreed that spiritual gifts were important in the execution of the pastoral ministry. When it came to the question which gifts might be particularly important for a pastor, several interviewees said that it would be good for pastors to have “all nine gifts”11 of the Spirit, even though they admitted that this might not be realistic, or that not all gifts would be in operation at all times.

11 This list usually encompasses the gift of the discernment of spirits, the gift of faith, the gift of glossolalia, the gift of healing, the gift of interpretation of tongues, the word of knowledge, the gift of miracles, the gift of prophecy, and the word of wisdom. Cf. J.R. Michaels, Article “The Gifts of the Spirit”, in: New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, pp. 664–667.


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[In a] very idealistic way, I would say, a pastor, if he has all gifts, it’s the best. But of course, sure, the Holy Spirit gives different gifts. For Pastor Yonggi Cho in Korea, when he was young, all these nine gifts were shown, exercised through him. But he says: ‘Eventually, my gift was faith.’ Faith. So, it depends upon the pastor, where he is. I believe that the pastor needs the gifts of the Spirit, and I pray every pastor will have all the nine.

Most pastors, though, only named two or three gifts of the Spirit that they found important for the execution of their ministry. The preference of certain gifts over others throws a strong light on how these pastors understand and live their ministries. Some pastors described themselves as miracle workers, or at least as someone who would occasionally have to function in this role: Each pastor must also show real power, so that people start to believe, but you have to give people a miracle so that their faith increases. And many people, sick people etc., need to be healed [. . .] In my opinion, it is better if the pastor has this gift. He [the pastor] needs to operate in the gifts of the Spirit, like prophecy, like the gifts of healing and that. Power gifts, casting out devils and things like that.

Others stressed the gift of discernment that would be important in counseling situations: For example, the pastor sitting with a couple, and they discuss, they giving the facts, so psychology is a factor to counsel. However, when you have two people telling you so good facts, and psychology is not making you . . . giving you the ability to get in, then you must fall on the Spirit, and if you don’t have discernment, the gift of discernment, and the spirit of counsel, then you, you’re a bit tied up. Aso, a pastor must have a gift of discernment. If somebody comes to you and the person is lying, you need to know [. . .] In order to be a very good counselor, if you are counseling people, and the people are talking, you know when they are saying the reality or when they are really telling stories. So you must have the gift of discernment . . .

Two interviewees said that faith was an important gift for a pastor. When a pastor has the gift of faith, he could edify, he could build his church stronger, surely.

Gifts of teaching, preaching and prophecy were also mentioned by interviewees: Personally, I today want to have prophecy. Because in a wider sense, any

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chapter three preaching is prophecy, you see? [. . .] Every preacher is a prophet. [. . .] Prophecy is for the congregation, you see? Building of the congregation, edification of the congregation. [. . .] Teaching, education, exultation, comfort or revelation or foretelling something are all included in prophecy.

One interviewee summarized the discourse about the pastoral call and the spiritual gifts as follows: Without gifts of the Spirit it would not be easy to lead a church. That is a spiritual issue [. . .] we live by praying to Jesus, then we will receive the right thoughts, and that’s why we cannot do everything unless we have gotten some divine gifts. There are problems that can only be saved by the Holy Spirit. And without that—the Apostle Paul says this, for example—it is not that we do it with our abilities, but by God’s ability.

Pastoring, leading a church is an enormous responsibility which cannot be carried by a mere human being. Only with the help of the divine Spirit and his gifts can a pastor even dare to take up this work. Nevertheless, it is not the gifts that distinguish a pastor from his congregation, because any believer can also show them or operate in them. The difference between the pastor and his congregation members lies in the call by God and in the ‘anointing’ which symbolizes the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, special favor, and divine commission, which will show themselves in gifts in which the pastor operates. Clearly, while most of the respondents described themselves as mediators of divine power and guidance, this concept was not tied to the presence of spiritual gifts. A pastor has authority because he or she has been called, and maintains, through spiritual discipline, a closeness to God, but not because he or she shows a special giftedness in prophecy, miracle working, or word of knowledge. There is a tension here that shows the lack of a clearly developed ecclesiology: On the one hand, pastors see themselves as imbued with special authority by the Holy Spirit—a clearly hierarchical idea. On the other hand, the understanding of the spiritual gifts is ‘anarchic’ in the sense that the gifts are not tied to a certain office. Only the relationship between call, recognition, ordination and gifts as outlined by the Church of Pentecost pastor is based on a more systematic ecclesiology. It has become obvious how enormously loaded with expectations the role of the pastor is within this discourse. It is therefore only to be expected that divine power plays an important role in their selfconcept. They are expected to do great things, to carry great authority, but they can do so confidently, even if they have received little training,


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because the power and the abilities do not come from them, but from God himself. To be able to tap into this power, the pastor has to position himself: The gifts have to be nursed through prayer, and through the word of God.

To sum up: This chapter looked at how pastors described their own pastoral role, and found that the metaphors of shepherd and father are pervasive for the self-concept of the interviewees. While showing certain divergences, a dominant discourse can clearly be ascertained from the interviews. Its plausibility is underscored by the fact that one comes across it often in informal meetings as well as in sermons. My interlocutors, rather than stressing a functional understanding of the pastor as preacher and administrator of sacraments, or a professional understanding of the pastor as counselor and manager, described themselves as spiritual leaders, as people with a special call and a special spiritual quality, usually termed ‘the anointing’. As the ‘father’12 of the congregation, the pastor stands between God and the people. He has a mediating function, interceding for his church, and waiting and listening to God for guidance and revelation about what should be done in the church. This means that he needs to spend much time in prayer and reading the Bible. Because he transmits the word and will of God, the pastor has great authority, though this should not be abused. Being anointed, the pastor will show certain powerful spiritual gifts. He lives a sacrificial life, caring for his congregation members in all respects at any time, and acting as a role model in all areas of his personal and familial life. If he does not do this, his authority will not be accepted by the congregation. 3.2. Defending one’s call: Biographical stories as legitimation narratives In chapter 3.1, we looked at the pastoral self-concept of the interviewees, by describing how they answered questions about their pastoral role, functions, and authority. The answers given showed that for all interviewees, the profession of a pastor is fundamentally tied to having

12 We have decided to stick with non-inclusive language in this paragraph as most migrant pastors are male.

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been called into that office. Somebody who does not have a personal, individual call to the ministry can never be a pastor or shepherd. 3.2.1. Call narratives in a pentecostal / charismatic context But what is actually going on when pentecostal / charismatic interlocutors talk about “having a call?” Interestingly, given the prominence of the “call” in Christian discourse in general and in evangelical and pentecostal / charismatic circles in particular, neither psychological nor social science research has so far paid much attention to call narratives.13 Two kinds of general considerations are necessary before we analyze the call narratives from the interviews: Firstly: What is the theological discourse in which call narratives are constructed, and secondly: Why, how and in what context are call narratives recounted? Like evangelicals, pentecostals and charismatics believe that God “has a plan for their lives,” i.e. that individual life courses have been prepared by God. God is seen as interested and involved in the believers’ daily lives, and one of the main task of every Christian is therefore to discern and follow God’s guidance particularly concerning major choices (e.g. for a career or a marriage partner). The question which choices are small enough to be made without divine guidance is one that is often debated when it comes to counselling. Especially in a pentecostal / charismatic context, though, increasing ‘holiness’ is often understood as becoming more and more dependent on divine guidance even in small matters. Individual divine guidance in major life choices, though, is not the same as a “call.” In pentecostal / charismatic discourse, pastoral ministry14 is regarded as a ‘special’ vocation, one that cannot simply be filled by being able, educated and trained. Consequently, while pentecostals / charismatics freely talk about having been called to be a pastor, an evangelist, a missionary, they would not usually claim to have received a call to be a scientist, a businesswoman, or a carpenter (unless exercising these professions within a mission agency or with a missionary intention). Birgit Meyer relates how some Ghanaian Christian

13 The one exception that could be found is Jeffrey Swanson’s Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, which deals with a cohort of US American missionaries working for one agency in Ecuador. 14 This would include being a pastor, evangelist, and ‘apostle,’ i.e. church founder.


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video-filmmakers see their ability to produce films as a divine gift and term their profession “a calling,” noting that they regard their films as a way to convey the Christian message, i.e. as evangelism.15 As we have seen above, an element of ‘supernatural’ enabling is necessary to work properly as a pastor. Call and supernatural enabling are therefore closely related to one another. Not surprisingly, the Biblical call narratives of Moses (particularly Ex. 4 where Moses is given the ability to work certain miracles to prove his divine call to the unbelieving Egyptians) and Elisha (1. Kings 19: 19 f. and 2. Kings 2: 13 ff.) play an important role in the pentecostal / charismatic discourse on the call. Within pentecostal / charismatic circles, a call is usually defined as a special experience in which an individual may have had a vision, audition or dream, may have been particularly touched by a Biblical passage, may have felt an inner urge or longing, or understood an arbitrary encounter as “God speaking to me,” with the understanding that God wanted to tell this individual to enter into pastoral ministry. A call is never just general, but always specific and personal. Call experiences can vary greatly according to cultural and denominational background, but they have one aspect in common: They are genuine only if they can be recounted. If someone has a call, he or she will necessarily have a call narrative. A pentecostal / charismatic pastor who could not recount such a narrative to answer the question how he or she was called to be a pastor would not be considered a proper pastor, regardless of his or her training, education, and experience. Why, how, and in what context are call narratives then recounted? Generally, pentecostal / charismatic Christianity is strongly experiential: It is not defined by certain dogmatic beliefs, but rather by recounted experiences. Such recounted experiences, biographical narratives, occur in the genre of “testimony.” Stephen Land explains that the point of pentecostal spiritual experience is “to experience life as part of a biblical drama of participation in God’s history.”.16 In pentecostal worship settings, it is the believers themselves who function as “icons”17 in which God’s actions become visible to the congregation. Testimony, therefore, means telling a biographical narrative as the story of divine 15 Birgit Meyer, “Praise the Lord”: Popular cinema and pentecostalite style in Ghana’s new public sphere, American Ethnologist Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 92–110, Note 18. 16 Stephen Land, Pentecostal Spirituality. A Passion for the Kingdom, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 3rd edition 2001, p. 74 f. 17 Daniel Albrecht, Pentecostal Spirituality: Looking through the Lens of Ritual, in: Pneuma 14:2 (Fall 1992), p. 110.

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action within an individual life. Consequently, testimony, rather than doctrinal deliberation, is the preferred mode of pentecostal theologymaking. Secondly, as Stephen Kroll-Smith18 has argued convincingly, testimonies meet the “need for identity work” within groups that operate within “a stratified belief system lacking formal passage rites.”19 Testimonies function to locate individuals ritually within the social matrix of a group. Kroll-Smith’s observations are apt even though they are not concerned with call narratives. Testimonies in general legitimate authority and hierarchy, produce group boundaries and serve to enhance group coherence.20 Pastoral call narratives in a pentecostal / charismatic context can therefore be read as legitimation narratives: By recounting a call testimony, pastors establish and strengthen their special position in relation to their congregation. I have witnessed many situations in which pentecostal / charismatic pastors introduced themselves to a foreign audience with a call narrative. A look at any catalogue of Ppntecostal or charismatic edification literature will result in finding dozens of autobiographical writings following the patterns of a conversion / call narrative. With the call playing such a pivotal role, and call narratives being such an important staple of pentecostal / charismatic discourse and literature, it could be expected that all interviewees, in their biographical narrative answering the question “What happened in your life so that you became a pastor in Germany?”, would have given a detailed account of how they had been called into the ministry. Surprisingly, this was not the case. While 11 interviewees recounted elaborate call narratives that clearly had not been told for the first time, 13 just mentioned the fact of their calling into the ministry in passing. To attempt to explain this discrepancy, the following chapter will undertake a functional analysis of the different call narratives. It will be argued that elaborate stories serve as legitimation narratives for pastors whose calling and role are being questioned, while pastors secure in their positions do not have a need for such a legitimation narrative. 18 Stephen Kroll-Smith, The Testimony as Performance: The Relationship of an Expressive Event to the Belief System of a Holiness Sect, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 16–25. 19 Ibd., p. 23. 20 This has also been shown, in a totally different context, by Dawne Moon, Discourse, interaction, and testimony: The making of selves in the U.S. Protestant dispute over homosexuality, Theory and Society, Volume 34, Nos. 5–6 / December 2005, pp. 551–557.


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3.2.2. No legitimation narrative: Observations and possible reasons Thirteen of the 24 interviewees, all of them men,21 talked about their calling to become a pastor in just a sentence or two, and in very matterof-fact ways. At the age of 15 I was born again, and at the age of 21 I more or less began a full-time ministry. Right from the onset in Ghana, I basically had, had this desire to serve Christ when I got born again. [. . .] I ended up studying mechanical— being a mechanical engineer. But afterwards I felt called to ministry, and so I had study in the Maranatha Bible College. And so, after my conversion, I had the zeal to serve the Lord. [. . .] I joined Christ Apostolic Church where I started to go to their seminary school. A friend invited me, the first time we went to a prayer meeting. It was an all night prayer meeting, and then at this prayer meeting, I knew that what I had also clear, that the Lord really was calling my attention to serve him.

Obviously, these pastors did not feel any need to explain or to defend their decision to become pastors. From their short answers, it can be inferred that they are not in a position where their call is being doubted or questioned. Several more observations can be made about the group that talked about their calling in this way. First of all, for the majority of this group, the calling into the ministry occurred at the time of their conversion, or very shortly afterwards. Secondly, all of these pastors knew about their calling at a young or even very young age: The youngest were in secondary school, and the oldest within the first few years of their professional careers. One pastor described how even as a child, he already had the urge to preach the Gospel. At the time of the interviews, they had, with two exceptions, been pastors for more than ten years. Ten of them had some kind of formal or informal theological training, and the other three stated that they would have liked such training, “but there was no green light from the Lord.” What was also striking was that some of these interviewees were willing to describe in great detail how they set up their first churches and continued in the ministry, but were not interested in elaborating 21

Of these interviewees, nine were from Africa, and two from Asia.

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how their calling had occurred, or how they were so sure of having been called. One pastor, after having been asked to elaborate on his “inner urging” to become an evangelist, said: I am not sure that I was able to answer your question, but it’s an inner feeling, something that is really driving you in . . . in a particular direction. Where someone asks you to explain, maybe the tangible reasons for—maybe you will not be able to say . . .

When pressed further whether he had had visions or auditions, he said: I will say that I had many of them. I had many of them. Seeing myself standing in front of congregations, talking to them. Seeing myself moving out to isolated areas, presenting Christ to people. I had a lot of such dreams and visions. But the conviction actually came from my heart, not based on this.

The above statement is a clear indicator that biographical narratives are constructed according to the situation and the audience they are told to. It is well possible that in another context, this interviewee would have given a call narrative based on his visions and dreams. But knowing very well that stories of visions and dreams as explanations for certain career choices are not acceptable in a Western Protestant ‘mainline’ discourse, this pastor might have felt compelled to downplay events that he might have felt made him sound strange to the interviewer. On the other hand, many of the other interviewees—though not the one quoted above!—who spoke only in passing about their calling, had no problems to revert to visions, dreams and auditions when it came to other turning points in their autobiographical narratives. If, therefore, these pastors do describe visions and dreams as factors in arriving at certain decisions, but not when it comes to their call to become a pastor, it can safely be assumed that they feel so sure about their call, and so unchallenged in their role as pastors, that they do not need to employ any spectacular spiritual events to legitimize their pastoral authority. Basically, they do not need a legitimation narrative. To test this assumption, it is worth looking more closely at the individual situation of the 13 members of this subgroup. Four pastors in this sample are the founders and head pastors of large, growing and flourishing mega-churches, with lead congregations of several hundred members from a wide range of nationalities meeting in their own (rented or purchased) premises. They have planted a number of satellite churches in other cities. Each of them has several


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pastors working under his leadership. All of them are well respected both among their peers and by their German colleagues from different denominational backgrounds with whom they cooperate in many projects. All of them are traveling widely, being invited to speak and preach in different churches and at conferences both nationally and internationally. In short, these pastors have been visibly successful in their ministries, and it could be argued that their success as pastors should suffice as legitimation of their call. Another four pastors in this sample are serving as pastors of denominational churches which sent them to Germany as missionaries. They describe their calling in the framework of being ‘discovered’ and being given pastoral responsibility by their superiors in the church hierarchy. I joined the Redeeemed Christian Church of God in [a city in Nigeria] in 1992, and within a few months that I joined the church, I was given a house fellowship center to handle. The house fellowship grew, they opened a mission station, and the pastor called me and told me that he would like me to head the mission station. That was how I became a pastor. It took me some years before the others find that I have a commitment, and that I also fear the Lord, so they recognized me, they recommended me to be a deacon. So I was ordained as a deacon in 1998, and an elder in 2001. And in 2001 I was called as an assistant to help the S. area, and through this, I was called to be a pastor.

Here, evidently, a legitimation narrative is not important, as one’s pastoral authority has been legitimized by the church hierarchy, through ordination. Three more pastors in this sample received their call into the ministry while being members of a denomination or ministry, and were assigned to their first ministerial post by this church or ministry. Even though they are no longer serving in their original churches, their original call seems to be legitimized by the fact that they were ordained in these churches. This is underscored by the fact that one of these three told a long legitimation narrative about why he eventually left his denomination and started his own church, maintaining that his original call was still valid even though his denomination will not have anything more to do with him. The second pastor among these three still maintains good ties to his original denomination, and the third is actually a successful medical doctor by profession and has always remained a part-time pastor. It can therefore be assumed that their need for legitimation may not be so great.

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The final two pastors in this sample are serving independent, but growing and well-integrated congregations. One congregation is affiliated with the Federation of Free Pentecostal Churches (BfP), while the other pastor has won recognition from the Evangelical Church by having been elected as an elder in his German geographical parish. Again, both of them do not seem to feel challenged or questioned in their role and authority and pastors, and therefore can do without a legitimation narrative. To sum up: Having founded and / or having become pastors of large, successful or at least growing churches, or having been ordained within a denominational structure seem to legitimize the interviewees to such a degree that they do not see a need for further legitimation narratives. The other 11 interviewees, in contrast, did talk about their calling in ways that clearly suggest that these narratives serve a legitimizing function. The following chapters will take a closer look at their stories. 3.2.3. Legitimation narratives I: Called by a prophetic word Five of the interviewees who told longer legitimation narratives recounted that they were called by a prophetic intervention of a person they met. For two pastors, the prophetic word came in addition to dreams and visions they had had beforehand, so that the prophecies were seen as a confirmation rather than the source of the call. For a third one, the prophetic word came to remind him of a calling he had forgotten. For the final two pastors, the prophetic word was what brought the call into their lives for the first time. To begin with the last two: It was not my thought to come to Germany and to found a church, but when I was still in China—that’s where I studied for three years— there was a big evangelism meeting. During this evangelism program, I met an evangelist who never knew me, had never met me before, and whom I have no contact with now. He looked at me and then called me up. I went to him, and then he started to tell me something about my future. It was a prophetic word about my life, but I didn’t believe in it. Then we went to this conference, and during this conference, another— that was a woman who preached there. When this woman preached, she said almost exactly what the other man had said. So finally I went back to this man to ask him: What had led him to talk to me? And so on. Then he said that he did not know me, he had never seen me, but God had spoken to him, about me, about my work, about my calling. So that’s how it happened, in 1987, that this evangelist, an American—there


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were two other brethren with us, one from Burkina Faso, and one from Burundi, they were there, in this room—then he started to pray for me. And then this prophetic word came that three years later I should fly to Europe, to go there, or that I had planned that, and there God would use me. That’s how it was, and three years later, without me doing much towards it, it somehow so happened that I came to Germany.22 CWO: How did you become an apostle? I don’t know how that came, but all comes from God, Claudia. I am very excited, because . . . ten years ago I did a correspondence Bible course in France, and then I did studies, but then for five years afterwards, I didn’t do anything, I just set up this choir with my kids. But then this idea of a church came. I was traveling to Africa, and there I met a servant of God, from Cameroun, he is one who is really blessed by God. He asked me one time: ‘You have received a great message from God.’ Back then, I had not been sent, I was just a servant of God, just like every believer, every Christian. And I met this man again for two or three times, and then he flew to South Africa. And I returned to Germany. And a few months later, six months later, he phones me and says: ‘God has told me that you are a man of God, I will come to you to bless you.’ I say: ‘Where does this come from?’ He says: ‘That comes from God.’ Then I told him: ‘I don’t know, God must do everything, but I myself, I am not yet ready, because . . .’ You see, life in Germany—I wanted to keep my job, I also wanted to take care of my family, I didn’t want to serve God full-time. That was not easy for me to decide. But anyhow, he said I should not be afraid: ‘I will pay my own plane ticket because God told me that I have to come to you.’ And then I have read in God’s Bible, and saw in Acts 9, the calling of Paul. God called Paul, and he sent Ananias. And Paul did not know what God does. But he just sent Ananias. And he prayed for Paul, and Paul got his vision. Then this man himself bought his ticket, he came here, he said to me: ‘Okay, we need to be together, you must be set aside as a servant of God.’ And on this day, I have thought that I might become a pastor, and then—many pastors from Germany were there, those who have a relationship with me, they were there. And as he was blessing me, he said: ‘You have been called as an apostle by God.’ This is how it happened.23

Some observations about the similarities in these narratives are in order: First of all, both interviewees stressed that becoming a pastor was not their idea at all, and that they were dubious when first confronted with the call. In both cases, the ‘prophet’ did not know the person over whom he prophesied beforehand, but simply met them during a church event. This serves to underline the idea that what occurred 22 23

Interview with M.N. in his church office, 15 November 2005, in his church office. Interview with D.I., 20 November 2005, after Sunday service in the church hall.

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was really a “prophetic”, i.e. a revealed word of God, and not the possible consequence of the ‘prophet’ having watched the pastor-tobe and recognized his talents. Also in both cases, the ‘prophet’ insisted that God had spoken to him, and prayed for the person over whom he had prophesied. Also in both cases, the final revelation about the character of their calling was only given during this prayer session, which was witnessed by several other people. So both interviewees stress the miraculous way in which they were called. These two narratives are clearly legitimation narratives that counter a possible accusation of having become a pastor out of one’s own desire for leadership, or a better life in a rich country. Because the revelation of the call came through another person, and was witnessed by others, it is made very clear that God has spoken in these instances. For the third interviewee, the prophetic word did not serve as the original call, but rather as a reminder of a call he had forgotten. After telling his story in some detail in a personal conversation with the author, he glossed over it in the taped interview24 which started with a description of how he became a Christian while studying architecture in Germany, and how towards the end of his study course, he came to the conclusion that he had been called into full-time ministry: I don’t know how, but in my heart, I had this impression that the Lord wanted me to be a full-time pastor to win people. I find that sometimes that we want something, we want to do something, we want to achieve something, and sometimes a call comes into our heart to do something more. And I can see that architecture is my passion, but I find that what I want even more is to serve the Lord Jesus, and with all costs I have to take that into my heart.25

After struggling to explain this feeling in his heart, he continued: When the call came back to me, I felt perhaps like Peter who had betrayed the Lord. ‘Lord, I will follow you always, Lord I will give you everything’, but in the end, then comes a better offer and one does what one wants. And yes, then I forgot, I have, perhaps, thought that this call still has time. [. . .] And to be honest, what I did was to promise the Lord: ‘Lord, if you really want me to be a missionary, I will follow you, but now, help me first to finish my diploma thesis.’ Then I finished within two months, and I presented it, and the professor said: ‘This can never be realized, but you have courage, so I give you a 1.7.’26 Then I find my 24 25 26

Interview with J.S., 25 April 2005, in my home. Ibd. The German marking scale reaches from 1 (excellent) to 6 (failed).


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pride, and so I forgot. And I found a job, and I forgot my call. But I believe the Lord is a Lord like a daddy, he is always waiting: ‘Okay, if you have a new toy, you can have it, but when the time comes, I will call you again.’ [. . .] Many people think that God calls you when you are at a low point in your life, and then you get called again by the Lord, reminded by the Lord. But I was not at a low point in my life; I was at a very good point in my life. (laughs) And then she [the woman who spoke the prophetic word] reminded me.27

This is all this interviewee said on tape. In the personal conversation, he told his story as follows:28 At a conference, he just happened to meet a woman pastor he did not know before, about two years after he had started working in an architectural firm. They talked for a bit, and then, out of the blue, she asked him about the state of his call. That was all that was needed to convince him that God had spoken to him. He cried bitterly and asked God for forgiveness. This narrative shares several characteristics with the two stories quoted before: Again, the interlocutor makes it very clear that the call could not possibly have come out of his own mind or heart. His forgetting the call makes that abundantly clear. His reluctance is also underlined by his expression that he finds the life of a pastor very hard and difficult and that it involves paying a heavy price. Like in the other two narratives, the prophetic word comes from a person who has no knowledge of the situation, but is rather a chance acquaintance. Unlike in the other narratives, though, not much is made of this prophetic intervention. There are no witnesses, no prayers, and no further revelations. The prophetic word remains rather vague, but this is enough. The pastor knows that God has spoken, and that this time he has to obey. It can be argued that this interlocutor, who comes from a wealthy family and who gave up a very promising career to become a full-time pastor, could not possibly be accused of having become a pastor in Germany for any kind of worldly gain. On the other hand, particularly his immediate family might be critical of the fact that the sole wage earner gave up his secure income and subjected them to financial deprivation. Towards them, this prophetic word would serve as a legitimization for his decision to become a full-time pastor.

27 28

Ibd. According to field notes taken immediately after the conversation.

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For the last two persons in this sample, the prophetic word only came as a confirmation of dreams and visions they had had beforehand. We will therefore deal with their narratives in chapter 3.2.5. It is difficult to establish clear commonalities between the three interviewees who told call narratives based on a prophetic word. The last one had not had any theological training, the second one only correspondence courses, and the first one is currently training with the Baptist Federation, many years after he started his church. The two who experienced the prophecy as the beginning of their call both come from the DR Congo, but belong to different and competing church networks. Their situations are also very different: One pastors a large, well-established mega-church integrated into the Baptist Federation, and also plays an important role as a traveling preacher, while the other serves a small, financially struggling congregation. The third one comes from Indonesia and works within a denominational network in which he was ordained, but is struggling with the fact that his salary is very low, and his visa status not stable. All three were (more or less successfully) working in other professions before they became pastors, and the decision to leave their paid jobs obviously was not easy for them, as it meant a step into financial insecurity. Still, in all three cases these narratives can be heard in a legitimizing function, as has been shown above. 3.2.4. Legitimation narratives II: Deciding for the ministry after a miracle experience Two pastors, in their biographical narratives, talked about how they had become Christians through a dramatic miracle experience. For both of them, with the conversion, came the conviction that they had to go and preach the message of this God who had done such wonderful things for them. The first narrative was told by an evangelist from Nepal: I came to faith through a miracle. My mother was dead for 17 hours. I had studied for one year to become a priest, I was a faithful Hindu, I did lots of Hindu rituals, and my mother remained dead. Because I worshipped so many gods. Because in Nepal, there are about 20 million people, but 33 million gods. In this time that my mother was dead, no god helped, even though I was a pious Hindu. At the very end,29 then 29

I have twice been witness to a long version of this story. The speaker told in


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I heard Jesus Christ can make dead people alive again. Then I went to a small congregation, church, then I called two brethren, they prayed, and they said that I should pray in Jesus’ name. But I did not know Jesus Christ. Then I prayed in Jesus’ name. Then I said: ‘Jesus Christ, if you are true God, save my mother, give back my mother, take my life, as I am, I will follow you all my life and be your servant.’ Concretely, after 15 minutes of praying, my mother came back to life. Then I realized, I experienced what kind of God we have! Every morning I had—as soon as I woke up, I took a cold shower, a bath, as the Hindus do, and I went to the temple every morning, at 4 a.m. In my life, I had been longing for God. I searched but . . . there was always this empty space in my heart, I did not find what I had searched for. Then I accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and then—Christ has changed my life totally! Not only did he give my mother back alive, but I was a dead person, too. I realized, I was a human being without life. Then I realized, experienced, every person living on earth has a longing for God. They want to get to know the real God. Then I talked to the Lord: ‘Lord, I really want to make you known, to preach you, my whole life, as long as I live.’ I really wanted to evangelize all of Nepal, but I couldn’t stay in Nepal due to my persecution. [. . .] When I was in Bahrain, I was a worker, but my wish and task was to make Jesus Christ known to people who don’t know him, and many became Christians. I was a testimony there, and it really worked well there. I baptized many people.30

The second narrative was conveyed by a Tamil pastor, the founder of a mega-church with a TV healing and evangelism ministry. I grew up as a Hindu in my time, etc. Through an accident, I got to know Jesus Christ. Afterwards, I also thought that if God can make me walk, then I need to walk for this God. Then I decided to become a pastor. Then I tried to learn theology, and succeeded.31

After this very short version of his history, probably only given so briefly because this pastor had already told me his story at great length, he could be persuaded to tell a longer version for the sake of the recording. Yes, I got to know Jesus Christ through my accident.32 Through this accident, my communication was totally broken, I could not walk, I great detail how he was walking from hospital to hospital in Kathmandu, carrying his dead mother on his back, only to be told in no uncertain terms that this woman was dead and ought to be buried as soon as possible. Finally, when he returned home in frustration, his relatives actually started the washing ritual that precedes a funeral. 30 Interview with D.A., 17 November 2005 in his home. 31 Interview with P.S., 5 January 2006, in his church office. 32 In another context, this speaker recounted that as a student of building engineering, he had come to Germany for an internship in the middle of winter. Not knowing what ice was, he slipped off the scaffolding and broke several vertebrae.

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chapter three could not move, I could not feel anything. I was in the hospital for six months. Then a pastor from the US came and he said that Jesus Christ is the only God who can help. He performed many miracles and so, but at this time I was a total atheist, I believe in no God. But nevertheless, he had a Tamil Bible, he gave it to me in my own language, and I opened it and looked, and saw John 11, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ I saw this like a crime novel, I read it like a storybook, but then there were other things in it. Then I thought: ‘Okay, if there is such a God who can make a dead man get up after four days, why not me?’ Then I asked: ‘Jesus, if you really are God, let me get up, let me get up, and I will give my whole life for you.’ On that same day the power of the Lord came, and it was like an electric shock. Only a voice, and I saw a light: ‘You are healthy. I am Jesus Christ. I wanted to have you, so get up!’ I said: ‘I cannot. Who are you?’ Says he: ‘I am Jesus Christ. I know that you could not, I know that very well, but with me you can.’ Then I tried to move, my legs, my body, everything moved properly. Then I really got up, I walked, walked, walked, walked, I could do it, and I am still walking. That is my story.33

The speaker then continued to describe how, having no knowledge of Christianity, he was searching for a church and ended up at a New Apostolic Church. According to his own account, he felt that they were not interpreting the Bible properly. Therefore, he wrote to the US pastor who had first given him the Tamil Bible, and this pastor invited him to the USA to study theology. When he returned to Germany, he tried to start a Tamil church, but encountered difficulties: They did not want to accept me, because I came from the US, that is an American or foreign theology, or somehow different, so they did not want to accept me. Because, at the same time, I have a healing gift, because Jesus talked to me and healed me, a healing and also the driving out of demons etc. I don’t know, but when I pray, the people, if they are bound by demons, they cry out. I got scared: ‘What is this here?’ And the people said: ‘Hey, I could not walk, I was in pain.’ One said: ‘I always had headaches, now it’s gone.’ I thought, what is this? Then one pastor said to me: ‘You are bound by the devil.’ That really scared me, what is this? I wanted to serve Jesus, but if the devil is in me—he said: ‘You are full of demons.’ Then I said that this couldn’t be right, and I went to a German pastor to have him pray for me. He said: ‘No, you have a call as apostle, and God has called you as an apostle, you must serve. You don’t need to be afraid, there are no demons inside; you are filled with the Spirit of God.’34

33 34

Ibd. Ibd.


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This interviewee then took another period of theological training at the seminary of the Federation of Pentecostal Free Churches, and was ordained as a minister by the Federation. For now 15 years, I have served among Tamils. This is—as a pastor I serve the whole world, not only Germans, not only Tamils, I have become well known all over the world. Before, I was a small fly, but now I fly around the whole world, and I think I have become such a famous pastor, so many phone calls, and so many people—every day, at least 70 to 80 people call me, to ask for prayer, or for advice, and many pastors call me, or come here, or invite me. This is my service, a wonderful service. That is my story.35

These two stories show some striking parallels. Both interviewees are former Hindus, even if one professes to have been pious, and the other claims to have been an atheist. Both describe how they first came in contact with Christianity in an emergency situation, and both experienced a ‘hard’ miracle, an event almost impossible to believe: Someone raised from the dead, someone healed from paralysis caused by a broken back. Both narratives have obviously been told many times, and show some clearly formed language and stylistic elements. Both start their prayers with a reservation: “Jesus, if you are true God . . .” Both ask for their miracle with the promise that if God shows himself powerful, they will serve him for the rest of their lives. Both experience an instant miracle, within a short time of their prayer, and both immediately take the answer to their prayer as the reason to become pastors. For both, the fact that they have experienced such an extraordinary miracle serves as a strong legitimation for their professional careers. Here the parallels end. While the Nepalese simply became an evangelist, without any training, first in Nepal, then in the Middle East, and finally in Germany, the Tamil took a long period of preparation and theological training. This may not be surprising as the Nepalese only had four years of formal schooling, while the Tamil was an engineer from a highly educated family. There is also a clear difference in the way they conduct their ministries: The Nepalese is an evangelist who does not claim to be able to perform any miracles. He now works within a German free church context and is employed, albeit depending on the receipt of sufficient donations, by a German free mission agency. His main evangelistic

35

Ibd.

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efforts go towards Nepalese in Germany, but he is also very active within a small free evangelical church under German leadership with a very international congregation. Many of its newer members were converted by him. Within the German church context, his career is quite extraordinary. For a German mission agency, even if it is a ‘faithbased’ one, to employ a foreigner with almost no formal education is rather unusual. It is striking, though, that in the Nepalese’s narrative, the recognition he receives everywhere due to his evangelistic gift and calling play only a minor role. As a legitimation narrative, his story is rather counterproductive in the sense that German evangelicals are usually quite critical of healing miracle stories, and would be even more unsympathetic towards a resurrection experience. Nevertheless, the Nepalese keeps recounting his miracle narrative to audiences which react with disdain or open mockery.36 It can therefore be concluded that this experience plays a pivotal role for his own sense of calling, but that, at the same time, he is so secure in his own sense of calling that he does not need to tailor a legitimation narrative towards his audience. In contrast the Tamil, in addition to pastoring his growing megachurch, has developed an ambitious healing ministry. His TV broadcasts are modeled on the formats of American televangelists, and include footage of healing services and testimonies of people who have been healed. With such a prominent, though fairly independent ministry,37 it is not surprising that a strong legitimation narrative is needed. The Tamil provides a double legitimation, first through the miracle narrative which also includes an explicit call into ministry by Jesus Christ himself, and then in the second part of this story in which he claims to have been surprised by his own healing gift which was subsequently identified as a calling by another (German!) pastor. 3.2.5. Legitimation narratives III: Called by visions and dreams Two interviewees, one from Ghana and one from Nigeria, related elaborate accounts of visions and dreams. For both, these visions and dreams did not only occur at the beginning of their ministry, but throughout their lives, whenever decisions had to be made.

36

I personally witnessed this at three different occasions. While his church is a member church of the BfP, the Federation does not control his TV ministry. 37


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The first interviewee, the founder and head pastor of a mega-church with branches in Germany, the US and Ghana, was originally a student of satellite geodesics. Even as an undergraduate in Ghana, he had been active in church work, and pastored a church on the side. Then he was sent to Germany on a prestigious scholarship to do his doctorate. While still in the language course, he was called into full-time ministry: I was in E., in the hostel, and then it came in a dream that there was a harvest field, and I saw some of my colleagues [. . .]. And they were in this big field, and they were harvesting. And I was sitting by a table with books, piled up with books, in the midst of the harvest field! So when that dream came, I was worried, I knew that it had to do with the work of God that I started in Ghana. [. . .] Then, this thing happened for a series of nights. If it comes today, the next day, in my dream I will somebody is schelling 38 my bell. And I thought maybe it is coming from the main gate. In E., the hostel, the sound of the main gate and the bell at my door are different, maybe for security reasons, I don’t know. So I would just go to the main gate, and nobody was there, maybe from two, between two and three in the night. And then one night, I heard it in my dream and I woke up, and the thing was still schelling, and now it was at the door, my room door. So I opened—the time I was opening, the thing was still schelling. I opened and nobody was there. Then I realized it was God. Then God started speaking to me. About how he brought me up to do some work for him, and how I left that ministry, and some of them are falling, and some of them have backslidden and gone back to the world, and so God was giving me some vision, I was seeing them. So I started crying. I told God he should forgive me, and: ‘Give me another opportunity to serve you the rest of my life!’ At that time, I had one other spiritual father, Rev. A., he had come to Britain, and he was phoning me, communicating with me. So I told him that I need to go back. But I think I wanted to go, maybe, to the US and do some further studies in theology or something. And he said with [. . .] he would suggest that if God is calling me, I should go back straight, go to the field, and if I need to do some correspondence course to just upgrade myself, that would be what he suggests. But if I feel that God is calling me, I should go back. So I was preparing to go back, when the one leader of the Resurrection Power came to see me in E. [. . .] and said: ‘We were together in Ghana, before you came, before our leader died, and now you are here, and we hear that you want to come back to Ghana. Why don’t you stay here and let us establish a church here? Because there are also people here to be won to the Lord!’ And I said: ‘Okay, if you say so, I can stay for some time, help establish a church, but we must find somebody who will take care of the church, because after establishing the church, I will need to go back.’ So they agreed, and we established the church. [. . .] And then, 38

‘To ring a bell’ in German is ‘schellen.’ The speaker is mixing languages.

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chapter three when the church started growing, I said: ‘No, I have to go.’ But he said: ‘Okay now, you are finished with the language course, you have passed. Why don’t you register with a school? When they give you some visa, you can start something whilst you are studying, and we can see how the thing goes.’ So somehow, they cornered me—I will say I didn’t pray on it—but I loved the people. I loved the way they were coming and responding, I loved the way how they were flocking—it was very fast. So I decided to stay a little bit, and then establish a church. So that is how the whole thing started.39

Several years later, this pastor left the denomination he had started out with, and set up his own, independent church in another city. At the same time, he also traveled to Ghana regularly where he set up several churches. The very large congregation in one city there eventually developed into the lead church of his network, even though he did not spend so much time there. Then, again after several years, he received a call to start another congregation in the US. God started speaking to me. [CWO: How?] Through dreams. And then also, there were confirmation, through prophecy. The first time I had a vision of myself preaching in the US, I didn’t know anything about the US, I didn’t know any place in the US. But I realized I was in the US. And when I went to M., it was like: I’ve been there before! And I realized that it was in my dreams. Now, after that, I also had a spiritual father [. . .] one time after ministry he told me that once he was sitting down on the platform, he saw me coming from the US, with a portfolio and something, and the church was full. So God is calling me to establish some churches in the US. And that was at a time when I was even having a hard time even getting my stay here [in Germany]. So I was kind of doubting, even though I had had a vision [about starting a church in the US], a dream before. I thought it’s just a dream. So when he said that, I somehow doubted, because even here I didn’t have any stay. So how do I go to the US and establish a church? So around 2002, a friend of mine, whom I also worked with in Ghana, had established a church there, and he phoned me and said: ‘Why don’t you come and visit us in the US?’ I said: ‘Can you give me an invitation?’, and the he sent an invitation. I went and then they gave me a visa, and the visa was a missionary visa! It wasn’t the normal one, the normal one they call the B1B2, but they gave me one they call the R1. So when I went there, he told me that that’s a missionary visa. Then my mind went on the prophecy, and also the dream, but I didn’t know how to start, where to start from. So I started helping some of the churches there, and then gradually God tried to connect me to some other people, and then they said “Pastor, why don’t 39

Interview with A.O., 12 April 2005, in his home.


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you establish a church here? So that you can be close to us, so that you can also help us.” So this is how the whole thing began. But before then, I had a dream, and then there was a confirmation through prophecy.40

As this pastor explicitly states, dreams, visions and prophetic confirmation go together. For him, dreams and visions have to be validated by persons whom he considers spiritual mentors. For the second interviewee, a pastor from Nigeria, the call into the ministry was, at the same time, the call to go to Germany. How this actually came about is a long story that will be analyzed in chapter 4. Here, we will just look into how he eventually became a pastor and started his own church. The second Sunday I was there [the migrant church where he had started to worship], Pastor R. called me and said: ‘I sense you are a man of God.’ I say: ‘I don’t know, why?’ He said: ‘I can see it in you. Can you come to the front?’ Then I said: ‘I just don’t know,’ because the people, they were sitting in the church, and I know only very few people. He says: ‘Yes, okay, I know, I want you to pray for these people.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘okay.’ And then I did. Then he say: ‘After you finish, I want to talk to you.’ Then we spoke for a while. He said: ‘Yeah, I sense it, I know that you are a man of God.’ So, I begin to serve the man of God. Really, it was a very nice time, serving with others under the platform of Pastor R. And Pastor R. is a man I highly respect, he is my father. So, that was all. [. . .] Then, in 1996, there was a young man had a church in H., he is from America. He asked me to always help him to assist him. You know, give the people the word of God. He asked me to pastor the children. I told him: ‘I have to ask God. I prayed, but God say: ‘No. Remember where you are.’ ’ Then I told him: ‘God said no, I cannot be there, but I can assist to pastor the church.’ I was doing that. [. . .] Then, I was driving there that morning [. . .] then God came into my car. It was a clear voice, very loud. It said: ‘Son, I want you to open a church for me in N.’ Then I swerve, I couldn’t drive well, then I parked to the other area [. . .] Then I drove again. Then it came back again. He did it three times before I got to H. I was confused. When I got to H. I told them that I think that I will not come here again. They said: ‘Why?’ I said: ‘God asked me to open a church in N.’ In that Sunday, I even said to God, I said: ‘I don’t know anybody in N., I can’t, it’s impossible.’ Then he said: ‘It’s time for you to do what I ask you to do, in Germany.’ [. . .] So when I came to the church, I also told Pastor R. Pastor R. told me ‘We will open a branch in N., and that will be the church God is talking about.’ I said: ‘Great. We kick off.’

40

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chapter three So along the line, that year rolled by, because I couldn’t do it. But I know this is true. So every night when I am in bed God will say to me—many time, sometime I wake and turn to my wife and say: ‘I am behaving stubborn to God, because God says I should open a church in N., but how do I do it? I don’t know a church building, I don’t know where to go, I don’t know the other area.’ [. . .] Sometimes some men of God, they come, they said . . . One man [. . .] one man of God, a bishop, he came and called me up and said: ‘You are stubborn to God.’ I said: ‘How?’ He said: ‘God asked you to start something, but you refused to start it.’ This guy is from America. Then I said: ‘What is that?’ He said: ‘You know it. I don’t need to tell you.’ I said I think he is right. He said: ‘When are you going to start?’ I said: ‘I tried, but it doesn’t work.’ He said: ‘It’s not God, it’s you who is not ready to do it.’ Really, I was also having a very good job. I’m also . . . I was respecting my good job to . . . I was a Gebaeude . . . an Objektleiter, and I was paid 4,500 D-Mark, so I don’t want to play with the money, too. That was the other thing in my head. And it goes on like that. Then that day I got home, that very day I got home, then I was sitting on my couch, then this voice came: ‘It’s time for you to just open a church for me in N.’ I said: ‘I rebuke the devil in Jesus’ name. You tried me too much.’ I got back. Two minutes later, it came back again. ‘It’s time for you to start a church for me in N.’ Then I said: ‘God, if it’s you, but I cannot find a church building, I can’t start a church in my house!’41

After a long time, the pastor was finally able to secure a church building in N. So that day was Friday evening! [. . .] Then in the morning, I was in bed, God came and said: ‘I am that I am sent you!’ He said it three times! He said, then I said: ‘God, how will I start a church when I don’t have people?’ He said: ‘You don’t need people. I bring people. You go there with your wife, and start.’ Then I said: ‘Well, what do I do again? Better I tell people in my church, so they can come with me and open it.’ He said: ‘Don’t allow anybody from [the church you are attending] to come. Don’t convince any Africans to come, and I will bring people to you.’ Then I woke up. [. . .] I told Pastor R. all what happened. He was just laughing. We were on the step. He laughed for a while. He said: ‘You got a place?’ I say yes. He said: ‘I don’t believe it!’ I say: ‘Yeah! But now,’ I say, ‘this is what I see from the Lord: I am going to start tomorrow.’ He say: ‘Go ahead. Don’t waste time!’ That’s what he said: ‘Go ahead.’ So Sunday we went there, we start. So, I clap for a while, with my wife, and my son, after, for a while, then I begin to preach, direct to them, just

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Interview with P.I., 2 January 2006, at his home.


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like that. I told them: ‘Thousands are here! I believe that God will bring people.’ So after I preach for a while, one young man came in. After the message he says: ‘I want to talk to you. I was in the train, that . . .. I heard a voice say that told me that I should come to let you know that God is with you in this ministry. But you don’t discourage, because there is nobody inside. Continue what you are doing, and then God will bring people.’ And I say: ‘That is a very good encouragement word.’ I say: ‘Thank you very much!’ And he left. Then that’s all. Then the following week we were there, some people came.42

It is instructive to look at the commonalities and differences between these two accounts. Both narrators were called into full-time ministry at a time when they had started off very well in their secular careers. For the Ghanaian, the call into ministry immediately followed his conversion, while for the Nigerian, the call was a kind of re-conversion that included repenting for not having followed God in the way that he should have. Both narrators interpret their secular careers as deviating from the plan that God had for their lives. Both speak about the difficulties to actually fulfill what the visions called them to do, and interpret their own doubts and hesitations as disobedience towards God which necessitated further divine intervention. It is striking that for both narrators, even the manifold visions, dreams and auditions are not sufficient. This is in part because they are not always sure that they have properly understood what they have seen, and need an authoritative interpretation. For both, such interpretations are given by pastor-mentors under whose tutelage they are working. In both narratives, there are also instances where prophetic utterances occur to confirm a certain vision or dream. The way both of these narratives are structured, God’s direct intervention by showing visions or speaking is important, but never enough on its own. The visions and auditions become almost every-day occurrences especially in the second narrative, but the authoritative permission by the pastormentor still is what finally lets the pastor go ahead to start his own church. Similarly, the first narrator stresses how he never moves without the agreement of other pastors. As both narrators have started their own, independent churches after working within another church structure, it can be assumed that their stories serve as legitimation narratives against a charge of churchsplitting. That would explain both the strong emphasis on God’s direct 42

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intervention—it is God himself who made them do what they did, not their own aspirations!—and, at the same time, the tendency to have the visions and auditions confirmed by senior pastors. 3.2.6. Legitimation narratives IV: Woman pastors Both women pastors interviewed for this study told long and elaborate legitimation narratives which rested almost solely on dreams. Prophetic utterances also occur, but play much less of a role than in the stories of the male narrators. These narratives need to be understood in the light of the situation of women pastors in migrant churches. First of all, women pastors are extremely rare. Within the 291 pentecostal / charismatic churches registered in the UEM database, only 11 women pastors can be found. Two of these women serve within mega-churches in which they were ordained, one in a denominational pentecostal church, while the other eight are leading independent, usually small churches. As far as could be observed over the past eight years, there is a lot of conflict within the pentecostal / charismatic migrant scene about the possibility of woman pastors. While few totally reject the ordination of women as pastors or evangelists, the practice seems very rare. In informal conversations and formal settings, women pastors have also shared how hard it is for them to win recognition among their male peers: When I do a crusade, or a revival, or a special service, none of them comes, not a minister, not a member. I invite them, but they don’t come. When they invite me, I will always go. I will also tell my members to go. But when I invite them, they never come. Not one person, not one member. They do not accept me as a pastor. But I know my call, I will never get up. Never, ever. I will keep working because I have a calling. They cannot change this, even if they don’t accept it. Even if no other pastor ever recognizes me, I will continue. My call is from God, not from man.43

For women who pastor small, independent churches, and who are not recognized by others, their legitimation rests solely on their call. So it is not surprising that both woman pastors interviewed had long stories to tell.

43 A female pastor speaking at a gathering with German and migrant pastors. Quoted from field notes.


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The first narrator, a young evangelist-pastor originally from Cameroon, with a struggling, small church, received her call into the ministry while living in Lagos, Nigeria, and working as a musician. I was about to bring out a CD. [. . .] I was about to go to the studio and bring out that music, when God said: “You are going to stop.” God gave me a very, very . . . a very inspired dream, that at that time, I could not explain it [. . .] I had this dream, I was in a church, standing on the pulpit, with the microphone in my hand, and in that church, there were Indians in the church, there were Chinese in the church, there were Koreans in the church, there were Africans in the church—in short, all kinds of people were in that church. And I was preaching there, you know. And there was a call in the dream. At that time, my relationship with God was so, so bad, that I could not even understand the dream! Because at that time, I did not say I know Jesus as my Lord and Savior, no, I was not even going to church at that time, also, you know. So I had this dream also, and in my heart, I saw the dream and I said ‘Oh, this is a very good dream; I think this dream is telling me about . . . I’m going to be somebody very, very good in politics.’ So I said to myself, I better go to the University of L. and study Political Science, because when I get my political science, I can go back to Cameroon, and then I intended to enter politics, and maybe I’m going to be one of the women presidents there in Cameroon. So that was how I understood the dream, until, two weeks later, there was no way out. There was no way out, and I became seriously sick because I did not understand the dream. Nobody can help me, you know, I am not saying to anybody, and I had nobody around me at that time to help me, and so I’m going to study and come out with my degree, and then I became so sick, so sick, you know? And they did a lot of tests, and everything was negative, negative, they thought maybe it was AIDS, but the test came out negative. [. . .] They thought it was blood disease and all kinds of things, you know. But I realized I was very, very depressed, my spirit was very, very weak. I was just thinking about this dream, and I was afraid! I was very, very afraid that I am going to die, and there was no doctor there at that time that can encourage me, you know? There was no doctor, and nobody around me that can encourage me, but I know that I have a problem with this dream! And in the hospital there, that’s where I asked for a Bible, and I started reading the Bible, and I started praying, praying. But God was hearing prayer even though I didn’t even know I was praying. [. . .] Until . . . God was speaking to me . . . [. . .] So, one night, there in the hospital, I prayed, I prayed, I prayed. I was reading the Bible, I was not understanding the Bible [. . .] and all of a sudden, I had another dream. Hmm! I had another dream on the hospital bed, and at this time, you know, I saw somebody, just like God, in the Spirit, very, very powerful, and in the dream, there was a Bible there, and there was a coffin there. So I heard a voice that said: ‘If you are going to preach this Gospel, you are not going to die. If you are not preaching the Gospel, you are not going to

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chapter three leave this room, you are going to die. And that is the coffin that they are going to put you inside. Do you want to enter this coffin, or do you want to preach this Gospel? You have to choose!’ And I said, in the dream, I look at the coffin and I said: ‘No, I cannot enter that coffin, I am too young. I am too young to die, I cannot enter that coffin.’ And I look at the Bible and I said: ‘Oh, I’m going to preach this Gospel. If only going to preach this Gospel I’m going to live, I’m going to preach this Gospel. For me this going to die . . . no, I cannot die in a foreign land. Moreover, I don’t know where I am going!’ So, I woke up in the dream, I realized that I was in the hospital, and it was a dream. So I got up from the bed [. . .] and I said, let me see what I could eat! [. . .] And I ate, and I did not even vomit that food, the food can remain in my stomach. I started to realize there is something in that dream, that there is something in that dream. [. . .] I started feeling strong, I started feeling strong, and then I came out from the hospital, and I came back home. And now the problem is, now that you’ve left the hospital, you have a call. What to do with it? So I said: ‘It’s better for me to look for a Bible School. But which Bible School?’, because I don’t belong to any church, you know, I don’t know how to start with it. But I remember that I’ve seen one Bible School one day somewhere, just like that. So I went to them and I knock at their door, and they received me, and I told them I want to come to this Bible School. And they said: ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’ I said: ‘What do you mean?’ They said: ‘Because having the call of God is one thing, we are going to give you a paper, you are going to fill it, and explaining it to us, how did God call you?’ So they gave me the paper, and I filled it [. . .] and I was accepted into that Bible School, and that was . . . I followed the Lord. I followed the Lord. I know that this is a serious call, you know, God called me just like that, without any ambition. You know, there are some people who have the ambition to preach the Gospel, and there are some people that God just calls. Just like that. Fighting with the call and saying you have another thing to do, and God is calling you to come to do something, you know? It . . . was crazy for my family to accept that I am preaching the Gospel. But after seeing me, they realized that she has changed, and things have happened, . . . and that is the way of God.44

The first thing that strikes one about this narrative is the fact that while the male narrators of visions needed human mentors to explain their dreams to them, this female interlocutor experiences the explanation of her first dream in a second one in which God herself speaks to her. In this narrative, no human being is needed to confirm the call. God himself makes everything sufficiently clear. Also, in no other narrative was the seriousness of a divine call related in such a strong way. For the 44

Interview with P.W., 26 October 2005 in her home.


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narrator, it is either death or becoming a preacher. In this narrative, strong parallels can be observed to the calling procedures of West African priestesses: “It is firmly believed that no one of her own accord becomes a priestess; the initiative rests with the deities. [ . . .] The candidate may be struck by a strange illness which would necessitate her being taken to the Akonnedi Shrine for treatment. At the shrine the particular deity then reveals himself or herself and indicates his or her intentions. It is believed that refusal to obey the ‘call’ could result in either insanity or death.”45 Disobedience, as it was related by the male narrators in chapter 3.2.5, is unthinkable. Later in this same interview, the speaker recounted how her pastoral authority was constantly being questioned, because she is both young46 and female, but that this did not bother her very much. With a call narrative this strong, it is not really possible to question her pastoral role within the framework of a pentecostal / charismatic discussion. Therefore, she only mentions her acceptance into the Bible school (which, in a pentecostal / charismatic context, amounts to a recognition of her call) in passing. The fact that her health came back after accepting the call is proof enough that she has understood rightly what God wants from her. The second narrator, a Black woman pastor originally from Brazil pastoring a well-established, middle-size church that consists predominantly of women, also spoke about her experiences of not being recognized as a pastor. As her narrative gives a very detailed account of how she split away from the church in which she originally was a member, it is worth quoting long passages from it. After a detailed biographical account in which she told about her difficult life in Brazil, her migration to Germany, then Nigeria, her conversion there, her migration back to Germany, this pastor recounted the long process of starting her own church and becoming a pastor. She started out as a member at the same migrant church in which the Nigerian pastor quoted above also began his ministry. But her experiences were quite different from his: I love the church! Because, I know Pastor R. since he first come to Germany, and I love the church. But God used me. I didn’t know, but God used me in a very strange way! Everything in the church, God revealed to me in a dream! Every Sunday, I have something to tell 45 Kofi Asare Opoku, West African Traditional Religion, Accra et al.: FEP International Private Ltd., 1978, p. 76. 46 She was born in 1972.

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chapter three to the church. God speak to me clear! [. . .] Many things, anything in the church, the Lord used to tell me. And they start, they dislike me, very slowly, slowly, but they let me go and tell me. [. . .] Anytime, every Sunday, I go to church. Where I put my feet, I love the church, I pray for the church, I pray for the pastors, for everybody, I putting my feet in the church, my heart closes. I say: ‘My goodness!’ Then I called to Pastor R., I say: ‘Something happened, it’s very strange to me. Every time when I come here, my heart closes. And maybe, here I am under oppression.’47 And he told me, ‘Yes, I believe you are under oppression.’, and they pray for me.48

This passage already shows how the conflict in the church is developing. In addition to the head pastor, here is now a woman who goes up to speak to the church every Sunday, claiming to transmit revelations from God. It is impossible not to allow her to speak, but the leaders dislike what she has to say. It can therefore safely be assumed that the revelations were critical of the leadership rather than supportive. And at that time, I had a shop, Brazilian import-export. People [. . .] start to come with a lot of problems. They use to tell, sit down, cry, have no help. Then I start to pray for them. Pray for one, for two, for three—after a while, I start a prayer meeting [laughs] inside of the shop. But I say: ‘No, I never have any idea, no desire at all, to have something apart from the church.’ It was never my idea! Then I have some Brazilian women, they are feeling to start something. When I say—they asking me: ‘What you think we start something?’ I say: ‘Oh, thank you very much. I am very happy in my church; I never will leave that church, for no reason!’ But they say: ‘A few people need your help!’—‘I have an office in my shop, it is empty, I can give it for you, but I have nothing to do. It is only for you to do what you want. I have my church, I am very happy, I have my pastor, I don’t want to start any kind of thing apart from my church.’ Then I told them, they come on Sunday. I say: ‘Okay, next Sunday, you people come, I give you the key, you organize everything here, I make one key and give it to you. I tell you how you do here on Sunday, the way you come in, your—how you think you organize.’ They come, they have something start with nine women. I sit down there, I stay with them, everything it was fine. The first Sunday. And they prayed, they sing, they did very well! Then I say: ‘Praise the Lord! Nice they start something!’ Then I say: ‘Come next Sunday, I give you the key. Everything is alright. You don’t need to pay me anything, because anyway, it’s there, nobody uses it.’ Next Sunday I came to give the key for them. When I came, everybody is there, even more people. Nobody [of the leaders] came. They, they start. I wait, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 47 48

I.e. under attack by a demonic force. Interview with V.K., 28 November 2005 in the meeting hall of her church.


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20 minutes, NOBODY came! Then I start to be very angry. I say: ‘My goodness, where are these people?’ Then I went to toilet, I start to pray, I say: ‘Lord, look all these people here!’ It was really cold, around October, very cold weather. ‘Where do these women go, with all their children? What can I do?’ Then the Lord spoke to me very clear: ‘Open your Bible.’ Then I was so angry, I open my Bible, I say ‘Okay, I open my Bible, but what else can I do?’ And the Lord told me: ‘Read them!’ I read the word. [. . .] He say: ‘Go there and say that word!’ Then I came, I don’t want to show to them how I was really—then I show very nice, I say: ‘Okay, that is that we sing, we pray, I will say one word to you.’ Then I started to say the word, we pray, I say the word to them, I explain to them, in my limitation, I have a concordance, then I just—of course, I was in the [church] long enough! [. . .] I knew enough, but I was not a preacher! At all! It was the first time, with nobody guide me, only God himself, and nobody here to tell me things. Then I stayed there, I just say the word to them, everybody feel I say very well, [. . .] Then everybody say: ‘Okay, see you next Sunday.’ And I say: ‘Alright, you people come next Sunday.’ Then I call them who were doing it, I find nobody! I leave a message for them. Nobody call me back. Then, coming next Sunday, I come again, I say: ‘Maybe they went somewhere, they will come next Sunday.’ Nobody [of the leaders] came. The second Sunday, the third Sunday, the fourth Sunday, nobody came. To today, they never came! I say: ‘Oh, what can I do with these people now?’ Because I have no plan, I have no idea, and also I don’t know what to do. Then I spoke to Pastor R., ‘Oh my goodness, what are you having them?’ Oh, he was not understanding at all! Anyway, he was very judging, he was not understanding, he was against it, and this and that. Then I feel myself very hmmmm . . . they didn’t allow the woman preacher and so on. Then I say: ‘Okay, what can I do with these people? They don’t understand English, [. . .] and they can leave their house in the morning. Afternoon, the husband is awake; they need to be there for lunch and stay with their husband, that’s what they told me.49 The church that they want is in the morning. And that’s the way.’ He say: ‘No, you must stop and so.’ Then I say: ‘Listen. I cannot stop. Why you don’t help me?’—‘I am going to think about.’ Then I say: ‘Alright, then you think about it, anything, you let me know.’ To today, also, he never came, he never helped me, they knew this preach, down, he curse me, he forbid the women talk to me, because I’d be really against God. [. . .] And I just put myself back, I cry very much, I stay very much . . . but I say: ‘I cannot leave these people now! It’s not possible like this.’ Then I go because God speak to me, I hear the way he guide me. And I cannot leave these people. Then I bring everything to the Lord in prayer, and I ask the Lord if that’s his will. He show me how he will give me people to help me, show me somehow, I 49 In Pastor R.’s church, the English language Sunday service starts at 2 p.m. and lasts until about 5 p.m.

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chapter three really understand he is with me! If he is not with me, please close all the doors, because anyway, I don’t want to do anything in this way. It was not my idea! But very contrary, come many people to inquire.50

This pastor’s account contains different layers of legitimizing arguments. In the first layer just quoted above, the narrator insists that starting a church of her own was not her idea. She takes great care to make sure the listener knows how she protested this suggestion. She only took over a pastoring role after the original leaders of the new group simply disappeared, leaving her with a congregation that needed a preacher. Even then, she did not just assume a pastoral role. God himself spoke to her and told her what to do. The narrator continues by recounting her efforts to find the original leaders of the Brazilian group, without success. It is then that she speaks to the head pastor of the congregation she is still part of, who, unlike in the case of one of his male members, is not at all supportive. So for this narrator, God’s guiding comes against everything she hears from the people around her, and is not confirmed by anyone. Then, in a second layer of legitimation, she recounts the confirmation of her call by two mentors: Then I met Pastor P.51 [. . .]. He just lunched one time with me. He say: ‘Oh, I hear you have a meeting here on Friday (because every Friday we used to have a prayer meeting and so on).’ I say yes. Then he say: ‘Can I come here, maybe I can help you?’ I say ‘Oh, welcome! I want you come! I need help!’ And he come, he really encourages me a lot, helping me a lot! Really, Pastor P. was a mentor to me like my spiritual father, I can say. He knew me very much, encourage me, and used to come every Friday. And it was so many people come! It was wonderful. And he start with me, always, all the Brazilians full of demons and so on, it was a lot of deliverance and prayer and so on. And we start. Pastor P., he couldn’t come any more.52

It remains unclear why the pastor who has been helping so much suddenly cannot continue to do so. But regardless of the reason, a second mentor soon arrives. His arrival actually is preceded by a dream: Then one day, I got a call, from one man, what I never hear, Pastor D. [. . .] from Sri Lanka. [. . .] He spent around six years with us, Pastor D. What a man of God! I dream, before I meet him, [. . .] the Lord show me, tell me. ‘Receive him in my name. He is going to be your right arm. Receive him in my name.’ Then my mind burned, I say: ‘Who 50 51 52

Ibd. A Black pastor from Britain with churches of his own in different cities. Ibd.


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is this man?’ I spent almost two months. I didn’t know nobody. I said: ‘I not going to look to nobody, I wait, as he say for me to receive it. That means he is going to send.’ One day, my telephone just ring in my shop. One voice, just like that: ‘Hallo, I want to speak with V. I say: I am V.’—‘Yeah, my name is D., I am Pastor D., I want to speak to you. The Lord is sending me to help you.’ I say: ‘Okay, I want to see you.’ I felt in my heart: This is the man! I didn’t say one thing. When I saw Pastor D., hnnnn . . . it was like I received the angel of God! What love he bears, kind, sweet! Everybody love him, Pastor D.! [. . .] And he was really like a father to all of us. To us, to me, to everybody in the church! We love him, his word for us, everybody obey. We call him our apostle, because he really is . . . I never, to today, I never met a person in my ministry like Pastor D. He is like a unique person. A man, my goodness, really a blessed man, and he blessed us. He came all the way from D., every Sunday morning, to preach in the church, to help us. Every Sunday, around six years! He never asked me one Pfennig. What a man! We wanted to help him, but: ‘No! I don’t need! I am doing from God. Please, I don’t need, God give me everything!’ And all the baptism, he helped me, he teaches me, he encourages me, what a kind of a person! After a while, we start—in the year 2000, I went to the Bible School, Rhema, encourages me. After I finished, he told me: ‘Okay sister, now it’s time for me to leave you. You are ready. What I supposed to do here, God’s time is already over. You can go ahead.’ And he blessed me. Oh, how he blessed! Everybody in the church cried! But okay, we still had the contact, we still are very close. He is in England, his is on mission there, but still when he comes here, he still is our apostle. And he left me, and I stay alone, but he encouraged me: ‘Anything, please, you can count on me.’ And of course!53

The fact that two male pastors of different nationalities and backgrounds have been sent by God to help her in her ministry serves as a second layer of legitimation in this account. Even though she is attacked by many, some have come forward and recognized and supported her call. Not surprisingly, the narrative continues with a scathing attack on those migrant pastors who are not willing to accept her: And we are the first Brazilian church here in Germany, and I am the first woman as a pastor. Then, everybody chase me! The African pastors, they dislike me badly! [. . .] They just come for one reason, they just come with ideas to make money. [. . .] They work for their own kingdom! What experience I have is bad, but still, it’s the truth! And I try my best to have the relationship, but still it didn’t work. [. . .] They don’t accept me. First they say, I have a three things against me: Woman, black—like that!—, and I am married to a German. [. . .] Then they start to preach 53

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chapter three all over. ‘This is a sect, this is no church,’ because our church is based in the G-12, Cesar Castellano’s teaching54 [. . .] They don’t accept women in ministry. But to say here they don’t accept women is something very hard. Then they look for something, and always, if you look, you find something. And they found now, from South to North, and East to West, they talk bad about me. Anybody who wants to come here and have contact with me, they catch. ‘Don’t accept!’ They tell things . . . I receive a lot of emails—people really give me bad! [. . .] I have problems enough. I go up and down and take care of these women; I don’t like this kind of remarks in my mind. And they don’t like, also because they feel, I am going to influence their women. [. . .] I have no chances, but okay, I have a chance through Jesus Christ.55

Obviously, the fact that her church was growing made this woman pastor the subject of attacks and rumors from other migrant churches. Possibly, this church run by a woman for women also became attractive for black women from other churches. As the worship service is held in Portuguese, English and German, an international appeal cannot be denied. Against attacks and criticisms, this pastor maintains that her call is divine. But obviously, the isolation was difficult for her, and also led her to question her call. When my life in the ministry, it was like that, then I pray very much to the Lord to give me the confirmation. Then one, twice, the Lord came to me, twice. Once he came to me, he shook me, just like that, and when I saw I was in the hospital, one room, I saw it was in the hospital, he told me: ‘Look!’ Then I look the glass door, window, it was everybody in green, then I understand, it’s doctors there. Then he say: ‘Look, these people are waiting for this woman die.’ And I looked, it was one woman, young, blond hair, a baby in the bed, and a bowl of water. He say: ‘Go and take out what this woman have.’ I went there, I took the baby, there is one bed beside, I put, this water, put in the floor, and I went to this bed, I took her both hands, she was cold, but I took her hands, and I command this demon was with her. And I saw, a demon came, sit, stood up, and went away. [speaking very slowly, almost in a whisper] And he told me ‘Come! Now this woman is going to be well. They don’t know! It was unnecessary they cut her, but they don’t know. Now she’s going to be alright. That is your ministry: Healing through deliverance.’ [shouting] Then, I was there again. Oh my goodness, a dream or what? Then I say: ‘Lord give me confirmation again!’ Because I needed really to be sure. Then one day, I was there in the shop, somebody ring my 54 Cf. www.mci12.com.co (in Spanish) or www.visiong12.com (in English) accessed 16 September 2008. A critical review of the movement (in German) can be found at www.relinfo.ch/icf/g12.html, accessed 16 September 08. 55 Ibd.


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telephone. They say: ‘I want to send an order through e-mail, but I still, I didn’t get.’ Then I asked her: ‘Where do you live?’ She said: ‘I live close to Denmark.’ And I say: ‘I am going to check what I was to send to you, and send it, okay?’ Then I say to her: ‘Oh, but you live there, close to Denmark, there is no Brazilians!’ And she say: ‘No, I stay alone, it’s very hard to live here, it’s very cold, and it is only me and my husband.’ Then I say: ‘Do you have children?’ She say ‘Nonono, I don’t have children. Then I say: “Oh, I will pray that God will give you a child for you.’ She say: ‘Amen. Thank you very much. Amen!’ I say: ‘Are you a Christian?’ She say: ‘Yes, I am a Christian.’ Then the Spirit of the Lord came over the telephone, I was so surprised! Then the woman start to speak in tongues, and she speak to me and say: ‘You asking me a confirmation. I told you already, look at your hands! I put my healing power in your hand! You are going to heal many people in my name! Your ministry is healing through deliverance!’— Again, ha!!!—Afterwards, there was: ‘Oh my God, what is it?’ I say: ‘Please, please, it is alright, everything is alright, it’s only for me.’ Then I put down the phone and said: ‘My goodness, that’s twice the Lord spoke to me, give me confirmation.’ And anybody who come to me, they need to be delivered, and they get healed. But I still asked: ‘Lord, give me confirmation.’ Because so many people talking about me, they are disgracing me, they put me down. I am alone! Many evening, the house of my husband, many people has been sick, and went there to pray, and got healed, in many circumstances, very strange. The wife of his brother, she will get a child, the doctor say this child is going to have this, eh . . . handicap, the syndrome of Down. And everybody was very sad. But she was already high pregnant. But my mother-in-law don’t want. Then the Lord told me one morning: ‘Go there and pray for her.’ When I went there, the Lord touch her, she fell under the touch, and the child was born two weeks later and was well. Everybody was so happy, but the doctor was crazy! ‘How can the water examination and everything?’— I say: ‘Okay, God can do miracle, it’s okay, it’s alright.’ Many time in the church, that’s my ministry. People I deliver. Anybody who come to me, I can say about 80 %, because they need deliverance. [. . .] God deliver, after that the life start to really flows, goes well, many sickness, many marriage problem, broken children, and God really used me for deliverance. Many confirmation, one after another.56

This part of the narrative serves up three more layers of legitimation. These seem necessary as with all the outside attacks, this pastor continues to doubt her own calling. Asking for confirmation that she has indeed been called into the office of a pastor, she receives a dream (third layer) and a prophetic utterance (fourth layer), which not only confirm her calling so far, but also add to it: She is now to do a ministry 56

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of deliverance. It is interesting here that the prophetic confirmation is even more ‘difficult’ than in the other accounts: Not only is the woman speaking prophetically a total stranger, she also speaks in tongues and does not know herself what she is saying. In contrast to the prophetic confirmations in the male narratives, this one also does not come from a pastor, preacher or evangelist, i.e. someone considered higher up in an informal hierarchy, but simply from another woman, a customer. For the male interviewees, confirmation was only valid if it occurred vertically, from above, while in this narrative, the confirmation is given horizontally. Finally, the fifth layer of legitimation consists in the confirmation of her calling by proof: The dream and prophetic utterance which told her of her healing ministry are validated by the fact that a miracle healing actually happens. Each further healing experience is interpreted as further confirmation for the call. And now, I have . . . I don’t looking for nothing. Come one woman here, full of the Holy Spirit, nice. For three weeks, the Lord spoke to me, she asks me prayer. ‘Please pray for me, always I feel something in my stomach.’ Then when I pray for her, the Holy Spirit tell me [whispering]: ‘No, no, don’t pray for her, she needs pray for others, then she is going to be well.’ Strange, eh? Then I say, anyway, I’m going to say so, and: ‘Look, I cannot pray for you.’—‘Why not?’ I say: ‘Because the Lord tell me, you need to pray for others. Then you are going to be well.’ She say: ‘He tell you that?’ I say yes.—‘Praise the Lord!’ She start to jump. I say: ‘Why you jump so?’—‘Because always I feel the Holy Spirit on me. I need to pray, the Lord tell me to pray, but in my church, they don’t allow the women pray.’ I say: ‘What church are you from? [. . .] Don’t make me troubles!’ She come here every Friday, she pray for everybody, many people are healed, she is helping me. Then I say: ‘Now I will have the trouble again.’ [laughs]. So the ministry, the Lord put the people in my way, I never looking for them, like Pastor D., Pastor P., now this woman, Sister L., she is coming here, she is from Eritrea. She comes here, and she is helping me. And doing a lot of very . . . really, we can see the power of the Holy Spirit. We can see it’s God guiding. And we are going this way.57

This last part also distinguishes this female narrative from all the male accounts. While several of the interviewed pastors now have pastors working under them, they mention them, if at all, only in a context of ‘I saw this person’s potential and developed it’. No male interviewee talked about other pastors or church workers sent to him by God to support him in his ministry. It may be an overassumption to detect a 57

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gender difference here, but the observation remains striking. In addition, it should be noted that the motif of a woman falling ill before she recognizes her call that we saw in the first female pastor’s interview is being repeated here. The woman pastor who refused to be interviewed for this study, a Ghanaian ordained within a mega-church that normally does not ordain women, had told me her story some years ago. From my notes of this conversation, some further conclusions can be drawn: C. [. . .] came to Germany in 1980, she is married and has three children. Since the early 1980s, she served as a deacon in the H. congregation of the [. . .]. At the end, she was responsible for the finances of the whole church. Since the early 1990s, she attended a lot of courses, read a lot, and also attended the church’s Bible School. By 1996 she was sure that she had been called to be a pastor, but she knew that her church does not ordain women. In 1997, she was allowed to preach for the first time. In spite of a clear sense of having a call, she decided not to fight for her ordination, but rather to trust in God, to fast and pray. She did this for several years. In 1999 she had a dream: She was in a big pastors’ meeting and could see one free seat up front. She knew that this seat was meant for her, and tried to go there to sit down. But she was prevented from doing so by some invisible power. C. took this dream as her motivation to once more fast and pray for her ordination to finally take place. Shortly afterwards, she was called to [the founder and General Overseer of her church]. He told her: ‘The Holy Spirit has been dealing with me about you. I have not had any peace. I don’t want to do this, but I have to ordain you as a pastor.’ She was then ordained and began to work there as a pastor. Since 2001 she has been the head pastor of the congregation in D.—this, too, is an answer to her prayers.”58

This woman obviously knew very clearly that the fact of her calling would scandalize her church. As she was not willing to risk her position in the congregation, she kept quiet about it, but did not remain passive. The times of fasting and prayer can be interpreted as a kind of lobbying with God: If he had really called her, he had to convince her superiors. The fact that her church leader seemed to have received exactly this message from God served as a confirmation of her call. But being ordained by a bishop who felt forced to do this, and in a church that in principle does not condone woman pastors, her position is not really secure, and it can be safely assumed that this is the reason why she did not want to tell her story on tape. 58

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chapter three 3.3. Mediators of divine power in a market situation: Observations and analysis of the pastoral role

So far, we have analyzed what the 22 interviewees had to say about their own pastoral role and calling. We will now turn to other sources, mainly written materials from different churches and my own observations, to examine how this self-understanding is actualized and lived in the context of migrant churches in Germany. As chapter 2 has shown, the situation of pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches in Germany is not stable. Approximately 20 churches are being newly established within the region of the UEM program every year. Others split, and some simply dissolve and disappear. With most new churches not belonging to any denominational structure, the whole field is extremely fluid. Such fluidity, naturally, creates keen competition among churches and pastors, who, despite their claims to missionary internationalism, tend to set up congregations with their own peers. This competition can be observed in every big city in the Rhine-Ruhr area, particularly among Anglophone and Francophone African churches, but it has also been notable among Korean,59 Tamil and, lately, Brazilian churches. Pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches exist in a true market situation: They compete for members within a limited constituency of migrant60 individuals and families who, orienting themselves within a new and foreign context, freely select the church that they like best. So far, no research has been published on the motivation of migrant Christians to join a specific church. It could be speculated that language, culture, familial ties or friendships, specific spiritual needs and experiences, and practical reasons like location and worship time all play a role. In the case of very international churches, individuals also might join them because these epitomize the modernity and globality for which they are striving.61 Furthermore, strong anecdotal evidence points towards the fact that members do not feel strongly bound to 59 It should be noted, though, that most Korean churches in the UEM region are mainline Protestant. 60 As the number of indigenous Germans is very small in most migrant churches, Germans are not here considered as part of the constituency. It should be noted, though, that in situations where migrant churches have started attracting more Germans, German churches often start to see them as competition. 61 See also Afe Adogame, The Quest for Space in the Global Spiritual Marketplace, in: International Review of Mission, Vol. LXXXIX No. 354, July 2000, pp. 400–409.


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the church they have joined, but easily move between churches. As any African, Korean, Tamil or Brazilian charismatic or pentecostal living in the Rhine-Ruhr area can choose from a large variety of churches, it can be argued that this situation creates an incentive for churches to claim greater miraculous powers, to build a closer-knit community—in short, to be ‘better’ than neighboring churches. With pastors playing such a decisive role in building up migrant pentecostal / charismatic congregations it is not surprising that this competitive situation should be reflected in their self-understanding and in their practices. The analysis of the discourse on the pastoral role in chapter 3.1 and 3.2 has shown that this is the case. Here now, observations from the field will be added to further the argument. 3.3.1. The market situation: Undermining pastoral authority As members tend to fluctuate freely between congregations, every establishment of a new church means that existing churches will lose some of their membership. This creates a sense of mutual suspicion among pastors and leaders, which is expressed in formal and informal conversations as well as in sermons and church publications. Pastors of existing churches lament the activities of ‘church splitters’ whom they accuse of poaching their members. Founders of new churches, on the other side, claim that pastors of existing congregations are self-serving, corrupt; do not follow the true Gospel and therefore do not deserve to be followed. It could be argued that such strong mutual accusations are necessary in a situation where being a pastor is so spiritually loaded, and where Biblical tradition calls for unity of Christians and ‘brotherly love’ among church workers: If healthy competition is not possible, then the other has to be vilified to justify one’s own claims. This discourse of suspicion, consequently, challenges and undermines pastoral authority. Two examples illustrate how these suspicions are voiced. The first is taken from a church magazine, the second from field notes. WOLIC62 Voice, the magazine of an Anglophone African independent charismatic church recently carried, in two successive issues, columns on the subject of church splitting. In the first column, the author, after claiming that a convention of his own church had not been attended by pastors invited from other churches due to their feelings of jealousy, continued:

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chapter three If we are doing the right thing at the right time, how come our members leave en mass [sic]? Some ministers deliberately ‘poach’ members from other churches but do you know one thing—remember that judgment will begin from the house of God. [. . .] Most of these so-called pastors here in Germany never went through a full pastoral school in Africa and were never ordained or even called into their ministry. Unfortunately, some of them rather ‘called’ themselves, instead of allowing God to call them.63

The second column continued in the same vein: This column takes a critical look at brethren who are newly called into the ministry but incidentally began on a sour note. 50 % of graduates from Bible schools end up establishing churches. Fact is that new churches must come into existence and it has to start off somehow from existing ones. Sadly today, the process most brethren prefer to take in order to accomplish this dream is sometimes unnatural. [. . .] As far as I am concerned, there are 4 types of Spiritual Calls [sic]: Those called by God Those called by the Devil Those called by other people Those who called themselves! By their fruits you shall know them says the Bible so it is not difficult to pick them out in the society no matter what name they give their churches. [. . .] A pastor once came to WOLIC and after service; he started telling some ushers to leave WOLIC and come over to his new church, Pastor Peterson heard it but handed the issue over to God and today that church is no more existing.”64

The column then continued that the proper process of establishing a new church should include the founder making his intentions clear to the leadership of the church he was currently attending, and asking for and receiving their blessing for this venture. There clearly were honorable intentions why someone might want to leave one church to establish another one: Perhaps the new church is owned [sic] by your relation or friend and you wish to help him.65

63 64 65

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But not everybody who was leaving the church was doing so for rightful intentions: There are professional church-changers. These are people who will get to any limit to be a new member in any new ministry simply to get a plum position in the new church. Mark my word; as soon as they could not get their heart desires over there, they move to yet another new ministry.66

These columns express in writing what can be heard in numerous conversations. Basically, a sense of distrust prevails. Pastors feel that their authority can never be taken for granted and is constantly being undermined. Other pastors are suspected of using every opportunity to take one’s members away. Neither can one’s own congregation members be trusted. They will simply leave if they do not get sufficient help in whatever crisis they might be facing, plus satisfactory recognition and an honorable position. And if somebody is given a position of authority, e.g. as an elder or assistant pastor, he or she may eventually still break away, taking a number of members with him or her.67 One Ghanaian pastor of a large mega-church has found an ingenious way to prevent such splits: All his assistant pastors have been brought from Ghana on so-called ‘pastor visas.’ This means that their stay in Germany is dependent on their employment in that particular church—if they were to break away, their visas would be terminated immediately, forcing them to leave the country. This discourse of suspicion could also be observed in one of the largest African-led mega-churches in the Rhine-Ruhr area. In its Church Handbook, dated June 2005, a pledge of “membership responsibilities” is quoted which new members have to sign. After committing themselves to “strive for excellence” in their Christian lives and “to submit to the authority of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct and to the control of the Holy Spirit,” members also have to promise to “cooperate respectfully with the Pastors / Leadership [sic] of the Church.”68 The handbook also contains matrimonial guidelines and codes of discipline, both of which again give the head pastor final say in both counseling and church life matters. That this pastoral authority, once gained, has to be guarded jealously became very obvious in this church’s ordination service for a junior 66 67 68

Ibd., p. 8. Between 1998 and 2006, I documented several such cases. LHICF Church Handbook, p. 11.

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pastor. Despite the fact that the ordinand was the wife of the head pastor, about half of the service instructions for her which were read out to the congregation and signed by the new pastor in public, dealt with her subordination to the head pastor: [. . .] You will submit to the senior pastor; – you are ready to serve in any capacity as appointed by the senior pastor; – you have no private vision that you do not submit to the vision of the senior pastor; – you do not act on your visions before discussing them with the senior pastor; – you have no critical spirit against the head pastor; – you do not create your own following; [. . .] – the pulpit is not your main target; – you are prepared to serve in any area assigned by the senior pastor [. . .].

Clearly, this was an attempt at affirming the authority of the head pastor, both towards the new ordinand and also towards the congregation which might start to prefer the newly-ordained pastor to the head pastor who, by not only overseeing a number of satellite churches, but also following many preaching invitations, is often absent from the church. Suspicions and fears about loss of pastoral authority are by no means unreasonable. Observations and informal conversations with congregation members and elders show that they often do not trust their pastors. Rumors, substantiated or unsubstantiated, circulate among members and can lead to a very quick loss of authority for a pastor. Such rumors usually concern either financial wrongdoings or marital infidelity (or both), but can go as far as charging pastors with involvement in the drug trade or with human trafficking. For example, a Ghanaian denominational pentecostal church in Düsseldorf was investigated for such crimes by the police after anonymous letters of accusation had been sent to the police as well as to the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. The claims turned out to be without any substance, but were deemed to come from fellow Ghanaians jealous of the fast growth of this particular church. In another case which could be observed closely, a large Tamilspeaking church was racked by massive internal conflicts. Several elders and members made contact with the UEM program to voice the following accusations against their head pastor:


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– The head pastor wanted total control over everything that was going on in the church and therefore forbade any kind of independent activity organized by members. – The head pastor had been spending large amounts of money without properly accounting for them. Rumors within the church were claiming that he had spent it on five-star accommodation when traveling, to finance his family remaining in Sri Lanka, to build himself a house there, and to buy one person’s silence who was threatening to inform the church members about this. None of the accusations were ever proven, but it did turn out that despite a monthly church income of more than 20,000 Deutschmarks, book keeping had been sloppy for years, and large sums of money could not properly be accounted for. When the conflict finally came into the open and some elders directly confronted the pastor about finances, the pastor refused to account for the money he had used, insisting that as the pastor, he did not have to justify his actions to elders or church members. This claim to pastoral authority backfired badly as it incited even more rumors, and more than half of the membership left the church, joining different newly established churches in surrounding cities. Rumors about financial irregularities are particularly frequent in situations where churches lack proper financial management and accounting procedures. Many pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches start out without church accounts, turning over the contents of their offering boxes to the pastor without counting the money. While pastors often complain that donations are too paltry to keep the church going, members resent the constant pressure to give and donate money, wondering where the cash goes. Without financial transparency in many of the migrant churches, neither guilt nor innocence can be proven once rumors of financial misconduct have started, resulting in acrimonious claims and counterclaims and ultimately church splits. It is on the background of this situation of general suspicion that the interviews about the pastoral self-understanding and role have to be read. There is a very strong need for legitimization; pastors need constantly to claim and prove that while suspicions and accusations may be true for some other pastors, they are wrong in their own cases. It is exactly because their authority is so fragile and subject to questions and suspicions that it needs to be constantly asserted anew.

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3.3.2. Asserting pastoral authority Only a pastor who speaks and acts with great spiritual authority will have members who adhere to him or her. Nevertheless, pastors often do not find it easy to assert their authority. For example, during the kikk courses organized by UEM, discussions regularly arose among participants about how to act when one knew from God what the congregation should do next, but the congregation or at least part of it did not want to follow. From the reaction of the participants, it was obvious that this is a common problem. Interestingly, the suggestion that they might want to discuss with their congregation (or at least with their elders) to discern together what the will of God might be in this situation was always roundly rejected. Rather, the participants asked for advice from the course leaders on how to make their congregation and elders follow and obey them. Authority, in their understanding, did not come from acceptance by the congregation, but was rather bestowed from above. But how can migrant pastors assert the authority they claim to have? A number of different ways can be ascertained from observations. 3.3.2.1. Power through spirituality In line with what could be observed in the interviews, a first way of asserting authority consists of displaying an intense spirituality. As we have already seen, the discussions on pastoral authority maintain that such authority is always the consequence of much prayer and fasting. This understanding is clearly shared by congregation members. Consequently, pastors make it known in sermons and conversations how much time they spend in prayer. It is not uncommon to call a migrant pastor only to be told by his wife that “he cannot be disturbed right now because he is praying.” Others let their congregations know that they cannot be called at certain times during the day because these have been set aside for prayer and Bible reading. Many migrant pastors also fast regularly, as often as one or two days every week. Others habitually go for extended periods of fasting, lasting seven, 28 or even 40 days. Such fasts usually are as public as the pastor’s prayer times: Pastors habitually broadcast their fast during worship services, or mention revelations gained during a fast in sermons. Often, the announcement of a fast is coupled with the mentioning of certain problems or issues that need prayer. The unspoken implications of such


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declarations are, of course, that during such a fast a pastor’s prayers might be more powerful, or that their revelations are important because they were given during a time of close proximity to God. When fasts were discussed in pastors’ meetings or during the kikk course, a certain one-upmanship could be observed: Pastors boasted about their ability to fast long and hard, with one even claiming that in one instance, he went without water in a ‘dry fast’ for seven days. Church members seem to expect such spiritual powers from their pastor. It is striking to observe how, after almost every pentecostal / charismatic worship service, members will stay back to ask the pastor for a special prayer, usually for a very concrete need. Such prayers are given quickly, with a minimum of fuss, though often accompanied by the laying-on of hands, and with the pastor moving from one supplicant to the next. It can be assumed that the authority of a pastor in such a context rests very much on the perception that his or her prayers have a better chance to be answered than one’s own prayers or those of one’s peers. It is interesting that despite the existence of prayer groups and prayer meetings in basically all pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches, members seem to set such high store in the efficacy of the prayers of their pastor. Not surprisingly, guest preachers and convention speakers are in even higher demand for such ministrations, and time for such individual prayers is usually factored into the program of visiting celebrities. All of these observations point towards a discourse in which spirituality is very much seen in a quantitative and possibly even mechanistic way: The more time a pastor spends in prayer, fasting and retreat, the more ‘power’ will he or she have. Such power is important because it results in ‘blessings’ for the members, blessings that can take the form of answered prayers for a job, a residence permit, a wife, husband or child, or for healing in case of an illness. Pastors therefore need to broadcast their spiritual efforts to ensure that members will trust their God-given power, and consequently submit to their authority. 3.3.2.2. Authority through self-sacrifice In the interviews, the pastors described themselves as shepherds and fathers to the congregation. This image is clearly shared by congregation members: In informal conversations, pastors are often referred to as fathers, especially when instances of help and assistance are being recounted, or when members talk about their conversion history. Tied

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to the title of ‘father’ or ‘mother’ is the expectation that this pastor will go out of his or her way to help the ‘child’ if the need arises. This author, at numerous occasions, was introduced to migrant charismatic / pentecostal congregations with sentences like “She has helped us so much, she is our mother.” Similarly, when Anglophone African pastors phoned and addressed me as “Ma”, I knew that a plea for assistance would shortly follow. Members of pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches have extremely high expectations of their pastor’s problem solving skills, or, if no solution is humanly possible, of their pastor’s power to effect miraculous solutions to their problems through prayer. They contact the pastor with whatever need they have: Visa problems, job loss, marital and family quarrels, illness, financial worries, the need for a place to stay—everything is immediately taken to the pastor in hope for a quick solution. These expectations can be actively encouraged during a worship service. In one instance that I observed,69 a guest preacher told the congregation: “The pastor is always there for you. If you have a visa problem, call the pastor. If you have a marital problem, call the pastor. If you have no flat, [by now, the congregation had gotten into the game and started joining in loudly for the second half of the sentence] call the pastor. If you have a problem about work, call the pastor . . ..” The expectation clearly is that the pastor serves as a father / mother figure that will take care of his or her children, even if it means neglecting his or her own needs. According to observations and informal conversations with many pastors, members are not shy about calling their pastor in the middle of the night if a problem needs immediate attention. Not surprisingly, basically all pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors carry mobile phones which they do not even switch off during the most important meeting, and which they will answer even in a situation where such behavior is frowned upon. Particularly African pastors frustrate their German colleagues because they might, e.g., skip a long-planned appointment to plan a joint worship with a German congregation simply because a congregation member called to ask for a home visit and prayer for a sick child, or because a member needed a translator in dealing with the German authorities. These expectations put enormous pressure on the pastors because if solutions cannot be provided, the pastor will see his authority under69 Word of Life International Church Oberhausen, Sept. 2006. Quote taken from field notes.


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mined and his membership diminishing. A striking example of this was communicated to me by a Ghanaian pastor. He described the case of a female congregation member who had been unable to conceive a child and was now asking the congregation for a large sum of money to undergo fertility treatments. When it was suggested to him that he might counsel the couple to come to terms with their childlessness, he refused to do so. “They will simply think that we are unable or unwilling to help solve their problem and leave the church.” How much this pastoral role of problem solver is perceived as necessary for church growth and membership maintenance was expressed time and again in informal conversations with pastors about the need and the Biblical commandment to rest. A sentiment expressed repeatedly was: “You German pastors can afford to be lazy, because you are not paid by your members. If we do not take care of our people, our families will have nothing to eat.” The equation is simple: A pastor who is not constantly available for his congregation members (except during prayer times—prayer seems to be the only possible excuse not to answer one’s phone) and who does not, by physical or spiritual effort, provides solutions to burning problems, will have no authority, and therefore no members who follow him. 3.3.2.3. Networks of authorization So far, we have described ways of individually asserting one’s authority as a pastor. But legitimation processes do not just function between a pastor and his or her congregation; they also take place within networks of churches. Within the scene of pentecostal / migrant churches, fluid and vague networks can be observed which help local pastors to assert their authority towards their congregations. Pastors invite guest preachers to their own church, and gladly accept invitations to preach in other churches. Both the presence of guest preachers and being asked to preach serve as steps within a complex process of negotiating authority. To bring in prominent guest speakers enhances the authority of a local pastor, as does the fact that he or she is in great demand by other churches. To look at terminology or certain catch phrases is a good means by which to demonstrate how such a negotiation of authority works concretely. When guest preachers are introduced in a pentecostal / charismatic migrant church or convention, the person in question is usually given the title “man / woman of God.” This designation is rich

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in associations as its Biblical connotation is immediately clear to the audience: The one person called “man of God” in the Bible is the prophet Elisha70 who had received a “double portion”71 of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the power to work astonishing miracles. Consequently, once a pastor is recognized by his or her peers as a “man / woman of God”, the implication and expectation is that this person speaks with God-given authority and acts with God-given power. As one Nigerian pastor once explained to me when I asked him about the meaning of that title he had bestowed on me: You as a woman of God, there is something in you that is quite different from any other woman on the street, and that thing is the Holy Spirit in you. The way you talk is not the way ordinary women in the street talk. Your ways can produce life, while the ways of the women of the street will always produce curse and problems. So the Holy Spirit in you differentiates you from any other somebody.72

This means: If a guest preacher is introduced as “man / woman of God”, he or she is formally entrusted to speak with divine authority. Whatever the guest preacher says carries special weight. (It is not surprising that guest speakers usually come from far, if not from abroad, then at least from a city several hours drive away. In this way, they cannot become a competitor!) Field observations show that after such an introduction, the guest preacher almost always reciprocates by telling the congregation that their pastor is also a “man / woman of God”. As guest preachers are often already known to the congregation through videos, DVDs, or books, and therefore have an established authority even before they were introduced, this ritual of mutual acknowledgement of spiritual power serves as a means of establishing and strengthening the authority of pastors in their congregation.

2. Kings 4: 9 etc. 2. Kings 2: 9 ff. Asking for a “double portion” of the “anointing” is a staple in neoPentecostal and charismatic prayer meetings and conventions. The idea was probably popularized by neo-Pentecostal healer and televangelist Benny Hinn, who claims this “double portion” for himself and his followers. See Benny Hinn, The Anointing, Waynesboro (GA): Send the Light Publishers, 1997. 72 Interview with Evans Nwiku, Victory Christian Ministries, Oberhausen, 2 March 2000. An edited version of this interview was translated into German and published in: Nwiku, Evans / Währisch-Oblau, Claudia, “Du musst Gottes Gesalbter sein, um jemanden zu befreien.” Ein interkulturelles Gespräch, in: Karl Federschmidt et al. (eds.), Handbuch Interkulturelle Seelsorge, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 2002. 70 71


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Similarly, observations show that it is guest preachers who, in their sermons, take up the subject of obedience to one’s pastor. In three instances documented in my field notes, the preachers argued that the congregational pastors had been called and placed into a position of authority by God himself and that only through obedience to them congregation members would be able to enjoy the blessings that they were meant to reap. Disrespect for the pastor and disobedience to him or her were labeled as serious sin, in line with disobedience against God. In this context, it is not surprising that pentecostal / charismatic churches tend to invite large numbers of pastors from other churches to all of their special events, be it conventions, anniversaries, or crusades. The more pastors show up for such an event, the more glory is reflected on the host pastor. Conversely, if invitees do not show up, this clearly indicates that the host pastor does not enjoy much authority among his or her peers, diminishing him or her in the eyes of his or her congregation. It can be argued that such informal networks serve as an ‘authorizing structure’ in a situation where no church order exists to define the obligations and authority of a pastor. As the overwhelming majority of pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches do not have a church order, they heavily rely on these authorizing structures. 3.3.3. Growing into pastoral authority: Calling and ordination So far, we have described how pastors assert their authority in a situation which does not have any clear authority structures. But how, in a fluid market situation without established church structures, does somebody actually become a pastor? Observations and many conversations have underscored what has also become clear in the interviews: Becoming a pastor starts out with a call from God. This, of course, immediately raises the question how a truly divine call can be ascertained and distinguished from one’s own aspirations. Many of the church splits observed during the past eight years hinged exactly on this question: A congregation member would insist on his or her calling to become a pastor, possibly supported by some other members, while the pastor of this congregation, possibly also supported by some other members, questioned or denied the divine origin of this call, often insinuating that the person in question was unwilling to obey the existing pastor’s authority, was out for personal gain, or simply quarrelsome. This in turn frequently led the newly called person to challenge the authority of a pastor who could not discern that God had spoken. In such

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situations, church splits basically became inevitable. If, on the other hand, the existing pastor of a congregation acknowledged the call into the ministry of one of his or her members, solutions could usually be found. In several cases, newly called persons started out working as assistant or junior pastor under the leadership of the established minister, or they were put in charge of daughter churches in a different city, or, in other cases, they left their congregation with the blessing of their pastor to plant a new, independent church. Observations show that after a church split, the newly called pastor usually starts a congregation without immediately seeking ordination. Rather, he or she works for a number of years to gain experience, and possibly undergoes some theological training, either in one of the self-organized migrant programs like the Excel College of Ministry in Essen73 or the Institut Biblique et Théologique in Bochum,74 or through a correspondence course like the Emmaus Bible Course, administered in Germany by the Zentralafrika-Mission,75 or by attending short courses at a Bible school either in Europe or in the home country.76 Conversely, in the case of an assistant or junior pastor, ordination occurs soon after the person has started ministry work. Ordinations are therefore rather recognition of a pastoral call and not so much an installation into pastoral authority. Nevertheless, the legitimizing function of an ordination should not be underestimated, and independent non-denominational pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors often seek ordination by and into a network to strengthen their credibility. Interestingly, networks like the Council of Pentecost Ministers or the Eglises en Réveil en RhénanieNord Westphalie do not ordain—from the discussions observed, they rather serve to protect the interests of those already ordained against newcomers. Networks relied on for ordination are often US-based and offer ordination and certification for a small fee. Migrant pastors in

73

This college is affiliated with Indiana Christian University, a part of LESEA Ministries established by Lester Sumrall. See http://www.lesea.org/documents/icu/ icucatalog_0506.pdf, and www.lesea.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=main.icu, accessed 31 August, 2006. 74 www.ibtb-online.de, accessed 11 September 2006. 75 http://zamonline.de/dt/emmaus.php, accessed 11 September 2006. 76 For example, Rhema Bible School Bonn, www.rhema-germany.de, accessed 11 September 2006, or New Covenant University (FL), Düren Extension. Oral information from Paul Tshibangu, 11 September 2006, and www.newcovenant.edu, accessed 11 September 2006.


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the UEM database have been ordained by the Association of Evangelical Gospel Assemblies,77 World Harvest Ministers’ Network attached to Lester Sumrall Evangelistic Association,78 New Life Churches and Ministries Network attached to Alan Pateman Ministries,79 and other similarly obscure organizations. Other pastors seek ordination with a church organization in their home country, though often without fully putting themselves under the authority of this organization. Here, a structure of mutual gain suggests itself: The pastor receives a framed certificate and, in some instances, even a kind of pastoral ID, while the ordaining church gains a contact to Europe, travel possibilities for leaders who join conventions and crusades as guest preachers, and possibly financial gain by donations from Germany. When an ordination occurs outside of any denomination or organization, informal contacts provide an authorizing structure. In two cases which I could observe closely, the pastors to be ordained first got the agreement of their congregation to their ordination, and then approached the senior pastor of another large congregation to ask them to ordain them. In one case, of a Ghanaian ordinand, the ordainer was the bishop of the Christian Church Outreach Mission, a Ghanaian-led denomination with about 20 churches in Germany. In the second case, of a Congolese ordinand, the ordainer was a Congolese pastor heading a large Church of God (Cleveland) congregation in Antwerp. Therefore, in both cases, the ordainer came from a denomination, but did not ordain the new pastor into that particular denomination. This was underscored by the fact that in both ordination services, a number of pastors from different denominations and nationalities participated in the ritual anointing with oil, laying-on of hands and prayers. Both ordaining pastors were highly successful, with large congregations of their own, and therefore can be assumed to carry great personal authority. In the ordination service, they spoke from personal experience rather than from denominational tradition, even if they used the ordination forms of their respective churches. In their sermons, they stressed that they personally (and not some anonymous church board) had spent time to assess the call of the ordinand, interviewing him at great depth, and that they had also assessed his practical work through

77 78 79

www.aega.org, accessed 31 August, 2006. www.whmn.net, accessed 31 August, 2006. www.alanpateman.de, www.alanpatemanministries.org, accessed 31 August, 2006.

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several visits to the church and talks with the elders before agreeing to do the ordination. Their way of praying for the ordinand clearly hinted at the Elijah-Elisha motif of passing the Spirit from one strong man of God to the other. In addition, the anointing with oil symbolized that a special measure of the Holy Spirit was expected to rest on the ordinands: In the case of the Ghanaian ordinand, the strength of the impartation of the Spirit was visualized by the fact that both he and his wife, after being anointed together, fell down and ‘rested in the Spirit’ for several minutes. In the case of the Congolese, the prayer explicitly spoke of the impartation of all spiritual gifts. While there was no impartation in the sense that the ordainer ritually passed these gifts to the ordinand, his prayer was clearly informed by a sense that through this ordination ritual, the gifts should come upon the pastor. Therefore, it can be argued that in a non-denominational, charismatic / pentecostal migrant context, an ordination serves both as the public acknowledgement that the ordinand has indeed been divinely called into the ministry, and as a strengthening of pastoral authority. 3.4. Summary: Mediators of divine power in a market setting It is quite obvious that in a charismatic setting, without clear church structures, just to claim pastoral authority will never suffice. If there are no organizational reasons to submit to a pastor’s power, if people can (and do!) move from one church to the next to find one that suits them best, then pastoral authority can only be realized if it is recognized and accepted by the congregation members. Despite the authoritariansounding theory, the practice is quite democratic, or, it might be said, market-oriented: Members submit to a pastor out of their own free will, and leave a church with few repercussions if they do not want to submit any longer. They simply choose the pastor whose authority they will respect. This chapter has shown how being a pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastor means performing a constant balancing act: The pastor who claims to have received a call cannot rest on it. He needs to be persistent in maintaining a spiritual life that gives him a clear understanding of the divine will in concrete situations. He claims great authority, but if he is unable to solve his members’ problems, his authority will be lost very quickly. It can be argued that pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors need to constantly claim such strong spiritual power


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exactly because they have no other means of establishing authority and keeping their congregation together. A self-strengthening circle may well be at play: Migrant pentecostal / charismatic Christians are searching for a spiritually and organizationally powerful father figure to assist them in their marginalized and threatened situation, and pastors, in a competitive market, claim and struggle to fulfill this role.

chapter four FOLLOWING THE CALL: EXPATRIATION NARRATIVES In chapter 3, we examined the self-perception of pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors in relationship to their congregations. In this chapter, we will now turn to another important facet of their selfunderstanding: In their encounters with the UEM program, almost all pentecostal / charismatic migrant church leaders described themselves as “missionaries.” This self-understanding was borne out by the short interviews. Therefore, the long interviews contained a section in which the respondents were asked about their missionary biography, tasks, message and strategies. In the following chapter, we shall examine the biographical narratives that recount how the narrator became a missionary in Germany. 4.1. Theoretical framework: Some considerations The opening question in all long interviews was: “What happened in your life so that you became a pastor / church founder in Germany?” This query was actually a double inquiry: It probed for call narratives (How did you become a pastor?) which were analyzed in the previous chapter, and for narratives which would describe the interviewees’ actual movement to Germany as well as the processes of building their church or ministry. In a pentecostal / charismatic setting, such moves were likely to be told as stories of a call as well. The call into pastoral ministry and the call into missionary ministry might be one and the same, or completely distinct and coming one after the other. In analyzing the biographical narratives of the migrant respondents, how can we avoid the pitfalls Gayatri C. Spivak has been warning about, namely, reducing the interviewees to “native informants” who provide raw data to be interpreted by a “knowing subject?”1 The 1 Gayatri C. Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge (MA)/London: Cambridge University Press 1999, p. 49.

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narratives analyzed below belong to a ‘subaltern’ discourse, i.e. a discourse that is ignored by and opposed to the dominant discourse.2 While most of the interviewees cannot be termed ‘subaltern’ in a strict sense, though, as they belonged to the middle classes or even elites of their home countries, they became subaltern by their migration: Culturally, socially and ecclesiastically marginalized, their stories are not of interest since they do not follow the dominant immigration discourse in Germany.3 But: “Can the subaltern speak?”4 After first negating her own question, Spivak tries a cautiously more positive answer: “All speaking, even seemingly the most immediate, entails a distanced decipherment by another, which is, at best, an interception. That is what speaking is. [ . . .] Yet the moot decipherment by another in an academic institution [ . . .] must not be too quickly identified with the ‘speaking’ of the subaltern.”5 The interviewees have already ‘spoken’ by the act of their migration, and they speak in the interviews. Of course, “when a line of communication is established between a member of subaltern groups and the circuits of citizenship or institutionality, the subaltern has been inserted into the long road to hegemony.”6 But this, Spivak insists, is to be desired—it cannot possibly be in the researcher’s interest that the subaltern remains subaltern. It is for this reason that the expatriation narratives analyzed below have been attached in full in an appendix. This will allow the speakers not merely to be re-presented by the author, and possibly be read as an authoritative construct of a ‘pentecostal / charismatic migrant church leader,’ but to represent themselves as individuals. Turning to the narratives, we have to ask a second question: What kind of biographical accounts are we facing? Careful consideration of terminologies is necessary here, because terminology will determine how we read these narratives.

2 For an introduction into the concept of ‘subaltern,’ see Edward Said, Foreword, in: Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri C. (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988. 3 See below and also chapter 6. 4 Gayatri C. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana & Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313. 5 Ibd., p. 309. 6 Ibd., p. 310.

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First of all, we need to realize what we have here: Oral autobiography, life stories; a constructed, literary genre. Biographies are ‘narrated life;’ they are efforts at making sense, both to themselves and to the interviewer. They have a plot, and they have a certain form or style. Paul Ricoeur,7 whose hermeneutical insights are important for this chapter, defines a plot as the “synthesis of the incongruent:”8 Multiple events are unified into one story, so that “components as widely divergent as circumstances encountered while unsought, agents of actions and those who passively undergo them, accidental confrontations or expected ones, interactions which place the actors in relations ranging from conflict to cooperation, means that are well-attuned to ends or less so, and, finally, results that were not willed . . .”9 are all unified into a single narrative, whereby a succession of incidents, a “pure chronology,” is turned into a meaningful unity characterized by a beginning, culmination and ending. In this, every story has a dynamic relationship to the traditions of storytelling, moving “between the two poles of servile repetition and calculated deviance.”10 Narrative analysis then means to attempt the “rational reconstruction of the rules hidden underneath the poetic activity.”11 Jeffrey Swanson12 adds to this the observation that in the case of missionary narratives, the story serves to establish the identity of the narrator: “Personal identity emerges as a tale to be told. [ . . .] The story of one’s life is always being rewritten in the life of new associations and new experiences. Unexpected events, ironic reversals of character, twists and turns all produce discontinuities in the life narrative. These vicissitudes often turn out to be even more significant for understanding the story than its large underlying themes. Nevertheless, the story moves towards its own telos—towards coherence, meaning, integrity, aesthetic sensibility, and intelligibility.”13

7 Paul Ricoeur, Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator. In Mario J. Valdés (Ed.), A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination (pp. 425–437). New York: Harvester / Wheatsheaf 1991. 8 Ibd. p. 427. 9 Ibd. p. 426. 10 Ibd. p. 430. 11 Ibd. p. 429. 12 Jeffrey Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995. 13 Ibd. p. 109.

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Following Gadamer, Ricoeur states that “the meaning or the significance of a story wells up from the intersection of the world of text and the world of the reader.”14 Every literary work brings together the dimensions of reference, communication, and self-understanding: “It is the act of reading which completes the work.”15 What Ricoeur states here about fiction is even more the case when it comes to the narratives gathered in the interviews. These biographies were told to an interviewer from the country to which the interlocutors have migrated, someone representing access to certain relationships within that country, and are therefore part and parcel of a process of negotiation of their role and place in their new environment. The narrators are aware that they are “read” in a certain way but want to replace that “reading” with their own: they establish their “narrative identity.” This means that we read these histories not to establish their objective veracity, but rather to understand their plot, and to learn from them about their narrators’ sense of self / identity, alienation, agency and meaning.16 Secondly, these narratives were originally oral, utterances by speakers who were not expressing themselves in their mother tongue, but rather in a language which most of them spoke only brokenly. By transcribing and slightly editing them into an authorized, written version, their character was somewhat changed. This operation makes sense insofar as this study does not use a psychological paradigm intending to discover the “unacknowledged aims”17 of the interlocutors, but rather proposes to understand how the speakers want to be understood. Thirdly, we need to be aware of what kind of a spatial, biographical and spiritual process these narratives are recounting. They are narratives of movement: The narrators, who have moved to Germany from other parts of the world, describe how these movements came about and what sense they make of them. In the dominant North Atlantic discourse, two terms can be identified which name people involved in such Ibd. p. 430; emphasis in the text. Ibd. p. 432. 16 See also Manuel A. Vasquez, What Religion Brings and Gains in the Conversation, in: Social Science Research Council, International Migration Program, Transnational Religion, Migration and Diversity. Project Background and Conceptual Framework, pdf document downloadable from http://programs.ssrc.org/intmigration/working_groups/ religion_and_migration/, accessed 2 September 2008. 17 See Peter G. Stromberg, Language and self-transformation. A study of the Christian conversion narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press 1993. 14 15


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movements: One is “migrant” / “immigrant,”18 the other one “expatriate.” Following Natalie Friedman,19 these two terms can be used to sketch mutually exclusive social types,20 and then to ask which type comes closer to the self-depiction of the interviewees. When we speak of ‘social types’ here, we play on both epistemological orientations of the term: A social type can equally be a ‘folk notion,’ a concept people use on a daily and intuitive basis, and an analytical tool for the social scientist. If social types are understood as “informal consensual concepts of roles that have not been fully codified,”21 they come close to Ervin Goffman’s concept of “status images,”22 a notion that is pertinent here as both ‘migrant / immigrant’ and ‘expatriate’ have clear status connotations. Migrants / immigrants come “for a better life,” they move due to contingency as refugees, asylum seekers or economic migrants fleeing from poverty and deprivation, and once they have arrived, they cannot go back. They are victims rather than agents. Migrants come from the South to the North, they are usually dark-skinned, they tend to work in low-skilled jobs, they usually have a lower financial status than the indigenous population, and they are expected to adapt and integrate because they have moved from an ‘old home’ to a new one. ‘Expatriate,’ on the other hand, is connoted with wealth, power, and glamour: Expatriates move as an act of personal agency. They go to a foreign country (usually from the North to other parts of the world) with a sense of purpose, to do a certain job, or to live out an ideal. They move freely and can go back home (or to yet another country) if they chose to do so. Expatriates are well-educated people who work in highly specialized fields for which no locals are available, and they are employed by international companies or organizations. 18 In the German discourse, the first term is preferred as dominant ideology still has it that we are “not an immigrant country.” 19 N. Friedman, Nostalgia, Nationhood, and the New Immigrant Narrative: Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and the Post-Soviet Experience, in: Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 5 (Fall 2004). 20 Social types have been used in sociology since Georg Simmel. For a review of the current discussion, see Oz Almog, The Problem of Social Type: A Review, in: Electronic Journal of Sociology, 1998, www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/almog.html (accessed 24 September 2007). 21 Ibd. Almog here quotes Orrin Klapp, Social Types: Process and Structure, in: American Sociological Review 23 (1958): pp. 674–678. 22 See E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Doubleday 1959.

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They tend to live in much better financial circumstances than the majority of the indigenous people around them, and they are usually white (and sometimes East Asian). Expatriates are expected to show some ‘cultural sensibility’ and local language skills, but they are not supposed to ‘go native,’ but rather to keep some distance from the local population: They are international, belonging to a culture that is not defined within national liminalities, but rather by the exigencies of international capital transfer. ‘Migrant / immigrant’ and ‘expatriate’ are heuristic terms implicit in and structuring the public discourse. For example, in the United States a “dominant immigrant narrative” can be identified:23 It describes the movement from an ‘old world’ to a ‘new world’ where the immigrants experience a clash of the two systems and suffer or adjust accordingly. While there may be some nostalgia for what is lost, the new life, in the end, is experienced as better than the old life. A classical example of such a narrative set in a European context, Waris Dirie, “Wüstenblume” (desert flower),24 was a bestseller in Germany: At least in part, the negative connotations of the term ‘migrant / immigrant’ can be ascribed to what Liisa Malkki25 has called “sedentarist metaphysics.” Commonsense ideas of “rootedness” in a nation or culture build on a notion of nations as “sovereign, spatially discontinuous units,”26 best represented in the clearly drawn national borders any map or atlas will show. “Arborescent” metaphors proliferate: terms like roots, uprootedness, transplantation and the like see human beings and cultures tied to a distinct space. This territorialization of culture is not only understood as ‘normal,’ but even turns into a “moral and spiritual need,”27 thus becoming “sedentarist metaphysics.” Being “displaced” is

23

On this genre, see for example: William Boelhower, The Necessary Ruse: Immigrant Autobiography and the Sovereign American Self, in: American Studies / Amerika Studien 35.3 (1990), pp. 297–319; Akhil Gupta, Reincarnating Immigrant Biography: On Migration and Transmigration, in: Elizabeth Mudimbe-Boyi (ed.), Beyond Dichotomies, Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, pp. 169–182; Natalie Friedman, Nostalgia, Nationhood, and the New Immigrant Narrative: Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and the Post-Soviet Experience, in: Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 5 (Fall 2004). 24 Waris Dirie, Wüstenblume, München: Knaur 2007 (second paperback edition). 25 Liisa Malkki, National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees, in: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 1, Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference (Feb. 1992), pp. 24–44. 26 Ibd., p. 26. 27 Ibd. p. 30.


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therefore seen as pathological, a moral and emotional problem, and migration as something that should be avoided. On the other hand, expatriation is considered as of growing importance in a globalizing world. High school and university students are encouraged to spend at least a year abroad, to learn foreign languages and engage with foreign cultures. Furthermore, within the past 40 years, a ‘culture of expatriateness’ has developed, epitomized, among others, by CNN News and same-looking business hotels all over the world, in-flight magazines and international Christian congregations. Expatriates don’t have much time for sedentarist metaphysics—they are constantly on the move and have found their identity precisely in their ability to do so. They may come from the USA or from Germany, from Hong Kong or Cape Town, but they bond easily with each other as shared experiences of ‘being away from home’ are more important to them than cultural roots. How then do the biographical narratives elicited in the interviews fit into this typology? Clearly, the dominant discourse would assign the interviewees to the ‘migrant’ type. But strikingly, their narratives do not fit the structure of a migrant / immigrant narrative. They are not narratives of a search for a better life, and of a struggle for integration. When describing themselves, the interlocutors tend to use the term “missionaries;” and their narratives are suffused by a sense of calling to the country to which they have moved. Jeffrey Swanson, in his study on missionary self-understanding and identity concentrating on a group of American evangelical missionaries in Ecuador28 builds his interpretation of missionary identity around the myth of “heroic strangerhood”29 which he sees as intrinsic to missionary ideology: “Missionaries, in contrast [to immigrants], tend to remain marginal not because of some unbalanced dependency upon their host country, but because of their autonomy from it and their distinctive motivation for approaching it. [ . . .] They tend to see themselves as religious ambassadors sent out to represent an other-worldly kingdom, and it is this self-perception which sets the tone of the missionaries’ confrontation with their host country.”30 Consequently, missionaries assume a cultural posture that “dramatizes strangerhood” in several 28 Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: oxford University Press 1995. 29 Ibd. pp. 17 ff. 30 Ibd. p. 18.

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ways, approaching their host culture “as an abstract matrix of otherness in which to develop a personal mission.”31 This strangerhood is heroic insofar as it involves the renunciation of family and friendship ties as well as of the comfortable living standards back home, risking disease and even death to achieve one’s mission. In the case of Swanson’s U.S. missionaries, the sense of heroic strangerhood is strengthened by their awareness of coming from a nation which is seen as having a “redeeming” function in the course of world history. Even though they are aware that their home has become a “spiritual wasteland,” the missionaries still construct ‘America’ as the epitome of rationality, order, truth and purity in contrast to the world of darkness in which they live in Ecuador.32 The interviewees of this study, in contrast, are missionaries who have moved to the ‘rich North’ from the ‘poor South.’ Consequently, they are under the constant suspicion that the motivation they profess for their move is not the real one: Haven’t they rather come to live a better, more comfortable, materially richer life than at home—i.e. aren’t they really migrants? We will see below that implicitly or explicitly, many narratives use images of heroic strangerhood to reject this suspicion.33 For most interviewees, though, this heroism is not based on giving up a comfortable life at home, but rather on rejecting a comfortable life in Germany due to their mission. Like Swanson’s US missionaries, they regard the country they live in as “the world:” Its materialism, the rampant and visible sexuality, and its disregard of the Christian faith make it an ‘other’ that they have to confront with their message, but into which they cannot and will not fully integrate. It is this very image of the missionary as the heroic stranger who goes out into a strange culture without fully engaging with it because he or she is fulfilling a mission that has informed the modern notion of the ‘expatriate businessman’ or woman.34 Where a missionary intends to spread the Gospel of an other-worldly kingdom, the business expatriIbd. p. 107. We will see in chapter 5.4 how images of Europe / Germany as a ‘special nation’ still inform the interviewees’ world view. 33 The analysis of the interviewees’ conceptualization of evangelism in chapter 5 strengthens this finding. 34 See Mary Lyn Glanz-Martin, Sensemaking in Expatriation—An Exploration. Doctoral thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2005. Available online at https:// ep.eur.nl/bitstream/1765/6671/1/LG ++ PhD + manuscript + Publish +++ 2004.pdf, accessed 17 March 2007. 31 32


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ate is working to extend the influence of his or her company—and both are defined as “mission!” Business language has unashamedly appropriated missionary language. Like the missionary message, the business message is understood as transcending national and cultural borders. Consequently, the business expatriate remains a ‘heroic stranger’ who may take up hardships to promote his or her product which is seen as useful and good for the citizens of this realm, but who will not fully integrate there. As will be shown below, the biographical narratives of the interviewees follow an ‘expatriate’ paradigm rather than a migrant one, reclaiming expatriate internationalism into the missionary domain from which it originated. The speakers, who are clearly aware of the strongly sedentarist dominant discourse in Germany, construct their narratives as a conscious alternative conversation: They do not describe themselves as uprooted, or trying to negotiate different cultural patterns. Rather, national borders are seen as unimportant, easy-to-overcome obstacles to a worldwide mission. Questions of identity are not discussed within a paradigm of nation or culture, but within a paradigm of spirituality or religion. As Christians, the narrators describe themselves as part of a world-wide, de-territorialized, transnational and transcultural network. As Sebastian Schüler has noted,35 transnational religious networks “help to unhinge the religious agent out of migrant networks and make the person understand himself or herself as a global citizen or metropolitan.”36 Finally, the interviewees did not tell their stories as narratives of contingency. While in some cases seemingly contingent factors influenced their actions and movements, in the end all biographies were interpreted as the unfolding of a pre-ordained divine plan. The narrators came to Germany because God sent them here: Divine agency simply used political contingency. Catherine Wanner has shown in a different context how pentecostal / charismatic Christians gain a new sense of power and direction by transferring all agency to God.37 This actually liberates them to act and think creatively in situations where there 35 Sebastian Schüler, Unmapped Territories. Discursive networks and the Making of Transnational Religious Landscapes in Global Pentecostalism, in: PentecoStudies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2008, pp. 46–62. 36 Ibd., p. 49. 37 See Catherine Wanner, Communities of the Converted. Ukrainians and Global Evangelism, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2007, particularly pp. 220– 227.

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seems to be no possible way out. In short, when it comes to social typology, by describing themselves as missionaries the interviewees choose for themselves the ‘expatriate’ type, explicitly rejecting the ‘migrant’ role into which the dominant discourse wants to press them. The fact that this rejection is almost totally ignored again marks what the interviewees have to say as a “subaltern discourse.” Consequently, the narratives analyzed below will be termed ‘expatriation narratives.’ With this terminology, we play on their dislocation from the dominant narrative and take up the empowered missionary self-understanding of the interviewees. We also infuse a theological meaning to the term. According to Pauline theology, all Christians in all places are expatriates, ex patria, since their citizenship38 rests with the Kingdom of Heaven rather than with any nationality on earth.39 While this remains on a metaphorical level for most, it becomes literal for those who, as ‘foreign missionaries,’ leave their home country to work elsewhere. At the same time, ‘expatriate’ here includes the notion of relating to / defining oneself within the paradigm of a global, transnational structure: the church of Jesus Christ. The expatriation narratives analyzed below are stories of a life journey and describe both spatial and psychological movements and developments. There is an outer, physical, and an inner, spiritual journey, both of which are intimately connected. The theological reading of ‘being expatriate,’ while never explicit, is implicit to these narratives. Finally, all interviewees were chosen because they had publicly and explicitly described themselves as missionaries in sermons, publications, and conversations. The expectation was that their expatriation narratives would throw a light on how exactly they define themselves as missionaries. In evangelical as well as pentecostal / charismatic circles, being a missionary is not an ordinary profession, but rather a special vocation which usually requires a special, personalized calling.40 Consequently, it seemed probable that a missionary call and an expatriation narrative would be closely related if the person interviewed came to Germany with a clear vision to build a church or churches here. But 38 Greek: Politeuma. It would be worth to consider the irony that several German Bible editions (Einheitsübersetzung and Neues Leben) translate this term as Heimat, home—a concept which strongly informs the dominant discourse on migration. 39 Phil. 3:20. 40 See again Jeffrey Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, pp. 66 ff.


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what about interviewees who came to Germany without such an idea? Would they also tell an expatriation narrative in the paradigm of a call narrative? And how and when did they come to see themselves as missionaries even if they did not see themselves in such a way when they arrived? In the end, the autobiographical narratives turned out to be very individual and not at all easy to be ordered into groups. Ten interviewees (including one woman) told intertwined call and expatriation narratives. Six of them recounted expatriation narratives as part of a call narrative with the aim to make theological sense of an expatriation that outwardly was not that of a missionary, but in hindsight was understood as such. A further two interviewees told narratives in which the call followed their expatriation. They did not define the call as the impulse that set the expatriation into motion; rather, the call met them where they were and gave that expatriation a new meaning. Finally, two narrators struggled to understand how their call and their expatriation were actually related without being able to come to a final conclusion. Out of this group, six narratives will be analyzed in an exemplary fashion. The second group, with seven interviewees including the two Protestants, constructed their expatriation narratives as the consequence of a prior call into the ministry. They did not describe any changed awareness of their call and role after arriving in Germany. Interestingly, none of them told a call narrative, while six of the eight related relatively elaborate expatriation accounts. Here, we will analyze all five pentecostal narratives. Six interviewees, among them the second woman, could not be counted into either of these two groups. Four of them did not relate their expatriation to their call in the sense of ascribing any kind of special divine guidance to their coming to Germany. The two last interviewees did not relate any expatriation narrative, but only volunteered a general spiritual interpretation of their coming to Germany. In a short final chapter, we will look at all of these accounts. 4.2. Intertwined call and expatriation narratives Among the following narratives, the first two can be described as ‘circular’ stories, while the second two should be characterized as ‘oscillating’ narratives. The ‘circular’ stories had a clear, temporal narrative struc-

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ture and were told without any intervening questions. The oscillating accounts consisted of different ‘packets’, each of which was elicited by a question, and moved forward and backward on a temporal line. 4.2.1. ‘Circular’ stories: How the call was realized after all Three interviewees told ‘circular’ stories, two of which will be analyzed below. The narrative structure of all three is quite similar: Each begins with a call that is more or less clearly understood, then continues with a number of upheavals which, while outwardly leading away from the fulfilling of the call, actually brings the called person nearer to its realization. At the end, the meaning of the expatriation has become clear: It was divinely ordered, a consequence of the call. 4.2.1.1. P.I.: “I never dreamt like that before”41 P.I., an ebullient German citizen of Nigerian background in his forties, has been in the country for about 15 years. After working as an assistant pastor in a large, international, African-led mega-church for several years, he started his own congregation in 2005.42 His church is the only migrant-led congregation in the town where it is situated, and is rather unusual in its make-up. The majority of its more than one hundred members are migrants, with sub-Saharan Africans making up somewhat less than half of the congregation, while Russians and other East Europeans, Turks and Kurds as well as some South Asians are also active in this church. There is, in addition, a sizeable group of German members, many of them visibly from the margins of society. P.I. has a flourishing street ministry and has been able to bring in a number of former drug addicts. The average age of the congregation is very young, with many teenagers in attendance. They are also responsible for the worship music, and lead the congregation with much enthusiasm, if little training. The fast growth and social composition of his congregation created many problems with the German Protestant church that hosted it at its beginnings. Less than 2 years after its foundation, P.I.’s church was told to find new accommodation, and now meets in

41 For the full narrative, see the Appendix. Interview with P.I., 2 January 2006, at his home. 42 See chapter 3.2.5 where his call narrative is analyzed.


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commercially rented premises. P.I. is married to a Nigerian immigrant and has teenage children. P.I. told a story that was clearly structured into ‘chapters,’ each new ‘chapter’ marked by an opening like “So, along the line” or a similarly structuring term. He started his account at the time of his conversion: So when I gave my life to Christ, and, what happened was that the middle of that night I was in bed sleeping. I have never dreamt like that before. I was in dream, I dreamt, and I was in the midst of people, and it was a very white land, white sand, just like a beach, then the—some people came in, and I saw one man—I couldn’t see his face, he only stretched his hand towards me with the full of tracts. Tracts, that’s for evangelism, these tracts that you give to people. ‘There is a [unintelligible word] to evangelize to people.’ Then I say: ‘I don’t know how to do it.’ He said: ‘That’s what I want you to do now! Take it, go to that [unintelligible] junction, give it to people!’ So everybody I was giving it to, they were all white people. Then I asked him, I said: ‘The people are here, they are not Blacks, so I know how to deal with the Black people.’ He said: ‘No, but I call you to the, the, to give to the white people.’ Then I said: ‘But there is no white people a lot, but we have white people here, but they are not many enough.’ He, he said: ‘Here . . .’ He said: ‘But this is the place where there are many.’ Then I said: ‘But there are not many here.’ He said: ‘But here.’ Then after a while, I give it, I wake up. So I go to the church that day. I told my pastor this what I dreamt. The pastor told me that ‘God is preparing you.’ He said, he told me to preach the Gospel. Then I said: ‘No, I have a good job here, I will never leave.’ Because after school, I have a good job waiting for me. Really, I was working at the Ministry of Defense, I was a civilian paymaster with good pay, a good money.

Several observations need to be made about this first ‘chapter’ of P.I.’s narrative: First of all, he opens his account with the description of a dream. As we have seen in the previous chapter, dreams have played an important role in several call narratives. Here, the dream has a double meaning: P.I. is called to perform a work which differs from his current job, and he is called to perform it in a different place characterized by whiteness: The land he dreams himself in is white, the people are white, and whiteness is what is reflected in the dialogue with the man whose face cannot be seen, who clearly must be God. It is a place that is different, ‘not here,’ even though it is not specified any further. As we have seen in other call narratives that were based on dreams, the dream does not stand alone. P.I. does not claim to understand it by himself. Instead, he seeks an authority to clarify its meaning

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and turns to his pastor, plausible behavior in a West African pentecostal / charismatic context. The pastor’s interpretation of the dream loads it with meaning: “God is preparing you” to preach the Gospel. It is not P.I. himself who identifies this dream as divine vision; this interpretation is coming from the outside. The way P.I. tells his story, he follows established patterns of call narratives.43 Commonly, the person who has received the call at first refuses to follow it. Here, P.I. refers back to the job he was holding at the time, which he professed not to want to leave. Again, this is plausible, as he held a government job, a coveted position in any African country. Even more, as a civilian pay master in the Nigerian army during a military dictatorship he was definitely in a very privileged position. So in this opening chapter, two elements are firmly established: The call to expatriate was a divine call, and it went against P.I.’s ‘natural’ interests. The subtext against which this narrative seeks to speak is clear: It would be the accusation that P.I. left his country because he was poor and seeking a better life. The second ‘chapter’ underscores this message: So, actually, and along the line, this friend of mine elsewhere traveled— he was now in Germany. [. . .] One night again I was dreaming then, eh, I was sitting in the midst of people, he came, he stretched his hand, and then he said: ‘Come over here.’ Then actually I lifted up, I was on a podium, as I sat with him I said: ‘Yes, this is the right place, I can now spread the Gospel.’ And he told me: ‘No, you didn’t come here to spread Gospel, you come here as an Asyl [sic].’ [. . .] So I wake up and now I went to the pastor and asked him [. . .] Then he told me that he doesn’t know it, the meaning.

It is certainly not by accident that this dream sounds like the Apostle Paul’s dream related in Acts 16:9, and which, within the Acts narrative, serves to set Paul’s mission to Europe into motion. P.I.’s dream then actually shifts to a setting suggestive of evangelism: He is sitting on a podium. But the dream is not finished: While P.I. sees himself evangelizing, his friend tells him that he has come for another purpose. Here, P.I. introduces the German word for asylum, Asyl, claiming that he did not understand it at the time. The second step is the same as in the first part of the narrative: P.I. seeks out his pastor for an interpretation of the dream. But in this 43 See Jeffrey Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, especially pp. 89–106.


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instance, the pastor is unable to help. None of the many people P.I. asks can give him an interpretation. But he recounts that he wrote down the word Asyl. The word is therefore loaded with a special meaning—it is a mysterious, divine revelation. As the narrative unfolds, it is going to play an important role. It is at this point of his narrative that P.I. actually identifies his pastor by name. He is none other than Benson Idahosa, one of the biggest names in West African Pentecostalism.44 As in any case of namedropping, the effectiveness of this narrative strategy depends on the listener’s knowledge of the name dropped. P.I., who knows about this author’s travels to West Africa and interest in the history of pentecostal churches there, could assume such knowledge. It is likely that in conversations with other Germans, this name would not have come up, while it would certainly have played a role in conversations with West Africans who would have been familiar with the name. As with mentioning his profession and workplace, P.I., in his narrative, establishes that he is not anybody coming from somewhere, but rather a person of a respected profession and a prominent spiritual heritage. As we could see in chapter 3, mentorship plays an important role within the pentecostal / charismatic discourse on the pastoral role. The idea that a ‘powerful’, ‘anointed’ leader can pass the anointing to those working under him45 means that pastoral authority can be strengthened by naming such an important mentor.46 Remarkably, though, P.I. is the only interviewee who kept dropping ‘big’ names during his biographical narrative. After establishing, in his first two ‘chapters,’ that he lived and worked in satisfactory circumstances, but was confronted with mysterious calls to move out, P.I. proceeded to tell how his expatriation to Germany was set into motion. So, at the, at the along the line, this thing happens. The young man wrote me a letter and said: ‘There is a school here. If you want to attend a German language course, then . . . [. . .] You can take your holidays 44 See the article on him in the online Dictionary of African Christian Biography, www.dacb.org/stories/nigeria/idahosa_bensona.html, accessed 17 September 2008. 45 As far as could be seen, such understanding was only possible if the leader in question was male. 46 At a meeting to evaluate seminars and workshops offered by the UEM Program for Cooperation Between German and Foreign Language Churches, one of the main criticisms was that the UEM events did not feature ‘famous’ and ‘successful’ pastors from the US and Britain.

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chapter four and do it.’ I said ‘okay.’ I did, and I went to the embassy that very day. [. . .] There were many people there, [. . .] eight of us were the people with the same letter of invitation to get admission to the German language school in Germany. [. . .] So when it got to my turn, I just move, I go back and said: ‘Let you attend to everybody. When you finish, I will be the last one.’ [. . .] Then I walk in, I show the letter to the man, he look at the letter [. . .] He took me to the upstairs. When I got there, I sat down. He said: ‘You want to take coffee, tea?’ He took me direct to his office. So the guy’s name is Holger. We sat down for a while, then he said: ‘Okay. Drink.’ After a while, he said: ‘You fill here, you fill here, you fill here.’ I fill, I give it to him. He said what he will do, he said: ‘Go home, bring a police report to me, and, eh, I will give you a visa, I will help you to get a visa.’ I said: ‘But you told the other people it is not possible, why are you doing it?’ He say: ‘Yeah, I just want to make you a friend.’ [. . .] And, eh, two days later [. . .] I came with the letter, the police report. [. . .] This senior man came. [. . .] He say: ‘Hey. Were you not the man I asked to present the police report?’ [. . .] He told the man to open the door. The man opened it, I went inside. I came in to him, I filled everything. He said: ‘Give me 180 Naira. Then in three days I hope you get your visa.’ I say: ‘But I don’t have time to come here. Can you post it to me?’ He said :‘Yeah, give me an address, and I’ll send it to you.’ Then I left. The following day I got the letter at home. The same day, he finish it and post it on me. The following day I got it and the visa was in.

In this narrative chapter, we come across a motif which is common to many of the missionary expatriation narratives encountered during the interviews: The ease of getting a visa and traveling to Germany. While the difficulty of obtaining a visa is a staple of the immigrant narrative, the relative ease of travel is connoted with an expatriate existence. Therefore, by talking about the ease of obtaining a visa and traveling, the interviewees set themselves up as expatriates who are different from other immigrants. In P.I.’s extraordinarily detailed narrative, we can see how this effect is achieved. The fact that his story is highly implausible serves to underline the miraculous character of what happened to him. First of all, P.I. recounts that in the visa line at the embassy on that day, there were eight people “with the same letter of invitation to get admission into the German language school in Germany” who were all turned down immediately. P.I., who consciously removed himself from the others—expressing, with this, that he would have nothing to do with any kind of racket to get to Germany—then experienced a totally different treatment. He was invited “upstairs”—symbolizing an entry into a sphere that would be closed for most applicants. Here again,


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we have an expatriation rather than an immigrant narrative: P.I. is not treated as a supplicant, but rather as a VIP, and offered a drink and conversation which was so informal that it even proceeded to the knowledge of first names. The completion of the visa application then seems to be a simple formality and is almost pressed on him who insists that he really has no need to go. Of course, a police report is needed— such are the rules—, but the officer, who under normal circumstances would be expected to be somebody who denies a visa, is here described as someone who will “help,” because he wants to make friends. As this story is told, it is hard to believe. As anybody working with people from countries like Nigeria or Congo knows, the German embassies in these countries routinely deny almost all requests for visas, even those backed up by letters of invitation from reputable German institutions like churches or universities. But P.I. intends to tell a miracle narrative which emphasizes the fact that he was divinely ordained to go to Germany, even if he himself was not so interested. The next encounter with the embassy he describes emphasizes this point: When rejected at the gate, P.I. simply suggests coming back another time—it is the official who almost drags him in so that the visa application can be completed, and then he even mails the visa to him. Well, I was not even willing to come. Really, what was in my mind was that I wanted to sell the visa to somebody else to go, because: I don’t want to lose my job, my job was a good job, I was getting a good pay. The government give me house and everything. I was enjoying life, it was good. So later, when I got it, I came. I said: ‘Let me just go there and see what is happening.’ [. . .] As I arrived, I wrestled the way to the school, I couldn’t get anyone to understand me, I went to dial my friend, he invited me down, so we chat for a while, then I told him . . . oh, I saw where he is living, and he is living this Asyl . . . this Asylheim. Ahh! I say: ‘This is the way you live?’ He say ‘yes.’ I can’t do it, I say: ‘Take me to a hotel!’ So I check myself into a hotel, because I came with enough money. I was with about 6,000 dollars in my pocket. So I just said: ‘Let me stay in a hotel.’ I was taking care of everything.

Again P.I. stresses that he did not mean to come to Germany. He even goes so far as to admit to thinking of illegal dealings—making some money on the side by selling his visa to someone else. He stresses again that he was not in need: He had a very good job which he did not want to lose and an enormous sum of money in his pockets when he arrived in Germany. Again, we have here an expatriation narrative rather than an immigrant narrative. Life in Nigeria was not bad at all, according to P.I. His travel did not happen in reaction to any kind of disaster of

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persecution, but rather as an adventure of a young man of substantial financial means. Accordingly, he professes himself shocked by the living circumstances of the friend who invited him to Germany, moving to a hotel rather than staying with him. Here again, the image projected is that of a traveler, an expatriate. The next chapter of P.I.’s narrative finally explains how this expatriate, well-to-do traveler ended up as an asylum seeker after all. Of course, the way P.I. structured his narrative it was clear from the beginning that this had to happen eventually. The way the story turns is therefore inevitable, even though there are a number of contradictions in the details. However, the veracity of P.I.’s narrative is not what concerns us here. We rather look at how he constructs his story: When it comes to traveling as an expatriate, P.I. clearly depicts himself as an agent. But then things happen that are out of his control: His friend steals his passport and ticket. He cannot confirm his identity at the embassy. He runs out of money. Police picks him up without any identification documents. He is told that his only possible way out is to apply for asylum. Again, the message is: It was not P.I.’s plan or making to become an asylum seeker. Rather, circumstances were against him— though of course these circumstances have already been established as divine agency by the first chapters of the narrative. P.I. never says so explicitly, but implicitly, the message of his narrative is: God wanted me to apply for asylum in Germany. He also keeps stressing that being an asylum seeker in Germany meant finding himself in much reduced circumstances compared to his life in Nigeria. The traveler who arrived with pockets full of dollars now had to stay in a “terrible place”, a home for asylum seekers, a place he actually found so unbearable when he first arrived that he moved to a hotel. The whole narrative can be read as a refutation of the supposition that P.I. came to Germany as an economic treasure hunter, somebody who was looking for a better life. This might be true for other immigrants but not for himself: He had a good life before, and life turned out much worse after applying for asylum. By not questioning, but rather confirming the dominant discourse on asylum, P.I. paints himself as different from other immigrants and stresses his special calling. He also plays, at least implicitly, with the old myth of heroic strangerhood of the missionary: When God leads, one cannot remain within one’s comfort zone. That was the time I called the president, because he was directly in charge of our office. Babangida was the president at that time. [. . .] He used to call me ‘small boy’, so he told me it’s not possible again ‘because


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your job is in the hand of your secretary general, it’s not me. So if the secretary general sacks somebody I have nothing to restore. So what you need to is talk to the man.’ I spoke to the man, he said ‘no. You have gone on leave for two weeks, two months, it’s not possible.’ So they have the right to even sue for damage, but they will leave it. So there was no way to run back to. So I stayed.

As P.I. constructs his narrative, he projects the image of a somewhat wild young man who travels to Germany because he wants to see the big world, falls into the hands of false friends, and loses everything he ever had: His home, his job, his money, his pride. Not even the president of Nigeria can reverse his fate.—Here again, we see how P.I. describes himself as connected to the high and mighty, in a very close and familiar way. The president of Nigeria not only knows him, but calls him “small boy.”—Clearly, P.I. wants to stress that when God leads, it is no use to rebel. This is implied in the narrative even though he has not referred to God for a long time. But this changes as he continues: So later along the line, they told me: ‘Okay, what you need to do, you have to look for a woman, then you get a paper here.’ Then I said: ‘I can’t do it, because I’m a Christian.’

Again the same motif: P.I. who has no problems to be involved in unChristian behavior, balks at anything ethically questionable that would secure his stay in Germany. When it comes to his stay, he himself has nothing to do with it. So along the line, I was able to find a church [. . .] I just stay one week, the second Sunday I was there, Pastor R. called me and said: ‘I sense that you are a man of God.’ I say: ‘I don’t know, why?’ He said: ‘I can see it in you.’

When the true telos of P.I.’s coming to Germany is finally and miraculously revealed, this again comes from the outside. So the whole long narrative serves to establish one point: However things may look from the outside, God himself sent P.I. to Germany as an evangelist. He did not come as an immigrant seeking a better life, but came from a good life and only experienced hard circumstances after his arrival. Only in regards to agency this story does not follow the patterns of an expatriation narrative. P.I. is not the prime actor and mover in his story— that role belongs to God. The call and what it entails happens to P.I., even though he did not want it. In the logic of a call narrative, this makes sense: Call narratives legitimize a call by denying self-interest.

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Therefore, a call narrative will always be constructed around a logic of contingency in the sense that the person called only reacts to what God is doing. Consequently, P.I. describes himself as a ‘victim’ of the divine call—resistance was simply not possible. 4.2.1.2. D.A.: “Nepalese don’t need a visa for Germany”47 D.A. is a quiet man exuding a lot of warmth. In his early fifties, he is an evangelist of Nepalese background who has been in Germany for almost 20 years. He is the only of the interviewees who is fully integrated into a German church organization: For several years now, he has been employed by a free church mission agency which has commissioned him to work both with an evangelical free church in the Ruhr area which has many members from a migration background, and as an itinerant evangelist reaching out to Nepalese migrants all over Europe. Long divorced from his first, Nepali, wife who objected to his conversion to Christianity and chose not to leave the country, he is now married to a Swiss citizen with whom he has a young child. His adult sons from his first marriage have joined the family in Germany. D.A. often gets invited to speak to German free church congregations, and also has many contacts to German Protestant churches. D.A.s narrative starts with how he was unable to continue with the evangelism he felt compelled to do in his home country: I wanted to evangelize all of Nepal, but regrettably, due to the persecution I could not stay, and for protection and also financial support [. . .] I came to Bahrain. There I worked; I earned money and sent it to Nepal. [. . .] I worked in Bahrain for two years, then I was sent to Egypt. When I was in Bahrain, I have many—I was a worker, but my wish and my task was to make Jesus known to people who live without him, and many came to faith. I was a testimony there, and that succeeded while I was there. I baptized many people. After the year in Egypt I came back to Bahrain. Then Saddam Hussein started the war with Iraq and Kuwait [. . .] I could not stay. All guest workers went back or flew back to their countries, I mustn’t go to Nepal . . . Then I asked: ‘Lord, where shall I go?’ My aim was really not to go to Germany, my aim was somehow to go to America and study theology; that was my aim. [. . .] Then we got information that Nepalese don’t need a visa for Germany. Then I came [. . .] to Germany . . .

47 For the full text of D.A.’s narrative, see the Appendix. Interview with D.A. 17 November 2005 at his home.


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The subtheme of D.A.’s narrative is established in its first sentence: “I wanted to evangelize all of Nepal.” As we will see, his whole story serves to show how this task was never forgotten, but how God broadened his perspectives. In his opening ‘chapter,’ D.A. describes his flight from Nepal in the vocabulary of a classical immigrant narrative: “Due to persecution,” and also “for financial support” for his family, he had to leave the country. Both persecution and financial need are classical topoi for an immigrant narrative, and they are also the two accepted (and always assumed) reasons for emigration in the dominant German migration discourse.48 Unlike P.I., D.A. does not set the scene for his story as an alternative account. For him, there were no dreams and mysterious calls before he left. Nevertheless, in describing his actions during his time in Bahrain, D.A. already starts to digress from the ‘normal’ migrant story: “I was a worker, but my wish and my task was to make Jesus known.” We do not learn what work he performed to earn his income, but we are told that he baptized “many people.” So what looks like a ‘normal’ migrant narrative is immediately transformed into something else: Money and safety, while important, are only the outer reasons for his migration. The not-so-hidden (“I was a testimony . . .”) inner meaning of his migration is his evangelistic calling. In that sense, the migrant is really an expatriate who continues what he used to do in a different setting. Nevertheless, the way the narrative continues, there is very little sense of agency. Things happen outside of his control, and the First Iraq War forces him to leave Bahrain. As he still cannot return to Nepal, he ends up in Germany because he could go there without a visa. Here again, we have the motif of travel to this country which is very easy, though in this case no miracle was necessary. As D.A. recounts how he asked God for guidance before traveling, there is an implication that the ease of travel is a sign that God wanted him to go to Germany, particularly as he himself would have preferred to go to the United States. Both motifs, the ease of travel and the coming to Germany against one’s own plans for travel to another country, can be found in several further narratives below and serve as elements of a legitimation narrative. Like P.I., D.A. recounts trials and tribulations after his arrival in Germany. But while in P.I.’s case, the recounting of these trials serves to

48

For more on this, see chapter 6.

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underline the fact that he had no selfish reasons to come to Germany and stay here, in D.A.’s case the trials are recounted because his deliverance from them was nothing short of miraculous: Then, I landed in Frankfurt. [. . .] I looked for a taxi, a man took me with him, I wanted to go to a hotel. He said ‘I’m a good taxi driver,’ but somewhere, on the highway, he said to me: ‘My car, my taxi is broken, could you push, please?’ I said ‘No problem.’ [. . .] He simply drove away; because he knew exactly I had money, and some things he took away. On the highway, he left me alone. Then I remembered Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ It rained, there was a lot of snow, I had a thin jacket because nobody had told me that Germany is so cold, but I had skimpy shoes, but never mind. I went forward [. . .] I came to the gas station; I looked for help, whether I could find someone from Nepal. The workers at the gas station said ‘No, we don’t know anybody from Nepal,’ but two Americans asked me, they spoke English [. . .] ‘Yes, we can help you, we will take you to Kaiserslautern, in Kaiserslautern, there are some Nepalese, we know exactly where they live,’ and so they took me to Kaiserslautern at 1 a.m. in the night. The Nepalese were surprised: 2 a.m. at night, ‘How did you get here without an address?’ Then I said that the Americans brought me. They said, ‘We don’t know any Americans here.’ [. . .] So I stayed in Germany.

The way D.A. narrates his life story, extraordinary things happen at every critical juncture. The disaster of being robbed and abandoned in the middle of the highway right after his arrival is immediately relieved by some friendly Americans who drive him to the home of compatriots who take him in right away. D.A. has no need to actually use the term ‘angels’ when he talks about the Americans who helped him; the way he tells the story clearly alludes that something miraculous is happening. How can the Americans know where to take him if the Nepalese have no idea who they are? The motif of the mysterious stranger who helps and then disappears is a staple of miracle stories. Here, we first come across a narrative element that can be found throughout D.A.’s biographical narrative: He depicts himself as naïve and somewhat helpless in practical matters, and therefore experiences both that he is taken advantage of, and that others help him when he finds himself in a difficult situation. There is no element of agency in this narrative (at least as long as it is concerned with his moving from place to place)—rather, D.A. depicts himself as someone to whom things happen. But the meaning of both the bad and the good is clear: Whatever happens to him is God’s will. After recounting his first day in Germany in great detail, D.A. just glosses over the next few years. Yet there is a further parallel between


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P.I.’s and D.A.’s expatriation narratives: D.A. also ends up applying for asylum without ever having intended to do so: I met some people from Nepal, they said that I had to urgently apply for asylum. And I did not know what that meant: ‘asylum application.’ When they heard my story, they said: ‘We can help you, but you must not say a word!’ [. . .] Then the friends from Nepal told the whole story. After some years I got a letter from the [asylum] office, that wasn’t me, that was totally wrong. Then I realized I needed to put that right. So I put it right and told the true story. After some years, Christians were in prison, we came out in ’95, then the German regulations said that I have to go back to Nepal. It is not bad in Nepal, we can go back to Nepal. Then I said: ‘Okay, I will go.’ But the people in B., the Christians, said: ‘You have started a big work in B., we need you here.’ [. . .] So they applied to the Interior Ministry for a pastor visa, and they said ‘yes.’

Again the motif of his naïveté is employed: D.A. describes himself as unable to understand anything about what was going on. He claims that he found out only years later what was actually stated in his asylum application, and simply says that he “put that right.” This remark does not sound very plausible to a listener familiar with German asylum procedures: Normally, changing one’s story so late into the process leads to an immediate dismissal of the asylum application. But D.A. does not relate any negative consequences. As in P.I.’s narrative, the reason he can remain in the country remains vague. It is enough that he can stay. In any case, D.A. clearly wants to establish with his narrative that he did not do anything to extend his stay in Germany. He recounts that Christian friends of his insisted that he stay, and secured a ‘pastor visa’ for him. Again, we see the underlying message of D.A.’s narrative explicated: He wanted to be a missionary in Nepal, and his coming to Germany was not of his own making. The way D.A. constructs this part of his narrative, it is clear that he sees his status as asylum seeker as an accident. In hindsight, he did not come as a refugee, he came as a missionary. Therefore, the pastor visa he eventually obtained is the visa that is appropriate to his mission. It is noteworthy that D.A., who portrays himself as passive as far as his legal status in Germany was concerned, shows himself as active when it comes to church membership and his evangelism work. He searches until he has found an organization with which he can work: Eventually, I was searching again, even though I was already a pastor in the American church,49 but I wanted to serve Germany. And also get to 49

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chapter four know German people, German mentality. I was still searching. I was with the American congregation, but that was not my aim, I wanted to get to know the German mentality. But I was still searching, and then I went to the Evangelical City Mission.50 I was still afraid that they do something, perhaps they ask something that I don’t know anything about, but they asked me whether I was a Christian. Then I said ‘Yes, I’m a Christian.’ They said: ‘Welcome, you are at home.’ [. . .] They gave me love, they were very, very interested in my life, they just showed love, and then I stayed in the Evangelical City Mission [. . .]. Then I moved, into the mission house, on the ground floor was the church room, upstairs I could live, because I had terribly many visitors and they realized: D.A. needs a big flat.

There is a strong sense of agency here; nevertheless, miraculous things still happen. After his long searching process, D.A. ends up with the city mission which takes him in and even gives him a big flat in which to stay. All good things that happen to him are gifts, not something he achieves by his own efforts. So D.A. describes how, without having planned this, he became a missionary to Germany: I was serving almost 24 hours a day, I had so many people—I could reach them, tell them about the Gospel. That is my aim, too, my wish, that is my gift, yes, to simply tell about the Gospel. Many people have come to faith, we have baptized many people [. . .] But my aim still is: How can we motivate youngsters? How can we support the Evangelical Church, those big church buildings? Yes, I still have the wish to fill these big church buildings, but I have not succeeded. I am still praying and asking the Lord, regardless of where I go. [. . .] The Germans have supported me financially, and they also have prayed somehow. The Lord simply . . . I still know how I packed my suitcase in ’96 because I really didn’t want to stay here, then a preacher said on TV (I had an American TV program): ‘Hey you, please don’t go! The revival will start with you! What you are looking for, you will not get. You must change. You must have a heart!’ Then I realized that [. . .] I have criticized the German Christians. Then God said: ‘I still love Germany, I still do. You must change!’ Then I went down on my knees: ‘Lord, forgive me! I really want you to use me, Lord!’ [. . .] Afterwards, I realized that Germany needed me. [. . .] then I participated [in the kikk course], then I understood what the background is, why the soil is so hard. [. . .] Now I know how to deal with Germans, I can explain well because I understand the background, I understand the mentality, yes.

50 Evangelical City Missions are local evangelical free churches which combine evangelistic and social work in a city context. See www.stadtmissionen.de, accessed on 11 October 2006.


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In a situation where foreigners and asylum seekers are told they are only good people if they return to their home countries as soon as the situation there makes that possible, D.A. experiences a prophetic intervention—even though it comes through a TV preacher, it is described as a miraculous act by God himself—which tells him that to return would be disobedience. It is God himself who wants him to stay in Germany and to reach out to Germans. D.A.’s desire to leave, while making him a ‘good’ migrant in German eyes, means a rejection of what God wants him to do. Therefore, his decision to stay in this country is made as an act of repentance—this is so important that D.A. describes it in some detail. Only then is he willing to actually engage himself somewhat more with society here by attending a training course which helps him to understand the “background” and the “mentality” of the Germans. Still, as D.A. continues his narrative, it is obvious that he has not given up his dream of evangelizing Nepal: I lived there for 12 1/2 years, and what I wanted to do, I achieved. The congregation there could not support me financially. And at a conference, [. . .] the pastor of the city mission in H. said: ‘D.A., what you are doing in B., they could also do with German Christians. What they cannot do is your task: In all of Europe, there are several thousand Nepalese [. . .]. Please, think about it, that is your task, we’ll see each other.’ Then they talked to their congregation about me. Then I told my boss, the director of the [evangelical free mission], he said: ‘We need to pray first. Don’t just go, we don’t allow that.’ [. . .] And then suddenly, the church said suddenly: We should come to the Ruhr area, because there are so many Nepalese here, we should start a church with Nepalese, and at the same time, I should be spiritual counselor in this church and also do evangelism with this church. [. . .] So we support the [city mission] congregation here [. . .] and at the same time, I am visiting Nepalese; I bring them the Good News. I don’t just work in the Ruhr area, but I have also started in Holland, and now I have received the news that 6,500 people in Belgium are also waiting for me. London alone has 30,000 Nepalese! And all of Germany, yes, that is my task. Long ago, 22 years ago, the Lord gave me the vision to evangelize all of Nepal, but the political situation in Nepal is not so good, therefore many young people have left the country. 13 million Nepalese [sic] live outside of Nepal! Many of these Nepalese are in Europe. These people I want to reach, that is my aim, that is what I concentrate on, to start churches with Nepalese . . . God had time.

The way D.A. interprets his own life journey becomes clear at the end of the narrative: His original vision is still valid. As it is not possible to evangelize Nepalese in Nepal, God has sent him to evangelize the millions of Nepalese outside of the country while at the same time using

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him as an evangelist to Germans. Therefore, even though elements of an immigrant narrative are recognizable here, his account still remains an expatriation narrative: D.A. came to Germany in obedience to God’s guidance. What seemed like a rupture turns out to be the basis for the continuity of his call. That D.A.’s narrative shows a number of traits of a typical ‘immigrant narrative’ is not surprising considering the fact that D.A. is the most ‘integrated’ of all interviewees. Married to a Swiss and employed by a German free church mission agency, he clearly differs from most of his migrant colleagues. It is quite likely that his close contact to many Germans has informed his account in the sense that it was made more palatable to the dominant discourse. Again, we can see that we have a ‘composed’ narrative here: It is circular, ending with the same vision with which it began while now encompassing a far broader perspective. Therefore, everything which happened in between is seen as loaded with meaning: Every step was ordered by a divine plan. 4.2.2. ‘Oscillating’ narratives: How the call became clear over time Three further interviewees who told their expatriation narratives within the framework of a call narrative did not tell circular stories, but oscillated in their accounts, jumping forward and backward temporally. The two narratives analyzed here recount how an early call became clear over time. 4.2.2.1. P.W.: “God was saying: ‘Leave that place!’ ”51 P.W. is a woman of Cameroonian background who was 37 at the time of the interview. She comes across as strong and even somewhat fierce. I had first gotten to know her when she was the worship leader in an African-led church. Later, she left that church to start her own congregation which has remained very small and struggling. P.W. is the only woman evangelist who regularly attends the meetings of the Council of Pentecost Ministers where she is well accepted as a musician and worship leader for joint events, even though rumor has it that her five young children were fathered by at least three different men. P.W.

51 The full text of P.W.’s expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. She was interviewed at her home on 26 October 2005.


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claims to be married, but obviously lives alone with her children whom she usually brings along to church events. P.W.’s answer to the opening question about how she had become an evangelist and pastor in Germany was exceedingly short: A very good question. I did not start in Germany, I started in Nigeria, that is in 1990, when I was an evangelist, and then I went to Bible School, and then I was later ordained. And then I went back to Cameroon, I was working there with other churches, and then I came to Germany to continue the job, you know. It’s just the call of God; it’s nothing else but the call of God. You know when God call you, just like Paul, to come out of darkness into his marvellous light, then you have to obey the call [. . .] and sacrifice.

This account gives nothing but the barest facts. All sounds very straightforward, and this impression is strengthened by the theological interpretation she immediately adds: “It’s just the call of God; it’s nothing else but the call of God.” Read from hindsight, in the clear knowledge of her calling, every move in her life makes perfect sense. Asked about her work before coming to Germany, P.W. said: I was working as a free evangelist [. . .] in Nigeria, you know, I was working with Lamb of God Ministry, also with Foursquare Bible Church, and then I was also preaching on the street, helping in crusades, and when I went to Cameroon, I applied to the Deeper Life Bible Church [. . .]. They did not take me serious, because at that time I was still young, just 22 years old. So told me I was just a small girl, you know, and before they knew it, I left for Germany. When I came to Germany, and then I saw that things were not going well [. . .] Then I also started with several pastors. [. . .] In [. . .] I started with Assemblies of God Church, that was under Pastor D. then God gave me a word that I have to leave there. [. . .] So I told him I was going. You know, he just was like I was crazy bit. God said something that I should leave, but I did not know where I was going. That was a call now for the music, so when I went I met Pastor A., and [. . .] we were going to sing and preach, you know. [. . .] I asked him and he helped me, and then all of a sudden, the first musical, they said I was out. You know, that was when I understood that God was saying: ‘Leave that place; you have a call somewhere else.’ You know, so I left the church and went into that evangelistic ministry.

With the first few words of this passage, P.W. sets the theme for her life narrative: She is a “free evangelist,” i.e. while following a divine call, she is independent of any church structure. She recounts how in Nigeria, she worked “with” different churches, implying that she did not belong to any of these, but just lent them her services. After her return to Cameroon she applied to a church, obviously now seeking

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employment. But—and we will see this motif again and again later on in her narrative—she was not taken seriously, just dismissed as a “small girl.” Few of the larger churches in Cameroon ordain women or allow them leadership roles. Consequently, a large portion of the newly founded, free ‘charismatic’ churches are led by women.52 P.W.’s ambitions which are based on a divine call53 are not recognized by the—presumably male—leadership of an existing church with a very good reputation.54 P.W. recounts her expatriation in just a half-sentence: “. . . and before they knew it, I left for Germany.” She gives no information about how and why she came, but she relates her move to the refusal of the Deeper Life Church to employ her. The words “before they knew it” imply a sense of grievance against that church, which is now upset by a certain comeuppance: ‘These people didn’t take me seriously, but then I really showed them what I can do!’ At this point, P.W. does not describe herself as called to Germany. She states that only after getting to know the country she discovered the need for evangelism: “I saw that things were not going well.” She does not elaborate on what these things are, clearly assuming that her perception of ‘things not going well’ will be shared by the interviewer. As long as she just changes from church to church as an ordinary member, P.W. does not see any need to justify or interpret her moves. This changes when she describes her switches as an evangelist. Again, we have the motif of divine calling which is not understood by people around her: The pastor with whom she was working declares her to be crazy. She, on the other hand, has “a word from God,” a direct revelation that has clearly told her to leave, even though she has not received guidance as to where to go next. Again, P.W. uses the word “call” when describing her next move: She joins another church, to do music ministry. But after the first public performance, she is told to leave. She interprets this rejection as a further divine intervention: “That was when I understood that God was saying: ‘Leave that place.’ ” P.W. allows us to observe a dialectical hermeneutical operation: What looks, from the outside, just like a

52 Conversation with Jean-Emile Njigue, General Secretary of CEPCA (Conseil des Eglises Protestantes au Cameroun), 9 May 2007. 53 See her call narrative analyzed in chapter 3.2.6. 54 On the Nigerian Deeper Life Bible Church, see A.U. Adogame, “Deeper Christian Life Mission (International)” in: NIDPCM, p. 574.


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dismissal, is more of a promotion, if viewed from the spiritual inside, a divine call to start her own ministry. As P.W. had said so little about her expatriation to Germany, the interview turned back to the main research question: CWO: How did you get a call to Germany? I think the call to Germany was the very call to the Bible School in Nigeria.”

P.W. then proceeded to tell the elaborate call narrative we already analyzed in chapter 3.2.6. She therefore explicitly tied her call to Germany to her call into the ministry, even though this may not have been so clear to her in the beginning, as the following passage shows: CWO: Can you say something about how you came to Germany? I think my coming to Germany was just a miracle [. . .] I had no vision for Germany, even though my sister was studying here in the University of M. [. . .] I preferred to go to America in case I’m leaving Africa. It’s easy to preach there, and you can preach at any time. But I think when she was calling me to Germany, that I have to come to Germany, I was very, very reluctant. [. . .] And I said: ‘Come to Germany? No. [. . .] Coming to Germany will just be like running away from the call!’ But I did not know that you can leave one place and also continue your call some place else. Until when I came, I entered Germany, and then I saw the way things are going, and I said: ‘God, have mercy, God, have mercy!’ until I stayed one year, two year, and then they were still calling me to come to America, you know, they were telling me to come to America, it would be easier, but I said no, I’m remaining in Germany. I think God wants me to stay in Germany. [. . .] But I said I did not understood that coming to Germany, okay, there is a purpose for the Gospel, yeah. [. . .] The purpose of me coming to Germany is really to preach the Word. To preach the Word, because at times, when we come like this, we get involved in a lot of things. We get involved in working, you know, and involved in looking for money—it’s also important, helping the family back home, and then we forget our call. And once you forget our call, to get back into the call, it’s going to take some years, some years for you to recover what you have had before. So I think my coming to Germany is for specific purpose by God.

After some prodding, the interview elicits a second expatriation narrative. While the first narrative was structured around the motif of rejection by male pastors, the second now centers on the question of how coming to Germany actually correlated to her calling. By comparing the two narratives, we can gain insights into how events are interpreted and re-interpreted according to the ‘meaning’ that structures the

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narrative. The outline of the plot—P.W. is divinely led to Germany and eventually starts a church here—remains the same, but different events are recounted to explain its movement towards a telos. In the first sentence of her second narrative, P.W. calls her coming to Germany a “miracle.” It is not a miracle because she made it here against strong odds, as a German listener might assume. Rather, the miracle consists in the fact that God can work his purposes even with people who do not understand them: He brought her here despite the fact that she had “no vision” for Germany. Like several other interviewees, P.W. had thought about moving abroad, but had not chosen Germany—she would have preferred to move to the US. Again, P.W. does not tell much about the actual process of her expatriation. All we learn is that her sister, who already lived here as a student, “called” her. P.W. describes her reluctance against this “call” which in hindsight, of course, turns out to have been divine: By stating that she saw coming to Germany as “running away from the call,” she implicitly strengthens her interpretation that coming to Germany was what God planned: God could use even her disobedience to further his plan for her life. To describe how she actually realized this call, P.W. uses almost the same phrase she used in the first narrative: “I saw the way things were going.” Again, she assumes that the interviewer knows what she means, and agrees with her interpretation. This time, she emphasizes the fact that ‘things’ were bad by adding “God have mercy!” By adding that she later got an invitation to move to the US which she turned down, P.W. concludes that she is now very aware of her calling to this country. To underscore this point, she repeats it again at the end: When she came to Germany, she had no idea that this was “a purpose for the Gospel.” While she defines herself as a missionary—“the purpose of my coming is to preach the Word”—P.W. seems to be struggling with this selfimage. When she continues talking, she no longer uses the pronoun “I,” but switches to “we.” In this way, it is not clear whether she speaks of her personal story in the framework of something that would be ‘typical’ for many immigrants, or whether she simply states an observation she has made about others—using “we” in that second context would betray a certain ‘pastoral’ language, as sermons often tend to use “we” as rhetorically more inclusive, though the preacher really means “you.” So this passage, deliberately or not, allows two possible interpretations: Either, P.W. herself came to Germany with the aim to make money, and only later discovered her call to preach. Or, P.W. realizes that most


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immigrants have the aim to do well for themselves financially in Germany, while their original call might also have been to evangelize this country. Therefore, her role is to help other migrants to recover this call. However this may be, P.W. leaves no doubt that in hindsight the telos of her expatriation is totally clear: “My coming to Germany is for specific purpose by God.” Quite obviously, P.W.’s narrative is more concerned with her legitimation as a female preacher, pastor and evangelist than with her legitimation of being in Germany. She negotiates her role more in an implicit dialogue with the many male immigrant evangelists and pastors, and the discourse among them which usually does not allow women to assume a role of pastor, than with the dominant German immigration discourse. P.W.’s narrative is not much of an expatriation narrative; rather, it is a continuation of her call narrative. 4.2.2.2. S.O.: “There was this stirring on me that I need to really move out”55 S.O., a fast-talking man in his late forties who originates from Ghana, came to Germany in 1991 as a chemical engineering student. He started a Bible study group for African students which has now grown into one of the largest African-led churches in the Ruhr area. He has never had any theological training, and was ordained by a group of Ghanaian pastors from different denominations several years after starting his church. In 2006, the lead congregation moved from the Protestant church in which it had been meeting for almost 10 years to a large factory hall which it has rebuilt as its worship and social center. S.O.’s church has a number of satellite churches in other German cities, and even one in Spain. S.O. has privately published several books which are circulating among anglophone African migrants in Europe, but also in Ghana. He is highly respected and well known in anglophone African circles in Germany, and has personal networks with anglophone African migrants that reach around the globe. He is actively looking to have more cooperation with German Protestants, and has been involved in almost all cooperation projects started by the UEM program. His lead congregation has entered a formal partnership with a German congregation in a neighboring city with which 55 For the full text of S.O.’s expatriation narrative, see the Appendix. I interviewed S.O. on 2 March 2005 in my home.

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there are regular exchanges. His church has a strong social ministry for migrants, but is so far attracting very few Germans. S.O. was among the interviewees who told a short call, but a long, rambling and very detailed expatriation narrative. With his first few sentences, he introduced himself simultaneously as someone used to moving around, as well as someone with a strong calling to start evangelistic ministries wherever he went, and as someone who moved between different Christian organizations. I like to really say that I am a son of a policeman [. . .] and we had the opportunity of really traveling across the country. [. . .] I got to know a friend; one of my classmates [. . .] he led me to Christ by his lifestyle. [. . .] So it was there that really, I had a calling, I had a stirring in my heart, a heart really for souls that were lost. [. . .] So that’s really how the whole thing began. Then, apart from this, I’ve also been in, let’s say, various organization or Christian, eh, fellowship setups, because, when you grow up in the SU56 setup, wherever you go, you try to also look for other organizations like that. And in areas where there were no such organizations, really, I went into also, let’s initiate some of these nondenominational, inter-denominational fellowships.

It is striking that S.O. emphasizes his interdenominational outlook so early into his narrative. He clearly wants to establish himself as somebody who is ecumenically open, who likes to work with other Christian groups than the one he belongs to himself, and who only moves out to start something on his own if such a group cannot be found. We will find this motif again and again during the course of his narrative. Interestingly, even though his narrative is extremely detailed, S.O. only mentions his move to Germany in passing: So from there, I went, came to Europe, to pursue my Diplom [sic] course also in Chemical Engineering at University.

Like in P.W.’s first narrative, there is no further explanation, and no spiritual reasoning about his move. This may simply be due to the fact that in the dominant discourse on immigration in Germany, the wish to further one’s higher education here is a well-accepted reason to move to this country. While many immigrant groups are not welcome, international students are actively recruited. Therefore, S.O.’s narrative does not have to contest the dominant discourse at this point. S.O., at this instant in his account, does not describe himself as coming to Germany with a missionary agenda. But as an active Christian, 56

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he immediately started looking for a Christian community, only to be frustrated by the German church: I saw this Evangelical signboard over there, and so I went in there, as a Christian. And when I went in there, service was conducted. It was conducted in German. In fact, there were no people . . . how, I compare to maybe how such a service are conducted in Ghana compared to this place, there were no people in the church! Some few old people that were there, in fact, after the church service, no one even spoke to me, so I came out and I went home. So then, the idea came up: Can I get in touch with other people, [. . .] maybe, we’ll have an English Association or wherever. So that was which we led me in touch with other Africans. And we saw that there was no any international community church around.

Again, we can see how S.O. tries to depict himself as someone who would have preferred to join an existing church rather than starting a new one. It is interesting that, in the context of this interview, S.O., who now serves as Secretary of the Council of Pentecost Ministers, emphasizes his evangelical background. He clearly intends to show that the politics of difference that led him to establish an African church were not his, but established by the German church. This is reinforced in the continuation of the narrative. There was an, a man who had also stayed in Ghana, worked with Reinhard Bonnke,57 called Pastor [. . .]. He had an international church, and he had this kind of charismatic background, so, really, there was an interest to go. Along the line, it did not work out. So we had to find where we Ghanaians, or, let’s say, where we Africans can have a place of meeting.

After failing to join a Protestant church, S.O. tried a charismatic, international church led by a German pastor who, through his relation to Reinhard Bonnke, could be expected to be more open to Africans. But this also failed, leading S.O. to establish an African fellowship. We started this Christian Fellowship, like the SU type that we had back in Ghana, [. . .] So it was a fellowship of whereby people from different backgrounds come together to fellowship. So that least we can still keep up with our Christian faith that we brought from Africa! 57 Reinhard Bonnke is a German pentecostal healing evangelist who has traveled and preached widely in Africa. See www.cfan.org. For a short introduction, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Bonnke, both accessed 22 September 2008. Short clips of his preaching can be found on YouTube, e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v= shxu0ba-SKU.

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Again, S.O. says very clearly that he did not have a missionary perspective. The group he helped set up was a diasporal group, even though it was comprised of people from different African countries and used English as its worship language. Its aim was not to reach out to Germans, but rather to safeguard the faith of African Christians. S.O. did not give any details about what happened, but eventually his perspective changed: It was from there that really I moved out to start [my own church], ‘cause there was this stirring on me that I need to really move out to do something that will not only be in a local place, but whereby the international community will equally, what, benefit from it.

Time and again, S.O. uses the term “stirring” when trying to describe what it means to be called. Asked how he would explain his move into the ministry to someone who might not be used to thinking in a framework of calling or inner conviction, he struggled for words: Actually [laughs]—I don’t know really how to explain it. [. . .] It’s an inner feeling, something that is really driving you in, in a particular direction, where someone asks you to explain, maybe the tangible reasons for—maybe you will not be able to say ‘I’m doing this based on this advantage or that advantage or that advantage,’ but then you realize that your whole system is convinced that this what must be done. Someone, someone may think that, maybe, you are not reasonable, because, maybe, not clear, because you cannot really explain everything in detail, but the fact is that, having known God, and having known the way God also speaks [. . .] I sensed it, I had a conviction about it, and it was then that I was convinced that God is asking me to leave.

This passage clearly shows the process of negotiation of meaning between a speaker and a listener who may be following different paradigms. S.O. describes the “stirring” as a conviction that may not be logically explained or deduced, an urgent inner feeling for which no obvious reason can be given. It is this particular unexplainability or irrationality of the “stirring” that marks it as divine intervention. And it is this “stirring” that drives him out of a diasporal group to form an international ministry which consciously reaches out to Germans. Before starting his own church, though, S.O. asked one of his mentors to advise him. The outcome, though, was not what he had expected: So he was of the view that, okay like, he didn’t want me to really come out [. . .] to really start a church, but he wanted me to be there to put in my, the resources and the calling in there. But it so happened it did not work the way he really advise [. . .] So that was where, after much prayer, and advice from other men of God, I moved out. [. . .] So I


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told many people about these intentions, this vision that God is laying on my heart, this passion for souls, having an international Christian community church, and at the same time also reach out to people that are lost [. . .] So some people got up with the idea—they said: ‘Look, it’s good. We’ll leave with you.’ And so, we took off.

S.O. openly admits that his mentor advised him to stay in the diasporal church with which he was working at the time. But in his eyes, this was not a divine message: S.O., within two sentences, twice repeats the words “he wanted me” and opens the whole passage with the phrase “so he was of the view.” As in the call narrative analyzed in chapter 3.2.5, we here get an account about a church split. But unlike the other narrator, S.O. does not refer to dreams and revelations to justify his actions, possibly because he is more of an evangelical than a pentecostal, and therefore tends to a more rationalizing narrative. In addition, S.O., who has intensive contacts with the Protestant church, is aware that recourse to dreams and revelations would not fulfill a legitimizing function in a narrative told to a Protestant interviewer. Finally, S.O. might expect that his listener is sympathetic to his rejection of a purely diasporal ministry. S.O. describes leaving his church as something that simply happened: Events are depicted as inevitable, following an inherent logic. S.O., in the end, did not have any choice but to move out. He did so after “much prayer and advice from other men of God.” S.O. is not one to take the word of one authority as the word of God, especially if it contradicts what he wants to do himself. But at the same time, he needs to stress that he did not act totally on his own: He emphasizes that his vision was shared by other members of his group who moved out with him. Here again, he rather moves in the framework of this interviewer than that of his own ‘scene:’ Within pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches, leaving a church to start one’s own is tolerated if based on a divine call. But to take people from an existing church to start a new, independent one (rather than planting a daughter church) is heavily frowned upon throughout the scene. Not surprisingly, several interviewees strongly emphasized that they did not take any people away from the churches they left when they established their own. Despite its detailed character, S.O.’s narrative does not sound like a composed story that has been performed repeatedly and has therefore taken on a certain, fixed form. It rather gives the impression that throughout this interview, the narrator wants to get the historical account right; therefore, so many names are mentioned, and so many

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little interactions recounted. More than the other narratives, S.O.’s account is informed by the fact that he is talking to a German Protestant interviewer to whom he wants to explain himself. S.O.’s narrative does not concern itself with reflections about identity. The move from Ghana to Germany, and from chemical engineering into pastoral ministry are mentioned only in passing, and in such a way that they are not to be read as upheavals, but rather as logical consequences of a process of divine guidance that began in his childhood. 4.2.3. Called after expatriation Two interviewees, both of them from Indonesia, talked about how they had been called as missionaries long after their expatriation to Germany as students. Here, we will look at the longer and more detailed narrative. 4.2.3.1. A.K.: “God wants us to be an international church”58 A.K., a former electrical engineer from an Indonesian background, was the only interviewee I did not know personally before I interviewed him. I made contact with him because I had come across the website of his church. This had originally been Indonesian, but was now consciously internationalizing and had joined the Federation of Free Pentecostal Churches some years ago. A.K. has not had any theological training and has not been ordained, but functions as a pastor together with his Indonesian wife. After I e-mailed him, he asked for a reference. When a local German charismatic pastor recommended me to him, he was ready to be interviewed. After I had finished with my questions, A.K. asked me whether I was willing to be interviewed as well, and posed a number of questions enquiring about my opinions of the church in Germany, migrant churches in general, and so on. A.K.’s expatriation and call narrative is different from that of all other interviewees as it begins as an individual account but quickly turns into a corporate, communal story. I was a Christian even when I was in Indonesia, and then I came to Germany to study. [. . .]. But as I came here, then I experience my 58 A.K.’s full narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him on 18 January 2006 in his church office, with the church secretary present but listening silently.


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renewal, [. . .] this baptism in the Spirit and so on. And then we started to gather together with other Indonesian students.

A.K. begins with a short, individual conversion narrative which incorporates his expatriation narrative. As he came to Germany to study, he has no further need to explain or justify his move. But the expatriation brings him in contact with Indonesians from another Christian tradition, and leads to his charismatic revival, which he quickly starts to share with other Indonesians. This is a clear expatriation narrative in the sense that the move to Germany serves the simple purpose to gain knowledge and an education. There is no reflection about living in a different culture, struggles for identity or integration. On the contrary, A.K. describes himself as moving within a diaspora framework: The first thought was, we are in a foreign country, we are foreigners, why can’t we meet, then we can talk about the Bible and pray. That was the beginning of this church. It was just a prayer group of Indonesian students, and we had no other relationship. It was just for survival.

After his individual conversion story, A.K. recounts the history of his church as a corporate call narrative. The introductory description depicts the ‘before’ the situation which had to be left behind and which therefore, in hindsight, is connoted negatively.59 What A.K. describes here is the classical diaspora group. Students come and go, and during their studies in this foreign country seek community and relationships with others from the same country and of the same faith background. They are “foreigners” in a “foreign country” and live an insular life, just trying to “survive” before returning home. After depicting the ‘before’ situation, A.K.’s narrative turns to the event that led to the conversion of the group: In the year 95 we celebrated the Indonesian Independence day [. . .] We also had a seminar, and a worship service, and a celebration, and then we also had exchanges, and then, we were collecting different points, and then we developed this determination, that we as Indonesians, we should be a blessing for the other nations, that we as Indonesians here in Germany, we should not just think among ourselves, but why we are here: Not just to study, and then finish, and then, yes, nothing to do with Germany etc. But on this day, God opened our eyes that we should have a greater relationship. And this vision is ‘light for the nations.’ And we got it from Isaiah 49. So that was our turning point.

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In this aspect, this call narrative also resembles a conversion narrative.

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Unlike in all other narratives analyzed in this chapter, national identity plays a big role in A.K.’s narrative. It has to be noted that this is indeed a national identity as Indonesian, which brings together people of many different cultures and backgrounds. In this, A.K.’s account follows official Indonesian ideology. It is highly significant that the call / conversion of his church to a more international outlook happens as it celebrates 50 years of Indonesian independence. Opening up to the outside world does not mean giving up one’s own national identity: “We as Indonesians, we should be a blessing for the other nations.” National identities are seen as set and unchangeable, but the “light” of the Christian faith transcends the borders between them and leads into a new community without nullifying them. Becoming an international church does not mean giving up being Indonesian; rather it fulfills the calling of being Indonesian. The internationalization of the church reinforces rather than undermines as sense of Indonesianness. Interestingly for a call narrative, the actual call is described rather in passing. There is no miraculous insight or strong feeling, just a development of a determination during a time of exchange and discussion. But to make sure that this event is properly understood as call, the narrative adds a number of theological qualifiers: “God opened our eyes,”— “vision,”—“we got it from Isiah 49,”—“turning point.” The change to a new, international outlook was divinely led, not just simply a human idea, and based on a Biblical text. And this change was not just a step, a further development, but a reversal of what had been before. And then as we prayed about how to put his into practice, we received a Bible verse from the Lord, it is also in the book of Isaiah, [. . .] ‘God’s temple shall be a prayer house for all nations.’ And this key word, ‘prayer’—oh yes, we Indonesian Christians, we like to pray, and then we thought, why don’t we just start with this? Prayer, that we invite other churches, other German churches in [. . .], and then we remembered that 3 October is the day of German unification. And then we thought: That is a good moment to invite the other German churches and pray and fast together. [. . .] And the reaction was super, and they came, yes.

The continuation of the narrative again shows the importance of national identity in A.K.’s understanding. The day for the first joint activity with Germans is, very logically, the German national day. Again we see how international community, at this point A.K.’s narrative, is not a negation of national identities, but rather its reinforce-


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ment. In relating to the German context, the Indonesians build on their strength as a praying community. They offer their ‘national’ Christian characteristic to a joint activity. And this was the first time, that we as a church, that we as a host also invited a church, a German congregation, that we pray and fast together. It was also the first time that we had a worship service in German [. . .] Yes, that was in October ’95, and then we thought, that’s it and ready, and then we go back to our old ways, Indonesian etc. But somehow this vision was not fulfilled. God said: ‘No, no, not only that you are a blessing for Indonesians, but you must, yes, the whole church must be open so that all nations can come, yes?’ And that isn’t easy for us, because we are Indonesians, and we would like to stay among ourselves, with our culture, our food etc. Yes, it’s not so easy for us. But because God talked to us in this way, I told the others: ‘God wants that we are no longer an Indonesian church, but an international one.’ [. . .] And that was, yes, a very difficult thing for us. And then since ’96 we have started, everything we have changed, from Indonesian to German. And now we do our praise and worship in German and English, and I preach in German—yes, with my accent, [laughs out loud] with my grammar—yes, and then it is also being translated into English. And now, our church is no longer Indonesian, it has become international.

As this Indonesian church starts relating to its German context, it begins to change. The call to this could be described as the call to an ‘inner expatriation:’ the church cannot remain a diasporal, Indonesian group, but has to move out of its national identity into a new, international distinctiveness. A.K. recounts this change as something that was very difficult, but based on clear, divine guidance: “God said . . .” The way A.K. tells his story, the group did not suddenly develop an interest in integration. After all, they were all students set to return to their home countries. After a one-off event with German churches, they wanted to go back to their “Indonesian ways” and had to be prevented from doing so by divine intervention. Change was difficult because “we are Indonesians.” A.K. associates national identity with culture, food, language and worship style. All of these now have to be changed: True internationalization means that the church is no longer Indonesian, it has become ex-patriate. Interestingly, the church did not turn into a binational Indonesian / German, but into a truly international community, even though the language of the Sunday sermon is now German.

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4.2.4. Struggling to understand call and expatriation Finally, two interviewees in this group told narratives which show that they are still in the process of determining what their call actually is and means. One of them shall be analyzed below. 4.2.4.1. B.A.: “God arranged that situation so that we can stay”60 The interview with B.A., a Nigerian in his early forties exuding a quiet dignity, was somewhat artificial. I had been involved in his visa application process, had worked with him closely during his time as a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Germany, and tried in vain to mediate in the conflict that eventually cost him his position as a pastor of the RCCG. We kept in fairly close contact afterwards, and so I knew that he had started an independent church. I also knew his Nigerian wife and his two young sons. Asking him about his biography therefore meant to ask him to recount, for the sake of a taped interview, events that I already knew about. It is therefore not surprising that in his narrative, he spent much time to talk about his life before coming to Germany, recounting in great detail how he became a pastor of the RCCG after having studied mass communication and then having started out as a branch secretary for the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria in Port Harcourt. He described how he worked as a part-time pastor, but as church work increased and started to influence his job performance, he decided to resign and join the ministry full-time. Looking back, he evaluated this decision in the light of the financial sacrifice involved: I was not happy and there was nothing to look forward to in the salary that full-time pastors have been paid in Nigeria.

According to his narrative, money remained a big topic: After struggling with a meager salary for two years, he joined a computer company for some time. It is at this point that his expatriation narrative really started: But I felt this strong leading: ‘Don’t take that job. Go and register as a full-time pastor!’ And I did not want to work as a full-time pastor because the welfare package of a full-time pastor isn’t enough to write 60 B.A.’s full expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him in my home on 9 April 2005.


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home about. But I felt I had to obey God, so I registered as a full-time pastor. [. . .] at the end of the second year, when the call came, Pastor [. . .] came to Nigeria from US and said: ‘They are having problems with the church in Germany, and they need a pastor. The pastor who was there before [. . .] has resigned.’ [. . .] He would be grateful if I could think about it and take that offer. As of that time, I was really getting tired of being a full-time pastor in Nigeria. [. . .] Anyway, everything just seemed to coincide at that period; that the only door that seemed open was to come to Germany. Ah, when we started processing, I remember the wife of my state pastor telling me that ‘it is a good thing about you that you did not lobby to be sent to Germany.’ That I’d just been sitting down and waiting for them to call me. ‘We know those who’d love to go, but you did not love it, so we take it that God wants you to go there and . . .’ In a nutshell, that’s how we ended up in Germany on the 19th of August 2001. That’s the journey so far.

With this first ‘chapter,’ the theme for B.A.’s narrative is set: It is the struggle between his sense of divine calling into full-time ministry and his struggles with the sacrifices and difficulties entailed by following this call. Obviously, in his understanding, doing God’s will is contrary to what one personally likes. In later passages of this interview, this sentiment will show up time and again. Interestingly, even though the interview was conducted in 2005, B.A. explicitly ends his account on the day of his arrival in 2001. Up to then, it is a clear and simple expatriation narrative concomitant with the mission policy of the Redeemed Christian Church which sees itself as a global organization.61 Also up to this point, the narrative would actually belong in the second group of accounts, those which describe expatriation as the consequence of a call into missionary service. But B.A. tells the story so that it already hints that things are not so clear-cut: The way he introduces the topic of his divine calling is strangely distanced. In his perspective, it is “the only door that seemed open”—a phrasing that does not imply a strong sense of necessity to move into a certain direction. The only explicit mentioning of a call is put into the words of his head pastor’s wife, which again are phrased betraying a certain distance: “We take it that God wants you to go there . . .” All of this does not seem like a positive calling, but rather like saying: There is no alternative, so this must be God’s plan. 61 In its 1991 “Missions Policy,” the church pledged to found 10,000 new churches outside of Nigeria between 1995 and 2005. For this aim, it was going to train “pioneer pastors” and “intercultural missionaries.” See: Redeemed Christian Church of God, Missions Policy, Lagos, April 1999.

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The short quote of the state pastor’s wife is a sentence loaded with meaning: First of all, B.A. makes clear that, while he was hoping to make more money in Germany, it was his church that sent him here and it were his superiors who decided that this meant following divine guidance. In the light of the difficulties he encountered later, this is very important to him. He wants to be clear of the suspicion that he moved to Germany for financial reasons and without a divine call. But there is a second layer of meaning to this sentence: The head pastor’s wife derives her sense of divine calling in B.A.’s move from the fact that he “did not love it.” Here again, we come across the main theme of B.A.’s narrative: To follow God’s guidance means to do something which goes against one’s own interests. As B.A. had finished his narrative with his move to Germany, he had to be prompted to talk about subsequent events. This study is not the place to recount in detail the conflict between the RCCG and B.A. which was played out with both sides trying to involve this author. It suffices to say that it extended over almost two years and ended with his recall to Nigeria by the RCCG Mission Board, his refusal to return home, and his subsequent dismissal. B.A. then started a new, independent church. This is what B.A. had to say about the conflict and its outcome: I would say God has a purpose for bringing us to Germany. Before I left Nigeria, he made that clear. When it was apparent we would be coming here, [. . .] I definitely heard the Holy Ghost say: ‘Pray for 20, eh, fast for 28 days for your mission in Germany, and pray seven hours every day.’ So I asked: ‘When do I start?’, and immediately I got another answer: ‘Start 1st of April.’ And throughout April, I fasted. My wife agreed to join me. [. . .] And God started showing us things that had to do with the work. And one of the things he showed us is that we are going to have a lot of problems when we got to Germany. [. . .] So I believe, one, that spiritually, God has a purpose for sending us to Germany. And as it is usual, whatever God initiates, the devil opposes it. So everything we’ve gone through, I saw it as an attempt of the devil to get us out of God’s perfect way. And God had to use a very traumatic means to make it possible for us to stay, [. . .] CWO: What was the traumatic means? Just so that I understand it . . . Yeah, the health of my son. We gave birth to E. on 3rd September of 2002, and the following day after he was born, the doctors diagnosed that he had a heart problem, and he was operated on [. . .] His doctors say that he has to remain in Germany for access to medical treatment [. . .] Even when we were recalled back to Nigeria in June of 2003, ah, it was clear that we could not go back. Because of E.’s situation, we were allowed by the German authorities, that Aliens’ Office, to continue to


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stay.62 That’s the only thing that will have kept us in Germany. And it, it is twofold, looking at it. The mission that sent us cannot recall us, and even if we do get angry, or upset, or got unhappy with Germany, we cannot leave. So it is like God killing two birds with one stone: Nobody can push you out, even you yourself, you can’t push, so you sit down here. And if God does that, it’s because he has a purpose.

In his narrative and interpretation, B.A. follows the basic pattern that we had established above: The struggle between his wish to follow God’s guidance and the fact that following this guidance leads into suffering. His basic premise, stated right at the beginning of his statement, is clear: There is nothing in his life which was not ordered or allowed by God. Therefore, whatever comes to pass needs to be read and interpreted in the light of this premise. B.A.’s answer shows him as struggling to come to terms with what has happened to him and his family. He insists that it is not possible that he has come in vain; it is not possible that he misread the call. As his basic tenet remains that God sent him to Germany, he needs to establish why his internal vocation is still true even though his church retracted his external vocation by recalling him to Nigeria. In short, he also needs to legitimize the fact that he is still in Germany, even though the original purpose of his coming is no longer valid. He does this by constructing a theological interpretation based on a typically pentecostal, dualistic world view. First of all, B.A. interprets his difficulties as the devil’s effort to sabotage God’s work. Such an interpretation allows the dialectic operation of understanding all difficulties arising as affirmations that one is on the right track: If the devil makes so much trouble, one must be doing God’s will! Secondly, as the devil used such powerful means to dislodge the B.A. family from its divinely ordained place in Germany, God had to use an even stronger way to ensure the family’s stay: The traumatic experience of giving birth to a child with a severe heart condition, in this interpretation, almost becomes a matter of special grace. It is a blessing in disguise: God has done something extraordinary to make sure that the family will remain in Germany, and that no one, not their mission board at home, not the enemies in the church here, not even they themselves, can make them leave. And as God has acted

62 As B.A. came to Germany on a ‘pastor visa’, his right to stay was based on his term with the RCCG. As soon as he was fired, his visa expired automatically. Due to his son’s medical problems, though, he and his family were allowed to stay in Germany on humanitarian grounds, though they did not get a residence permit.

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in such an extraordinary way, there must be something important for him to accomplish in Germany. It is obvious that the difficulties B.A. encountered did not undermine his sense of divine calling, but rather strengthened it further. This theological meaning-making leads B.A. no longer to tie his calling to his church organization, but to God himself. The RCCG, which, at the point of his expatriation to Germany, was an instrument of God’s will, has now become an instrument of the devil against whose plans God has to act in a rather spectacular way. The following part of B.A.’s narrative further emphasizes and qualifies this interpretation: And one thing that God has done that has encouraged me to continue to stay, to continue to hold on—[. . .] So while I was praying I asked God three questions: [. . .] Question number one: Why am I here? Two: Why are all these things taking place? And three: What am I supposed to do now? Three questions. And within 30 minutes, God gave me the answer to the three. It’s one of those rare moments that he speaks and you know that he speaks definitely. And the first question, [. . .], he said: ‘It is to be a light to the Germans.’ Question number 2, [. . .] he said ‘There is a treasure inside of you that has to come out, so you have to be broken.’ And he referred me to 2. Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7: ‘Now we have a treasure in an earthly vessel.’ And then question number 3 [. . .] He said: ‘You begin to pray 12 midnight, every day.’ And that’s why till today, my alarm is permanently set to a quarter to 12 at night. [. . .] I could pray for one hour, for three hours, for four hours, it depends on how alert and awake I am. But 12 midnight, I’m at the place of prayer, every day. [. . .] And one grace that God also gave me was the opportunity to be part of a German prayer team [. . .], and we meet twice in a month. [. . .] It gives me an opportunity to, one, be able to pray for Germany, two, to be able to give something back to the nation, because we received so much help and so much favor, particularly when E. was sick.

In the first part of his narrative, B.A. recounted his own theological and spiritual reasoning in trying to interpret what had happened to him. In this part now, he adds a second layer of interpretation, which is framed in a divine revelation received during an audition. In this way, his own reasoning is justified by God himself. This interpretation consists of three statements: Firstly, B.A. was sent to Germany with a divine call and mission; secondly, the difficulties are meant to make him even more effective in his mission; and thirdly, he is to start a fixed prayer routine. In this second layer of interpretation, B.A.’s difficulties are no longer ascribed to the devil trying to destroy God’s work, but rather to God himself, who acts with a pedagogical aim. This interpretation clearly breaks with the Prosperity Gospel paradigm which normally suffuses


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RCCG theology and preaching.63 But to keep within this paradigm, B.A. would have had to interpret his coming to Germany as a failure or disobedience—something he was not willing to do. But with this divine intervention, B.A. was able to abandon the theological paradigm in which he had been raised, and thereby save his sense of calling. B.A.’s story is not ‘rounded,’ not yet a finished product which has been told and retold many times. It is a narrative in search for legitimation, not in relation to German immigration policies, but rather in relation to the church that first sent him here and then tried to recall him. It is a narrative of spiritual growth, of trying out new ways of understanding why the call he is so sure about led him into such difficulties. B.A.’s statements allow us to observe the process of constructing such a narrative, attempting to make sense by applying different and even contradicting paradigms until a pattern has been established that fulfills both the narrator’s and the listener’s expectations of spiritual meaning. 4.2.5. Concluding remarks: Intertwined call and expatriation narratives The expatriation narratives analyzed above, even though they are so different in character, have a basic structure in common: For all narrators, their call developed and became clear only in the course of their expatriation, even though some received a call into the ministry and even as a missionary before they left their home countries. Especially the long accounts show setbacks and detours, a lot of insecurities, doubts, and questioning. These are not simple narratives where every step is a clear and logical consequence of a previous call, though in hindsight, for most interviewees, even a winding path led to the right destination. Rather, the motifs of setbacks, disobedience and difficulty are an integral part of the narratives and serve to emphasize the divine authorship of the call: One is not doing something one wants to do oneself, but something one was divinely called to achieve. They are missionaries.

63 See the sermons on the RCCG website, http://congress2006.rccg.org/ accessed 21 December 2006. The theme of the congress, “Heaven on Earth”, already shows this paradigm.

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The second large group of interviewees constructed their expatriation narratives in such a way that their moving to Germany was interpreted as the consequence of a previous call. Again, the individual stories vary widely in length and character, so we will look at them individually. The individual stories, though, can be divided into several groups. 4.3.1. Independent charismatic missionaries: Success stories Three interviewees, all of them from Ghana, came to Germany as independent, charismatic missionaries, and went on to found large, successful, and international congregations. Since they have the largest churches of the sample, all three will be analyzed below. 4.3.1.1. R.A.: “God gave me a burden”64 R.A., who came to Germany from Ghana, is a rather shy and softspoken man his mid-forties who transforms into a fiery, humorous preacher once in front of a congregation. The church he founded was one of the first African-led churches in the Western part of Germany, and has now grown to be one of the biggest in the country. Wellconnected to the Protestant and the Catholic church in the city where it is located, the lead congregation was able to acquire, for a symbolic rent, a former Catholic church building with an adjacent community center, giving it several hundred square meters of usable space. Satellite churches have been set up in several other German cities, and the lead congregation is now negotiating for a second church building. R.A.’s church, co-pastored by his Chilean wife, runs worship services in English (with simultaneous translation into as many as eight languages), German and Spanish. Guest preachers are commonly featured and have included major Ghanaian and international charismatics as well as the president of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and the suffragan bishop of the Archdiocese of Cologne. The church also has a strong social outreach into its surrounding quarter, a poor area with a high percentage of migrant inhabitants. With its excellent Gospel choir, R.A.’s church has been attracting a sizeable number of Germans; 64 R.A.’s full expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him in his church office on 16 February 2005.


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though observation shows that many of them leave the congregation after some years, particularly those who were involved in leadership roles. R.A. is a sought-after speaker who travels widely in charismatic circles. He has two teenage sons. R.A. started his narrative as follows: One time I was praying and I felt the Lord was urging me to go to Germany. And the reason why it was very special for me was I never thought of coming to Germany, because I knew that many people who left Ghana and they came to Germany, any time they went back to Ghana they were unbelievers! [. . .] So I have asked some of them: ‘Don’t you go to church in Germany?’ And they said that, one, they couldn’t attend any German church service because it was done in German and they didn’t understand anything that was happening, and also sometimes they go to a German church and they didn’t feel welcomed, so some of them prefer to stay home [. . .] so when I heard the voice ‘Germany’, I felt that this would be my vision, this would be my what I’ll be doing in Germany, so God opened the doors for me to come to Germany, and when I came, I started this ministry.

This first, rather brief expatriation narrative moves forward in four steps: It begins with a divine call (though somewhat qualified here by the addition “I felt”), continues with a reflection of why the narrator had never thought himself of moving to Germany—emphasizing the fact that this must have been a divine call!—turns back to the call (this time described as an audition), and finally states how this call was followed. The actual expatriation is recounted extremely briefly: “God opened the doors for me to come to Germany”—the expatriation move is therefore narrated as an act of divine ageny: God calls, God opens the doors, and the narrator simply follows and does what he is called to do. There are no twists and turns, no doubts, no difficulties; everything happens according to (God’s) plan. It should be noted here that R.A.’s call to go to Germany, according to this narrative, was not a call to become a missionary to Germans, but rather a vision to be a pastor to Ghanaians in the diaspora. The aim of his expatriation is not described as evangelism and the recruitment of new Christians, but rather to enable Ghanaian Christians abroad to keep their faith alive. Such a ‘diasporal’ motivation to start a church is often cited by migrant church founders, at least in conversations with Germans. The two reasons cited by R.A. in his narrative, namely, the language barrier and the feeling of not being welcomed by German churches are both prominent motifs in such narratives. In informal conversations, many African pastors have voiced their surprise that no

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mainline German church had thought to offer translation for foreign participants of their worship services. In cities like Kinshasa, Accra or Lagos, many churches offer bi- or even tri-lingual worship services as a matter of course, using French / English plus one or two local languages. Feelings of not being welcome often resulted from the German mainline Protestant habit of leaving the church building after the worship service without greeting somebody one does not know. But especially black Christians also have encountered open racist rejection: I have been told how white worshippers moved away when an African sat down next to them, how Africans were told to find a church of their own people where they would fit in better, and even, in one case, how the participation of an African in Holy Communion created a big stir as several people were not willing to take wine from the common cup after he had drunk from it. It needs to be asked why such a ‘diasporal’ motivation is so often recounted when further conversations usually show that the interlocutors actually see themselves as missionaries far beyond their own ethnic or language group. There may be two different reasons at work here: One, a ‘diasporal’ motivation to start a church is very acceptable within a German Protestant context. The right to worship within one’s own language and tradition is held in high regard and always encouraged. It is only when migrant Christian groups start to evangelize Germans that conflicts with the Protestant church arise. A second reason might also play a role: Within their own context back home, migrant pastors are often suspected to have been motivated by ‘greener pastures,’ i.e. having moved abroad to make more money. By centering their motivation on serving their country people, this suspicion is somewhat deflected. The interview with R.A. then proceeded to ask for more details about how he made his way to Germany. His response: I heard a voice, the voice ‘Germany’, and straightaway God gave me a burden. So I went to the German embassy and made enquiries. [. . .] And they said: ‘Bring your passport and bring a valid ticket.’ So the following day I bought a ticket, I took my passport, and I went to the German Embassy. And the forms that I filled, they, they asked ‘Do you know anybody in Germany?’ I said ‘no.’—‘Where will you stay in Germany?’ I wrote ‘hotel.’ And, I couldn’t complete so many areas on the form, because I knew that it was God’s leading. So, I filled the form, and they told me: ‘Say, when do you want to travel?’ And I said, I said ‘Friday.’ That was Tuesday—I said ‘Friday I will travel.’ They told me to come on Thursday to collect my visa. So it was no struggle and that made me know that it was the will of God. So when I got to Germany—


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it was D. Airport I came to, and as soon as I came out from the airport, I told the taxi driver: ‘Take me to the cheapest hotel.’ Over there, I locked myself in the hotel for one week, just seeking the face of God in prayer, and in fasting, and when I came out from the hotel, that’s how God connected me to Pfarrer G., and we’ll be friends to this time, and he has been helpful to us.

Several significant observations can be made about this account: First and most remarkable of all, R.A. describes his call and mission as coming directly from God and being totally individual. The way he constructs his narrative, no church context becomes visible. R.A. receives the call on his own, and obeys it on his own. His mission is extremely individualistic, with neither a sending or a receiving church or network. Such entrepreneurial individualism in mission is something that can be found often within the pentecostal / charismatic movement. Secondly, the narrative recounts R.A.’s expatriation to Germany as exceedingly easy: There is no account of his having to wait for an appointment at the embassy, no account of having to answer a lot of questions, to prove his financial means etc. As the story is told, just a few days passed between the call and the actual journey. This seems hardly plausible, but is used in the course of the narrative to emphasize the basic assertion that his expatriation was a consequence of his call. The ease of travel highlights both his obedience to God and the supposition that God must be on his side to smooth his way: “It was no struggle and that made me know that it was the will of God.” Thirdly, it needs to be noted that according to his narrative, R.A. went to Germany without any prior preparation and contacts. As the story is told, he did not rely at all on any kind of existing Ghanaian diaspora network. (This is in clear contradiction with his earlier claim that his main motivation was to help diasporal Ghanaians to keep their faith!) He simply arrived, locked himself up in a hotel, and then went out and, more or less miraculously, encountered a German pastor who became a friend. This is the more surprising as he was not inexperienced internationally, having served as a missionary to Liberia before. But the construction of his narrative makes sense: He was called, he obeyed and went, and God prepared the way for him in an almost miraculous way. Any mentioning of contacts or a pre-existing network to fall back on would have detracted from this intended message. It is also significant that the first person he met and with whom he built a relationship was not a Ghanaian, but rather a German. The narrative connects this relationship with the fact that R.A. had fasted and

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prayed for a week: “. . . that’s how God connected me . . .” Like the first narrative, this second narrative relates every step and development to divine agency. Everything happened because God made it happen; and because God made it happen, everything was very easy. The interview continued trying to elicit more detailed information about the process of starting the church. As R.A.’s answers tended to veer into general statements very quickly, this was not easy. Nevertheless, some information could be gained. I started with seven people. We were just seven in number, and the seven grew to, we got to the twenties . . .

Seven, incidentally, is the number of people needed to start a registered association in Germany. But seven is also a holy number in Biblical tradition, so giving this precise number may have some significance for R.A. The budding church secured rooms for worship at a former cinema which had been bought and renovated by a German pentecostal congregation. The friendship with the German Protestant pastor, who held office as the local church district superintendent, turned out to be very helpful in securing financial and organizational assistance. As R.A. tells the story, his newly founded church was originally meant for Africans, though not as a secluded diaspora group: I saw the need in here. And most part of my work here is to bring about integration. [. . .] I saw a lot of devastation here. And they [the Ghanaians] told me that in Germany, they have no mentor, they have no Christian to help them, and I discovered that the Ghanaians live in their own communities [. . .] and they speaking Ghanaian language, they eat Ghanaian food, everything Ghanaian Ghanaian [. . .] and I discovered that the people were very close up [. . .] some of them had no contact to Germans! [. . .] They couldn’t go to church. So our church was the first in, in this city to bring about having an African church in this city, and we were able to reach out to all these people [. . .] We are a multicultural church. [. . .] I made it very international in such a way that people around me were urging me to have a Ghanaian church, have a Ghanaian Bible, use the Ghanaian language, but I, I’ve felt that I was not called to reach out to Ghanaians only. If, if I’m called to reach out to Ghanaians I will have remained in Ghana. We have a lot Ghanaians in Ghana today. But I discovered that I’m here for the Gospel’s sake. And I discover—we discover in the Bible that the Gospel is for all nations! So, we went the international way, that’s not been easy, but God has given us grace.

After stating his initial motivation to found a church in a more diasporal sense, R.A. describes his current work differently: The ghettoized


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Ghanaians do not only need to be strengthened in their Christian faith, they also need integration. R.A. describes this new aim for his church as something that he “discovered” due to his observations and re-reading of the Bible. Clearly, while starting out building a church for Africans in a German city, R.A. had a more international perspective. This may also be due to the fact he is married to a Chilean woman of German descent. By refusing to hold worship services in Twi, the language spoken by most Ghanaians in Germany, he consciously avoided building an ethnic diaspora church. In fact, his church is one of the most international African-led churches in the region, with members from many African countries as well as from Asia and Europe. It now has several hundred members, a well-known Gospel choir, and runs four Sunday services as well as several weekday services, a discipleship school, youth and children ministries, counseling and social work. 4.3.1.2. E.S.: “I felt a call strongly to Germany”65 E.S. is a German citizen of Ghanaian background in his forties. Small, skinny, and of nervous intensity, he charms people around him with his quirky sense of humor. E.S. has been in Germany for 20 years now, and has built one of the largest and most high-profile African-led churches in the country. I have been able to observe this church since 1998. Back then, there were about 60 members, worshipping in rented rooms in a Methodist chapel. As the church grew steadily, the Methodists felt crowded out of their own building, and conflicts started to arise. Eventually, the congregation grew too big for the chapel, and was asked to find new accommodation. Several attempts at taking over one of the large Protestant church buildings in the town center failed, though the relationship to the local Protestant church remained cordial and friendly. For a period, the congregation worshipped at a larger Protestant church in a nearby city. Finally, in late 2003, E.S.’s church rented a very run-down factory building just minutes from the main railway station in its original place. With much financial and practical help from the members of his Protestant host church, the building was refurbished and changed into a church center with a large and a smaller hall, community rooms, a café, seminar rooms including a computer lab, and

65 E.S.’s full expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him in his church office on 2 March 2005.

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offices. It was opened in the presence of a large number of German guests, including the superintendent of the Protestant church district and the mayor of the town. For the last four years, the church has been starting a number of ‘satellite churches’ in different German cities, and even one in Buenos Aires. The lead congregation now has several hundred members, with a small number of Germans among them. It is active in regular street evangelism as well as in a number of social ministries, and also runs a discipleship school. Worship services are held in English with simultaneous translation into German via headphones and consecutive translation for special occasions. In the last few years, E.S. has left much of the every day work in his church to his junior pastors, one of them his Ghanaian wife with whom he has a teenage daughter, while traveling and preaching all over the world, in churches and at conventions in countries as far as Korea or Colombia. He is a sought-after speaker in German evangelical circles as well, and has preached in numerous German churches as well as at conventions and special events. E.S.’s narrative, especially at the beginning, sounds quite similar to that of R.A. analyzed just above: I felt called to ministry [. . .] then I moved into church planting, founded a church in [Ghana] and felt a call to go to Germany, specifically because I had a German family I was living with. And I felt a call strongly to Germany. I cannot explain that because it is more of a calling from your, what you call it, from your spirit, from your heart. [. . .] Actually, we have to work out to get a missionary visa. Okay, that worked out, and I came to Germany. I came to Germany not having any church. Not a German church invited me, nor me knowing which church I am going to. [. . .] But I just came [. . .] that was a Friday evening, and on Saturday morning I went out to look for a place of worship. Since I was a Baptist back then, I decided to look for a Baptist church. [. . .] So I just went there Sunday morning for the service. After the service, a young man came up to me and—he just spoke: ‘Hello, how are you?’ [. . .] And I told him who I was as a pastor, and a church, and why I am here in Germany as a missionary and stuff like that. And he said: ‘Well, that’s a good idea!’

Here again is a Ghanaian pastor already ministering in Ghana, who feels called to Germany. Like R.A., E.S. does not describe this call in any detail—it is simply a strong feeling from his heart. Again, the call is an individual one, and not connected to any particular church that could be described as a ‘sending church.’ Unlike R.A., though, E.S. describes his close contacts to a German living in Ghana who


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assisted him in his plans. Then again, achieving a visa seems to have worked out fairly easily. While R.A. does not specify the visa he traveled on to Germany, E.S. does: It is a “missionary visa,” therefore it is clear from the beginning what his role will be in Germany: He will not tend to Ghanaians in the diaspora, but work as an evangelist to Germans. Like R.A., E.S. describes himself as arriving in Germany without knowing anybody, without a network, and without a clear idea how to start his ministry. E.S. only mentions the name of the city he first went to in passing, and never tells us why he went to this particular place. Like R.A.’s account, E.S.’s narrative moves forward with a sense of inevitability: Everything that happens is divinely ordained, and because of that, there are no difficulties. The German he meets at the Baptist Church, his first German contact, reinforces this notion as his reaction to E.S.’s self-introduction as a missionary is: “That’s a good idea.” Not surprisingly, this German became an immediate supporter: About two weeks later, I told him about my idea about starting something with English, because I speak English [. . .] So right in my flat there, we basically started a fellowship, and that was him and myself. And so all—we started inviting people, and I basically go out and invite everybody. [. . .] So it’s sort of growing, growing like that. We moved then to A., and they provided us a place, and we started a work there. Actually, what was very integral to our work there was the street work we did, actually. We go out, he plays the guitar [. . .], many people gather, then I preach, I preach in English, he translates into German, and we invited people to church. That’s how we got people to come into the church. Eh, basically, that’s how I came to Germany, basically, I felt the call to come here as a missionary.

Again, there are striking similarities between R.A.’s and E.S.’s narratives: Like R.A., E.S. describes starting a Christian fellowship within days of his arrival. Unlike R.A., though, he did not target Africans. By attaching himself to an existing German church, teaming up with a German for evangelistic activities, doing street preaching in German and English, and bringing new people to this German Baptist church, he shows a clear orientation towards the German host society, though his evangelism in the asylum seekers’ home also shows that integration of foreigners was on his agenda. E.S. sums up this chapter of his narrative: “that’s how I came to Germany,” and adds a reference to his missionary call. This sentence makes explicit what has been underlying as the narrative structure: E.S. came to Germany because he was called to be a missionary here. There

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is no questioning of the call, no doubting, no reference to the dominant discourse on immigration. It is this simple: When God calls, he moves, and things work out. But after this short break, the narrative continues: So that’s how my work here started. I moved to W. for some time, I did some work with this one pastor [. . .] And then, obviously, I was in B., I started a church in B., I and then, I just felt God asking me to come down to the R. area to start a central church and build a bigger mission. And that’s, that’s how it happens that I moved to M. I didn’t have any church, so I was just going on the street and preach publicly, and, distribute tracts. [. . .] Initially, our heart was more strongly on— just, you know, kind of having conferences and seminars, inviting people, which we started that way and it was quite fruitful, go and get about people. But we felt led by God to start a church where people [. . .] would be able to come and worship . . .

The continuation of E.S.’s narrative is structured in such a way that each step seems entirely logical. Though the facts of this section could be recounted in such a way that one would get the image of somebody drifting around, trying to find his place—whether within an existing church or starting a new one—, E.S. tells a story of consistent development and divine guidance. His call was to win people in Germany for the Gospel, and everything he did conformed to that call. He simply worked as an itinerant evangelist and claims here that this is what he enjoyed and found fruitful. That he finally became the founder of a church is ascribed, in this account, to both divine guidance and a feeling that this might be a strategic move. E.S. does not mention in his narrative what he has told numerous other times, namely, that he spent some six months in a German free church Bible school to learn more about his host country. This would not have fit into the narrative structure he employs here, talking about his missionary vocation being lived out step by step. There is no reflection of a need to first get to know the host country, culture and language. If called as a preacher, one has to preach—this is simply enough. So we started in my flat over there again, and, eh, me and my wife alone. [. . .] and the number increased . . . [. . .] We actually got a lot of Germans, as well, coming in. We were able to reach a lot of Germans. Actually, at the beginning stages, I think my church was predominantly German, there were mostly Germans and we only had a few, a few Africans. But well, over the years, things have changed. [. . .] Well, the church is completely self-supportive, and, eh, basically, we, we believe strongly that our missionary work here is going to grow and going to grow, quite big.


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At the end of his narrative, E.S. explicitly states what has already been implied by the structure of his account: His missionary work consists of making contact with individuals, and starting house fellowships which then evolve into proper churches. There is a certain contradiction visible here as E.S. names the nationalities of his first members who were all African, while then adding that at the beginning, his church was predominantly German. He admits that this has changed now—as any visitor to a Sunday service at his church can see, this church is basically a black church, with only a small minority of white members. As E.S., in his initial narrative, only spoke about his calling to Germay in passing, he was asked after finishing his biographical account: “What put the thought of Germany in your mind? How did you find out you had a call to Germany?” He answered: It’s a call from God in my heart to go there. But however, I can also contribute it to, to the fact that, well, I am living among a German family and thereby hearing about the spiritual situation in Germany, also as a contributing factor. [. . .] I felt called as a missionary, I think, I hundred percent say that. Because I didn’t even know that Africans living in here that much. It wasn’t something I knew, not until I came here. [. . .] Initially I wasn’t really involved with that much Africans, my involvement has been with Germans.

While R.A.’s and E.S.’s biographical accounts show remarkable similarities in their narrative structure, their motivation to become a missionary in Germany was quite different: Where R.A. describes himself as moved by the plight of his country people, E.S. was motivated by what he learnt about Germany from German contacts in Ghana, claiming that he did not know about Africans in Germany before he came here. It could be stated that, though both of them ended up founding and heading large, African-majority international churches, they moved to this aim from opposite starting points, changing their ideas and practices after having been confronted with the situation in Germany. But neither of them leaves any doubt that they came to Germany due to a divine call.

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4.3.1.3. R.N.: “To come to [ . . .] was not a choice”66 R.N., a suave and very dignified man, is also originally from Ghana. He has been in Germany for almost 20 years and holds German citizenship. His wife is a midwife at a renowned university teaching hospital; their children are grown. R.N., who is a certified pastor of the Federation of Pentecostal Free Churches (BfP), heads a very large and well-organized, international African-majority church with several hundred members. His church has been a full member of the BfP for many years, and is the only African-led church that I know of that was able to buy property in western Germany. It does not only own the purpose-built meeting hall-cum-offices in which its activities are held, but also an adjacent, six-storey residential building. The church runs a very impressive Youth Ministry (headed by a Nigerian pastor), and its excellent hip-hop dance group which comprises both black and white youth is often invited to perform at ecumenical church functions. R.N., who recently turned fifty, is something of a father figure among anglophone African church leaders in Germany, many of whom jokingly call him “bishop.” He is also very well networked ecumenically, and well known and respected among German pastors and church leaders in the city where his church is located. R.N. is another Ghanaian pastor who was willing to talk in some detail about how he came to Germany and started his church here. He had become a Christian while still in high school, and had received a call to become a pastor at the time of his conversion. After telling this very briefly, he continued: I got myself attached to the Assemblies of God Church, ever since I have been in an Assemblies of God church. It’s the place I’ve had my training. So, in ’84, I had the opportunity to be a missionary in Togo [. . .] It was during the time I serviced there that I had a contact with Operation Mobilisation [. . .] I got to know Germany and the outreach work Germany did in mission, the vision and different things. I studied the whole history, and I found out that Germans were in Ghana, especially in the Volta Region where my wife comes from. So there was something so rich about Germany. But to come to [. . .] was not a choice! It’s not like—oh, after my mission in Togo, the next place to go, wow, we’re going to [. . .]—no, it was not on my calendar at all! Number one, the reason which I also told God: ‘Please, don’t send me to Germany,’ 66 R.N.’s full expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him in his church office on 16 November 2005.


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when I saw it was obvious that I was going to Germany, I was arguing with God: ‘God, how can you send me to Germany? Number one, I don’t speak German, I don’t know anything about Germany, apart from the contact with OM, I don’t know anyone. [. . .]’ Number two, my wife was studying in [. . .] so I said: ‘God, if you’re sending me somewhere, why not to the place where my wife-to-be is? I mean that will be great, you know, after her studies, we have our duration.’ But the door was closed for me to go to UK or anywhere else. But then I saw myself in Germany, in 1989, in October.

R.N.’s narrative is a classical missionary call narrative and follows the established structure of such narratives:67 There is the description of what he was doing before the call, the mentioning of some interest in the country he eventually found himself in, the insistence that he did not want to go to Germany and struggled with God about this call, and the final acceptance. At the same time, there is a typical ‘pentecostal’ flavor to this narrative which distinguishes it from evangelical narratives: R.N.’s call is entirely between him and his God; no church structure comes into play to confirm and validate the call and to actually act as a sending body. R.N. was vague about how he knew that he was called to Germany. He only said that it was “obvious that I was going to Germany”, but did not volunteer any more information. How he managed to acquire a visa also remains unclear. But the process cannot have lasted very long, since, according to his account, he worked in Togo for five years, beginning in 1984, but already found himself in Germany in October 1989. In this narrative, therefore, the motif of the ease of travel is lacking in an explicit form, but implicitly, it is still there. So when I came [. . .] I went to OM headquarters, I asked for some of my friends, those with whom we had worked together, but most of them were scattered [. . .] But there was one man who had just returned from India. And this man, he just wants to begin some, you know, foreigners’ work in Germany. And then, I was introduced to him [. . .] I went to W. I stayed for three weeks and met some pastors there—these are all Germans, and a missionary from America. They prayed every Tuesday, so I was with them in the prayer meeting.

Like R.A. and E.S., R.N. continues his narrative with a description of a networking process which only started after his arrival in Germany. R.N.’s account is the most detailed by far. Unlike R.A. and E.S., 67 See Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, pp. 66 ff.

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he speaks about contacts developed prior to his coming. But as the story turns, these contacts are worthless, as the German missionaries he knew in Togo are now scattered all over the world. Nevertheless, R.N. meets “one man” who connects him into a wider network. This motif of meeting one person who plays a seminal role in how the narrator eventually becomes the church founder he is today is another staple of charismatic missionary call / expatriation stories. Unlike Protestants, evangelicals and denominational pentecostals who rely on organizational structures in their missionary ventures, charismatics narrate their stories in such a way that organizations are unimportant. What is important, instead, are chance—or, to be more precise—divinelyordained encounters which, while seemingly arbitrary, influence the further course of the missionary history of the narrator. It can be stated that this motif serves to emphasize ‘supernatural,’ divine means of guidance in contrast to a more ‘worldly’ way of organizing missionary careers in Protestant and evangelical churches. It also conforms with a, in the Weberian68 sense, ‘charismatic’ way of organization rather than the ‘bureaucratic’ structures preferred by evangelical and Protestant mission organizations. To repeat: R.N.’s narrative shows him as having come to Germany on a divine call, though this call remained vague and had not been validated by an organization. To find his concrete place then, like R.A., he recounts how he relied on prayer: For three weeks, I was there, and I was only in my spirit praying that ‘God, what do you have for me here in Germany?’

The response to a situation of an unclear calling is retreat and prayer rather than involvement, observation and analysis. This again distinguishes charismatic (and also pentecostal) missionary call stories from their evangelical counterparts. In this way, the interviewees emphasize again that they are following God’s guidance rather than their own plans and ideas. In R.N.’s case, hearing news about a particular city becomes a possible divine answer: So this was the first time I heard about A., I didn’t know anyone there, I didn’t have any contact. And I think it became something that sticked into my spirit, so when I was sleeping, and when I prayed, I have something, a strong urge—I didn’t know exactly what the impression was.

68 Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der Verstehenden Soziologie, hrsg. von Johannes Winckelmann, Tübingen: Mohr 2002.


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Here again, we find the charismatic disregard of any kind of organizational structures or planning: R.N. just happens to find himself in a certain city where he had no contacts, and develops “a strong urge,” a feeling that this might be the place he was called to. In the logic of the narrative, the fact that R.N. “didn’t know anybody there” serves to emphasize the notion that he was indeed divinely led to this city rather than having wanted to go there out of his own interests. But as R.N. feels that his urge is still vague, he decides to have another look. So one time I called my friend, the pastor, and I said: ‘Is there any way that we can visit A., just to look?’ [. . .] And then we came. And we met one Baptist brother, very wonderful brother, and he loves the Lord so much, he hosted us [. . .] On Monday, my friend said that we should be going back. And I said: ‘No, I’m not going back with you.’ He said ‘why?’ And I said: ‘I want to know a little bit about A., so please, I’ll call you.’ So after the service on Sunday, in the week, this young man took me around the city [. . .] and he is ready to talk about the history, how old this is, this is a very old empire, many kings were crowned here, the coronation [. . .] And I told my friend: ‘I’m not coming, I mean this place is so rich, and, I want to be here.’

R.N.’s detailed narrative allows us to see very clearly how a Charismatic works to discern the concrete place of his missionary calling. First of all, while not relying on any kind of organization, R.N. does not move completely without any contacts—he relies on his informal network of contacts and friends to get to know a local person. We have already seen in R.A.’s and E.S.’s narratives how such informal networks aided them in their early days in Germany. For the missionary moves of pentecostal / charismatic migrant church founders, such informal networks play a much larger role than any established institution. During the last nine years, it was possible to observe how such networks function on the basis of encounter and a feeling of a shared mission. Such networks, which can swing between times of great activity and times of no activity at all, are extremely flexible. They are networks of individual pastors rather than of churches; they usually have neither membership lists nor any kind of written statutes or aims. Rather, they function on the basis of more or less unspoken shared theological assumptions and bring people together for one or more concrete projects. Pastors easily move between many different and unrelated networks, which often transcend national and theological / denominational borders. This multitude of overlaying and sometimes even competing

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‘charismatic’69 networks has long been an oikoumene in its own right, quite distinct from the organized oikoumene of the World Council of Churches or the Pentecostal World Fellowship. Due to their vague and loosely structured character, these networks easily remain invisible to the outsider, and have not received much research attention so far. In order to ascertain whether this city was the place that God wanted him to move to, R.N. relied on his informal network. A friend introduced him to a “Baptist brother” in the city, and R.N. went to visit a Baptist church. There is a sense of easy ecumenism here— denominational differences don’t count for much if the aim is to evangelize a city. R.N. recounts his sense of growing excitement as he got to know the city and its rich history. For him, it is important that this city belongs to an “old empire” and that it was a place where kings were crowned. For a missionary steeped in an understanding of evangelism as ‘spiritual warfare,’70 the powers of the world have to be met where they are centered; therefore, a place with an empire history is a good place to evangelize. That R.N. follows such an understanding becomes even clearer in the continuation of his narrative. He meets an American missionary who warns him against this very place from which no evangelistic ministry can be started. Rather than being discouraged, R.N. finally knows that he is called exactly there: This message for me, it was great! I said: ‘God, now I know that you want to send me to A.! Not because of comfort, but because there is an assignment. If the place is hard, I believe, it is where you will begin anything from.’ Then I came, and then indeed, [. . .] I saw that what the old man had said is true. For one thing, my decision was clear. Through that I knew that God is faithful, right now I can say God is faithful, looking back to 16 years, and I say: God is faithful. So I came here with that strong impression, it came to me at night, praying, after they told me about A. That’s it, and now I am in A. (laughs out loud).

R.N. furnishes us with a detailed and rich narrative which allows us to analyze the negotiations involved in concretizing a vague calling. We have already seen that prayer for guidance was an important motif. Within pentecostal / charismatic discourse, prayer sets the scene, it opens up a possibility for God to move and speak. In R.N.’s case, God speaks dialectically, through the American missionary who tells him that the city he has in mind is “a hard place.” 69 70

Again in the Weberian sense of the word. For more on this, see chapter 5.5.


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There are several layers of meaning here: First of all, the notion that the city is “hard” needs to be understood in the framework of spiritual warfare. In this city, the German empire was born; therefore, it must be a center of forces hostile to God and the church. Starting a church here means to confront these forces in their home place, in the place where they are most deeply entrenched. This is hard, but it also promises great gains if successful. Secondly, by recounting the warning of difficulties, R.N. plays on the old motif of missionary heroism which informed so many missionary narratives in the 19th and 20th centuries. A missionary is not meant to have an easy life; for the sake of the Gospel, he will move to the most difficult place, knowing that he will overcome obstacles with the power of God. The fact that this place is difficult must mean that God wants him to go there. Finally, there is a clear sense of irony involved here and expressed openly by the laughter at the end point of the narrative: The warning against starting a church in this city comes from an older, more experienced person, and it comes from a (presumably white) American. Within the Pentecostal / charismatic oikoumene, both that of organizations like the World Pentecostal Fellowship and that of informal networks, Americans still carry special clout. America is where the pentecostal movement was born, and America is still understood in some ways as a ‘redeemer nation,’ as a nation specially gifted with a divine calling and power. But in R.N.’s narrative, it is not the powerful and experienced American, but the young African who succeeds in planting a church in a “hard place.” R.N.’s irony is the more poignant as he told this narrative in the office of his church, situated in a compound of a block of flats, a large church hall, offices, meeting rooms and an interior courtyard owned by his ministry. R.N.’s church is easily the best established and wealthiest of all migrant churches in North Rhine-Westphalia, and R.N. has long enjoyed enormous stature among anglophone African migrant pastors all over the country. R.N.’s narrative emphasizes that he achieved all of this against human advice, and therefore relied solely on divine guidance and power. As R.N. ended his narrative at this point, the interview continued with a question for more details about the beginnings of his church. His detailed answer shows, in paradigmatic ways, how a pentecostal / charismatic migrant missionary negotiates his place in his German environment. I talked to this Baptist friend, and he—around the same year, he and this Baptist friend were saying: ‘Oh, we want to start English house

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chapter four fellowship—Hauskreis.’ So when I came, he said: ‘Wow, look at it, we have just begun and we have an English pastor!’ [. . .] I contacted my pastors, my general superintendents at home, and I told him, we want to begin a work here. So they told me important was first to start to check all the foundational work, what is necessary, get in contact with some churches. So I start to get in contact. I knew this Baptist church, the pastor, an old man, very Spirit-filled, he was so generous, he welcomed me to the Baptist church, so I fellowshipped there every Sunday. So I got to know one other man in a pentecostal church, [. . .] and then gradually I got to know one other pastor from the Evangelical Church. [. . .] He was like a father and mentor to me, from the Evangelical Church. So when I met all these people, I called them and I said: ‘I have something to share,’ and they gave me audience. And I talked with these three people [. . .] I told them that ‘I’m a pastor, I’ve been in mission for five years, I went back home, and the Lord sent me here. I have come, and I want to establish a community. And I believe, having prayed I believe that God has sent me first of all to the African or the English community or some people from my background. The reason why I see it is, from this short time I have stayed, some of our people don’t have direct access to the already established German community. Number one, language, number two, culture, number three, I mean this family thing. So I want to . . . I have been praying to God to first help me get these people, and when they have a place, where they can gather themselves together as a community, they will see the need to be [unintelligible word] and integrated, to be in a community where they will not be lost, but they see themselves as part of it. So this is my assignment.’ And they said: ‘Wow, we never thought of this!’ And then they started to share with me: ‘Yeah, we had a student here from Kenya, he came to our church for three months, but we don’t see him again.’ Or another person . . . so they gave me such testimony. I said: ‘Yeah, this is what I need. I mean, when they are alone, they don’t fit in, but when they are many, they see themselves as a body, it’s easy to fit in.’ So they said: ‘We agree, that would be helpful, and we support.’ [. . .] So I got some papers from those pastors, they signed that we agree, and I sent my letter from Africa [. . .] so I added it to the Foreign Office, [. . .] they translated everything for me, and I added it all for the Ausländeramt. I waited for the response, it took some time, I mean the whole long process, but eventually, they agreed, it was agreed by the church, or by the churches in the city, this foreign work is accepted and it should be done, because they were not doing it officially. And so we started.

First of all, the Baptist he encountered by introduction turns out to have just started an international English language house fellowship. The coincidence that within weeks of its inception, an Englishspeaking pastor turns up is seen on both sides as clear proof that they are engaging in a venture that is divinely ordained. We have stated


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before how important seemingly chance encounters are within pentecostal / charismatic narratives, and here we see this importance reinforced once again. Secondly, R.N.’s narrative allows us to see how he moves within both informal, ecumenical networks, and at the same time relates to a denominational structure at home. Coming from a denominational church, he was not sent to Germany as a missionary by that church. Nevertheless, R.N. relates how once he was clear about where he was led to start his missionary work, he reestablished contact with his denomination and received advice from there. It needs to be noted that unlike the more charismatic independent R.A. and E.S., R.N. is advised by his church leadership to seek contact with existing churches in Germany and not to start out on his own. If nothing else, existing churches could help him to put a proper foundation under the church he was starting. Thirdly, R.N.’s contacts with different churches result in a friendly relationship with three pastors from different denominations: A Protestant from the Evangelical Church, a Baptist, and a Pentecostal. He describes them as older, experienced, mentoring figures. It is to them that he takes his plan to establish a church for migrant Africans and other English-speaking expatriates. The way he describes the need for such a church is very similar to what R.A. related about his missionary motivation: Migrant Christians have a hard time as they are divided from the German churches by language, culture, and a different understanding of community. The way R.N. describes his plans, he wanted to found the church with the aim of better integration of these migrants— the same intention that also drove R.A. to start his church. His three mentors not only agree to his plan, stating how such a church was needed and would also support what they were doing, they also work together to support R.N.’s application for a missionary visa. This support by three leading pastors in the city was important for R.N. in several aspects: First of all, their agreement meant an ecumenical and therefore exceedingly strong confirmation of his missionary call. It may be due to this confirmation that R.N. did not include a call narrative in his biographical account, limiting himself to just one or two sentences to describe his feeling of being called to Germany. Furthermore, it was through efforts of these pastors that R.N. was able to eventually secure a missionary visa. Unlike all other interviewees, R.N. talks about the difficulty and the long duration of the visa process, and not of a miraculously easy experience. Within the logic of his narrative, the reason for this is obvious: The community of pastors supporting

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his application stands for the divine side—they are the ones who know God’s plan for the city, while the government authorities symbolize the world which will always reject the Gospel. The fight between these two is not an easy one, but after much time and effort, is won to the glory of God. Actually, contacts with different German pastors were instrumental in getting the ministries of all three interviewees in this group going. But R.N. is the only one who describes not only assistance from German churches, but something like a contractual link in which he is commissioned for a certain field which the Germans find hard to work themselves. The fact that he had built relationships with different denominations helped R.N.’s church as it grew and had to move locations several times. R.N. described in some detail how he recruited members for his church: We started with a small group. . . . I was attending Volkshochschule [adult education school], because of the German language. [. . .] If I meet someone, an African, I ask ‘Do you speak English?’ If he say yes: ‘Can we share something?’ I gave tracts, I went to the bank hall, I started visiting some Asylheims, I invited people, praying with people. [. . .] Yeah, I forgot something: We started with ‘African Christian Fellowship’ for a short time, then I realized, no, this is not African Christians, it is international. Because the future is that we don’t want to be separated, the future is that we want to rather be integrated, we want to be together. There’ll be some people, Germans, who’ll be interested or who would know Jesus through our outreach, and if we say ‘Africans,’ it will put them off. So we changed the name from ‘African Christian Fellowship,’ and it became ‘International Christian Fellowship.’ I have to write also to the Ordnungsamt [Municipal Office] that the name has changed. So that is how we have started.

R.N.’s narrative shows him working with African migrants at first, approaching them in language school, in homes for asylum seekers, or even in the street. The ‘natural’ thing seems to have been to start an ‘African’ church, while the insight that the church should be international came later. Like R.A., R.N. sees his task as working for the integration of Africans and other migrants. But in addition, he also develops a perspective to reach out to Germans. Asked about how his church finally came to buy its own premises, R.N. vividly described the difficulties migrant churches are facing in terms of rooms even if they have very friendly host churches: The host church will have special programs which force the migrant church to move their Sunday service to a different venue time and again; furthermore, it is difficult,


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when renting rooms from a German church, to have programs during the week as the buildings are in use by the Germans. The vision to have their own building is shared by most migrant churches, but no other interviewee described as clearly the process by which this is achieved. R.N.’s church started putting a small amount into a special bank account every month, and after four years, when a suitable building became available, had enough money accumulated to be eligible for a loan, the sum of which equaled the church’s savings. As someone who has advised a number of churches in their search for a building of their own, I have been able to witness their negotiations with banks. Usually, banks are reluctant to loan money to groups of migrants as so many do not have a stable visa status, and therefore repayment is questionable. A banker from a Christian bank, at a meeting with migrant pastors, suggested, as a possible solution, the way R.N.’s International Christian Fellowship had already modeled, stating that a history of saving with a bank would greatly enhance the trust into the repayment abilities of a migrant church.71 R.N.’s account shows that for him, visions and calling do not mean that he has to drift and let things happen to him, as we have seen in some of the other narratives. Rather, once a vision is there, he plans and organizes to make that vision a reality, even if it takes a long time. Even though he came to Germany without a clear plan and without an established network, once he knew his call, he methodically went to work on it. R.N.’s narrative makes do without miracles or strange happenings; it appears as a level-headed, sober account. Nevertheless, we have seen that pentecostal / charismatic characteristics can clearly be established in this account. In his story, R.N. depicts himself as a respectable, respected, and ecumenically open figure that is able to negotiate different denominational fields. 4.3.1.4. Summary: Charismatic missionary success stories To summarize, R.A.’s, E.S.’s and R.N.’s accounts, even though they differ in style and length, show a number of striking similarities. All three came to Germany on a clear but vague call, as independent missionaries, even though they had worked in churches (and even, in the cases of R.A. and R.N., as missionaries abroad!) before. All of them recount

71

At a meeting of list church pastors, 2005.

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how they started their pastoral work within days of their arrival, preparing themselves solely through prayer. All of them report seminal experiences in meeting with certain Germans who supported and assisted them. All of them started with very small house fellowship groups that quickly grew into larger congregations. R.A. and R.N. started out with a perspective to assist African migrants with their integration in Germany, while E.S. wanted to reach out to Germans. All three ended up heading large, international, African-majority churches which keep close contact with German churches and organizations. 4.3.2. Missionaries sent by pentecostal churches Two of the interviewees, both from Nigeria, were sent to Germany as missionaries by their respective churches. We will analyze both narratives. 4.3.2.1. J.S.: “I was posted to [ . . .]”72 J.S. is a quiet, soft-spoken Nigerian in his mid-forties who had been in Germany for about seven years at the time of the interview. With the clerical collar he prefers to wear in public, he exudes a pastoral aura. Originally an ordained minister of the Christ Apostolic Church sent to pastor a rather diasporal congregation of this church in Germany, he has since, with the blessing of the church president, left the CAC structures to plant a new, missionary church. Since he arrived in Germany, J.S. has been hoping and looking for closer cooperation with German churches in evangelizing Germans, but found that the elders of the CAC congregation did not share his vision. His newly founded, still very small church is now well networked with German churches in its surroundings. J.S. is married to a Nigerian; the couple has three young children. J.S. started his biographical account with his childhood. Even though the story remains rather vague and contradictory, it shows some aspects of a typical missionary narrative. As Jeffrey Swanson73 has shown, many missionaries tend to begin their missionary call narratives with child72 J.S.’s full expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him at his home on 29 March 2006. 73 Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, pp. 36 ff.


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hood reminiscences. Interestingly, only three of the interviewees in this study spoke about their childhood, and only J.S. included concrete childhood stories. In talking about their childhood, Swanson’s interviewees depict themselves as “set apart” early on, and in hindsight see this as preparation for their missionary service. Such set-apartness can also be observed in J.S.’s account: He describes himself as an undernourished, weak and troubled child (even though the troubles are never explained) whose mother fights for his life. Conversely, J.S. recounts how as a one-year old, he was able to convince a traditional healer to treat his mother’s blindness free of charge, thereby becoming instrumental to his mother’s healing. Even though his account is rather obscure, we can ascertain that J.S. saw himself as a special child, both in his troubles and in precociousness. In any case, the repeated injections of “I thank God for . . .” put the narrative of his early, pre-Christian life within the framework of a greater, divine plan. Consequently, his account of his conversion to Christianity is recounted rather matter-offactly, ending with a short remark about his “zeal to serve the Lord” which replaces a story of pastoral calling, and a listing of the different churches he passed through on his way to becoming a pastor of Christ Apostolic Church.74 As the narrative was so brief, the interview continued with a question for more details of his expatriation, to which J.S. said: I came to Germany through Christ Apostolic Church, and this happened when some of our fathers, they visited Germany and discovered that some of our brothers and sisters, they don’t go to church. And some way or other they are complaining because they don’t understand the language, they don’t . . . so the church authority prayed, and you know, decided that they will have foreign mission. [. . .] I would say this is the call that God give to the founder to this church, Apostle Ayo Babalola,75 who God gave a revelation that the church will be planted all over

74 Christ Apostolic Church Nigeria is one of the larger classical Pentecostal churches in Nigeria and, with missionaries abroad, describes itself as a worldwide church. See www.cacworldwide.net, accessed 22 September 2008. 75 For more information on Babalola, see A. Anderson, African Reformation. African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century. Trenton, NJ / Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press 2001, pp. 86 f., and also the four articles in the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, www.dacb.org/stories/nigeria/babalola1_joseph.html to www.dacb.org/stories/nigeria/babalola4_joseph.html, accessed on 11 October 2006. E.H.L. Olusheye’s Mysterious Legacies of Apostle J.A. Babalola, Ibadan: Gideon Global Publications 2004, is a hagiography for use within the CAC, but still a useful source of information. Olusheye is the current President of the CAC.

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chapter four the world, and it started in Africa, in Ghana, in Sierra Leone, all over in Africa, before they started moving overseas, through some of the members of the church who traveled overseas, and so the church began widespread abroad through members of the church that came abroad.

Rather than telling a personal expatriation story, J.S. answers the interview question with a narrative about how the ‘foreign mission’ of Christ Apostolic Church came into being. The account gives a double reasoning: First of all, the mission was started because the church leadership found out that church members who had moved abroad found it impossible to integrate to a local church there. Secondly, this mission was then understood as the fulfillment of a vision given to the church founder that the church would spread worldwide. As this narrative did not include anything about J.S.’s personal expatriation, he was asked about how he was chosen to be sent to Germany. Again, the answer was general rather than personal: Yes, the issue is that most of us, when we hear of overseas, we’re excited, and we really want to go, because we think that one will be better off, so to say, because one way or the other, it might be more comfortable. From our thinking . . . until you get to the field, you really have to face the challenges there. That’s one of the things that we don’t take into cognizance, that living abroad has some challenges, even though it might look very good from outside, to live and stay abroad is not as easy as we thought from the beginning. So I would say, part of it will be to spread the good news of God, and at the same time to see yourself better off, so to say, you are abroad and so . . .. Until when you get down here that you begin to face some of the challenges.

Through the general musings, a personal story can be detected: J.S. came to Europe not simply to spread the Gospel, but also with the expectation that his life would be better. In a kind of inverted ‘missionary heroism’ motive, he then discovered that life here was actually much harder than he expected. Asked again how he was chosen to go to Germany, J.S. said: Actually, the church here was in operation before I came. So, but they’re in need of a pastor. And so they wrote a letter to the church in Nigeria that they require a pastor. And also they have some contact here with people who are very familiar with me in Nigeria, so they made the contact, and I said . . . you know, just like ‘We know somebody and he’s okay,’ and then I went to the President, and he said: ‘Why, if everything will be okay for you, whatever it requires, let us go and do it.’ And so they processed my missionary visa to travel abroad. That was in the year 1999.


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This short account throws some light about how a denominational church in Nigeria chose a missionary to go abroad. Obviously, J.S. was asked to serve as a pastor in Germany by acquaintances of his already in the country. The expatriates requested a pastor from the church leadership, and J.S. himself talked to the church president about this. As the story goes, there was no general discussion or any deliberation about mission policy and the qualification of staff to be sent abroad, or any kind of preparation for missionary service. Rather, after ensuring that J.S. wanted to go to Germany himself, the president of the church just concurred with what had been asked for. Therefore, unlike in the case of the charismatic independent interviewees, J.S.’s missionary visa was processed by his home church. He clearly is a denominational missionary sent by a church which is extending its reach beyond the borders of its home country. During the interview, J.S. declined to speak about his difficulties with policies of Christ Apostolic Church, reports of which he had shared with me private conversations before. From these conversations, the impression was gained that Christ Apostolic Church was strongly trying to maintain its Nigerian identity, while J.S. and other pastors abroad were lobbying for a more inculturated approach. As J.S. felt that he could not successfully work as a missionary within the framework of an existing CAC congregation, he finally moved out with permission from his church leaders to start a new congregation which is only loosely attached to the CAC. 4.3.2.2. A.O.: “We would go into the world”76 A.O., who is in his late thirties, is another Nigerian sent to Germany as a missionary by a denominational pentecostal church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Tall, confident, well-dressed and with a firstrate command of German, he looks every inch the successful expatriate. Trained in engineering and with an M.B.A., he is the only interviewee who has found a qualified, well-paid secular job in Germany. It did not surprise me that for our interview, he chose an elegant café close to his workplace where he obviously was a regular customer. A.O is married to a British citizen of Nigerian descent; the couple has two young children. The new church he started after first serving in an existing parish is consciously international, but still very small. A.O. has excel76 A.O.’s full expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him in a café close to his workplace on 21 December 2005.

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lent contacts with the Protestant congregation which hosts his church, and with other Protestant pastors in his city. Not long after the interview, A.O. was transferred to a city in Eastern Germany by his German employer, and promptly started a new missionary church there. A.O. spoke in great detail about how things developed in his church as well as in his personal life before he went abroad, beginning with his conversion story which already shows several elements that will continue to work as a red thread through his whole biographical narrative. Firstly, he established, right from the start, an ironic distance from the usual framework of such narratives: “I started off as a good person. I never really stopped myself to be bad.” A.O. knows that conversion stories move from the bad past to the good present, but he refuses to play along with such a simplistic division. Further on, we will see him repeat such operations. They serve to emphasize his self-depiction as an intelligent, highly educated, professional person who thinks for himself rather than buying into pre-conceived religious notions. He is not like others—“I stood out”—and therefore becomes a leader quickly. His move from the Anglican Church to Redeemed Christian Church of God therefore becomes a logical move from a traditional (elite) church to a young, vibrant elitist church. So we [he and his wife] got there [the Redeemed Christian Church of God], we met a man [laughs out loud] which we call a ‘crazy man’ called pastor V., he is very educated, very learned, very intelligent man, and he could bring a group of adults, 300 professionals together—and which is a feat of its own because professionals [laughing] are very difficult to control! [. . .] and shared a vision with us, a vision that Pastor Adeboye77 had, a vision of taking the Gospel into the whole world, the vision of reaching out into other cultures, a vision, that only people like us could do, because, one, we were young, two, we were educated, three, we could take up the challenge, four, we could go into different cultures and fit in.

A.O. describes his congregation and its pastor like he describes himself: educated, learned, intelligent, and professional. By calling the pastor, whom he clearly respects, a “crazy man,” he again introduces an 77 E.A. Adeboye is the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the fastest-growing Nigerian Pentecostal churches. Adeboye, a former lecturer in Mathematics, is a sought after speaker and known and respected in Nigeria well beyond the borders of his own church. His Holy Ghost Nights, held once a month on a huge prayer ground on the Lagos-Ibadan Highway, draw up to a million participants. See the church website at www.rccg.org which also has videos and radio. For a hagiographic biography, see www.onlinenigeria.com/links/Adeboyeadv.asp?blurb= 588, accessed 22 December 2006.


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element of ironic distancing into his narrative. The pastor is not crazy; he simply presents the missionary vision to his congregation. The way A.O. recounts it, this pastor followed the old, established patterns of missionary heroism in trying to interest and challenge his congregation. Mission was not something old-fashioned; rather, it was a challenge for young, educated, interculturally open people. A.O.’s narrative ties in with the self-image the RCCG has been promoting, namely that it is a kind of elite force slated to evangelize the whole world within this generation.78 In Nigeria, the RCCG is popularly known as the ‘Lion’s Club Church’, as so many of its members are prominent bankers, lawyers, business people and high-ranking government employees.79 A.O. then continued his story by turning it into a typical missionary call narrative: So, and then he kept on showing us things that God had said, really, I looked at that from a far distance and said: ‘This vision is good, but I don’t think I’m part of this [laughs], because I’m staying here, I have all my roots in [Nigeria], I’ll succeed here,’ and so one day, he said: ‘You see, we have a church in Germany that needs a pastor. Go there for three months. If you don’t like it, come back.’ And about that time, I was setting up something like a consultancy, which was always my desire [. . .] So he said: ‘Before you set up something of your own, just take the time off, go to Germany for three months, see how it is. If you don’t like it, then come back and, and then we’ll see how it goes,’ you know. So, so I came to Germany, and I’m still in Germany today [smiles].

One of the elements of a missionary call narrative is the ambivalence between the attraction of the call and the fear to actually submit to it.80 This can be found here, but, as before, tempered by a somewhat ironic distance. The way A.O. tells it, his pastor was able to deal with such an attitude extremely well: Rather than telling him that God had called 78 On the evangelism policy of the RCCG, also see Währisch-Oblau, Claudia, Mission und Migration(skirchen), in: Dahling-Sander, Christoph; Schulte, Andrea; Werner, Dietrich; Wrogemann, Henning (eds.), Leitfaden Ökumenische Missionstheologie, Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser / Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2003, pp. 363–383, which extensively quotes from policy papers of the RCCG. 79 For an in-depth analysis of this church, see Asonzeh Franklin-Kennedy Ukah, The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Nigeria. Local Identities and Global Processes in African Pentecostalism. Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades an der Kulturwissenschaftlich Fakultät der Universität Bayreuth, 17.12.2003. Available under http://opus.ub.uni-bayreuth.de/volltexte/2004/73/pdf/Ukah.pdf, accessed on 1 December 2006. 80 See Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, p. 87.

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him to be a missionary, he simply suggested that he should try out how he might like working in a church in Germany. To go to Germany for three months is made to sound like a little escapade, an adventure that one goes for before settling down for something more serious. A.O. phrases his narrative not in pentecostal language, but rather in that of a slightly amused, slightly cynical, educated and enlightened person. He obviously does not want to sound like a ‘crazy’ pentecostal. In his description of his first months in Germany, A.O. again shows the typical characteristics that distinguish him from the other interviewees: So I came in for three months, and started off with the work. My view had always been, or my vision had always been the one Pastor V. had shared with us, that is, we would go into the world, and we would make disciples of men. So when I got into Germany, I saw that you can’t make disciples in Germany, because you have a barrier, you have a language barrier—that’s the biggest barrier that I supposed I saw. If you don’t understand the language, if you don’t understand the culture, you don’t have a thing . . . you don’t know what’s going on. So, if you want this missionary thing, if you want to make disciples in Germany, you have to speak the language well. My wife is British, and when we came, we were told that she had to register, she had to, because she is a European citizen, she had to register with the foreign department. Well, when we got to the foreign department, they told us: ‘Both of you have to register, because you are married. And, what we do when you register, we give you a 3-month stay permit, and then if you want to stay longer, you come back and we’ll give you a 5-year stay permit, and then you can work here, you have the—whaddayou call it—Arbeitserlaubnis [work permit], you have the, eh, Aufenthaltsbefugnis or Erlaubnis [two kinds of residence permit] to stay in Germany.’ So we went there to, to get the 3 months, and then we continued.

A.O. was the only pentecostal interviewee who, in his biographical narrative, spoke so clearly about the cultural and language barriers to being a missionary. Even though he came to pastor a diasporal church, he saw himself as reaching out beyond Nigerians in Germany, and therefore acknowledged a need for more time and preparation. This part of the narrative also contains the motif of ease in obtaining a visa to stay in Germany we have already observed in several other accounts. In this story, though, this ease is not ascribed to any divine miracle; it is simply explained by the fact that A.O.’s wife is a British citizen. In the course of the narrative, mentioning this fact emphasizes again that A.O. does not see himself as an ordinary South-North migrant. He comes from the elite and moves within the elite; consequently, why should Germany reject him?


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I still felt, well, maybe I wasn’t going to stay here for long, maybe I was going back, so well, but I mean, have the leeway to decide whether I’m going to stay or go back. So then things happened that caused us to stay. [. . .] There was no other person that would be in B., if I left, so I was kind of, like hooked up there, being the only one there to continue the work there. But I didn’t like the setting [. . .], it was full of diplomats, and I didn’t think [laughs] that I would be called to diplomats, to people who were focused on having a group of themselves. I felt I would be called to a group of people that live here, and not people who are posted to Germany for two years and go back to their different countries. So, after a while, I told the General Overseer I wouldn’t stay in B., so he should get somebody who would stay in B., but we would stay in Germany, we would settle down in Germany, and set up a parish and look at how to reach out to people in Germany. So, he agreed to that, and sent someone in, and we moved to K., so that’s how we ended up in K., because then we would start off afresh.

Again, this narrative is striking in that it doesn’t follow typically pentecostal patterns. No mentioning of a call or an inner longing, a burden or a vision. Rather, A.O. looks pragmatically at the situation and decides what he wants to do. The only time he mentions a call, he does so in a distanced way: “I felt I would be called to a group of people that live here . . .” Being sent through a church structure, A.O. had to get permission from his General Overseer to do what he wanted to do. This again is told in a pragmatic, matter-of-fact way. A.O. narrates his account so that it makes sense in a Western, rationalist paradigm. This also shows as he continues: I also observed that we had to learn the language very well, otherwise we would start off a church and it would be in English. [. . .] But I felt the first thing was to learn German. So I invested . . . we invested a lot of money learning the language, [. . .] I did the exam called the PSH, the final level of German speakers [grins], I got into the university because I felt I could make it better, further my education, and also learn the language speaking to the other students and make it better. I do a Ph.D., a doctorate in political science [. . .] And then with the speaking of the language, we then started to have contact with the German congregations. [. . .] As I could go and talk, I could apply, I could speak right [. . .]. I can go into a place and confidently express myself in German, maybe teach in German, preach in German, pray a bit in German, so building up that contact to the society itself. We’re looking at, in the future, doing more things in German, and also in English, but basically moving into what we really are, which is to be a missionary church, to reach out to the German society and environment, and that’s where we are now.

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A.O., though asking that this interview be conducted in English, actually speaks fluent, almost perfect, very little accented German. His approach to mission in Germany here seems rational and planned, taking into account a careful analysis of the situation. This again ties in with the self-image that has been established throughout the narrative: A.O. is not some ‘spooky’ pentecostal, but an educated, intelligent person who can meet any European on an intellectual level. This is underscored by his mentioning, in passing, that he is working on a PhD in political science—a move highly unusual for a pentecostal pastor, and by his emphasis on how much time and money he spent to improve his language skills before actually starting evangelism work. This shows how different his approach was from that of R.A. and E.S., both of whom started evangelizing with a few days of their arrival: It was a phase of about three years of just going to language school, looking for a job, I mean just basically breaking into the society before actually doing church work or evangelistic work or missionary work.

A.O., in very pragmatic terms, also detailed how he prepared to live in Germany long-term. Realizing the cost of sending a missionary from Nigeria to Germany, he decided to forego funding from home and rather stand on his own feet. The way A.O. tells his story, he could be any young person moving abroad for an intercultural adventure. He is the only interviewee who talks about having to take care of himself financially in such matter-of-fact ways—all other interviewees either do not mention finances, leaving the listener with the unspoken assumption that God took care of them, or they talk about financial difficulties in passing, using them to establish the motif of missionary hardship and heroism. So far, A.O.’s narrative made do without any kind of theological or spiritual reasoning. But this changed as he continued: I always felt [laughs]—I . . . just happen to be here, happen to be the person, but [. . .] I saw that God must have prepared me for this sort of thing. I looked at, first the language; I found out that I picked it up very quickly. [. . .] And two, I could understand it because of the background that I had educationally. I know people that have problems with the language, not because it’s a difficult language, but because educationally, they’ve not been developed to be able to understand [. . .]. And thirdly, I see myself, I would say, an optimist in the sense that: I came, I saw the situation, I saw how difficult it would be, and . . . but [. . .] it could be done [. . .]. I, looking back, believe God must have also seen that [. . .] if this man puts himself to it, he can do it. And so, making a tent [. . .] because you, you use the tent to, to finance yourself, [. . .] to make everyone happy [laughs], and then you, like Apostle Paul did, also


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then try to evangelize and do the church work. [. . .] Actually, Apostle Paul was someone I studied very well, he’s my mentor, he’s . . . and incidentally, he came to Europe as well from Jerusalem, you know. And he was able to go into cultures; he was able to mission, to evangelize in various cultures. And I looked at his background [. . .] I tried to see: Do I have some of the things, the character he has that allowed him to do that what he did? And I found out, yes, [. . .] the language was necessary, because Apostle Paul could communicate in this language as well, citizenship also, education as well. Also his passion to read and to understand the principles of spiritual things, so I see myself similar to him in some ways.

After a long, rational and pragmatic report, we now get a theological interpretation of what has happened. Interestingly, A.O. is not using the experience that something that should have been very difficult turns out to be easy to then deduce that this shows that whatever happened must have been God’s will, as other interviews did. Rather, he acknowledges the difficulties of “breaking into German society.” But he feels that he is up to this complicated task, and therefore believes that this is what God wants him to do. The elitist self-perception that he was first taught by his pastor in Lagos comes to fruition here: The task is difficult, but he is qualified to tackle it, and God must have known this, therefore it is God who sent him here. The way A.O. compares himself with the Apostle Paul also shows that he is not shy to acknowledge his own capabilities. His image of Paul is that of a highly educated, bi-lingual intellectual who is capable of intercultural communication, and who works at understanding what really moves the world (“the principles of spiritual things”), i.e. he sees Paul’s theological reasoning as a kind of higher understanding. It is in this image that A.O. strives to develop his own personality. More than all other accounts analyzed so far, A.O.’s narrative is that of an expatriate: An educated man who moves between cultures due to his abilities, financially well-off and with a clear sense of what he wants to achieve. 4.3.2.3. Summary: Missionaries sent by pentecostal churches The two narratives analyzed above show not only differences in personality, but also the very different missionary styles of the two Nigerian pentecostal churches. While Christ Apostolic Church comes across as not really having any missionary policy, with the leadership simply reacting, without a lot of considerations, to requests from members abroad, the Redeemed Christian Church of God is depicted as actively

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developing a missionary vision in its members and rationally developing policies and practices. The elitist self-understanding of the RCCG which could also be glimpsed in the interview with B.A.81 is clearly visible also in the style of its operations in Germany: Where most migrant congregations meet in rented church halls or old factory buildings, the RCCG prefers city halls and hotel ballrooms for its worship services and conventions. 4.3.3. Concluding remarks: Expatriation as consequence of the call The five accounts we have analyzed in this section, even though they differ widely in style and length, do show a number of commonalities: All narrators had a clear call to be ministers in Germany before they traveled here. Interestingly, none of the interviewees mentioned any doubts or second thoughts after arriving in Germany. Unlike the narratives in section 4.2, the accounts in this section describe lives lived in a straight line, rather than on a winding path. Even where difficulties and setbacks are mentioned, they are quickly overcome. Doubts and questions are not admitted. These narrators have no need to legitimize their calling; their call is an unquestioned given, proven either by their success or by their appointment through an international church structure. 4.4. Pastoral call and expatriation not connected Four interviewees told expatriation narratives which show that they do not connect their pastoral call and their expatriation. Even though all of them understand themselves as missionaries, they do not recount a ‘missionary call’ to a certain country or place. Rather, each of them simply finds him- or herself in Germany without attaching any spiritual meaning to his being here. 4.4.1. V.K.: “For me it was so wonderful to go to Germany” 82 V.K. is an exuberant Black Brazilian woman in her early fifties. With her dark, gravelly voice and her loud laugh she exudes self-confidence See chapter 4.2.4.1. V.K.’s full and very detailed expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed her in her church meeting room on 28 November 2005. 81 82


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and an easy charm. V.K. is married to a German with whom she has two teenage children, and with whom she runs an import-export company dealing in German-Brazilian trade. V.K.’s church, which has about 50 members, consists mainly of Brazilian women and their children. Many of these women are married to Germans, but only a few husbands have joined the church, even though all church activities are held bilingually in Portuguese and German, sometimes also with translation into English. V.K. did a one-year course at a Rhema Bible School in Germany, and is well connected into the Rhema network, while at the same time also actively seeking contacts to the Protestant churches in her city. V.K. has been a very active participant in the UEM program, and is particularly interested in joining workshops and seminars with German pastors with whom she develops an easy rapport despite her strong Word of Faith theology. V.K. insisted that we do the interview in English, which she considers her “spiritual language,” though she speaks good German. Of all the interviewees, V.K. told the most detailed life story. In chapter 3.2.6, we already analyzed the later part of it, the call into and the founding of her ministry. Here, we will look at what she told about her coming to Germany. Her narrative is extraordinarily detailed in some aspects and clearly composed. With her first few sentences, V.K. firmly establishes her life story within the genre of conversion testimonies.83 I born a family of 15 children, my mother was a Catholic, my father has no religion, he was dealing with the spiritism that time when I born, and I grew up. My family very warm, but I never have kind of teaching of God’s word. I never had a Bible in my house.

As conversion testimonies strongly play on the contrast between the ‘before’ and the ‘after,’ the scene is set: V.K. grew up without any religious education, and just learned some rudimentary prayers from 83 For a concise discussion about the research of conversion narratives, see Ulrike Popp-Baier, Narrating Embodied Aims. Self-Transformation in Conversion Narratives —A Psychological Analysis, in: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Online Journal], 2(3), May. Available at: www.qualitative/research.net/fqs/fqsenglish.htm. Date of Access 16 April 2007. Ulrike Popp-Baier, Conversion as a Social Construction: A Narrative Approach to Conversion Research, in: C.A.M. Hermans, G. Immink, A. de Jong & J. van der Lans (eds.): Social Constructionism and Theology, Leiden, Brill Academic Publishers: 2002, and Hetty Zock, Paradigms in Psychological Conversion Research between Social Science and Literary Analysis, in: J.N. Bremmer, W.J. van Bekkum & A.L. Molendijk (eds.): Paradigms, Poetics, and Politics of Conversion, Leuven: 2006 give good insights into the history of conversion (narrative) research.

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her mother. From there, the story develops, and the informed listener already knows that he or she is in for a depiction of a sinful and depraved life which was then fundamentally changed by the conversion experience.84 But V.K. heightens the literary tension by starting out on a much more positive note. She depicts herself as a poor, but bright and very ambitious girl who makes the most of every opportunity that arises. (The upward mobility which has been diagnosed for so many members of Latin American pentecostal / charismatic church members85 is clearly visible here, a long time before her conversion.) V.K. recounts how she worked herself out of her dire poverty and even managed to go to university. As her material circumstances improved, migration became an option. I start getting money here and there, then, one time, around ’79, I came to Germany, with 1,300 dollars in my pocket. [. . .] For me it was so wonderful to go to Germany! [laughs] Many people were asking me: Why Germany? Because I lived in [Brazil], where they have Volkswagen, all this big company from Germany. There, I used to know a lot of Germans, German restaurants, German people, and also, I used to have . . . the Deutsche Schäferhund [German Shepherd]. I used to have a little place and I used to sell dogs. I put in the newspaper, in the German newspaper: I go to a place, I tell them, they put it in the newspaper, in German, and all of the Germans should buy my dogs. I used to get a very good money! That’s how I started to have feelings for Germany.

V.K. traveled to Germany with a one-way ticket, even though she had no plan what she was going to do once she had arrived. It is here that the first intimation creeps into the narrative that this is not a life that simply moves from poverty to riches. In talking of her first trip to Germany, V.K. establishes herself as a naïve, adventurous girl who easily might have fallen into a moral disaster. Even though she creates the impression of having moved around in a foreign country with astonishing ease, having found people to help her at every step, 84

Conversion stories, particularly in a charismatic / Pentecostal context, are performative, i.e. they are told and retold. Their performance is part of a ritual in which a religious group reassures itself about its values and aims. See also Stromberg, Peter G., Language and self-transformation. A study of the Christian conversion narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press 1993. 85 See, for example, Michael Bergunder (ed.), Pfingstbewegung und Basisgemeinden in Lateinamerika. Studienheft Weltmission heute Nr. 39, Hamburg: Evangelisches Missionswerk in Deutschland 2000, and Andrew Chesnut, Born Again in Brazil. The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick / New Jersey / London: Rutgers University Press 1997.


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she is never very far from disaster. Following a strange man whom she met on the train, she is almost gang-raped at night. Without language abilities, and working without the proper papers, she might have easily gotten into serious trouble. It is this constant possibility of disaster that keeps the narrative flowing and the literary tension high: This girl is going to take a fall, but how and when will it happen? Just two observations on the side: Firstly, in her narrative, V.K. describes (and we have also seen this in other narratives) an almost instinctive solidarity between migrants in Germany. Marginalized and overlooked by the indigenous population, they quickly identify each other and help out even if they themselves have few means to do so. Secondly, up to this point, V.K.’s story is a travel adventure rather than an expatriation narrative. She centers on the strange things happening to her during her first few days, just summarizing the following months of probably boring work. In addition, her motivation for travel is nothing more than a sense of adventure and curiosity. V.K. maintains the tension as she continues her story. Things are still going well for her. After six months in Germany, she returns to Brazil to finish her education, and after getting her degree, she returns for yet another German adventure. Here, she meets some Africans who tickle her interest in this continent: I got crazy for Africa. Then I went to Africa! Look at me! [laughs] In ’84, I just went to Africa. I went to Nigeria. I lived three years in Nigeria. I am the kind of person who never stop anywhere. I went to Nigeria, I met many people, many Brazilians, they give me a job in the embassy. Then I met many Americans [. . .] they give me a job like . . . I can say a secret service. I work for them, I can say somehow I have a specific job to do for them. Because I am black, but I was not African. And I was not American. They need somebody who fits for that job for them. [. . .] Then I have diplomatic car. Everything was wonderful for me; all the doors open for me. I travel the whole of Africa, 21 countries, from Nigeria all over to Ethiopia, to Addis Abbeba, all over! I know many things, I work for them, I was very well paid, I had a diplomatic car, I go all the parts diplomatic, I was VIP, and I have the contacts with the Germans, Lufthansa, I travel all over the world with the Lufthansa people. [. . .] Then I travel all over without paying anything! Then my life was in God’s hands. One day, about ’87, I saw a program—I have no cocktail Saturday. I was living in Lagos, because Monday to Sunday, they were having cocktail parties, I was in all of them . . . [laughs]

V.K.’s narrative is slowly moving towards its climax. Her adventures continue, her material life keeps getting better. V.K. is vague about what she does to earn money, but concrete about the perks and

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privileges she enjoys. Here, we can clearly see the trappings of a conversion narrative: V.K. is obviously well-off and privileged, but she lives a rather dissipated life. For pentecostals who usually strongly object to the consumption of any kind of alcohol, daily participation in cocktail parties would symbolize the height of depravity. V.K., who has worked herself up out of deepest poverty, has not found in her financial success what life really is all about. She may be materially rich and having an adventurous life, but spiritually she is poor—otherwise she would not need alcohol. And now, the narrative comes to its turning point: “And then my life was in God’s hands.” With this sentence, V.K. introduces the dramatic event of her conversion: But one day, they had no party, no cocktail [laughs]. Then I watched television, but television in Nigeria was really nothing, then I just have some noise in my house. Then, suddenly, a man said: ‘You, I am speaking to you! God has a message for you!’ Then I say: ‘To me?’ And I really start to laugh. And he said—and I was going here and there and I come back—and he said again: ‘You, still God wants to speak to you!’ Then I sit down, I say: ‘Oh really, if God wants to speak to me, I really want to see!’ I challenge. And he say: ‘You come and see what God have for you.’ And gave the address, and I went. That place, was very heavy in Nigeria, because they had this kind of a political situation, they kill [. . .] I learnt that place I supposed not to go to that place. [. . .] When I saw where I was I said ‘my goodness, I cannot move now, because when I turn my car, they are going to shot me. What can I do?’ Then I start to say: ‘My God, help me!’ Then come, from nowhere, come one little boy, he started to smile, then I open my door, I say ‘I am looking for the American school, where they have Sunday service.’ And he didn’t speak, he just show. Show me like that, and I turn, go to the next gate. The way he show me I understood, then I turn my car, shake myself, and I went, it was the next gate, perhaps 600 meter or one kilometer, it was the next gate. Then I sit down in the last place, I stay there quiet. I said ‘not me, let me just see what the people are doing.’ [. . .] The man asked: ‘Who want to accept Christ?’ And I stay very quiet. Then my girl friend say: ‘She wants to accept Jesus Christ.’ And she pulled me. [. . .] I couldn’t say one word, I just shaking my head. And he pray for me, and I feel like two hands leaving my heart. And I accept Christ. On Tuesday, I was really crazy for Jesus. Oh, how I love you, Jesus! My goodness! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, I did everything with Christ. I have the understanding about salvation, like he got open for me, everything about him. The first time, I have a Bible. Then I bought my Bible. I finally read, I started to read it from Genesis to Revelation, every time I read it, you don’t know how many times, I love the word! Really, I’m crazy for the word! I say: ‘Lord, nevermore I’m going to leave you, and I’m going to say to everybody about you. I nevermore I go back the way I was before.’ [. . .] Then


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I have a promise between me and Jesus: I’m going to tell everybody your words. Then I start in my house. Then I come back to Germany. It was September, 27th of September, 1987.

Like many pentecostal conversion narratives, V.K.’s story has a certain miraculous aspect. God simply speaks to her, out of the blue, at a moment when she is not distracted by a party. The motif of God speaking through the mouth of a television preacher is not uncommon in pentecostal / charismatic narratives,86 and we have also encountered it in D.A.’s narrative. Also typically for a conversion narrative, V.K. does not immediately repent, but rather resists the attempt at converting her. She first laughs off the challenge by the television preacher, but then decides to go to his church after all. Interestingly, on her way to church, V.K. finds herself yet again in a dangerous situation. Obviously caught between government soldiers and an insurrectionist group, she fears for her life—and starts to pray. Immediately, a miracle happens: A little boy materializes “from nowhere,” smiles at her and shows her where to go. The assumption is clear: God has sent an angel to save and direct her. The report of V.K.’s eventual conversion is somewhat convoluted. It is not quite clear how long she has been attending church when her friend volunteers her during an altar call. But the rest of the story follows the established pattern of a conversion narrative. Somewhat shocked and surprised by her friend putting her forward, she is unable to protest. In other conversion narratives, the narrators might talk about “being pulled forward towards the altar.” This serves to emphasize the fact that it is God acting in this conversion, not the narrator him- or herself. V.K. continues to follow the established conversion narrative pattern: As the preacher prays for her, something happens: “I feel like two hands leaving my heart.” This is a typical motif: At the moment of conversion, the converted person feels strongly at peace, intense joy, a power flowing through her or his body, or some sense of becoming unburdened. And finally, and constitutionally for a conversion story, V.K. describes that her life is immediately and dramatically changed. Overnight, she is in love with Jesus, she reads the Bible, she understands the difference between her new faith and other religious paths she has tried out, and she wants to become an evangelist.

86 TV preachers make much of testimonies attesting to this fact, as can be seen, for example, in Kenneth Copeland’s magazine, Believers’ Voice of Victory.

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Just at the end of this part of her narrative, V.K. adds one sentence: “Then I come back to Germany.” We never learn why she decided to move back here, or how she arranged for a visa. She is simply back. Again, we have an expatriation rather than an immigration narrative: V.K. is a glamorous traveler who moves where she likes to go, without any of the difficulties which would normally be encountered by a poor person moving to a rich country. Now that she has become a Christian, God continues to act in her life through dreams and revelations. V.K. tells how she meets her future husband, and gets married to him just two months later. Rejecting the unspoken assumption that she just married him to be able to stay in Germany,87 she recounts that she had already been shown this man in a dream, and had understood that Jesus meant her to marry him. She no longer acts impulsively, out of a sense of adventure as she did before, but rather follows divine guidance. V.K. continues her narrative as an expatriation narrative. She moves back to Brazil with her husband, then back to Germany, and around Germany. Nowhere in her narrative do we get a sense that she felt called as a missionary or even simply led to Germany. While dreams and visions often tell her what to do next at crucial points in her life, the question of where she is located does not seem to carry the same importance: She simply moves around as she likes. Therefore, we can conclude that for V.K., the dimension of being called is limited to the relational sphere of her ministry, but not to its location. V.K. has a call to certain people, not to a particular place. In her moving, she seems to have looked for a church that was lively and vibrant, but not for an ethnic church. In one place, she attended a German church, in another, an American one. Nationalities seem not to have been important to her. Nevertheless, the American connection is quite obvious in V.K.’s case. The church where she got converted seems to have been American. Later, V.K. attended Rhema Bible School (connected to Kenneth Hagin Ministries), an American ministry. Finally, V.K., who speaks good German, insisted that she should have the interview done in English, since this was her ‘spiritual’ language. Before the tape recorder was switched on, she said that God always spoke to her in English, 87 As a Brazilian, Koch could stay in Germany without a visa for a maximum of three months, and would likely not have gotten an extension. Anecdotal evidence over the years points to the fact that marriages of convenience may be quite common in Pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches.


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never in Portuguese or German. A throwaway remark in her narrative, “full of the Holy Spirit, you know how the Americans are,” points to an understanding of American neo-pentecostal Christianity as exemplary. But among the interviewees, V.K. is the only one who confesses to such a strong American influence on her spirituality. 4.4.2. A.M.,88 P.S., I.A.: Asylum in Germany A.M., a man in his early forties, came to Germany from the DR Congo. Self-confident but reserved, he runs one of the oldest Francophone churches in Western Germany which has seen a number of splits and upheavals. Currently it has about 100 members who mostly come from the DR Congo, Angola or Cameroon. There is a strong, bilingual youth group which plays an important role in the church. A.M. is married to a woman from Congo with whom he has two small children. He has long had very good contacts to Protestant churches and pastors in the city where his church is located, and has been very active in the UEM program. A.M. was obviously reluctant to talk about details of his expatriation. The introductory interview question about how he had become a pastor in Germany elicited some information about his pastoral work in the DR Congo. He then continued: When I got here—I came here as an evangelist, and therefore I had to, first of all—that’s normal—learn the German language. I didn’t know what would await me here personally, await me here personally, and therefore I had to learn the German language. I learnt German for almost a year, at W. University, and I made contacts especially with my country people, and I also had . . . the need was very great to support the people spiritually. And this is why I began to talk with people about the Bible, moving from house to house. We started in one flat; then more and more people came, we couldn’t stay in the house. We went to a church, and over time many people came. We had to move from one church to the next and . . . the congregation came into being, and therefore I had to stay, from then on until today, really I had to stay in Germany and take care of the people with the Bible and so on.

A.M.’s narrative makes do without any call narrative; he only reports that shortly after his revival experience, which he connects to a general revival in his country, he started to work in a church. In his next 88 A.M.’s full expatriation narrative can be found in the Appendix. I interviewed him on 14 November 2005 in his home.

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sentence, he simply states that he arrived in Germany, adding as an afterthought that he arrived as an evangelist. Like the Ghanaian charismatic interviewees whose narratives were analyzed in chapter 4.3, he did not know what would await him in Germany. Nevertheless, unlike them, he does not talk about immediately having started to preach. Rather, he talks about learning German first, claiming that this was “normal,” and adding that the language study was a consequence of the fact that he did not know what the future would bring. Clearly, A.M. shows a somewhat more integrationist approach than the Ghanaian charismatics. Nevertheless, he says that his contacts were mostly limited to fellow Congolese, and that he saw their need for spiritual support. Therefore, he begins his ministry for migrants. A.M. describes the development and growth of his congregation as a logical consequence of these spiritual needs, and then adds an intriguing statement: “Therefore, I had to stay . . . until today.” A.M.’s narrative shows him as somebody who simply was an evangelist as soon as he got revived, and who continued to act as an evangelist even in his expatriate situation. His vocation was not the reason to move to Germany, but eventually became a reason to stay in this country. Trying to elicit more information, the interview continued with a question about details of his expatriation process. Strikingly, this did not elicit an expatriation narrative, but only an account of how A.M. developed into an evangelist. As a call narrative, it was rather understated: As a committed evangelizing Christian, A.M. was recognized as gifted by his peers and superiors, and therefore he was eventually seen as an evangelist. A.M. does not mention any kind of ordination or official recognition. The interview continued with the question of what had given him the idea to move to Germany. Again, A.M. did not answer the question put to him. Rather than talking about the motivation for his expatriation, he offered a theological explanation: Christians are called to be witnesses all over the world. Only then did he actually talk about his expatriation: Without giving any motives or reason, he simply states that he wanted to go abroad, and that he came to Germany because he already had family and friends here. Clearly, his expatriation was not connected to his call. Rather, he understands his call as valid regardless of where he finds himself, and therefore, also in Germany. Later in the interview, when talking about what it meant to be a pastor, A.M. disclosed some further biographical details:


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I had to apply for asylum. First of all, I could not apply for a visa as pastor, because back then there was no church. That’s why I got . . . as I already said, I did a German language course at W. University, so that means I also had a place to study there. In the beginning, I had a visa as a student, but over time, as the church grew, I needed to work for them all the time. Thanks be to God, during this time I met my sisters and brothers of the church in W. and they got involved in my situation and were very active to get my visa changed. At first, it was thought that it would be impossible, but God helped. And there was also support from UEM, who supported us, I really don’t know, but I just know that I got a letter from UEM, and also one from the Bible Center in Morsbach,89 and also from the W. church. And that is why a visa could simply be changed from student to pastor.

This passage is highly contradictory. Trying to establish a time line of his changing visa status, it sounds like he came to Germany on a student visa, then applied for asylum and finally had his status changed to a pastor’s visa with the help of German church contacts. All of this seems rather implausible given the reluctance of the German authorities to change the visa status of any immigrant. However, the motif of the ease of travel which we have observed in so many other accounts can be found here, too. A.M. does not mention any problems about his initial travel to Germany. The visa situation only became difficult after his arrival. A.M. interprets the support he got from different churches and Christian organizations as divine support, which made something that seemed impossible simple in the end. To sum up: A.M. clearly sees himself as a pastor and evangelist. Being a pastor is what defines him, while the place where he lives does not have any relationship to this. P.S., the Sri Lankan who related a very detailed call narrative,90 was asked later in the interview how he had actually come to Germany. He answered: I was a building engineer in Sri Lanka, and back then we had a fraternal war, and this fraternal war, I must continue my work, but in [Sri Lanka]—that’s in the north—we had some problems, and there I was working in a cement factory. And the director of the factory, he is an acquaintance of mine, and he says: ‘You! Go to France and get a diploma in engineering.’ So I was sent to France on a scholarship, and I studied there for three years. Afterwards I wanted to go back, but at 89 Here, A.M. refers to the Zentralafrika-Mission which runs Bible Correspondence courses which are being taken by many migrant pastors. See also http://www.zamonline .de/dt/emmaus.php, accessed 23 November 2006. 90 See chapter 3.2.4.

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chapter four the same time, this fraternal war started in Sri Lanka. Then I thought: If I go back, I will have problems myself, then I better go to Germany as a refugee. Because I had studied in France, I couldn’t become a refugee there. Then I came to Germany, and my sister was here back then. Then I went to my sister, and I started my life in Germany as an asylum seeker. That was in ’81.

P.S. came to Germany long before he became a Christian. But even now, in hindsight, he did not give any kind of spiritual or theological interpretation of his coming. Very matter-of-factly, he told how he wanted to avoid a civil war, and how he simply went to a country where he already had a relative and which was willing to take him in as a refugee. For P.S., the call into the ministry seems to be solely the call into a certain profession, while the question of where he actually lives and works does not seem to be loaded with any kind of spiritual meaning. Like A.M., he does not seem to have any ‘missionary call’ to a specific country. I.A.’s short expatriation narrative is quite similar to P.S.’s. A Ghanaian, he also came to Germany as an asylum seeker, and never gave any spiritual interpretation of his moving here: I came to Germany purposely for political asylum. Because I was in a Christian fellowship, but the government was not interested in a Christian fellowship. We were involved in demonstrations against the government, and through that, most of our fellow Christians were arrested. And we were able to escape to Nigeria, and then [unintelligible]. And before that, I was a very good Christian, and I was also a footballer, before I came here. [. . .] There, I get a very nice German lady called [. . .], and the family also helped me a lot. Through that, I get the church in S., and I communicate with them, and the church also have a branch in D., and I came to S. as a member of the church. Before, I was a member also in Ghana, so I introduced myself to them that I was a member in Ghana. It took me some years before the others find that I have a commitment, and that I also fear the Lord, so they recognized me, they recommended me to be a deacon. So I was ordained as a deacon in 1998, and an elder in 2001. And in 2001 I was called as an assistant to help the R. area, and through this I was called to be a pastor, a missionary, a pastor in 2003. And through that, I went to Ghana, to Pentecost University [. . .], Apostle Dr. Onyinah91 is there, for almost 10 months. So I came back last August. That’s what I can say about my life.

91 Rev. Dr. Opoku Onyinah has since been elected the Chairman of the Church of Pentecost, see www.thecophq.org, accessed 22 September 2008.


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Obviously, I.A. was not comfortable talking about himself. He sketched his biography in a few short sentences. No conversion narrative, no details about the political involvement that forced him to leave Ghana, just a listing of places to which he moved one after the other. The whole account carries an undertone of ‘this is what happened, and it is not important.’ Interesting about this narrative, though, is the fact that two people are mentioned specifically: One is “a very nice German lady”, the other one is a leader of the Church of Pentecost who is well known to the interviewer. It does not seem far-fetched to assume that by mentioning these two persons, the narrator aimed at establishing a positive rapport with the interviewer. Nevertheless, in this narrative again we do not find any kind of sense of a ‘missionary calling’ to a specific place. There is no theological or spiritual meaning attached, in hindsight, to his move to Germany. Strikingly, the call to become a pastor / missionary does not strengthen I.A.’s connection to Germany, but rather to his home country: It is this call that results in his going back home for theological training. 4.4.3. Spiritual interpretation instead of expatriation narrative Two interviewees did not volunteer any expatriation narrative, but instead formulated a statement of spiritual interpretation of why they had come to Germany. D.I., a Congolese pastor, had this to say: I believe with God, there is nothing unplanned. Simply, I want to say, everything was already planned by God. I don’t want to look at myself, what happened in Congo, but I just must say, exactly like Joseph, God sent Joseph to Egypt because God has a plan. Jacob believed this in advance, that’s why he sent Joseph there. I believe, God even before had a message for me, for Germany, for the people in Germany, this is why he sent me here, this is why I came here 12 years ago. And then I got a new path, I went a new path, and today I can see clearly that God planned everything in advance.

D.I. did not volunteer any information about why he left his country and how he came to Germany. By comparing himself with the Biblical figure of Joseph, though, he makes several points: First of all, Joseph did not want to go to Egypt, he was sold there as a slave. D.I. therefore implies that he did not want to come to Germany, but was forced to do so by circumstances outside of his control. Secondly, the intrinsic meaning of Joseph’s expatriation only became clear in hindsight—the

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outer reason was his being sold into slavery, while the inner reason was that God wanted to care for his people. Similarly, D.I. hints that while he came to Germany as a refugee, the real reason for his coming was that God planned for him to be here. He does not see himself as a slave to a blind fate or political upheaval, but is secure in the knowledge that God has a purpose for him. In that sense, D.I. belongs to the first group of interviewees, those who made theological sense of their expatriation in hindsight. M.Y., another pastor from Congo, had the following answer when asked how he came to Germany: Hmmm, in Germany—I came here with an idea. I wanted to finish my school here, but my idea wasn’t to live in Germany. I wanted to go to Belgium where I can speak French well with other people, but then one day I slept and I got a vision: I saw I was in Germany, and I was speaking with many people about God. And then I understood that I had a vision here in Germany.

In just two sentences, M.Y. sketches a typical missionary call story: He had certain plans for his life, but through a dream he experienced a divine call to remain in Germany. In the light of this call, there is no need to actually relate how he came to this country. This may be due to the fact that he knew that his story—he was granted political asylum—was known to the interviewer already. M.Y. can therefore also be counted with the first group of interviewees, those who interpreted their coming to Germany as divinely ordered in hindsight. 4.5. Expatriation narratives: Some final observations As we have seen, the expatriation narratives show enormous differences in style and content even though they can be organized into certain groupings. One possible reason for this is that within migrant entecostal / charismatic churches, ‘missionary’ call / expatriation narratives do not seem to play an important role. Unlike in evangelical circles where such stories serve both to define certain groups and to legitimize one’s own calling,92 I have never heard a ‘missionary’ call / expatriation narrative recounted in the context of a migrant church. Neither are

92 See Jeffrey Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, pp. 128 ff.


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such stories shared informally. They are only heard when migrant pastors speak to a German audience and want to introduce and legitimize themselves as missionaries. This allows several conclusions: First of all, expatriation narratives are constructed in dialogue and communication with Germans who ask for them. Unlike the pastoral call narratives which aim at their own churches, the migrant pastors’ expatriation narratives are for an outside audience. As we have said in the introduction to this chapter, migrant pastors constantly have to engage with a dominant discourse on migration and immigration that questions the legitimacy of their being here. Strikingly, the interviewees never accord the legitimacy of their stay either to German authorities or to German society. Implicitly, their narratives deny the right of these authorities to decide about who is allowed to live where. The authority of government bureaucracies is a derived one; they are only the instrument of God’s actions within the boundaries of space and time. Here, the motif of the ease of obtaining a visa or stay permit has its locus. Secondly, if the expatriation narratives analyzed in this chapter are the result of a negotiation of status in relation to a German audience, the question has to be asked how expatriation is discussed and filled with meaning in the discourse within the migrant churches. Is it possible that the missionary self-perception is limited to the pastors, and not shared by the congregation members? Sermons that urge church members to realize that they have been “sent to Germany for a purpose which is not cleaning other people’s toilets” would point into this direction, as would the constant appeals in sermons, speeches and leaflets to be more active evangelistically. As Nsodu Mbinglo’s impassioned treatise93 shows, few West Africans so far interpret the migration to the North in terms of a missionary undertaking. Three final observations should be kept in mind as we move on to the next chapter: First of all, a number of interviewees spoke about the fact that as they were thinking about going abroad, they actually did not want to move to Germany, but rather to another country. Two reasons are given for this, the language barrier and the lack of a network of contacts that may be tapped into. Germany is clearly not a dream country for most of the Asian and African migrant pastors. Francophone Africans prefer Belgium or France, while Anglophones 93 Nsodu Mbinglo, Black Angels in the White Man’s Country, privately published: Legon / Accra 2004.

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and Asians dream of moving to the US, or, occasionally, to Britain. Even though moving to Germany not by choice is interpreted as pointing clearly to divine guidance, it remains to be seen what this lack of interest in Germany will mean for the relationship these migrant pastors have with this country and its people. Secondly, it is remarkable that even the interviewees who traveled to Germany with a clear missionary call came with little or no preparation whatever. None of them had any language training before arriving, and most knew next to nothing about the country. A period of learning and inculturation was also not seen as necessary, with evangelistic work taken up within days of their arrival. Such an attitude has been common among pentecostal / charismatic ‘foreign missionaries’ from the beginning, as the earliest missionaries leaving from the Azusa Street Revival believed that due to the gift of tongues which was understood as xenolalia, they would not have to learn any foreign language.94 This usually led to a practice of handing newly founded churches over to local leadership very quickly. In the case of the migrant missionaries in Europe and Northern America, it could have the long-term consequence that despite their missionary claims, ‘new mission churches’ remain diasporal churches made up predominantly of immigrants, and make little or no evangelistic impact on the situation in their target countries as a whole. Thirdly, and in a different vein: biographical narratives are attempts to make sense of one’s life in hindsight, and the narratives documented here are no exception. In constructing meaning, all analyzed narratives show a striking commonality. None of the interviewees portray themselves as victims. Even those who talk about injustices that happened to them do not dwell on the actual problems, but rather on the positive meaning and outcomes that they ascribe to them. They are not sufferers of political or economic circumstances, but rather agents of a divine plan that is worked out for them even if they do not understand it immediately. All interviewees are adamant in their conviction that it was God’s guidance that brought them to Germany. Consequently, everything that happened and continues to happen to them must be

94 See M. Bergunder, Crossing Boundaries: Issues of Representation, Identity and Postcolonial Discourse in Pentecostal Studies. Paper for the Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism on ‘What is Pentecostalism? Constructing and Representing Global Pentecostalism in Academic Discourse’, Birmingham, January 19–20, 2006.


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part of God’s plan and, therefore, good. With such an interpretation, the narrators show themselves as empowered. They are not marginal figures, but rather important instruments of a divine plan. As an elder from the Church of Pentecost said at the end of our interview: Now we [Africans] . . .: Some come [to Europe] to go to school, some come for Asyl [sic], some travel for a business, and they stay here. That means, God knows how to send everybody. Some get the visa to come, some come by ship, some come by plane, God have the way to send everybody.

chapter five BEING ON A MISSION: THE RELATIONSHIP TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD

5.1. “What is your mission?” Observations from the short interviews Pentecostal / charismatic pastors and church leaders describe their churches as ‘new mission churches.’ But how do they actually understand their mission? Before we turn to observations on missionary practice and the long interviews, we will take a look at the short interviews. Here, the respondents were asked to describe in one or two sentences the mission of their church. In this setting, a striking difference between pentecostal / charismatic and ‘mainline’ Protestant respondents could be observed: The former, without exception, framed their mission in terms of evangelism understood as the recruitment of new members, while the latter, equally without exception, described it in terms of community and identity, i.e. ‘diasporal,’ defining their role as guardians and protectors of the culture of their country and denomination of origin. A short note is necessary to clarify terminology: In the context of this study, ‘mission’ is understood as what churches and Christian communities are divinely commissioned to do in a broad sense: This might encompass preaching both inside and outside one’s own circles, the recruitment of new members, worship, education, social services, political advocacy and many more aspects. The concept of ‘mission’ is defined by a goal-oriented interaction between a group of ‘believers’ (a church, a congregation etc.) and those outside of this group (whether they are individuals, communities, societies, or governments etc.). ‘Evangelism’ is used in a narrower sense and describes any activity aimed at recruiting active church members who adhere to the belief system and the ethical rules of the recruiting community. In this sense, evangelism is an aspect of ‘mission;’ depending on the theological school, it carries greater or lesser importance. For evangelicals and

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pentecostals / charismatics, evangelism is the most important task of mission, relegating any other church work to lesser significance.1 The pentecostal / charismatic responses in the short interviews tended to define mission as evangelism and showed strong similarities even in the choice of wording:2 To win souls for Christ Jesus. To reach the world for Jesus. To evangelize, so that people will come to Christ. To preach the Gospel, to make disciples. To preach the good news to a dying world. To make the name of Jesus known, that people get to know Jesus as their Lord and have forgiveness of sin. People should find God and Jesus. They shall believe and be saved.

Clearly, the recruitment of new members into the Christian faith (whether for one’s own congregation or for the church in general) is the overriding aim of these respondents. For them, mission is evangelism. Interestingly, in these very short answers, the respondents tend to phrase their evangelistic aim in terms of classical evangelical language, using terms like “to win souls” or “forgiveness of sin.” When asked toward which people their mission was directed, the pentecostal / charismatic responses fell into two distinct groups: A majority professed an international outlook, including Germans as their target group, while a minority concentrates on migrants: All nationalities around me. To everybody, not just foreigners. We want to reach the German nation, German people. We want to reach out to the unchurched.

1

This study is not the place for a closer look at the ongoing global controversy about mission, evangelism and social / political action among evangelicals and pentecostals / charismatics, some of whom would certainly reject the sweeping statement just made. For an evangelical understanding of evangelism shared by many charismatics, see the Lausanne Covenant, agreed upon during the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism, downloadable, e.g., from http://community.gospelcom.net/lcwe/assets/ Lausanne_Covenant.pdf, accessed 12 December 2006. For a pentecostal / charismatic understanding of evangelism and mission, see the articles by L.G. McClung Jr. on “Evangelism”, and V.M. Kärkkäinen, on “Missiology: Pentecostal and Charismatic”, both in: in: The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Revised and expanded edition, Grand Rapids (MI): Zondervan 2002, pp. 617– 622 and pp. 877–885. 2 All quotes in the following section are from short phone interviews. Quotes in German were translated into English.

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Africans who lead a bad life in Germany. All people, but predominantly people who speak my language—all Africans.

It is obvious that a church that defines its main aim as the recruitment of new members from many different cultures and backgrounds will not define itself as an ethnic, diasporal group. This might be different if a target group were delimited along ethnic lines. But if pentecostal / charismatic respondents at all demarcated a limited target group for their evangelism, that group was in itself already international (“Africans”). In their answers, several pentecostals / charismatics additionally reflected what it meant that their church is situated in Germany: If it is for Africans, we can stay in Africa. We need to reach the souls here. I have just said in the church that too few Germans are attending. We want to reach the world, beginning where we are—in Germany. We are here to reach the Germans. Our main focus is Germans. We are in Germany; they are the highest percentage here. They should be the priority. We have started a bilingual service, and I am preparing myself to preach in German.

These statements are a further indication of the fact that a pentecostal / charismatic evangelistic outlook excludes a ‘diasporal’ perspective. The perspective is never backward, concentrated on the country and / or culture of origin, but always forward: This leads either to an internationalist, more migrant-oriented perspective, or to a more bicultural perception in which origin and target culture are related to each other. The ‘mainline’ Protestant responses provided a sharp contrast to this outlook. Evangelism was never mentioned as part of their mission which clearly centered on groups defined by cultural liminality: To provide English language worship and pastoral work for people who want to worship in a reformed / mainstream tradition. First of all: People who have left their homes shall continue their faith lives. That should not happen in isolation, but rather in contact with the society around us. We are a church for Koreans. We counsel students and German-Korean families. The second generation needs an identity; they learn Korean to safeguard their identity.

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Obviously, these respondents see their churches as ‘diaspora’ churches whose main task is to provide migrant believers with worship and community in their familiar language and culture. The aim of preserving one’s faith and culture is the overriding concern; the perspective is backward rather than forward. Identity is defined by roots rather than by routes. Two Protestant respondents expressly rejected the kind of evangelism that seems to be the norm for pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches: We want to enable people to worship in their mother tongue, because you can only pray in your mother tongue. We don’t go into the street. We provide worship services and counseling for Finnish people in their mother tongue. We do not evangelize in any other way.

While a global evangelistic outlook seems to preclude a ‘diasporal’ self-definition, the reverse also seems to hold true: A ‘diasporal’ selfunderstanding leads to a rejection of evangelism, at least in a ‘mainline’ Protestant context. The short interviews were not a quantitative study, and should not be read as such. But they provide some data to back up the general observation that at least the pastors and leaders of pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches do not define them as ethnic, diasporal groups, but rather as evangelistic bridgeheads in a broad effort at world evangelism.3 They express this very clearly in their contacts with German churches and Christians,4 and also emphasize it in sermons and teaching materials. Whether this claim is always backed up by practice, and whether it is being shared by congregation members, remains open to questions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may well be tensions between pastors’ visions of an evangelistic, multicultural church, and the need of members for a cohesive group which allows them to worship in their mother tongue and home culture. For example, Sabine Jaggi, who studied an African migrant church in Bern, Switzerland, reports tensions between the more evangelistic outlook of the pastor and the ‘diasporal’ interests of the members, without, unfortunately,

We have already discussed this in chapter 2.1 in relation to terminology. For just one example, see the report about the ‘Foreigners Mission Conference’ (Ausländermissionskonferenz) of the Evangelical Alliance at http://www.ideagentur.de/ startseite/nachrichten/sv-ss-topnews/article/44142/, accessed 5 December 2006, and headlined: “God will use the foreigners to bring revival to Germany.” 3 4

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giving them further reflection.5 Clearly, this remains a topic for further research beyond the scope of this study. 5.2. Missionary practice: Evangelizing Germans How do pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches try to evangelize Germans? Before we analyze how evangelism is conceptualized, we will first take a look at evangelistic practices. The following passages are based both on the interviews and extensive observations. 5.2.1. Street evangelism When migrant pentecostal / charismatic pastors speak about evangelism, they first and foremost mean street evangelism. There seems to be no migrant pentecostal / charismatic church that does not engage in this practice at least once in a while, and larger churches do so regularly. Going outside of one’s own church to win new recruits literally means going out: Railway stations, central squares and pedestrian shopping streets are the areas where migrant churches make contact with others. The way P.W. describes the practice of her church fits many of the migrant churches observed, particularly those with an African background. Her striking familiarity with the bureaucratic steps necessary to engage in street evangelism in Germany was shared by several other interviewees and shows how well those churches work within German structures. We go to the Rathaus [City Hall], ask for permission, and then we ask for Sondernutzungserlaubnis [special use permit] or Straßenerlaubnis [street permit] from Ordnungsamt [Municipal Office], so we get those papers, and we do a stand, just like an Infotisch [information table], like tomorrow, we’ll be out from 12 for four hours . . . When we are going out for music, we also take the same Erlaubnis [permit]. So we play the music, we contact people, we preach—you know, just like doing a Straßengottesdienst [street worship service]. Now I am also thinking of Straßengottesdienst, 5 Sabine Jaggi, “Yesu azali awa.” Untersuchung einer afrikanischen, frankophonen MigrantInnenkirche in Bern. Lizentiatsarbeit der philosophisch-historischen Fakultät der Universität Bern, WS 2004/2005, available at www.refbejuso.ch/downloads/ refbejuso/doc/jaggi_yesu_liz.pdf (14 June 2007). See particularly pp. 39 f., 104, 171 ff., 195 ff.

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chapter five maybe once in a month, doing Straßengottesdienst, and also invite the people to come. If they don’t want to come to the church, then meet them on the street! [. . .] I’ve seen that lots of young people are hungry for God, but they have no background, they have no foundation, because their parents never took them to church. So they want to learn something, and you can only meet them in the street, because most of them will not come to church, no. You just give them the word there, and if they want to come to church, you give them the address, you know?

Street evangelism as ‘mass evangelism,’ i.e. with music and preaching, is one common form frequently employed by migrant churches, either acting alone or in cooperation between several churches, sometimes also together with German pentecostal / charismatic congregations. Such events tend to follow a similar choreography: A central stage (more or less elaborate depending on the resources of the respective church) provides the point of attention. From here, music and possibly some theatre skits are performed, congregation members may relate a testimony about what their faith has meant in their lives, and pastors will preach short evangelistic messages, in the case of English-speaking pastors, frequently in English with German consecutive translation. Around the stage, other church members congregate. They pass out tracts to passers-by and, if they have the necessary language abilities, try to engage them in conversation. In terms of the effects of such events, pastors’ opinions vary. Some interviewees related that they found street evangelism very hard, that they tended to experience hostile reactions, especially from Germans, and that few people were willing to stop, take a tract, and listen or talk. Most of the time, they laugh at you, they mock at you, ‘Es gibt keinen Gott!’ [There is no God!]—‘Jesus, was ist Jesus!’ [Jesus, what is Jesus!] You have to—at times I just laugh also, when they laugh at me, I also laugh, because if you don’t laugh with them, you get discouraged, you stop what you are doing. It’s difficult, sometimes I try to share tracts to people, and as you give them, they will say ‘nein danke’ [no, thank you], they will not accept, or they will take it, and before they go a few steps, they put it in a dustbin, something like that. But we still continue to do that, we still continue to reach everybody, when we stand at the Post [post office] or the Bahnhof [railway station] to share tracts. No matter the color, anybody who passes by, we give, if they take, they take. Surprisingly, sometimes people come, even Germans, ‘we saw your tracts and then we decided to come and see what’s happening here’, and we are happy, because if we share one hundred tracts, and one person comes, I give glory to God.

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But negative experiences, as we can see from the statements above, do not cause the pastors to discontinue street evangelism. To the contrary, E.S., for example, claims that most of the German members of his congregation first came into contact with his church through street evangelism. How many German members this church really has remains unclear, though. E.S. himself claims “up to 100” German members, while one of the German members, in a recent informal conversation, put the number at “no more than ten.” He added that new Germans regularly showed up at the church, but rarely stayed for longer than a few weeks, and almost never became full members. Others pastors simply feel that it is their responsibility to preach to as many people as possible, while the results can be left to the Holy Spirit. Street evangelism does not always mean preaching from a stage. In other instances, street evangelism can consist of individual encounters with the down-and-out: I believe to take the church to the people in their streets, in their home, in the disco hall, in their . . . where people take drugs [. . .] We meet with a group of drug addicts; I sit with them, I say it, some people, I tell them to throw it away. I ask him how he can reduce it bit by bit, and come down for a while. Then later, perhaps he can stop entirely.

Migrant churches in big cities use this approach often, since it needs no official permits and far fewer logistics than a proper ‘crusade.’ Pastors and congregation members may just spread themselves around in an area where the homeless, alcoholics and drug addicts congregate, sometimes distributing food, and trying to share an evangelistic message individually. At least in one case, this approach seems to work well: P.I. claims that the majority of his members, only a minority of whom is of an African background, were recruited through such street evangelism. However it is done, street evangelism is not just the task of the pastor, but of the whole congregation, or at least an ‘outreach team:’ We will go out in mass to share Christ to whoever is willing to wait, and, you know, chat with us; we’ll be willing to answer some questions. We’ll share tracts.

Sermons, Bible studies and written materials for internal use in migrant churches point to the fact that church members may not always be very willing or interested in active evangelism and have to be expressly motivated to get involved.

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5.2.2. Tracts Tracts are an important instrument of street evangelism, especially for migrants whose German is not good enough for any deeper conversation. Some migrant churches produce their own tracts, though these tend to be of rather inferior quality in regards to grammar and spelling. Much more commonly, pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches use tracts which they obtain ready-made from German or international mission organizations. Three organizations whose tracts are popular among pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches are the “Missionswerk Werner Heukelbach,”6 “Missionswerk Freundes-Dienst International”7 and the the “Missionswerk DIE BRUDERHAND.”8 On their websites, all three introduce themselves as “faith missions” (“Glaubenswerk”). The first two organizations add a description as independent, non-denominational (“überkonfessionell”) and “Bible believing / Bible based” (“bibelgläubig” / “Bibel als Grundlage”), while the third one calls itself “evangelical” (evangelikal).9 All three organizations say that they do not want to start their own churches, but rather serve existing churches and organizations. From the information available on the websites and the content of the tracts, all three organizations are clearly fundamentalist evangelical rather than pentecostal / charismatic.10 The tracts11 do not only follow a traditional evangelical approach but also employ evangelical jargon, revolving around terms like sin, repentance, salvation and eternal life. Salvation is understood exclusively as belonging to an otherworldly realm, and the only consequence of it in this life are peace of heart and a sense of inner joy. There is no trace of the more holistic or even material understanding of salvation which is common among (migrant) pentecostals and charismatics.12 www.missionswerk-heukelbach.de, accessed 15 December 2006. www.freundesdienst.org, accessed 6 January 2006. 8 www.bruderhand.de, accessed 6 January 2006. 9 Evangelikal, in German, means evangelical in a narrower sense. 10 This assessment is shared by the Handbuch der Evangelistisch-missionarischen Werke, Einrichtungen und Gemeinden, see pp. 260, 261, and 270 f. 11 Tracts can be read online under http://missionswerk-heukelbach.de/index.php ?option=com_bookshelf&Itemid=25 or www.bruderhand.de/html/evangelistisch.html, accessed 15 December 2006. Tracts of the Missionswerk Freundes-Dienst are only available in printed form. 12 On the pentecostal understanding of the materiality of salvation, cf. the ground6 7

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This raises an interesting question: Are the pentecostal / charismatic migrant distributors of these tracts even aware of the fact that they are handing out materials that do not conform to their own beliefs, and sometimes even contradict them? For example, migrant churches distribute a tract titled “Dennoch geborgen. Ein Wort für Kranke und Geprüfte” (Sheltered despite all. A word for the sick and tested) published by the Missionswerk Werner Heukelbach.13 It contains the message that people who have to live with sickness will be comforted by God. Healing through prayer is mentioned as a possibility, but dismissed as “bodily health” which is worthless when compared with eternal life. The tract then leads the reader to pray for the forgiveness of sins rather than for healing. In contrast, pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches often evangelize through “miracle crusades,” promising the healing of all kinds of illnesses. This contradiction was, unfortunately, not discussed in the interviews. But most likely, such an observation would have surprised the interviewees. As we will see below,14 many of them tend to use the same evangelical phraseology when summarizing their message without reflecting on how it is actually related to their more holistic understanding. Others, who are aware of the differences, might understand these tracts to be contextually German. It is interesting, though, that throughout my research, I have not come across a single migrant church that was distributing Germanmade tracts or booklets written with a pentecostal / charismatic approach, even though they are easily available, as e.g. Reinhard Bonnke’s “Vom Minus zum Plus” (From minus to plus).15 This is probably due to the fact that such materials are not provided free of charge to distributors. The interviewees as well as other migrant pastors clearly expressed their concern that the cost of materials was a big issue, and that they could only afford to distribute tracts for which they did not have to pay. breaking article by Miroslav Volf: Materiality of Salvation: An Investigation in the Soteriologies of Liberation and Pentecostal Theologies, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1989, pp. 447–467. For details on the migrant perspective, see 5.5.2 and Claudia Währisch-Oblau, Mission und Migration(skirchen), in: Dahling-Sander, Christoph; Schulte, Andrea; Werner, Dietrich; Wrogemann, Henning (eds.), Leitfaden Ökumenische Missionstheologie, Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser / Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2003, pp. 378 ff. 13 See http://missionswerk-heukelbach.de / cms / zusatz / leseproben / ih05_internet .pdf, accessed 16 December 2006. 14 Chapter 5.3.2. 15 This small booklet is available from Christ for all Nations, www.cfan.org (accessed 27 Spetember 2007).

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5.2.3. Gospel Music Large African-majority churches use the German interest in Gospel music as an evangelistic avenue and organize Gospel concerts, both in their own buildings and in public halls. Such concerts always include a short evangelistic sermon: And with these Gospel concerts, we invite them [the Germans], and we get . . . in all of our Gospel concerts, we get 90 % Germans attending. So with the Gospel concerts, we will sing a lot of Gospel songs, they dance with us, but then I always have 15 minutes time to preach about Jesus.

Clearly, the music in itself is not seen as an evangelistic method. It is simply an attraction to bring people into the church, to prepare them emotionally for the ‘real’ evangelism, a preached message. Building up good Gospel choirs is a priority particularly in African majority churches, and professional musicians to head such choirs are very much sought after. But as good musicians tend to move from one church to the next,16 it is difficult to maintain a consistent high quality of Gospel music. To solve this problem, one African-led church brought several professional musicians from Ghana on ‘clergy visas:’17 These musicians are tied to the church as their visas will become invalid if they leave their employment. 5.2.4. Other means In the interviews, several other ways of evangelizing Germans were mentioned. An important means for those pastors who have good German language abilities is preaching in German churches. Some do this often, and others said that they would like to have more opportunities to do so. Now I have the opportunity to preach in German congregations, and I can contribute what I believe. And I think with this I reach more Germans every Sunday as with anything else I should do.

If preaching in German churches is seen as evangelism, the unspoken assumption is clear: Those who attend a German (mainline Protestant) church are not yet real Christians. If they do not need conversion, 16

The wanderings of several of these musicians could be observed over the years. According to § 5.6 of the Arbeitsaufenthalteverordnung, clergy of any religion can work in Germany without a work permit if there is a defined “local need” for their services. Such visas are tied to an employment contract. 17

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at least they need a revival. Not all migrant pastors who are invited to preach in German churches manage to bring this message across tactfully. In one of the early days of the UEM program, I received a call from an irate German pastor. He had invited the African colleague whose church was meeting in his buildings to preach in a German Sunday service. The African pastor, unused to the fact that he did not get any reaction to his preaching from the congregation, finished his sermon with the frustrated outbreak: “You are a dead church!” Only one interviewee suggested classical ‘crusades’18 as a means of evangelizing Germans. (In fact, most migrant churches hold ‘crusades’ or ‘revivals’ on a regular basis. But these are clearly aimed at other migrants rather than at Germans.) In April 2006, this interviewee organized a three-day event that featured German, African and AfricanAmerican preachers (two each for every night) and was conducted in French, English and German, with double consecutive translation which was actually done so well, down to copying body language and voice tone, that this ‘triple-preaching’ developed a dance-like quality and charm. The few German attendants though, as far as could be observed, were Christians from different Protestant and free-church congregations rather than non-Christians. Only one interviewee admitted openly to what many others only implied, namely that church planting was a necessary means of evangelizing Germans because German churches could not be trusted to disciple new converts properly: My method will be evangelism, and also to plant local churches, so that people will hear the message, and will be able to come in. [. . .] It will be difficult, you know, when souls have been won, and they’ve been directed to German churches . . .

Finally: Some migrant churches do not only engage in social work for their migrant members, but also do some social outreach particularly in their immediate, often rather poor inner-city neighborhoods. For example, one African-led church provides internet seminars for young Germans who have no access to computers at home. This church and others also have a program of food distribution to the homeless. Such social outreach is seen as a means of holistic evangelism:

18 He actually used the German term ‘Evangelisation’ which carries no militaristic undertones. But in its narrow definition, this term can only be translated into English as ‘crusade.’

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chapter five So, when we go out there, we have two things on our mind: Bringing spiritual help to them—that is making them find Jesus Christ, [. . .] and then, two, we help them physically. Some of them need physical advice; they just need wisdom to go on in their lives. Some of them need to be told: Go back to school. Some of them need to be helped to overcome some habits like drugs or alcohol or just hanging out with wrong friends . . . We make sure that we don’t only preach to this people but that we help them to come out from this.

5.3. Conceptualizing evangelism in interdenominational dialogue: The long interviews All interviews contained a section with questions about evangelism: Here, we enquired about the interviewee’s ‘target group,’ his or her evangelistic message and methods, and ended with questions about a possible inculturation of message and methods. The results of these interviews were somewhat disappointing: In many cases, the interlocutors reproduced dogmatic statements phrased in fundamentalist evangelical language which stood in clear contrast to both internal materials on evangelism and observations at crusades and other meetings. This result does not really surprise, though. After all, the interviews were conducted by a German theologian. In migrant church circles, German theology has a reputation for being strong on correct dogma. It was only to be expected that the interlocutors would have shaped their answers accordingly, showing that they also know their proper doctrines. But there may be a second reason for the discrepancy between dogmatic statements in the interviews and sermons preached in migrant churches. The paradigm of the questions was not the paradigm in which the interviewees operate. The discourse on evangelism, at least in Germany, is shaped by concepts of communication and dialogue, with evangelization defined as “communication of the whole Gospel in an elementary form connected with the effort to engage with experientially caused and intellectual obstacles to faith.”19 In contrast, pente19 “So ist E. die Mitteilung des ganzen Evangeliums in elementarer Form verbunden mit dem Bemühen, sich mit erfahrungsbedingten und intellektuellen Hindernissen des Glaubens bei den Adressaten auseinanderzusetzen.” Emilio Castro / Gerhard Linn, Artikel Evangelisation, in: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, Band 1 pp. 1194–1198. See also the official documents from the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland, Vom offenen Himmel erzählen. Unterwegs zu einer missionarischen Volkskirche. Arbeitshilfe, August 2006; and Auf Sendung. Mission

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costal / charismatic migrants conceptualize evangelism within a framework of a spiritual battle in which ‘souls must be won,’ i.e. liberated from satanic bondage. Consequently, the interview questions centered on message content and evangelistic methods, intended to ascertain how the migrant pastors shape their message and methods according to the context they are addressing. But these topics play almost no role in the migrant pentecostal / charismatic discourse on evangelism which is not about how to communicate a message, but about how to overcome adverse powers which prevent people from believing in Jesus Christ. The migrants’ issues are not content and communicative methods, but rather spiritual discernment and spiritual strength. We will look more deeply into this conceptualization of evangelism in chapter 5.5. Nevertheless, the interviews allow us some insight into how migrant pentecostal / charismatic pastors define themselves and their mission in dialogue with German Protestantism. The interviews are, in and of themselves, documents of interdenominational and intercultural communication and therefore worth an analytical look. In the following section, we will concentrate on three aspects: How the speakers locate themselves globally, how they formulate their evangelistic message to a German listener, and what they have to say about inculturation. 5.3.1. Locating oneself globally: Sent to the world The section of questions about evangelism began with the following query: “Who are the people you are called to evangelize? Why?” This question was framed with two different considerations in mind. First of all, within the German churches, the discussion on migration and Christianity centers on ethnicity and identity, and consequently frames migrant churches within a concept of diaspora. Migrant churches are understood as places where Christians from abroad can worship in their own language and tradition, and migrant pastors are supposed to serve fellow migrants from their own or a closely related ethnic group.20 This discourse defines ethnicity in cultural terms, with religion und Evangelisation in unserer Kirche. Proponendum 2002; and: Amt für missionarische Dienste der Ev. Kirche von Westfalen (ed.), Gottes Lust am Menschen—Kongress für kontextuelle Evangelisation 20.—23. 9. 1999. Eine Dokumentation aus der Reihe “aus der Praxis für die Praxis”, Dortmund 2000. 20 The best example for this discourse can be found in Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (ed.), Kirchen und Gemeinden anderer Sprache und Herkunft, Frankfurt am Main: Gemeinschaftswerk der evangelischen Publizistik 1997.

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subsumed under ‘cultural identity.’ But numerous conversations with Pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors have shown that they tend to reject a view in which their particular religiosity is defined as merely an expression of their ethnic culture. “We don’t dance in church because we are Africans, but because it is written in the Bible!” is a typical sentiment. Secondly, mission theology, whether Catholic, Protestant mainline or evangelical, has for the past 50 years centered strongly on issues of Gospel and culture, contextualization and inculturation.21 Evangelical theologians at Fuller Theological Seminary in the USA developed pragmatic evangelism strategies by dividing the world into “people groups,” each of which needed to be reached with an appropriately inculturated Gospel message.22 The query about possible evangelistic ‘target groups,’ therefore, served to help locate the interlocutors in their relationship to these conversations. The interviewees’ answers clearly show that they reject any kind of ethnic limitation of their missionary calling: God spoke to me and said he would send me worldwide. [I.A.:] Our mission is to win souls for Christ, all tribes. German, Indian, Black—all tribes for Christ. That’s our mission. [D.K.:] In Church of Pentecost, our mission is a prophecy from our forefather in 1934. That this church will reach all the world. That time, our fathers see that they are about six or seven persons, and they travel by foot. And God tell them that the church will reach all the world, and they didn’t believe it. But [unintelligible word] that this God who says this

We have already seen in chapter 5.1 that this concept is shared by ‘mainline’ Protestant migrant pastors. 21 For a first overview over these issues, see Heinrich Balz, “Akkulturation,” in: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. Internationale theologische Enzyklopädie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1989, Bd. 1 pp. 74–76; Lothar Schreiner, “Kontextuelle Theologie,” in: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. Internationale theologische Enzyklopädie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1989, Bd. 2, pp. 1418–1422; and Klauspeter Blaser, “Kultur und Christentum,” Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. Internationale theologische Enzyklopädie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1989, Bd. 2, pp. 1513–1520. 22 The concept of “people group evangelism,” ecclesiologically developed as “homogeneous unit principle,” was popularized by Donald A. McGavran of Fuller Theological Seminary, particularly in his book: Understanding Church Growth, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1970, and has been widely discussed in Evangelical circles ever since. For just one recent example, see Peter F. Penner, Homogeneous Unit Principle, Ephesians 2 and the Early Church Praxis, in: Penner, Peter F. (ed.), Ethnic Churches in Europe—A Baptist Response, Schwarzenfeld: Neufeld Verlag, Oktober 2006.

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is the true God. The mission of Church of Pentecost is a prophecy from our living father and God to our forefathers. [I.A.:] What he was trying to say is that the Church of Pentecost—I think you know it already!—is not a one-man church, yes. God through prophecy or revelation let our forefathers know that he will establish this church throughout the world, all nations, so our mission is that to reach aaaall human beings, whether black or white, to Christ. Yes!

These two statements, one phrased individually and the other communally, base the de-limiting of their call on direct, divine revelation, an audition and a prophecy, respectively. They must be understood as a rejection of the (unspoken) idea that world mission is a project reserved for white, rich, Northern churches, while poor Southern churches should keep their mission to their own people. Being small and backward does not mean that one cannot fulfill the Great Commission completely. The Church of Pentecost is now established in more than fifty countries on all continents. A number of further interviewees also insisted that their missionary call was not limited to one culture or people group, though they concretized this call as having to preach to all people in the country or region where they found themselves. I think I’m called to preach to everybody, because when I look back at the dream, I saw sort of colors in the dream, there were all colors in the dream [. . .] that dream was, I’m going to preach to all sorts of colors, all sorts of background. So don’t limit myself to anybody, or any groups, you know, I don’t limit myself to any group. [. . .] And I can work with anybody, yeah, because I have realized that is the call that God have called me. Because myself, before I was very, very reluctant. I thought perhaps God has only called me to the Blacks, or maybe I’m here because of the Blacks. And we are not here because of the Blacks, we are not in Africa. I think the pastors that are in Africa are there for the people of Africa, and the people that are here in Europe are here for the people of Europe. Yeah. As a missionary, we are not only sent to an individual group of people, but rather the universal people, God’s people, everyone, as the Bible says: ‘God loved the whole world!’ And the message of Jesus Christ is for everyone, and we must strive all we do that everyone gets the message of Jesus Christ. So as a missionary, you are not just called for a particular group, but rather for everyone, especially in the nation where you are.

These two statements both give a theological foundation to the delimiting of the missionary task. The first one does so on the basis of an individual calling: The speaker herself would have tended to limit herself to people of her cultural background, but she understands the

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vision she received as transcending this limitation. The second speaker bases the delimiting of the missionary call on the fact that God’s love is for the whole world. Clearly, this interviewee does not share the idea that while the missionary task of the whole church would be universal, strategic reasoning might suggest that individual missionaries keep within the limits of ethnic or cultural groups. If God transcends humanly constructed boundaries, each individual missionary has to do the same. The only limitation that is allowed is to concentrate on the people around where the missionary finds him- or herself. But even in this place, the message is for “everyone:” This African speaker clearly does not understand nations as ethnically or culturally monolithic units. Some speakers reflected the fact that they had moved to Germany in the light of their missionary calling: I believe my mission is, now here, for the German people, as I have already said. If my message were for Africa, I could have stayed in Africa! But God has told me: ‘This is for the Germans, and also for the other people who live here.’ The mission is to show them all the way to Christ.

Having become expatriated, this interviewee defines his call in terms of the people he encounters: Living in Germany, he is called to both Germans and “the other people who live here.” Again, the missionary calling is bounded not by ethnic or cultural considerations, but simply by location. The question of how to communicate the Gospel in inculturated ways to different groups is simply not considered. We have said in chapter 4 that pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors define themselves as expatriates even if they never use this particular term. As they have transcended their cultural and ethnic boundaries, so has their calling. These migrant pastors see themselves as playing their part in a worldwide commission and movement. All statements above stress the all-encompassing scope of the missionary calling. Pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors think big when it comes to their task and role. Even if they have a church that consists of only a few members, they still know themselves called to ‘everybody’. When it comes to the understanding of the call, thinking small is a sign of unbelief. The speakers quoted so far all came from Africa. One of the Asian interviewees, though, had a somewhat divergent viewpoint: Our motto is ‘Our mission is people,’ and I know exactly that God is speaking to my heart, I have an impression that my work is in Germany. And I asked the Lord: ‘Why in Germany?’ And he: ‘You know the

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language, the culture, you have lived here fore years, you know the Germans, their mentality,’ and okay, I know exactly that my area is in Germany, not only to start a church, but to win the people.

Again, transcending ethnic limitations in missionary work is based on a direct divine order. But unlike the other interviewees, this Indonesian speaker reflects that his knowledge of German language and culture might be an asset in his evangelistic efforts. Several respondents, all of whom are pastoring relatively large churches, share the understanding of an unlimited missionary call, but find, pragmatically, that it is easiest to start a church with people of a background that is similar to their own. In our church, we say we are international, so we embrace all kinds of people, from different race, from different color, from different social and economic status into our church. And well—I have an emphasis. [. . .] The emphasis is—maybe because of my own personal experience when I first came to study and I had this shock—I was thinking it would be good also to target there some of these international students who are studying here, [. . .] migrants, people who have come from various countries, and who are working here in various fields. God really wants me to reach out to souls. And [. . .] when we came over here, my vision first of all was to reach out to the international community or people with diverse backgrounds, not the Akan community. [. . .] So I saw that Jesus used this principle, from Jerusalem—if Jerusalem would be your own type of people, then from there you reach out, maybe to another cultural set-up, then at least you are trying to make sure that you bring in more people of different cultural backgrounds, so that at least in your set-up, you reach out to as many people as you can. The primary is our people [. . .] after reaching them, it extends, it increases, it gives me opportunity—now I have hands, I have tools to reach the other people, as Jesus said. He sent his disciples first to the house of Israel, then it goes on.

All three interviewees aim at reconciling a worldwide call to evangelism with their own individual, narrower scope. The first explains that he finds relating to migrants easier because he is a migrant himself. It should be noted, though, that while such a church of migrants could be understood as a homogeneous people unit,23 it is not one defined by cultural roots, but rather by migratory routes. The second and third speaker explain their limited outreach with a Biblical principle: As 23 German mainline Protestants tend to assume that all migrant churches are such homogeneous, ‘ethnic’ units.

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Acts 1:8 shows, the missionary process moves from the inside out: You start with your own people, but then you have to go beyond. Clearly, none of the speakers believes that building a mono-ethnic church could be a possible evangelistic strategy! By defining their limited outreach as the first step in a longer process, this limitation is constructed as temporary. They are preaching to migrants in Germany now, but their congregation members will reach out beyond their own ethnic groups. Several interviewees talked very concretely about the strategies they were employing to achieve this goal: Sometimes, when you have a vision, you also spell it out over a long period of time. [. . .] You have to give yourself time, work within a time frame. Now, we’re also having little children. [. . .] And I can say that they speak better German than English, they speak better German than our mother tongue. [. . .] So at least one needs to plan, that okay, if we are able to work on them, having both, let’s say the African culture, that’s what they have at home, and then the European culture, that’s what we have in the society, they can be a good blend. And if they carry the zeal that we are having now, they will be able to infiltrate—let me use that word—into the German set-up and also make impact. I.A: Now our plan is to equip our children in Christ, and because of them, maybe we can work here in Germany. S.G. [. . .] We’re equipping the children. The PIWC,24 most of the time, we take the youth, we pick the youth there, because there, when the Germans come, or then they can talk to them and explain more to them. So it’s something that, first of all, when we came here, the evangelism took our people first, and now we are taking it to the Germans through our children.

Clearly, the speakers, despite the fact that their churches are now almost entirely African, see their role as ‘making an impact’ within German society. Their calling remains greater than their current church reality and therefore forces them to make plans and take concrete steps for a changed future. They assign the role that the first-generation immigrants cannot play to the second generation. To sum up: The interviewees do not share the assumption that they should only pastor and evangelize their own people, but rather, they perceive their calling as universal. The question of how the Gospel relates to a certain culture is, at best, a pragmatic one, and not theologically loaded. The universality of the missionary call has to be lived 24 “Pentecost International Worship Centre,” international ministries of the Church of Pentecost.

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out in each individual missionary career, and in each missionary congregation. The boundaries of the missionary calling are not cultural, but simply spatial. One’s calling is to all people around oneself. 5.3.2. Describing one’s message All interviewees were asked the same question: “What is your missionary message?” After hearing numerous sermons and evangelistic speeches over the years, I expected that the answers would show a strong emphasis on material and physical blessings as the fruit of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Interestingly, though, many statements were rather phrased within the classical evangelical language of sin, salvation, and the need for a personal relationship with God, which, of course, was also the missionary paradigm of the early Pentecostals,25 with the respondents taking recourse to rather abstract, formulaic theological terms. It can be argued that such statements serve more to establish the theological correctness of the speakers than to actually inform the listener about their core beliefs. Walter Hollenweger points out that in pentecostal soteriology, one has to distinguish between articulated and lived soteriology, as these two are not identical.26 Salvation could be understood both physically and spiritually, though Pentecostal statements of faith usually concentrated on the spiritual aspect. It is likely that this is also true, to some degree, for the interview situation, while a much broader understanding of salvation would be preached in revival sermons. Keeping these caveats in mind, we will now turn to the individual statements. I always have four important points. So first, the love of God, that God is a loving God and has done everything with love. Second: But what really has separated us from God? That is sin. That’s my second point. The third point is that despite our sin, God has built a bridge so that we can come back to him. This is Jesus Christ on the cross. And fourthly, and that is true for everybody, you need to decide.

25 See Donald Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, Peabody (MA): Hendrickson Publishers 1987, and Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality. A Passion for the Kingdom, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 3rd edition 2001. 26 “In der pfingstlichen Soteriologie muß man unterscheiden zwischen der artikulierten und der gelebten Soteriologie, denn die beiden sind nicht identisch.” Walter J. Hollenweger, Charismatisch-pfingstliches Christentum. Herkunft, Situation, Ökumenische Chancen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997, p. 276.

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This speaker, whose church is affiliated with the Baptist Federation in Germany, gives a truly ‘canned’ answer: He basically recounts the “Four Spiritual Laws,” a summary of an evangelical, evangelistic message which was popularized worldwide by Campus Crusade for Christ.27 Several other interviewees also gave similar statements based on evangelical doctrines: The general salvation message, it’s [. . .] Jesus Christ came to die for all of us [. . .] that man has hope through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That when one believes in Christ, he has a new live in Christ.

Such statements were phrased in such a general way that any Protestant, evangelical, pentecostal or charismatic would have to agree. They serve to establish the fact that the interviewees stand firmly on the ground of ‘orthodox’ Protestant theology. This also becomes obvious in a further formulaic answer: We only can say to the people: ‘Jesus is the only—what? The only way. Jesus is the only truth, and the only life.’ And must also say to people: ‘Jesus lives!’ All people. This is our message, which we have learned from Martin Luther.

By connecting his message back to the great Reformer, the speaker puts himself squarely within Protestant tradition, even though the phrase “Jesus is the only way” is rather of newer, evangelical provenance than going back to Luther. Several speakers connected their message to the second coming of Christ: Primarily, we talk about the return of Jesus. But if we preach the return of Jesus, we primarily preach the love of God. Because the whole Bible, for me, is a summary of the love of God.

It is remarkable that the strong emphasis on the second coming, in this statement, is paired with an accent on God’s love rather than on God’s judgment. This is different in the case of two further respondents who take the final judgment as the starting point of their missionary message: What would I tell them? [. . .] One thing is certain: One day you are going to make the final decision. That one, you cannot run away from it. [. . .] I will tell them: Every night that you sleep, and wake up in the morning, you are one day closer to your death. [. . .] Today, you

27

See www.campuscrusade.com/four_laws_online.htm, accessed 7 December 2006.

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want to live, you want to enjoy yourself, drink beer whenever you want to drink beer, have sex whenever you want to have sex, go on vacation whenever you want to. Whenever somebody calls you ‘hey, remember your creator!’ you will return to him to get very angry. But whether you get angry or whether you don’t get angry, it’s there [. . .] Whether you like hell or not, whether you like death or not, whether you believe or not, one day you will make a decision. I reach people with a simple, plain message: ‘What happens after death? Do you know that?’ They say: ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Then I say: ‘But it does matter. After death comes the judgment, are you ready? Have you gotten to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior in your life? If you don’t know him, he is there, he wants to have you!’ [. . .] My explanation for people: After death judgment. People live, those who believe, will go to heaven, those who have not heard the message, the good news, and those who don’t believe will be damned.

While no longer popular today in Germany, this message can be traced back to classical revival theology and preaching. After all, the highest motivation for evangelism is to save souls, save people from eternal condemnation. Interestingly, the two women were the only interviewees who expressed their missionary message solely within a ‘material’ paradigm, stressing that Jesus Christ provides solutions for concrete problems in every-day life. The message I preach is just summarized in Luke 4:16 [sic] [. . .]: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ I think that is the call of the Lord, yeah, that is the call. I preach the good news to the poor, you know, and then, you know, I believe in healing, I believe in setting the captives free, I believe in people recovering their sight, and then I believe that God can set at liberty those who are oppressed, those, the brokenhearted, you know, we are also preaching the acceptable year, the coming of the Lord. I think that is the thing in the Bible. You can trust Jesus Christ in every area of your life! That is one thing I used to say almost every day. Luke 1:38, there is nothing impossible with the Lord, because all of them, I can say 90 %, have no solution [. . .]. ‘I spent 10 years in this kind of life.’—‘I married three, four times, had five children, each one from each father.’—‘I used drug all my life; I have no chance to come out! I have no chance. I have no power to come out.’ Then I say to them: ‘For God, there is nothing impossible. Only, you need to give that chance to him. Trust him, only one time, you see your life is going to change.’

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Both women describe salvation as holistic and phrase their statements in a problem-solution framework. Jesus Christ is preached as an answer to existential, physical concerns: He heals from illness, he frees from drug addiction, and he enriches human lives. The underlying paradigm here is not a paradigm of sin and salvation, but a paradigm of a life lived in fullness, based, among others, on John 10:10.28 Several male interviewees tried to combine both paradigms in their answers: My missionary message is Jesus. Without Jesus, there is no other message. Jesus is everything. Jesus is the basis for men’s salvation, basis for men’s redemption, basis for men’s deliverance from poverty, misery, from bondage—whatever problem, Jesus is the solution. Jesus came to die for mankind, and so without Jesus, we don’t have any message. We introduce to them God as father, we are living like orphans, why? Miserable! Then we invite them to come to Father. But we cannot come to Father, because he is holy, that is why Father sent, gave his only son. Giving Jesus means he gave everything to us. Blessing, what kind of blessing? Jesus, he is the King of Kings, he is God! So receiving Jesus means—I very emphasize in our church this—we have everything! Wealth, fame, any kind of success, all are in Jesus, actually, when we see the reality. [. . .] This is why it is not only saving sin, that’s only part I think. This basic, fundamental thing, but many are included in this Jesus, what the Bible says. This why Father, heavenly Father, he loves us, he sent Jesus, not only forgive our sins, then he loves, with all heavenly blessings, us. That’s why come back to heavenly Father. Then, eternal life, of course that’s, I think, main message. Eternal life, it’s not only long life, eternal life, in this eternal life is included every blessing of God, of course. I think this is, I can . . . summarize the Gospel message with this John 3:16.

The style of the second statement is strikingly different from that of the first: While the former remains in the realm of more general dogmatics, the latter, despite some dogmatic language, displays a more personal and less ‘polished’ speaking style. The first speaker remains rather abstract, using as his keywords ‘salvation,’ ‘redemption’ and ‘deliverance.’ With this, he also pays homage to the ‘orthodox’ evangelical tradition, which would center on the forgiveness of sins, and to the pentecostal emphasis on physical manifestations of this salvation, which 28 See, e.g., Werner Kahl, Zur Bibelhermeneutik pfingstlich-charismatischer Gemeinden aus Westafrika in Deutschland, in: Michael Bergunder / Jörg Haustein (Hg.), Migration und Identität. Pfingstlich-charismatische Migrationsgemeinden in Deutschland. Beiheft der Zeitschrift für Mission 8. Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 2006.

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is expressed in healing29 and deliverance from demonic oppression, and the neo-pentecostal notion that salvation also leads to financial success. Clearly, he does not only have souls in mind, but also bodies and physical livelihoods. Both the spiritual and the physical realm are tied together in Jesus Christ. Jesus the healer and miracle worker who still works in the same way today is the same Christ who ‘died for our sins.’ The second speaker, a pastor within a classical pentecostal denomination, connects the spiritual and the material world in the concept of God the loving father who sends Jesus as the all-encompassing blessing. The speaker explicitly states that just preaching salvation from sin would not be sufficient in his mind. Eternal life does not just mean a future in a spiritual realm; it means a physical life in fullness, “wealth, fame, any kind of success” even today. These words hint at influences from the neo-pentecostal Faith Movement, though this interviewee does not base the expectation of physical blessings on certain principles, as the Faith Movement does, but rather on the personal loving relationship God has with people. ‘God’s love’ is also the keyword for several other respondents when asked about their missionary message: I don’t just present Jesus to the person like that. I start with whatever he hold in his hand or whatever he really love. We discuss about it for a while, then along the line I will let the person know there is something that love him more than that. [. . .] Because I’ve discovered that many people here, they need something that will keep them happy in their heart, but they don’t know where to find it. That’s why some people are taking alcohol, that’s why people are taking drugs, [. . .] I never condemn them, I never criticize them. If you condemn them, you don’t know what they are going through. They need joy, they need something that will keep them happy in their life, but they don’t know where to go, and nobody show them the way. [. . .] Because I discovered Jesus never preached to people by condemning them. [. . .] You can say your life, show your life to them, what you went through. For example, I was once in alcohol, I have alcoholic problem before, when I was in school. How God saved me from it. So when I see people alcoholic, I sometimes, what comes to my mind first, I say: ‘I would have been like that man if I didn’t know Christ.’ So I go to them, to let them know what happened to me before. So, and how you can come out. [. . .] I present my Jesus to people.

29 On the early pentecostal concept of healing as part of the provision in Christ’s atonement, see Allan Anderson, Pentecostal Approaches to Faith and Healing, in: Towards the Fullness of Life. International Review of Mission, Vol. XCI No. 363, October 2002.

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Unlike the interviewees who stressed the coming judgment and the possibility of hell, this pastor has an entirely positive message phrased in relational terms. With his evangelistic work centering on drug-addicts, alcoholics and other marginalized groups, he rejects any kind of moral condemnation of the people to whom he preaches. Drug addiction and alcoholism are not wrong ethical choices, but rather blind, desperate and therefore failed attempts at gaining happiness. This interviewee’s solidarity with drug addicts is based on the fact that he was once an alcoholic himself. In typically revivalist fashion, he uses his own ‘salvation’ from addiction as a paradigmatic narrative to invite others to follow his example. Because he was freed, others can ‘come out,’ too. The missionary message here is most clearly experiential and relational: It is not phrased in terms of a certain truth or information that needs to be related to people (“I tell them that God loves them”), but rather as an introduction to a person: “I present my Jesus to people,” an encounter that will fundamentally liberate. 5.3.3. Reflections on contextualization After having inquired about their missionary message in general, the interviewees were asked whether they would have to phrase their message differently depending on whether they talked to persons from their country of origin rather than to Germans. A number of respondents strongly rejected the notion that their message should be contextualized according to the situation. Several interviewees framed their rejection of any kind of contextualization of their preaching in the language of radical Protestant fundamentalism.30 I preach the same everywhere; I only preach the correct truth. I will not change one word of the Bible. Every millimeter has been written in the Bible. I will not change to any foreign word because I want to remain within the word of God.

Such language does not necessarily mean that the speaker’s theology is fundamentalist throughout—it is also possible that such recourse 30 Cf. the short discussion of pentecostalism, fundamentalism and evangelicalism in Walter J. Hollenweger, Charismatisch-pfingstliches Christentum. Herkunft, Situation, Ökumenische Chancen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997, and also Russell P. Spittler, Sind Pfingstler und Charismatiker Fundamentalisten? In: M. Bergunder (Hrsg.), Pfingstbewegung und Basisgemeinden in Lateinamerika. Studienheft Weltmission heute Nr. 39, Hamburg: Evangelisches Missionswerk in Deutschland 2000, pp. 43– 56.

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to fundamentalist doctrine was simply meant to establish him as a ‘true believer’ and proper theologian to the German interviewer. Other respondents gave entirely different reasons for refusing to adapt their message: I always tell the Germans that Jesus Christ is the same, regardless whether I come from Africa or here in Germany, he is Christ for all. [. . .] They [the Europeans] must not say: ‘We don’t need Jesus Christ’s help.’ We always need Jesus Christ’s help! He helps us, he is ever the same. He is no African, he is no European, he has created us all. When I go out for evangelism in the street, I don’t say: Okay, this is a black man coming, I’m going to talk to him in this way . . . no! There is no difference in my eyes. I see all of them the same, and I use the same words for them, yeah.

Here, the argument against contextualization is not fundamentalist, but rather ‘political’ or relational. Any kind of tailoring of the message according to the situation would amount to racism or apartheid, and would make the Gospel message less than global. The Christian message is not an abstract truth, but a person: As Christ is neither African nor European, people must not be distinguished according to skin color or culture. Everyone is the same in God’s eyes, and everyone needs a relationship to him. The majority of the respondents, though, answered the question about contextualization by insisting that the message remained the same while methods of evangelism could be adapted, thereby following what could be termed a ‘pragmatic fundamentalist’ approach: Everyone needs to hear the Gospel and the truth. If you are confident that you are preaching the truth, there is no need to mix up the message. But what you can do: In order to reach one, you may also try to preach it with . . . at the back of your mind, the culture of the person you are preaching to. When it comes to the general salvation message, it’s the same, Jesus Christ came to die for all of us, that one, a German needs to understand it in the same way. But then when it comes to certain issues, you need to approach differently. [. . .] So like, when I’m going to [. . .] church to preach, I take out some of the emotional aspects that I would have done in our own local church! Because I know that at that place, I am talking to their minds, and their minds will work on it, and then it will affect their lives.

The fundamentalist approach, which is based upon an understanding of the Christian message as a set of dogmatically correct statements, is clearly discernible in these statements: The “general salvation message”

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is said to remain unchanged regardless of the context. But their experience shows them that one has to take different cultures into account, and as a result the respondents are willing to do this. The image they have in mind, though, is that of an unchanged message core, which is then clothed into different methods or adaptations. Other respondents, while claiming that only their accidental methods changed, but not their essential message, actually do not follow a fundamentalist approach. This can be shown by a closer analysis of their statements. Perhaps one always has to learn to confront one’s environment, so to say, that’s how it was with Jesus. One can see, he was the one who could deal well with his environment. But I think first of all I have to say, there is only one Bible, in Africa, in Europe, in America, only one Bible, and when we have to speak about the love of God, there is only one message. God is the same God in Congo, in Germany, in America, but naturally, one also has to know what kind of problems people have.

This statement, first of all, bases the unity of the message not on an abstract truth, but on a personal God who is the same vis-à-vis different cultures, even though he knows how to deal with each one differently. Secondly, it stresses the fact that in global Christianity, there is one book, the Bible, which is the basic document for all. For this speaker, the message is all about relationship, the love of God. The relationship aspect was also important to another speaker: The message is always the same, regardless to which person [. . .] It’s the message of love. [. . .] Probably, with Germans, I have to build a relationship first, but with Indonesians, we start with food, that’s the idea, to eat together [. . .] I think it is the most important thing that we show this love to other people which we have already experienced ourselves.

The language here points to an experientialist rather than a fundamentalist approach. Evangelism is not about sharing certain dogmatic statements which need to be adhered to, but rather about an experience to be shared in culturally appropriate ways. The third respondent argued similarly: The message of Christ is only one. I may be going to China, I will be preaching about the salvation, there is nothing impossible to Christ. If I go to North Korea, I may be preaching the same message. I don’t believe I’m going to change. It’s the same Bible! The style, I can change, but in Prinzip [sic], I don’t believe I’m going to change.

Salvation, for this speaker, is not an abstract term: It becomes concrete in the statement that “there is nothing impossible to Christ.” Salvation

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means a relationship, tangible experiences, signs and miracles. This is a dynamic, experiential understanding of salvation that has nothing to do with a fundamentalist, legalistic concept. Similarly, by underlining that the Bible is the same document for all believers, this speaker does not imply that there is one abstract ‘Biblical truth’ to which all believers must adhere. Some respondents reflected pragmatically about ways of contextualizing a message which they claimed was unchanged throughout: The approach is different. [. . .] If I want to do a strong campaign of evangelization [. . .] get on a Gospel Concert, make a program: Gospel Concert, everybody is going to come! European, Western, German, they’re going to come to a concert, and that’s an open door. The place is packed! [. . .] For Africans, you just come and say ‘This is a Gospel Crusade, there will be prayer and deliverance’—they will come in their numbers, the place is packed, you see the response [. . .] So there’s a difference. But the message will be the same. The message will be the same! Jesus is Lord, Jesus will save you, and . . . yeah, the message will be the same. Basically, the message is the same, whether Germans or Ghanaians or Americans, the message is the same. But [. . .] there are times you need to change the method. In Ghana, even because of problems, because of poverty, when you tell people that Jesus is the solution to your problems, they will come. When they see some miracles, they will come. But when you go to some place, miracles only won’t bring the people. [. . .] There are some places, like, maybe, Germany, when you want to attract the people, you need to develop maybe your music ministry, because people are attracted by music. [. . .] You have to study the situation and to allow the Holy Spirit to teach you what to use.

Both (African) interviewees believe that what attracts Africans to a meeting is not what will attract Germans: Africans need deliverance, miracles, physical and material solutions for the burning problems they are encountering. Germans, on the other hand, do not have such pressing material needs. In a wealthy, consumerist society, a church can be attractive if it has good music. Both speakers claim, though, that the message they preach is the same. The first speaker phrases his message in such an abstract way that it hides the fact that it can have totally different meanings depending on the context: “Jesus is Lord, Jesus will save you”—in the African context, salvation often means material solutions, in the German context (even though this is not stated explicitly), simply eternal life. The second interlocutor, while stating that his message remains the same, proceeds to give a

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concrete, ‘African’ message, while never disclosing what he actually preaches to Germans. Again, this is probably just lip service to the fundamentalist concept of the unchanged message. The speaker states that the situation must be studied, allowing “the Holy Spirit to teach you what to use.” Here, a dynamic element is introduced. The Holy Spirit is not an abstract truth, but rather a living, relational power. Clearly, the experiential approach is stronger than the fundamentalist structure. The statement of one of the Asian interviewees followed a very similar pattern. After having said that the Gospel message could never be changed, he explicated: In Sri Lanka people are totally poor; they don’t know what’s going to happen the next day. But in Germany there is security, they have everything, they just want to think about eternity. In Sri Lanka you have to think of the next day. That’s the difference. Therefore, in Sri Lanka we preach about the next day, and in Germany we preach about eternity. That’s the difference. CWO: So you do make a certain difference? Yes, but both are eternity, there the next day and here the next life.

Even though the speaker admits that his message may have different emphases according to the situation, he insists that it is always the same message. Even if he preaches about the solution of material problems, he does not deviate from his message about eternal life. Eternal life encompasses both this realm and the next. It is this statement that tells us that the speaker, despite his claims to a fundamentalist approach, does not follow it. While fundamentalists would claim discontinuity between the earthly and the heavenly realm, this life and the next, this speaker sees no division between the two. The solution of physical problems is already part of eternal life. Eternal life already manifests itself on earth. Generally, the interviewees’ analysis of the differences between a German and an African or Asian context tended to be rather superficial and simplistic. But it must be noted that these differences were not formulated within a cultural paradigm (as German Protestants might tend to do), but in an economic one! What distinguishes the German context from the home country context of the speakers is that Germans have their material needs met, while Africans and Asians do not. “Salvation” has a materialist ring for the migrants because they are poor, struggling and marginalized. Having come to Germany, they have realized that such a ‘materialist’ salvation message does not appeal to

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Germans. Who needs Jesus to take care of their food if there is always enough to eat? As simplistic as some statements sound, the insight is an important one and all too easily overlooked within a ‘culturalized’ outlook. The fact that cooperation between German and migrant churches is so difficult in practice probably has far less to do with different cultures than with their different economic and social situation. Only two interviewees stated more concretely how they would phrase their evangelistic message for Germans. They centered on observations of materialism and social isolation: Here you see the people, [. . .] you see this poverty in relationships, that loneliness [. . .] People really don’t have this kind of, can I say, inner rest and peace within themselves. Why? Because they keep [. . .] having things like cars and stuff, but there is not this inner rest. It’s like everybody is rushing for work, materialism is at hand [. . .] And therefore, the approach should be [. . .]: Life fulfillment does not come by having things, but life fulfillment comes by having Christ. So here is a different approach. People would prefer to be, eh, related to, before won over to Christ. Society has everything in terms of material things, but deep down, because we are social beings by nature, I can see that sometimes, people don’t feel as happy as we imagine they feel, even feel lonely. They need someone. And people also—after you’ve gotten everything, sometimes you ask after the meaning of life. [. . .] So you have to show the person that, in spite of all difficulties that maybe I face as a foreigner, [. . .] I feel happy with my life, because there is somebody in me who gives me this inner peace, that you can’t use money to buy. There is somebody in me, who makes me feel, you know, so special, even if people want me to feel low, because maybe I’m a foreigner; I’m of a different color. But that person in me makes me feel special, and then it will make you feel even more special, because you are in your own country, in your own land, it will make you have more peace.

Both speakers claim that their message is about Jesus who meets people’s needs. In Germany, they diagnose not material, but rather relational wants. People are rich, but they are not fulfilled. This is where the Gospel meets them. They may be lonely, but they can get to know Jesus Christ, and find a relationship with other Christians. The unity of the message is a personal and a functional one. In every context, it is the same Christ who meets people’s needs, and it is the same God who wants to give all humans life in fullness. Summing up: Despite paying lip service to a fundamentalist approach of an essential evangelistic message which consists of a dogmatic

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truth that demands adherence, the pentecostal / charismatic pastors interviewed for this study follow an evangelistic approach which stresses an affective, personal relationship with Jesus Christ who gives them what they need, whether it be material, psychological or spiritual. They can therefore be flexible with the actual message they preach and, while claiming to adhere constantly to the ‘same Gospel,’ convey very different message contents according to the situation in which they find themselves. 5.4. Imagining Germany and Europe “Migrants with a Mission” is the title of this study. As we have already seen, the interviewees see themselves, without exception, as missionaries with a divine call to work in Germany. But how do they look at this country to which they consider themselves sent? Why did they have to come here? Why are they needed? Missionaries, be it in private talks among themselves, in newsletters, articles or books, tend to describe their host country in “an abstract matrix of otherness”31—missionaries aim at transformation, and therefore their understanding of their own role and task is inevitably bound up with their imagination of their target country. They bring something good that has not been there before, or they fight something bad from their understanding of what is good. Missionary talk is a form of symbolic mapping. The country in which the missionaries find themselves is located within the divine economy of salvation, and its culture and history are interpreted through a spiritual lens. In classical missionary narratives, such symbolic mapping usually took the form of contrasting the ‘dark heathen’ realities with the ‘light’ of the Christian Gospel and faith. Such patterns can still be found in the narratives of evangelical and pentecostal / charismatic missionaries from Northern America and Europe. J. Swanson shows how the American missionaries he studied, in their newsletters to their constituencies at home, often constructed “America” as standing for rationality, order, truth and purity, while “Ecuador” was described as superstitious, chaotic, unreliable and dirty.32 The imagination of the 31 Jeffrey Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995, p. 107. 32 Ibd. pp. 158 ff. A quick glance at mission magazines from, e.g., the Liebenzell

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host country is always bound up with the imagination of the home the missionary has left, and with the role that he or she ascribes to him- or herself. The ‘mission field’ is always deficient, problematic, negatively associated, so that the Gospel message the missionary brings can be projected as meeting needs, solving problems, and “bringing good into the world.”33 Since the pastors interviewed for this study have reversed the classical direction of the missionary endeavor, they need to develop new forms of symbolic mapping. Before, the “Christian North and West” brought the Gospel to the “heathen East and South.” The imagination of Europe and North America as Christian continents is still active in Africa, Asia and Latin America, therefore sharpening the need for ‘reverse’ missionaries from these continents to redraw the symbolic map. As will be shown below, a kind of ‘symbolic master map’ informs the imagining process for all interviewees, though individual concretizations can take different forms.34 5.4.1. Restoring a ruined church First of all, none of the interviewees contradicted or challenged the classical missionary master narrative. All interviewees were clearly conversant with an image of Germany as a Christian nation or Europe / North America as a Christian region. But this image was, by most interlocutors, plainly assigned to the past. . . . remind the Germans of their past, remind them that everywhere they look, they will find a church building. Remind them that their forefathers served God, and their forefathers were not stupid, and they laid the right foundation for them which led to their prosperity today. [. . .] I think the Germans need to be reminded again and again that their forefathers were not stupid. They are very clever people. That’s why they invested so much money—I think somebody should calculate, somebody should do a study how much all the church buildings in Germany is worth. Stupid people don’t spend that kind of money. Mission in Germany, or Youth with a Mission, confirms that similar views can also be found in 21st century Europe. 33 This slogan (Mission. Bringt Gutes in die Welt.) has been suggested to anchor a marketing strategy, orchestrated by the Association of Churches and Missions in Germany, to ‘better’ the image of ‘mission’ here. (Unpublished presentation made available to the author.) 34 See also Elizabeht McAlister, Globalization and the Religious Production of Space, in: Journal for the scientific study of religion, vol. 44, issue 3, 2005, pp. 249–255.

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For many interviewees, the diagnosis is clear: Germany was once, not even in the very distant past, a Christian country. This is obvious in the numerous church buildings that dot the landscape and still shape the skyline of many cities and towns. But now, these roots are lost. German, so many people don’t attend a church. So I feel sorry many times. This is my aim [. . .] the people who live in Germany, many nationalities, and also the Germans themselves, to go back to their roots. [. . .] Somehow they became empty. [. . .] I believe the church must be renewed. The church buildings really should be filled! 700 seats in the church, 500, 200 seats, but 20, 25 people—that is not enough for me!

Therefore, strictly speaking, Germany is not so much of a mission country—in the sense that the Christian faith has not been known there—but rather a country in need of revival. Preachers from Africa and Asia have to go to Germany to bring this about: My understanding of missions is someone who goes to a place where the Gospel has not been preached before. Then he tells them about Christ. [. . .] The letter that brought me here, I was posted there as a missionary pastor. Which means, some people do see Germany as a mission field, because of the need to have a revival in the land. But in actual fact, if we look at the definition, it does not qualify as a mission field, because Christ is known here. The Europeans . . . because we see that they need revival, too, yes. I once read this statistic, I don’t know whether it is still accurate, that the newborn, the born again Christians in Germany are less than 2 %. [. . .] And then, this was very sad for me, yes. And this is why we have this task; this is why we want that what we experience in Indonesia should be experienced in other countries, too, it should happen in Europe, too, because we worship the same God. And God will never forget Europe, we believe that.

The second statement contrasts an imagination of Germany as a country in need of revival with what pastors have experienced at home. It is somewhat striking to European sensibilities that the comparison between a de-Christianized Europe and a revivalist home church is made by an Indonesian rather than a Ghanaian or Nigerian. Indonesia, in the German perception, is a Muslim country with a small, oppressed Christian minority The term ‘revival’ implies that a church exists, but that it is dead, sleeping or weakened. Such images are indeed strongly present in the discussions among pentecostal / charismatic migrants. Possibly due to

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politeness towards the interviewer, they were phrased rather carefully during the interviews: The Evangelical churches should have an outreach for the Germans. I know that they are compromising [. . .] And they should also recognize the need for the Holy Spirit also, because he is doing the work now, and when we think that we don’t need the Holy Spirit, his time has passed, then the church will die.

To a non-pentecostal listener, this statement may sound comparatively mild. In pentecostal language, though, to be found “compromising” is a fairly damning verdict. The church belongs to God and has to be strictly apart from “the world”—a compromising church is indeed compromised! This speaker bases her conclusion on the fact that she does not see the German church evangelizing anymore, the reason for which she perceives as a loss of trust in the Holy Spirit. While not yet calling the German church dead, she clearly sees it as dying. Another African speaker concretized the weakness of the German churches in a different way: The Africans are able to travail in areas in which the German church is yet to get back into—they were there before, but because of—I don’t know what happened, I cannot be a judge of that, but the simple truth is that the European church and the European believers need to come back to the place of prayer and fasting which people like Smith Wigglesworth and John Wesley and all the other revivalists used very effectively for revival. The Africans are now doing that. The migrant churches are now doing that.

The European churches which were once strong in fasting and prayer have lost this ability and therefore need help from the migrant churches. In sermons, the negative imagery can be much stronger than it was in the interviews. In a short exhortation at a meeting of the Cologne International Convent (a group of migrant pastors and church leaders), a Korean pastor reflected on Nehemiah 1, saying: “The broken Jerusalem that Nehemiah weeps, prays and fasts about is the German churches. They are in ruins, and there is very little hope.”35 This diagnosis was then followed by a description of what the role of migrant churches had to be: “The migrant churches are Nehemiah.

35 Meeting of the Cologne International Convent, 12 September 2005. Exhortation held in German, quotations translated from field notes.

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Like Nehemiah did, we need to take responsibility. Like Nehemiah, we need to fast and pray. Then God will show us how we can rebuild the churches in Germany.” During an All-Night Prayer organized by the Council of Pentecostal Ministers, a Ghanaian pastor preached a short sermon about the role of Africans in Germany. He told the large, overwhelmingly black audience that the foreigners’ office might try to push them out of this country but that God had given them this very land. He had sent them to Germany because he wanted to do something here through them. Addressing the few Germans in the audience in particular, he compared the German church with Samson. Before (“during the time of Martin Luther”) it had been strong, but today it had been blinded, and therefore its strength could no longer be seen. Like Samson needed a small boy to lead him, the German church now needed the African churches to lead them. The little boy brought Samson to the pillar “and he could pull down the stronghold.” If the German churches let themselves be led to the stronghold by the African churches, they could achieve the same.36 The imagery of the role of the missionaries is strikingly different in these two statements. Where the Korean pastor likens the migrants to Nehemiah, an important leader of the Jewish restoration, the African speaker is content with the role of a small boy leading the blind giant. We will come back to this observation later. All these statements allow us to perceive clearly the ‘spiritual master map’ of the pentecostal / charismatic migrant discourse: Missionaries (or revivalists) need to come to Germany because this country is no longer a Christian one. Where the Christian church37 once shaped society, it has now become a small minority, weakened by unbelief, broken and ruined. The image is a restorationist one: Rather than bringing a new message to people who have never heard it before, the mission of the migrants is to restore the German church to its glorious past, thereby re-making Germany into the Christian country it once was. My mission here is to bring back into this country that kind of faith, the faith in God [. . .] that people come back to faith, and that’s the main issue: Bringing people back to faith. [. . .] It’s not an old-time religion. 36 CPM Allnight Prayer, Düsseldorf, January 16–17, 2004. Sermon preached in English, summary and quotes from field notes. 37 It should be noted that the Catholic church is plainly ignored in this imagery!

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[. . .] That is my personal goal, my personal heart [. . .] Because many people are losing their faith in God, and that is what our mission is here.

5.4.2. “Bringing back” the Gospel A number of interviewees added a further aspect to the restorationist imagery: They spoke about “giving something back” to the country or continent which had first evangelized them. I’m just looking at the country Germany, or at Europe for that matter, people that some time, maybe hundred years ago [. . .] sent out missionaries to Africa, came and preached about this Biblical faith to us [. . .] We have a mission, that Germans—the faith that they brought to us, that same faith, must really be revived over here. [. . .] They [the Germans] themselves do not attach significance to Christianity, and this is where we think there is a little deviation. And this is also where we think that we can also do something. I believe what God really gave me as task, is first of all: [. . .] We need to give something back, because we live in Germany. [. . .] And I think for us . . . we in Germany have more responsibility, because we are evangelical, Protestants, and that all started here. And we simply want to give something back . . .. What we have from our revival, back to the Germans, to the German churches. One thing I know . . . Indonesians think about Germans—yes, especially how they sent German missionaries to Indonesia—they did a very good job. But it is sad that Germany is a mission country, it’s not like it was before. Now is our time, the time of us Indonesians to missionize the Germans, as a return service now. [. . .] I believe the Germans did us good, especially the missionaries, and we want to give something back.

The positive image pentecostal / charismatic pastors have of the missionary endeavors of the German churches is conspicuous in all these statements. The mission efforts of the 18th and 19th century are seen as a blessing without any shortcomings, something for which one simply needs to be thankful. Within the pentecostal / charismatic migrant scene, no critical words can be heard about the relationship between mission and colonialism. Similarly, pentecostal / charismatic migrants do not seem to share the widely held perception that the colonial mission had a highly negative impact on the indigenous cultures it met. The result of this gratitude towards the mission of the 19th and 20th century is that the migrants now want to “give something back.” As their nations were Christianized, they now want to re-Christianize Germany.

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Such positive assessments of mission history coupled with a sense of reverse mission as ‘giving back’ are also common in sermons, particularly when new congregations or church buildings are inaugurated. For example, at the launch of the International Full Gospel Fellowship— Gereja Injili Seutu Internasional (IFGF-GISI) in Düsseldorf, the guest preacher, an Indonesian based in Amsterdam, said the following: God wants IFGF-GISI to plant a church in Düsseldorf. [. . .] This church shall win many people, so that the room will be too small very soon. The missionaries brought the Gospel to Indonesia. Now the Indonesians bring it back. They were blessed, now they shall bless. The Indonesians are smaller in stature than the Germans. [Laughter] But now they are coming with a mission. Their aim is to bring the Gospel. [. . .] If we bring Düsseldorf to the Lord, if we pray more and start house fellowships, it will become a safe city.38

There is, of course, a certain subversive element in interpreting mission history in this way: If the white missionaries who brought the Gospel are described as a blessing to the nations they colonized, it is clear that the missionaries coming from the South and East to the North and West now cannot be anything else but a blessing, too. Furthermore, a certain sense of expected reciprocity can be ascertained. The unspoken implication is: If we do not criticize your missionaries, you cannot criticize ours. And as we received your missionaries and their message, we expect you to accept our missionaries and their message, too. After all, we are bringing you nothing else than the message your people brought to us before. At the dedication of the ‘House of Solution’, the factory church of Lighthouse Christian Fellowship, the guest preacher, a Ghanaian based in London, made a similar point: Our community and our governments don’t take churches like this one seriously. [. . .] There is a mistrust of ethnic minority churches. We are only perceived as people who have needs. [. . .] People, take notice: We have something to offer to this nation. We have solutions! [. . .] This nation has invested in us. They colonized us. They came with the Bible, they told us about Jesus. We must be thankful for this. Otherwise, we would still be worshipping stones and wood! Today, we are bringing Jesus back! [Loud shouts of approval, laughter, applause] But we bring him back in a way you [Germans] don’t know him. It is payback time. It is time for you to receive your wages. We are confident that we can do it. Allow us to 38 30 January 2005. Sermon in Indonesian with German translation. Quote translated from field notes.

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be all that we can be, so that you can be all that you can be. [. . .] With this church dedication we announce that we have something to give. We give something others can’t give. We deal with things that professionals can’t solve. The solution for depression is not tablets. It is giving people a value in themselves. That is what we dedicate this house for. We measure the value of this building not in currency, but in changed lives.39

This statement, made at a church function with numerous Germans (local politicians as well as church representatives) in attendance, was provocative in several ways. First of all, the speaker plainly refused to describe migration as a problem and migrants as people who need help and assistance, thereby challenging the dominant discourse on migration in Germany. Rather, migrant churches had plenty to offer to Germany. “We have solutions!”40 The sense of mission is clearly evident: Germans may not understand this yet, but the migrant churches are here to help. Secondly, mission history is described in ways explicitly contradicting its dominant understanding in Germany. Rather than criticizing colonial mission efforts, the speaker insists that Germany ‘invested’ in Africa by colonizing and evangelizing it. Without this investment, Africa would still be ‘backward.’ Obviously, he attributes Christianization with progress and modernity, which are valued in an entirely positive way. The fact that Christianity replaced an ‘original’ religion (and culture) is not regretted, but rather celebrated. Here again, the speaker shows open opposition to the dominant discourse which denounces Christian mission as “culturally destructive.”41 Thirdly, we find a clear sense of reciprocity. Just as Germany sent missionaries to Africa, Africa is now sending missionaries to Germany. But as Africans respected and received the message of the Western colonizers, Germans must be willing to accept what the migrants have to offer. Such acceptance will allow migrants, but also the German 39

Sermon in English, quoted from extensive written notes. Making a similar point, a letter to migrant churches by the Executive of the Association of Migrant Christian Churches (dated 18 April 2005) says: “It is about time to let the established churches and the government bodies know that we are not a ‘problem’, but partners for problem solution.” 41 For more information on this dominant discourse, see Mission und Kolonialismus, in: Dahling-Sander, Christoph et al. (eds), Leitfaden Ökumenische Missionstheologie, Gütersloh: Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser / Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2003, pp. 79–110. Novels can also be highly instructive. A typical example from a Northern perspective is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, New York: HarperFlamingo 1998. A classic example from an African perspective which was widely discussed in Europe and North America is Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, New York, Anchor Books 1994. (The book was first published in 1958.) 40

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church, to live up to their fullest potential. Fourthly, what the Africans have to give is not within the Western paradigm. It is Jesus in an unknown way, it is a solution for something “professionals [i.e. people trained in a Western, enlightenment way] cannot solve.” Mechanized medicine (i.e. tablets for depression) will not change lives, but an encounter with Jesus who gives people value will.42 As the missionaries brought a new approach to Africa, Africans are now bringing a new approach to Europe. And as Africa developed because it received this new approach, Europe is now called to move forward by receiving what the African missionaries are bringing. 5.4.3. The German nation in the economy of salvation We have already seen that the interviewees did not simply describe themselves as bringing revival to the German churches, but rather that they envision re-christianizing the whole country, and with it the European continent, bringing it back to the place it once had in the economy of salvation. Two interviewees reflected about this role in somewhat more detail. We believe that there is something that God would do in this country. [. . .] Every country that God makes, God gives a gift to the country. [. . .] Now, Germany is gifted with administration and the gift of leadership [. . .] Look at the previous world war that was fought! Germany had a major hand in it [. . .] God has made Germany to be a country of leadership. They are very strong in administration, organization and in leadership, this is their gift. When I believe God has brought the foreigners here, God has brought different nations here [. . .] they should know that they’re not here only to look for money, they’re not here to look for, only, good careers, but if they’re Christians they’re here—they must know that they’re here on a mission. They’re here to come to encourage the Germans to wake up. When the Germans wake up, I believe all Europe; all European countries will wake up [. . .] And I believe God will revive the Germans, God will revive the German churches and God is only using the foreigners here [. . .] the foreigners who are Christians—God is using them as a reminder for the Germans, and soon the Germans will know this is our calling, they will wake up and there’ll be revival. So I urge every foreigner here to continue to pray for the Germans. Don’t condemn the Germans! Just pray for the German churches. 42 See, as a classical example, the testimony by Elke Schlich, “How Jesus healed and liberated me” (Wie Jesus mich heilte und befreite), in: Charisma 146, 4. Quartal 2008. This issue, entitled “The blessing is coming back” (Der Segen kommt zurück) centers on the mission of migrant churches in Germany and Europe.

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The concept of nationhood which informs this statement, begs closer analysis. Firstly, the speaker states that countries or nations have been created by God. National cultures are not seen as communal human expressions, but rather as divinely ordained ‘characters.’ As God fashioned each nation, he gave it particular gifts which then define that country’s task in the economy of salvation. A country or nation, here, is metaphorically understood as a person, a ‘natural’ unit, which like a person can have a specific calling. (Further on, the speaker named Israel and its gift and task of evangelism as another example.) Germany’s gift and task is identified as leadership. With this statement, the speaker clearly locates himself within an international, neo-pentecostal discourse on nationhood.43 In terms of the economy of salvation, revival in Europe will only happen if Germany takes up its divinely ordained leadership role in it. In recent history, Germany abused this divine gift by starting a world war. Germany needs to be revived, needs to be brought back to the right understanding of its nationhood and calling. The speaker uses the idea of revival both in relation to the German churches and to Germany as a country—the aim of revival is to overcome any distinction between country and church, with the whole country becoming Christianized and therefore turning into the church. In this divine economy, the migrant missionaries have their role and place. They have been sent to Europe “to encourage the Germans to wake up” so that Germany will fulfill the role God has assigned to it. Therefore, it would not be right to condemn the Germans, or to seek to replace them in this salvation economy. We note that in this symbolic mapping process, the traditional colonial imagery prevails to a large extent. Migrants, in particular Africans, have a subservient, assisting role, while the Whites are the leaders and movers. The migrants’ role is nothing more than to serve as a catalyst; revival in Europe will have to be led by the Germans. What kind of influences can we detect here? In pentecostal mission history, the idea that ‘nationals evangelize nationals’ has played a large role right from the beginning. Consequently, ‘foreign’ missionaries used 43 See also Catherine Wanner, Communities of the Converted. Ukrainians and Global Evangelism, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2007. Wanner reports that at the African-led “Embassy of God” church in Kiev, national flags of many countries are displayed during worship services. During praise time, flags are taken down to dance with, and “after the Ukrainian flag, usually the American, Israeli or German flag comes next,” indicating that these countries are seen as particularly important in the economy of salvation. P. 217.

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to turn over newly founded churches to indigenous leadership quickly, and to send out indigenous evangelists shortly after they had been baptized, with a minimum of training. Such thinking could have influenced this statement.44 Furthermore, it could be asked whether here, the speaker was playing to a German audience. Sensitive to the fact that many Germans feel threatened by the missionary claims particularly of African migrants, such a statement could be primarily intended to allay fears of being overrun by a foreign form of Christianity. One respondent explicitly mentioned such fears: We are here for a purpose, to awaken the church in Germany. We have a mission, and God sent us here. So that we are not here as a threat, but we are here to help the church in Germany. Amen!

But it could also be that migrants, and specifically African migrants, bring with them a mindset still influenced by colonialist notions. The fact that the speaker defines the roles of both migrants and indigenous as divinely ordained precludes any interpretation of the inequalities as historically developed and therefore changeable. We will test these assumptions by looking at the statement of another African speaker. He, like other respondents, started out with the notion that Germany was once a Christian country but now in need of revival. His own role, therefore, was not that of a missionary (a missionary defined as somebody who preached the Gospel where it had not been preached before), but rather that of a catalyst for revival: Maybe I’m like Ananias, whose work is just to baptize Apostle Paul, pray for him and release him into his ministry, and nothing more is heard about Ananias. Maybe God sent me here to find just one German, who would be filled with the Holy Ghost, and he will go and reach the Germans. Because the work here, I believe in my own understanding—I may be wrong—needs a German, needs someone who understands the culture, understands the do’s and the don’t’s of the Germans, is able to reach them and is able to minister to them. I keep thinking that maybe I’m looking for that man, and that when I find him, or her, as the case may be, I will have fulfilled my assignment.

These words, at a first glance, seem to show the influences of an understanding of mission in which the foreign missionary or revivalist comes

44 See also Allan Anderson, Spreading Fires. The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism, London: SCM Press 2007.

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in and passes his message on to a local person who will then carry on the work. At the same time, certain ambivalences should not be overlooked. On the one hand, the speaker sees himself as the possible catalyst for a great revival in Germany, as the one who ‘releases’ a new German Christian leader into his ministry. On the other hand, he defines this as a background role: Like Ananias who ‘released’ Paul, the African pastor would fade out of the picture as the great German revivalist does his (or her!) work. In this statement, we can detect both a certain notion of spiritual superiority—after all, it is the African who passes on the Holy Spirit!—and a noticeable feeling of cultural inferiority. This speaker then explained why revival in Germany was so important to the economy of salvation: And then the Germans can be mobilized to reach out, because I still believe, looking back historically, it was Europe that God used to reach the world with the Gospel, including the United States of America. [. . .] Right now Europe is sleeping, and only God can wake Europe. And one of the things that produce sleep is tiredness. When a man has worked very, very hard, he is going to sleep, and there is nothing you can do about it. [. . .] Europe worked very hard for God, the people worked very hard, and right now Europe is in the state of sleep, because it has done such hard work. But Europe has to wake up. If Europe wakes up today, I can assure you, within three years, the Lord will come back. The whole world will be reached if Europe wakes up today. And that’s why I believe that Satan is doing everything possible to make Europeans get distracted from the Gospel. They don’t go to church, they live for pleasure, they do any other thing. If Europe wakes up today, then it’s a foregone conclusion: They have the organization, they have the discipline, they have the know-how, they will move. They are the ones God used before. And once God used someone before, God wants to use that person again. . . . And that’s what we prayed for last Saturday. ‘Lord, wake Europe, revive Europe.’ Once Europe is revived, then everything is finished.

This speaker, too, has an image of Europe as organized, disciplined, and knowledgeable. He does not describe these qualities as divine gifts, but simply states that they are there. Because of them, God could use Europe once to bring the Gospel to the world, and if Europe allows itself to be used again in this way, the task of world evangelism could be finished within a very short time, resulting in the second coming of Christ. What we have here is an explicit understanding of Europe— and not America!—as a ‘savior nation.’ But Europe is asleep. The speaker gives a somewhat contradictory interpretation of this situation: Europe’s sleep is understood both as a consequence of its good work in

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the past and as caused by Satanic intervention. Here now the migrant churches find their role: They have to “wake up” Europe. But this is all they have to do: I don’t believe that God is using the Africans to do so that the Africans will do the work. I think God is using the Africans to pray, to wake up the European church.

Again, the symbolic mapping is informed by colonialist thinking: Europe (though, conspicuously, not the USA!) is God’s chosen instrument, the natural leader, the region that will complete the task of world evangelism. It is not possible for Africa to achieve this goal, because God will not replace the sleeping Europeans with African workers. Africans can only assist by waking up Europe. This immediately begs the question why God would not turn to the Africans when the Europeans show themselves unwilling to do what he wants them to do. The speaker had a clear answer to this: Our forefathers in Africa made a mistake through ignorance, they turned to demons and to devils; they did not serve God. And that’s why we a suffering a lot today, that’s why there is so much darkness and so much wickedness in Africa. The Europeans, the Americans, their forefathers handed them over to God, who promised that he would keep covenant for a thousand generations to those that love him, and do his will.

While this speaker does not go back to the old understanding of the ‘Hamitic curse’ which assigns black-skinned people to unending servitude,45 he has a developed theory of African inferiority: Africans rejected God and chose to serve demons, while Europeans and Americans made a covenant with God. Even though both decisions are now long in the past, the consequences are still present: Africans suffer, and Europeans prosper. Europe will be able to evangelize the world, but Africa will not be used by God in this way, even if Europe fails its divine calling. The old covenants override present activities. The idea that Africa’s problems, from wars to corruption to underdevelopment, are caused by demonic forces which found fertile ground in Africa through witchcraft and traditional religions and culture is widely held in pentecostal / charismatic circles at least in Ghana and Nigeria.46 It is passed 45 A West African charismatic refutation of this myth can be found in Mensa Otabil, Beyond the rivers of Ethiopia. A biblical revelation on God’s purpose for the Black Race, Accra (Ghana): Altar International, 1992. 46 The Dutch anthropologist Birgit Meyer has shown in several studies how such worldviews developed. See, in particular, Translating the Devil. Religion and Moder-

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on in prayer camps where worshippers break “generational curses”, rejecting and nullifying ‘covenants with the devil’ which their parents, grandparents, or even more remote forebears might have entered into, in sermons which reject a revival of traditional culture,47 and in many booklets on problem-solving prayer.48 5.4.4. Territorial spirits One African interviewee gave the following ‘spiritual diagnosis’ of the German situation: The spirits, that control nations, they are there. [. . .] I believe there are two problems I see very physically that one has to address. The first one is [. . .] hopelessness. [. . .] I see hope in the form of the confidence that one should have to challenge things and to move on. What do I mean by ‘move on’? I mean to create, to have the social, the family strengthened. I believe two things that are related. I believe the lack of hope comes from the family situation, that many relationships are affected by some principality that makes relationship issues very . . . it affects generations. I will just give an example: When I was discussing this with someone, he said maybe this is because of the world war, the women took over most of the work and the men—but I said ‘you see, maybe that’s where this spirit came in, because when you look at spiritual things, you know, it’s usually an event that gives them a leeway.’ It brought hopelessness and brought families being not really strong together anymore in the sense that family, holding a family together became a very difficult thing. Relationships, you know, are not stable, so families are not stable. And then, the children are brought up with this instability, and then people don’t know it, but it’s passed on [. . .] So by having all this hopelessness— that is what I see in the eyes of people, you know, just walking in the street and I see—I mean they have everything but then—something is not complete. And I believe it’s spiritual. Because when the same people go to Spain, or go to America, or go to some other place where the dominating spirit is not that hopeless spirit, I mean people will come alive, and people become different. [. . .] So the root cause is a spiritual problem which, I believe, might have come in after the world war. The opening was there, it came in, it made people hopeless, which the war nity among the Ewe in Ghana, Trenton (NJ): Africa World Press 1999; and Charismatic Christianity and ‘Modernity’ in Ghana, Journal of African History, 46 no. 2, 2005, pp. 372–374. 47 See Birgit Meyer, “Praise the Lord”: Popular cinema and pentecostalite style in Ghana’s new public sphere, American Ethnologist, Vol. 31 No. 1 (2004), pp. 92–110. 48 “It is a fact that dark powers are responsible for most problems of the black man.” D.K. Olukoya, Violent Prayers to Disgrace Stubborn Problems, Lagos: Battle Cry Ministries 1999, p. 28.

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chapter five usually does, but then everything then was rebuilt and made okay. But the spirits had gained ownership, and they stayed, and no one is chasing them—I mean they just stay there. So, yeah, that’s how I see the spiritual climate from this perspective.

We have said above that in the West-African Pentecostal / charismatic discourse, ideas of a spiritual root cause to political and social problems abound. Such thinking is actually not limited to West Africa, but also circulates worldwide in neo-pentecostal circles. In particular, US American neo-pentecostals have popularized a concept called ‘spiritual mapping:’49 This is a somewhat technocratic approach developed within the framework of ‘spiritual warfare’ theology and is understood as a spiritual, diagnostic tool which “combines research, divine revelation, and confirmatory evidence in order to provide complete and exact data concerning the identity, strategies and methods employed by spiritual forces of darkness to influence the people and the churches in a given region.”50 Even without using the term, the speaker quoted above engages in just such a process of spiritual mapping. He tries to establish a spiritual diagnosis of the situation in his host country, so that his missionary efforts can be most effective by addressing the root cause of Germany’s problems. This root cause is interpreted to be a “dominating” or “controlling” spirit—“spirit” is here not used as a metaphor to describe a pervasive climate, but understood as a living, acting entity outside of human thinking and feeling. According to this interlocutor, such “spirits” just wait for a chance to enter a country, exploiting certain human actions to do so. In the case of Germany and the “spirit of hopelessness,” the Second World War and the reversal of gender roles it initiated might have been this opening. Now, the spirit does control the 49 This concept was first developed by John Dawson in his book “Taking Our Cities for God,” Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 1989, and later taken up by C. Peter Wagner and others. See C. Peter Wagner, Breaking strongholds in your city: how to use spiritual mapping to make your prayers more strategic, effective, and targeted, Ventura, CA.: Regal Books, 1993, and the website of the “United States Global Apostolic Prayer Network” aka “Battle Axe Brigade” which Wagner now heads as “Senior Apostle,” www.battleaxe.org/spn.html. Concept and strategy are heavily debated within pentecostal / charismatic and evangelical circles. A Google search on “spiritual mapping” on 14 December 2006 elicited 21,200 hits, with websites either praising the concept as an effective tool for evangelism, or rejecting it strongly as un-Biblical, ‘magic,’ or ‘technocratic’ in trying to ‘manage God and the devil.’ 50 Quote taken from the introduction to spiritual mapping on www.ausprayernet.org .au/spiritual_mapping.php, accessed 14 December 2006.

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country, but it is bound to its borders: The same people who are so hopeless in Germany will change once they move to another country— then they are free of this ‘territorial’ spirit. To change this situation in Germany, spiritual warfare51 is required— and this is where the migrant churches come in. Due to their history, Germans do not like the idea of warfare, but migrants, especially those from West Africa, are experienced in such an approach. They can do what the Germans are unable to, and serve as a “back-up” to get a spiritual process going: In the sense that when the atmosphere, when the spiritual climate is resolved, the Germans themselves will rise up [. . .] And then we that come from outside, we would just be in the background, a backup.

5.4.5. Summary notes: Imagining Germany and Europe We have said in the introduction to this chapter that the symbolic map of the missionary requires the mission field to be drawn in dark colors so that the mission can be projected as something positive. In the statements analyzed above, we can see how migrant missionaries engage in this mapping process. They have to deal with the fact that the old missionary map would have placed them in the dark areas, while their ‘mission field,’ Europe and America were the areas drawn in bright colors. Therefore, to justify their mission, it could be expected that the old map would be redrawn. But this does not quite happen. The old map still seems persistently dominant; it is only characterized as currently inaccurate. The ideal German church-state is projected into the past. Consequently, the present church in Germany is perceived to be asleep, blind or in ruins. Empty churches in particular are markers that allow such conclusions. Similar mapping processes can be observed among pentecostal / charismatic migrants all over Europe and the Northern America. In France, migrant churches compare the situation of the indigenous church with the valley of bones envisioned in Ezechiel 37, and have reacted by starting a missionary program under the label “The vision of the valley.”52 In the Netherlands, African migrant pastors have formed An analysis of the concept of spiritual warfare will follow in chapter 5.5. “De nombreux africains relisent la situation de nos pays à travers la vision des ossements d’Ézéchiel: ‘La puissance du Seigneur me saisit; son Esprit m’emmena et me déposa dans une large vallée dont le sol était couvert d’ossements. Le Seigneur 51 52

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GATE, “Gospel from Africa to Europe” to re-evangelize a continent which they see in need of revival.53 The missionary effort of the migrant churches therefore does not challenge the old symbolic map as such, but rather serves to restore its reality. Germany should be the leader of world evangelism; it should be a Christian country. Migrant missionaries have been divinely sent to help Germany to become what it should be. They are assistants, backups, background workers. Once Germany has been restored to its proper place in the divine economy of salvation, they can stand back. In the end, it is the ‘white’ North that remains superior, and the ‘colored’ South can return to its inferior status. But this sense of ‘colored inferiority’ was not shared by all interviewees. One of the Asian interlocutors explicitly rejected such views as a hindrance for the missionary task of the migrants. Talking about the internationalization of his originally entirely Indonesian congregation, he said what made it difficult: Our mentality. Because Indonesians, Indonesia was a colony under Holland for 350 years, and therefore, our mentality was from this background, always, yes, sitting in the back, and then, yes, and we see that the Europeans are always more, superior or whatever, and then, this inferiority complex is in us, yes. Then we are ‘Yes, I am small—what can I do here?’ This kind of mentality.

This speaker insists that a perception of Indonesian inferiority against the Europeans must be overcome if the mission of his church is to succeed. Migrants should not just sit in the back, do back-up or background work. Europeans are not superior, and, one could conclude, Europe does not have a special place in the economy of salvation! Indonesians have been called to be missionaries just as the Europeans were, and colonial history does not establish any kind of divinely ordained European dominance. me fit circuler tout autour d’eux, dans cette vallée: ils étaient très nombreux et complètement desséchés 11.’ Des étrangers vivants en Europe trouvent une ressemblance frappante entre la vision du prophète et l’état du christianisme dans notre pays. Ils considèrent que l’Europe occidentale a été transformé en désert spirituel par le processus de sécularisation et qu’elle est devenue une vallée remplie d’ossements desséchés, privés de chair et d’esprit. Dans certaines Églises, cette image a été transformée en programme missionnaire sous le nom de ‘La vision de la vallée’.” http://www.protestants.org/textes/eglises_immigration/perspectives_theologiques .htm, accessed 20 August 2008. 53 Personal communication from GATE chairman Moses Alagbe, October 2005. See also www.aeafrica.org/projects/tgae, accessed 2 October 2008.

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It can be assumed that not only Asians think in this way. In a short exhortation at a meeting of the (Anglophone African) Council of Pentecost Ministers, one pastor had this to say: We shall occupy. Right now, we are still existing. But we need to occupy, we need to take control. We need to be the New Jerusalem. This country is on the verge of revival. [. . .] We need to compact together, so that we can reign. We will see our names, our churches’ names, in the Zeitung [newspaper]. We are in a paradigm shift.54

Migrants will no longer be marginalized; migrant churches will no longer be overlooked as they are now. Here, an African clearly does not see African churches in a subservient or assisting role. The language employed is extraordinarily strong: “Occupy”—“take control”— “reign.” Clearly, the idea is that just as the white colonizers took control of Africa, so African Christians will occupy and control Europe, bringing revival to a dead continent. Such ideas do indeed circulate at least in Nigeria, as the following quote from a pentecostal magazine shows: “Why should a man [Reinhard Bonnke who had just done a major crusade in Lagos] from a country that toils behind Nigeria in spiritual adherence bring the Gospel here? The Adeboyes, the Abiaras, the Olukoyas, the Odeyepos etc. should be the ones to invade Germany and the rest of Europe and America with such crusades.”55 5.5. Conceptualizing evangelism in the global pentecostal / charismatic network: The spiritual warfare paradigm So far, we have analyzed what migrant pastors said about evangelism in the long interviews, i.e. statements made in a context of intercultural communication. As we noted above, the questions put to the interviewees came from a German Protestant theological paradigm, and the answers must be understood as part of a process of negotiation of the roles of migrant pastors within the German Christian scene. What we have seen, therefore, are interculturally or, better, interdenominationally communicated conceptualizations of evangelism. But the discourse on evangelism also takes place within and among migrant churches, i.e. as a process of internal communication. It is expressed in sermons and Bible studies, in printed and electronic 54 55

Meeting of the CPM, 20 May 2005. Quote taken from field notes. W. Olarinde, Bonnke Isn’t All, in: Christian Benefits 6/2000, Lagos.

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media, and, particularly, in pastors’ meetings which regularly take place within different networks shaped by language, ethnic or cultural background.56 This discourse is not limited to certain migrant subsets, but it is rather bound into international and transnational networks of exchange and discourse which make up the global pentecostal / charismatic movement,57 and it is therefore by and in itself also intercultural. The language barrier made it impossible for me to observe any of the Asian networks, and my efforts to participate in francophone African pastors’ meetings were largely frustrated as these pastors felt they could not trust me sufficiently to allow me to witness internal meetings. Therefore, in the following chapter, we will attempt an exemplary analysis of the conceptualization of evangelism within a ‘spiritual warfare’ paradigm in an anglophone West African context. 5.5.1. Evangelism in the framework of spiritual warfare: The anglophone West African Example 5.5.1.1. Initial observations We have just said that meetings of pastors within migrant church networks are one of the loci of the internal discourse on evangelism. One such network is the Council of Pentecostal Ministers (CPM) in whose meetings I could participate fairly regularly over about six years. The Council is made up mostly of Ghanaians, many of whom share a Baptist and Scripture Union background,58 but also includes some Nigerians and at least one Liberian and one Cameroonian. Pastors’ meetings, which take place two to four times per year, are attended by 20–50 persons, with an average number of about 30. A few woman pastors are present at the meetings, but rarely if ever speak. Each meeting begins with a worship and prayer time that can last well 56 In the region of the UEM program, three Congolese, two Korean and two Tamil networks could be identified in addition to a large Anglophone West African network, the Council of Pentecostal Ministers. 57 See chapter 2.6, and also Afe Adogame, The Quest for Space in the Global Spiritual Marketplace, in: International Review of Mission, Vol. LXXXIX No. 354, July 2000, pp. 400–409. 58 On the role of the Scripture Union in the Ghanaian charismatic revival, see K.J. Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics: Current Developments Within Independent Indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004.

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over two hours, and sometimes, but not always, includes a sermon or exhortation. Then follow a meal and a business meeting in which information is shared and joint programs like retreats, crusades, revivals and all night prayers are planned. Evangelism is a major topic at each meeting. Discussions of the relationship (and often competition!) between different anglophone African churches also play a major role, while topics of integration are discussed only occasionally. Deliberations about evangelism and, in particular, prayer meetings displayed a strong sense of being involved in a spiritual battle. I do not recall a single debate about evangelistic methods; instead, a strong sense prevailed that only joint and extended prayer was going to yield a revival in Germany. Therefore, prayers took precedence over business matters at each CPM meeting, and joint programs organized by the Council also concentrated on prayer. Whether in public gatherings or in closed pastors’ meetings, the prayers at the CPM had a specific ‘warfare’ character. For example, at the CPM pastors’ meeting on 25 March 2007, the pastor leading the introductory prayers asked those assembled to pray, first of all, “against obstacles.”59 His language was that of a battle: “We come against60 any power, any spirit of the enemy . . .”—“We break every stronghold of the enemy . . .”—“We bind all powers of the enemy in the name of Jesus”—“We declare the power of Jesus . . .” etc. The “enemy” was never named, but clearly understood as a power set to destroy what the pastors were trying to achieve. After this, the pastors prayed “for souls” (i.e. successful evangelism), for people to come to church, for the church in Germany, “against rebellion in the churches,” and finally for the finances of their churches. This ‘battle awareness’ may not only be observed at CPM meetings, but also in almost every anglophone African migrant pentecostal or charismatic worship service.61 How it informs these churches’ understanding of evangelism is demonstrated in an exemplary way by a Sunday school worksheet of Christ-for-All Evangelistic Ministries, an African-majority church in Dortmund. It was obviously part of an

59

Quotes taken from field notes. This phrasing is taken from 2. Chronicles 14:11 and very common in anglophone African public prayers. 61 It could also be found in francophone African and particularly some Tamil services. 60

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established lesson plan, carrying the headline “Lessons 17–19: Evangelism.” It is particularly the third part of the lesson which concerns our analysis here: Under the headline “Preparing for evangelism,” three sub-themes are given: Prayer for Oneself before evangelism [. . .] Prayer for the person and place to be evangelized [. . .] Team work in evangelism

Especially the first two sub-themes are instructive about the conceptualization of evangelism that is common in West African pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches. Concretizing the “prayer for oneself before evangelism,” the material lists several aspects: – Confess your inadequacies before going out (Psalm 139:23,24) – Ask God to remove all blindness (Matthew 15:14) – Pray for the Holy Spirit’s power and anointing from above before taking this step—House to House (HtH) and Mass Evangelism (ME) (Luke 24:49, Acts 1:8) – Ask for wisdom to speak and to control yourself (James 1:5–8)

Evangelism is clearly seen as a spiritual undertaking which needs spiritual preparation. First of all, it is a venture that no human being can simply undertake. The Psalm verse that is given points out that one’s motivation needs to be purified. To be able to evangelize, the evangelizer needs to be free from sin, evil thoughts and deeds. Secondly, the analysis of the situation is not something accomplished by intellect, but rather a miracle given by God. As he removes blindness, the evangelizers will be able to see the situation as it really is, i.e. according to its spiritual basis. It can be concluded that gathering information about a certain context is less important than prayers for a spiritual insight about it. Thirdly, evangelism is a difficult task. One should not just simply engage in it, but should be properly prepared. Evangelism can only be effective if it is ‘powerful’ and ‘anointed,’ with both power and anointing understood as divine gifts. This power is clearly more important than the “wisdom to speak” named as the fourth point, but both are understood as a divine endowment rather than a fruit of (communication) training. But evangelists, according to this material, do not only need to pray for themselves. The second point in the preparation list concerns itself with “prayer for the person and place to be evangelized:” – “Bind all forces of darkness that will oppose you in the work (Mark 3:27; Luke 10:19,20)

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– Ask for souls—(HtH) or (ME) (in Jerusalem—Acts 1:8) – Ask God to open the heart of your audience so that they may not resist you (Acts 16:10–14)”

Here, we observe the same approach: Evangelism is a spiritual venture and can only be done if someone is invested with spiritual power. Now, the prayer concentrates on the person or place which is the target of evangelism. The language is one of conflict or battle: Opposing forces need to be bound, and hearts need to be opened so that resistance will be overcome and souls won. To summarize, both the prayers and deliberations at the Council of Pentecostal Ministers and this work sheet frame evangelism within a paradigm of spiritual battle rather than one of communicating a message. In this, they tie into a globalized pentecostal / charismatic discourse on ‘spiritual warfare’ that has been informing the understanding of evangelism from the Anglican Communion62 to West African independent charismatic churches. In the following chapter, we will look at the anglophone West African appropriation of this discourse. 5.5.1.2. ‘Spiritual warfare’ and West African cosmology63 Spiritual warfare is an important and hotly debated topic in both pentecostal / charismatic, and increasingly, in evangelical circles. This is underlined by the fact that the term deserves not only a 5-page article in the New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements,64 but also features prominently in the English language Wikipedia.65 On the worldwide web, one can learn about the practice on websites like “Spiritual Warfare Ministries Online”66 or “Spiritual

62 See the introduction to the research of Graham R. Smith, www.glopent.net/ members / grsmith / research-project-the-church-militant / ?searchterm = spiritual%20 warfare, accessed 28 June 2007. 63 On the relationship between globally homogenized and locally distinct cultures in Pentecostalism, see the very instructive article by Joel Robbins, The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, in: Annual Review of Anthropology, 2004, pp. 117– 134. 64 Charles H. Kraft, Spiritual Warfare: A Neocharismatic Perspective. NIDPCM, pp. 1091–1096. 65 www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_warfare, accessed 14 December 2006. The German equivalent, “geistliche Kriegführung” or “geistliche Kampfführung” do not warrant an article in the German Wikipedia, though. 66 www.sw-mins.org, accessed 14 December 2006.

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Warfare Net”67 Looking at these sources, one could easily be led to believe that spiritual warfare is an American concept which started to gain ground in the 1980s, having been popularized by John Wimber, C. Peter Wagner, Derek Prince and Charles Kraft68 and then having been exported worldwide via crusades, books, websites, and satellite TV. But this assumption would be far too simplistic. Visitors to Christian bookstores in Ghana and Nigeria are faced with a huge choice of locally produced books, manuals, videos and DVDs on “aggressive prayer,” “deliverance,” “achieving breakthrough” and other spiritual warfare topics,69 which, even if they occasionally quote American neoPentecostals, deal with such African problems as witchcraft, “water spirits,”70 or “spirit marriage”71 which do not play any role in any North Atlantic spiritual warfare theology. As the Nigerian theologian Ogbu Kalu insists, neither “globalism” as the dominance of a media-driven Northern perspective, nor “glocalization” as the adaptation of a global outlook to a local perspective are appropriate terms to describe the development of African Pentecostalism. Instead, he suggests the term “globecalisation” to “explore the interior dynamics and process of culture contacts in contexts of asymmetrical power relations. [ . . .] Local conditions and cultural patterns do still filter global flows.”72 Kalu states that traditional African worldviews do not distinwww.spiritual-warfare.net, accessed 14 December 2006. For a literature list which would underscore this, see the article “Spiritual Warfare: A Neocharismatic Perspective” cited above, note 64. 69 G.F. Oyor, Who Needs Deliverance? Revised and enlarged edition (With 500 Powerful Breakthrough Prayer Points), 3rd edition, Ibadan: Freedom Press 2000, bought at the Catholic bookstore in Kumasi, Ghana, is a typical example of using spiritual warfare to overcome individual problems. 70 Water spirits are revered in traditional African religions as givers of wealth and fertility. See Kofi A. Opoku, West African Traditional Religion, Accra et al.: FEP International Private Ltd., 1978, pp. 60–65. In Pentecostal / charismatic Christianity, water spirits are seen as particularly dangerous: They enslave people with false promises. See, e.g., D.K. Olukoya, Violent Prayers to Disgrace Stubborn Problems, Lagos: Battle Cry Ministries 1999, pp. 123 ff.; G.F. Oyor, Who Needs Deliverance? Revised and enlarged edition (With 500 Powerful Breakthrough Prayer Points), 3rd edition, Ibadan: Freedom Press 2000, pp. 139 ff. 71 Many West African Pentecostals and charismatics blame the inability to find a marriage partner on conscious or unconscious, but “legally binding” marriages to a spirit. If such marriages are revoked during a deliverance session, the person will be free to marry a human being. See, e.g., D.K. Olukoya, Violent Prayers to Disgrace Stubborn Problems, Lagos: Battle Cry Ministries 1999, pp. 104 ff. 72 Ogbu Kalu, The Pentecostal Model in Africa, in: Cox, James L. and ter Haar, Gerrie (eds.), Uniquely African? African Christian Identità from Cultural and Historical Perspectives, Trenton (NJ) / Asmara (Eritrea): Africa World Press 2003, p. 220. 67 68

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guish between the sacred and the profane, claiming that each space is populated by spiritual powers reaching from the Supreme Being to other deities to ancestral spirits. Kalu calls the African worldview “religious” and continues to say: “Going through life is like a spiritual warfare [emphasis mine] and religious ardour may appear very materialistic as people strive to preserve their material sustenance in the midst of the machinations of pervasive evil forces. Behind it is a strong sense of the moral and spiritual moorings of life. It is an organic worldview in which the three dimensions of space are bound together; the visible and the invisible worlds interweave. Nothing happens in the visible world which has not been predetermined in the invisible realm. [ . . .] The power question is ultimate.”73 Birgit Meyer74 has shown in great detail how European pietistic missionaries impacted this worldview, and how African believers, rather than being marionettes and victims of a colonializing message, creatively appropriated and developed Christian theology. She explains that while mainline Protestant theology dismissed all beliefs in spirits and witchcraft as superstition, and, as people remained afraid of such powers, forced them to lead a double life, attending both churches and fetish ceremonies, Pentecostal / charismatic churches were able to dialectically integrate such beliefs by providing discursive and ritual possibilities to deal with them. West African Pentecostals / charismatics do not doubt the power of the spirit world, but fight this power “in the name of Jesus” through prophecy and deliverance. In his introduction to the concept of spiritual warfare,75 Charles Kraft states that it is based on the idea of a “human life lived in a context of continual warfare between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.” The parallels to the African worldview as described by Kalu are obvious. Kalu finds the same worldview in the New Testament and its contemporary Jewish literature and claims that “African Pentecostals have appropriated the resonance of this factor in the two traditions to domesticate the new and construct tools of hope with symbols of transcendence.”76 By doing this, Kalu insists, they provided a strong impact on American “Third Wave Theology” (i.e. the theology Ibd., p. 230. Translating the Devil: Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana, Trenton (NJ): Africa World Press 1999. 75 See above note 64. 76 Kalu, ibd., p. 233. 73 74

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of spiritual warfare).77 This assumption is, to some extent, borne out by the debate on spiritual warfare in the United States, where critics accuse spiritual warfare theology of being influenced by encounters with “animism” in Third World countries.78 Paul Gifford, on the other hand, points out that deliverance thinking and practices only gained ground in Africa after they had been endorsed by Americans like Derek Prince.79 Traditional African cosmologies could be re-appropriated only after having been Americanized: “Things are truer if un-African, so we quote Americans. It is traditional, but projected in modern dress. The more foreign, the more serious, true, powerful it is.”80 5.5.1.3. Fighting a battle with words: Spiritual warfare, Holy Spirit power and prayer It is clear that spiritual warfare thinking among West African migrants in Germany must be understood as a bricolage in which elements taken from traditional African thinking, Pietistic missionary theology, classical Pentecostal theology, international ‘Third Wave’ preaching and intercultural and interdenominational insights are made up into a creative, new theology. In the following paragraphs, we will try to draw an outline of this theology, knowing full well that this can be no more than a rough sketch which disregards individual variations. It will become obvious that the theology sketched in this chapter does, in some aspects, contradict what has been said in chapter 5.3.2. This is not surprising as we are not dealing with a systematized theology, but with a discourse still in the making—pentecostal / charismatic theology, due to its strong oral character, is dynamic and constantly evolving and

77

This view is backed up, with regards to Britain, by Stephen Hunt, The ‘Health and Wealth’ Gospel in the UK: variations on a theme, in: Culture and religion: an interdisciplinary journal, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 89–104. 78 See, for example Scott Moreau, Religious Borrowing as a Two-Way Street: An introduction to animistic tendencies in the Euro-North American context, in: Rommen, Edward and Netland, Harold (eds.) Christianity and the Religions, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1995, pp. 166–183, and Robert J. Priest et al., Missiological Syncretism: The New Animistic Paradigm, in: Rommen, Edward (ed.) Spiritual Power and Missions, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1995, pp. 143–168. 79 Paul Gifford, The Complex Provenance of Some Elements of African Pentecostal Theology, in: Corten, André and Marshall-Fratani, Ruth (eds.), Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2001, pp. 62–79. 80 Paul Gifford quoting Max Assimeng, ibd., p. 69.

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developing. Therefore, this sketch can be no more than just a snapshot. The Biblical passage usually quoted as the scriptural basis of spiritual warfare is Ephesians 6:12. It is used to emphasize the fact that manifest and unseen realities are connected, and that problems in the manifest world are caused by unseen spirits. Other Biblical passages81 that describe an antagonistic relationship between God and Satan or God and demons also serve as proof that the concept has a firm Biblical basis. Human life is understood as fragile and precarious, lived under constant threat from evil powers. While Jesus Christ came to earth to give every believer a life in fullness,82 early death, illness, poverty, misfortune, infertility and many other problems show that Satan, demons, evil spirits or witchcraft are still active in this realm. Within this spiritualized cosmology, problems are only understood properly if their ‘spiritual dimension’ has been analyzed. Demonic possession or oppression is suspected when problems of any kind persist, and a real fear of witchcraft83 suffuses relationships among West African migrants84 and their extended families at home. Several pastors told me how they had to take strong protective measures against witchcraft before traveling to visit their families in their country of origin. Such measures can, e.g., consist of a time of prayer and fasting before the trip, and intensive prayer times while traveling. Demon affliction is believed as concerning individuals as well as groups, families, locations or even nations. Demons and witchcraft are not limited to Africa; West African pentecostals / charismatics tend to insist that “there are as many demons in Europe as there are in Africa, only you don’t want to realize it.” Several pastors have stated that they perceive racism as a “territorial demon” which oppresses Germany. 81 E.g. Gen 3, Job 1, Dan. 10:13, Lk. 4:1–13, Acts 16:16–18 and 19:11–20, 1. Cor. 10:18–21, 2. Cor. 10:4–5, 1. Pet. 5:8, 1. Jn. 3:8, Rev. 2–3. 82 John 10:10. 83 See, among others, Peter Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft. Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, Charlottesville (VA): University Press of Virginia, 1997, or the very new collection of essays edited by Gerrie ter Haar, Imagining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa, Trenton (NJ): Africa World Press 2007. 84 For an account of witchcraft accusations within a migrant church, see Sabine Jaggi, “Yesu azali awa.” Untersuchung einer afrikanischen, frankophonen MigrantInnenkirche in Bern. Lizentiatsarbeit der philosophisch-historischen Fakultät der Universität Bern, WS 2004/2005, available at www.refbejuso.ch/downloads/refbejuso/doc/ jaggi_yesu_liz.pdf (14 June 2007), pp. 81 ff.

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Though God has already won victory over Satan, demons and witchcraft through Christ’s death and resurrection, Christians still have a role to play in the cosmic battle between God and his enemies. They cannot simply stand by and watch; they are warriors in the ongoing process of spiritual warfare. In fact, the newer pentecostal / charismatic churches in West Africa “have made evil and its removal fundamental to their message and activities.”85 To be able to withstand evil powers, Christians need to be commissioned and empowered, or ‘anointed by the Holy Spirit.’ The anointing is the power of God that passes through a human vessel to accomplish the will and purpose of God in that person’s life. It is literally the life of God Himself passing through a man. It proceeds from the Holy Spirit. [. . .] The anointing is the presence and power of God the Holy Spirit.86

Like the anointing of a king in the Old Testament meant both an investiture into power and a task to do God’s will, the anointing by the Holy Spirit connects the believer with divine power, enabling him or her to evangelize, preach, teach, heal and work miracles. ‘Anointing’ means that the Holy Spirit is ‘upon’ a person, working in and through this person’s life and acts. The concept of power is so important in this context because the evil forces still loose in the world are perceived as extremely threatening: We should not be kind to a destroyer who is ready to destroy a believer at the slightest opportunity. [. . .] It is a fact that dark powers are responsible for most problems of the black man and we have a mission as Christians to identify, confront and conquer them. [. . .] Let the anointing to destroy the works of the enemies come upon my life, in the name of Jesus.87

Spiritual warfare is fought solely by prayer—consequently, prayer groups in some West African pentecostal/charismatic migrant churches 85 Elom Dovlo, Witchcraft in contemporary Ghana, in: Imagining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa, Trenton (NJ): Africa World Press 2007, pp. 67–92, quote taken from p. 80. 86 Abraham Bediako, From Distress and Discouragement to Stability, Hamburg: Winners Publications 1999, p. 123. Bediako is the founder and General Overseer of Christian Church Outreach Mission International. 87 D.K. Olukoya, Violent Prayers to Disgrace Stubborn Problems, Lagos: Battle Cry Ministries 1999, pp. 27–29. Olukoya is the founder and General Overseer of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, a fast growing neo-Pentecostal denomination of Nigerian origin with branches on all continents. See www.mountainoffire.org, accessed 13 December 2006.

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are called “prayer warriors.” This warfare calls for a specific form of prayer, termed “authority prayer” or “prayer of command.” Such “authority prayer” significantly differs from supplication prayers: Rather than asking God to act, the speaker commands “in the name of Jesus.” Typical prayer sequences begin with utterances like “I / we come against . . .,” “I / we break . . .,” “I / we bind . . .,” “I / we declare . . ..” Prayers for healing take the same syntactic form: “I break the power of this illness . . . I command this illness to leave . . . you are healed in Jesus’ name.” Logically, prayers for deliverance from demonic oppression or possession also do not address God, but command the demon(s): “Get out, in the name of Jesus.” In spiritual warfare, the person praying is acting in accord with God and in God’s authority. West African pastors point to Biblical passages like John 14:12, Acts 3:6, 9:40 or 14:10 to prove that they follow Jesus’ commandment and apostolic precedent. The efficacy of the prayer is ascribed to the spoken word, even if oil is occasionally used in deliverance prayers. “Situations can be spoken into being or out of being. Onoma is metonym where the part represents the whole and the name of Jesus can be used to achieve effects in the physical realm.”88 Spiritual warfare prayers are spoken aloud so that the effects of God’s victory over all evil powers become real and visible in people’s everyday lives, manifested, among other ways, in conversion, healing from physical illness, the birth of a healthy child, the granting of a residence permit, a job and financial success. The strong sense of power ascribed to the spoken word by West African pentecostal / charismatic migrants cannot be overestimated. Sermons regularly expound “the power of the tongue” and exhort believers not to bring about negative effects by speaking thoughtlessly. In one instance,89 the preacher told the story of a woman who kept telling her little daughter that she might be run over by a car if she wasn’t more careful out in the street. That the girl was eventually hit by a car was ascribed by the preacher to the fact that the woman had, with her words, created just such a reality. In the margin of my field notes, I wrote: “Magical90 understanding of what we can do with 88 Ogbu Kalu, The Pentecostal Model in Africa, in: Cox, James L. and ter Haar, Gerrie (eds.), Uniquely African? African Christian Identità from Cultural and Historical Perspectives, Trenton (NJ) / Asmara (Eritrea): Africa World Press 2003, p. 232. 89 Friday evening worship service, International Gospel Church Essen, 16. May 1998. 90 We lack the space for a discussion about the differences and commonalities

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words.” Words, in this context, are not first and foremost conceptualized as carriers of information. Rather, spoken words are understood to be taken up either by evil spirits or by the Holy Spirit to generate new realities. The same is true for “authority prayer:” Here, spoken words are meant to create a new spiritual reality which in turn will affect changes in the visible world. They are creative words like those reported in Genesis 1. When God speaks, or when humans speak “in Jesus name” (i.e. with God’s authority), their words will be turned into action.91 It is striking how West African pentecostal / charismatic migrants who, on a social and political level, are considered among the most marginalized and powerless groups in Germany, perceive themselves as extremely powerful in the spiritual realm and thereby expect to effect positive changes on the social and material level. Whether such a theology is rather escapist92 or whether it empowers its adherents to engage actively in changes in the political realm93 is widely debated and has not been answered conclusively.94 My own observations indicate that both outcomes are possible.

between magic and religion. For some background on this debate, see K.E. Rosengren, Malinowski’s Magic: The Riddle of the Empty Cell, in: Current Anthropology, Vol. 17 No. 4, 1976, pp. 667–685. The responses to Rosengren documented at the end of the article are of particular interest. 91 Such speech acts cannot be understood as “performative” in the sense of J.L. Austin (How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). Anthropological and ethnological research in different cultures has shown that linguistic categories do not suffice to analyse “magic” speaking. Cf. D.S. Gardener, Performativity in Ritual: The Mianmin Case, in: Man, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 1983), pp. 346–360; John McCreery, Negotiating with Demons: The Uses of Magical Language, in: American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 144–164; and Juval Harari, How to Do Things with Words: Philosophical Theory and Magical Deeds (English summary of an article originally in Hebrew), www.folklore.org.il/JSIJF/jsijf19–20.html, accessed 9 August 2007. See also Stephen Hunt, Dramatising the ‘Health and Wealth Gospel’: belief and practice of a neo-Pentecostal ‘Faith’ ministry, in: Journal of beliefs & values: studies in religion & education, vol. 21, no. 1, 2000, pp. 73–86. 92 This is Paul Gifford’s conclusion. See Ghana’s New Christianity. Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004, pp. 161 ff. 93 This has been shown for Pentecostal and charismatic groups in Latin America, see e.g. Pfingstbewegung und Basisgemeinden in Lateinamerika. Studienheft Weltmission heute Nr. 39, Hamburg: Evangelisches Missionswerk in Deutschland 2000. 94 An excellent discussion of this topic can be found in Andrew Chesnut, Born Again in Brazil. The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick / New Jersey / London: Rutgers University Press 1997.

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The authority of the spoken word is also strongly stressed within the Word of Faith95 movement which originated in the United States. Popularized by Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland, this movement claims that health, financial well-being and success are the “covenant rights” of any believer and can be possessed by “faith and proclamation,” i.e. that any believer can create positive reality by believing in it and “confessing” it. If ill, for example, one is supposed to repeat constantly the words “I am already healed” rather than reflecting on and speaking about the illness. The spoken word stands against the visible reality and will eventually affect and change it.96 Large Faith Movement ministries are taking active steps to influence the theology and practice of migrant churches. The Rhema Bible School in Bonn, run by Kenneth Hagin Ministries, has trained numerous migrant church leaders (among them two interviewees of this study). Kenneth Copeland’s books and magazines circulate widely in migrant circles. When he came to Germany for a convention in 2002, an invitation for a special pastors’ meeting was related to me through several of my migrant colleagues. In addition, West African migrant Pentecostals and charismatics are exposed to Word of Faith theology through TV and magazines. Informal conversations with pastors concerning Kenneth Copeland’s TV programs suggest that West African pentecostal / charismatic migrants perceive Word of Faith theology as expressing more or less what they have believed and experienced all along. Consequently, they easily appropriate Word of Faith language which helps them to express in English what they originally learned in Twi or Yoruba, overlooking the differences in the underlying worldviews.

95

For a short, if biased introduction, see the article on “Glaubensbewegung” (Faith Movement) in: Reinhard Hempelmann (ed.), Handbuch der evangelistischmissionarischen Werke, Einrichtungen und Gemeinden: Deutschland—Österreich— Schweiz; eine Publikation der Evangelischen Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen—EZW, Stuttgart: Christliches Verlagshaus Stuttgart 1997, pp. 191 ff. 96 On the understanding of “positive confession” see Kenneth E. Hagin, Right and Wrong Thinking for Christians, Tulsa OK: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1966; Kenneth Copeland, The Laws of Prosperity, Fort Worth TX: Kenneth Copeland Publications 1996. Critically: D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel. A Historical and Biblical Analysis of the Modern Faith Movement. Peabody (MA): Hendrickson Publishers, 1988.

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5.5.1.4. Evangelism as power encounter and the materiality of salvation West African pentecostal / charismatic spiritualized cosmologies also inform the conceptualization of evangelism. As Ogbu Kalu succinctly states, the human-divine relationship is understood as “covenantal, and, therefore, Christian evangelism is a power encounter in which two covenant traditions are opposed. Salvation is imaged as the liberation from the obligations of one covenant with freedom to be re-covenanted to Jesus.”97 Or, in other words: Evangelism is not first and foremost the communication of a message to be believed, not a dialogue between the evangelizer and the evangelized, but a battle of spiritual powers with the aim of holistic liberation: Only the Holy Spirit can break people’s enslavement to the powers opposed to God. The first addressee of evangelism, so to speak, is not the person to be evangelized, but the powers that enslave him or her. Kalu describes evangelism as “power encounter,” appropriating American Third Wave terminology.98 With this term, he indicates that evangelism needs to be approached as a spiritual venture: If nothing happens in the spiritual realm, no conversion can be achieved. West African pentecostal / charismatic migrants in Germany rarely use this expression, but would concur with what it articulates: Without ‘anointing,’ without power from the Holy Spirit acquired through prayer, evangelism will not be successful. Though the “power encounter” happens on a spiritual level, salvation as a result of this power encounter is not limited to an otherworldly realm. Salvation is holistic; it has a spiritual and a material side. The “materiality of salvation”99 is clearly expressed in leaflets of migrant churches broadcasting “crusades:”

97 Ogu Kalu, The Pentecostal Model in Africa, in: Cox, James L. and ter Haar, Gerrie (eds.), Uniquely African? African Christian Identità from Cultural and Historical Perspectives, Trenton (NJ) / Asmara (Eritrea): Africa World Press 2003, p. 232. 98 The concept of evangelism as “power encounter” plays an important role in the writings of John Wimber, Charles Kraft and C. Peter Wagner, see Charles Kraft, Spiritual Warfare: A Neocharismatic Perspective, in: The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Revised and expanded edition, Grand Rapids (MI): Zondervan 2002, pp. 1091–1096. 99 This term was coined by Miroslav Volf. See M. Volf, Materiality of Salvation: An Investigation in the Soteriologies of Liberation and Pentecostal Theologies, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1989, pp. 447–467.

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Grand crusade of evangelism, miracles and healings Come in your numbers; bring the sick, the blind, the paralytics etc. . . . because our God still acts!100 Liberation hour and Inauguration Service Theme: The Road War to Revival. Bring the Sick, Afflicted, Cripple, the Blind, the Deaf. God will be glorified in Healing, Miracles, Deliverance, Breaking of curses, fruit of the womb and breakthroughs in all areas. Come for a change of story in your life; come for a time of refreshing in God’s presence.101

The spiritual warfare paradigm is based on a holistic understanding of salvation: God’s power protects people from evil influences and allows them to live a life in fullness. In this context, evangelism means speaking God’s power into people’s lives so that the power encounter in the spiritual realm results not only in conversion, but also in physical healing and the solution of concrete material problems (“breakthroughs in all areas” can include finding work or a promotion at work, acquiring a residence permit, being able to pay of debts etc.). This understanding was concretized in the statement by a Congolese interviewee: It’s [evangelism] not easy! The devil, the adversary, he is also against us. He shows us how difficult this is, but we cannot step back, we always need to continue to move forward. Therefore, with God’s help, I believe it is successful. CWO: How can you recognize that your mission is successful? Oh, I recognize that by signs. Like we see in Mark 16:18—Jesus says that ‘to those who will believe I will give signs.’ I see many signs in our church, through our faith.

Evangelism is here described as a dangerous battle with Satan which can only be won with divine assistance. Despite all difficulties, there are “signs” of victory, i.e. miracles like the ones promised in Mark 16:18. This speaker knows that his mission is ‘successful’ because he sees such miracles in his church. In the interview, he talked about the case of an asylum seeker expecting to be deported, whom he told that he had “just one more chance: God’s grace. We must pray.” After relating that the church had “prayed much,” he recounted that the man was given a residence permit. “That was a great miracle for me! The man, he 100 101

2005.

Flyer, originally in French, of the Assemblée de Dieu Rocher Düren, 2000. Flyer in German and English, of the Liberty Christian Center Mönchengladbach

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said: ‘God is God!’ ” For this speaker, prayer resulted in a miraculous happening by which God proved himself as God, as powerful and trustworthy. ‘Successful’ evangelism means that spiritual actions result in material solutions. To sum up: In this section, we have limited our analysis to the discourse on spiritual warfare among anglophone West African migrants. We did this, first of all, because due to language reasons, we had the most material from this area. Furthermore, this limitation allowed us to show how the “globecalization” of concepts work in the transnational pentecostal / charismatic discourse. But as we will see in chapter 5.5.2, the conceptualization of evangelism within a paradigm of spiritual warfare is common to pentecostal / charismatic migrants from different cultural and national backgrounds. In general, all of them would probably agree with the following summary of their theology. The spiritual and the material realms are not separate from each other, but are closely connected. Events in the spiritual realm have material outcomes, and actions in the material realm can influence the spiritual world. Consequently, evangelism, while happening in the material world, is a spiritual undertaking that needs to be prepared and empowered by prayer. Only the power of the Holy Spirit enables an evangelist to speak, to heal and to free people from demonic powers. Evangelism is ‘power evangelism,’ a battle for the liberation of human lives on a spiritual plane which results in materially changed lives, and not so much an encounter between two human beings, an ‘I’ and a ‘you.’ The communication aspect of evangelism is, at best, secondary. Considering this, it seems logical that pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches expend little energy in schooling their members in communicative methods for evangelism. Rather, they concentrate on prayer to “prepare the spiritual atmosphere,” and then spread their evangelistic message as quickly and as widely as possible. Tracts, street preaching, “miracle crusades,” radio, TV and internet ministries promise the broadest effect and are therefore preferred. 5.5.2. Evangelism in the context of ‘spiritual warfare:’ Concretizations We have already stated that the questions about evangelism in the long interviews were framed in a paradigm of communication rather than in one of spiritual warfare. Nevertheless, they elicited some concrete reflections which will be analyzed below. In addition, we will look at the sermon at a revival meeting and at an intercultural encounter, both

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of which can be understood as concretizations of evangelism within a spiritual warfare paradigm. 5.5.2.1. Affecting the spiritual atmosphere Several interviewees described their churches’ prayer activities as preparing the spiritual atmosphere around them for evangelism: We are also doing a prayer for the city, always on the 8th of every month, 24 hours, and we also try to mobilize other churches for this. And then we have this pastors’ prayer meeting, every Friday [. . .] that helps to— how do you say?—warm up the spiritual atmosphere. We prayed and we fasted for 40 days, prayed for revival, and prayed for the Holy Ghost to move again in Germany.

Clearly, both speakers (one Asian, the other African) believe that the more believers pray, and the longer and more intensively they pray, the more the “spiritual atmosphere” will be affected, i.e. the easier people will convert. Prayer for revival in Germany plays a major role in almost all migrant churches observed, both during Sunday worship services and in weekly as well as specialized prayer meetings. During one of such specialized meetings, the Germans present were singled out as “points of contact,” the idea being that through laying hands on them prayers for Germany would become even more efficacious.102 Another interviewee spoke in some detail about how he understands the role of migrant churches in affecting the spiritual atmosphere of Germany: The reason I’m here, in Germany is to affect the spiritual atmosphere [. . .] I see myself as praying and taking control of the spiritual atmosphere of Germany. [. . .] Yeah, to a non-Pentecostal person, let me explain it: We believe there is the spiritual level and the physical level. [. . .] I am a spirit, I have a soul, I live in a body. [. . .] So, we believe in the same way, a, a nation has a spirit that controls, that governs it. It has a soul which is expressed in the culture of the people that live there, and it has a body which is expressed in the actual people that you come to see, that you talk to. Now, if you’re going to take a nation [. . .] if you try to directly take the body, it is impossible, because the body is controlled by the spirit. [. . .] So, if I came into a land, and I say, you know, ‘Germany needs revival. Revival in Germany!’ and I stand in a Bahnhof

102 Observed at the Council of Pentecostal Ministers All-Night Prayer on 16/17 January 2004.

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chapter five [railway station] and I do everything that is right, shout with a microphone and tell everybody that hell is real and they will die and—nobody . . . you wouldn’t bother anybody. Because you can’t, you can’t change a nation [. . .] by just the physical contact. And you would be mistaken to try that. [. . .] So, the only way to change a city is to start off with the spirit. So when you can change the influence, the influence in the spirit, it will affect the people [. . .] My function is to affect the atmosphere. So how do we affect the atmosphere? I believe that when we pray, we contact God. I believe that nothing can be done without God. But also God cannot do anything without man, because he gave man the absolute authority on earth. So, if God is going to do anything in Germany, somebody or some people must be telling him what to do, which is my . . . which might shake theology, but that is how it is.

This statement is unusual in its detailed theological explanations. What seems, at first, like an expression of pure American Third Wave theology,103 under careful analysis reveals itself to be much more complex. The speaker, a Yoruba from Nigeria, sets out with the pentecostal / charismatic understanding of the interconnectedness between the physical and the spiritual level, which, as we have seen, closely resembles traditional West African cosmologies. Clearly influenced by the spiritual warfare method of ‘spiritual mapping,’ he imagines cities and nations as defined entities that can metaphorically be constructed like a human being or person. But in using the ‘person’ metaphor, the speaker thinks in categories established by traditional Yoruba anthropology:104 Like a human being, a nation consists of a body, a soul and a spirit, with the spirit governing the other two. The spirit connects the person to God who has breathed it into the human body. Spirit and soul are closely connected, with the soul seen as the essence of a person and also belonging to the spiritual realm. The body belongs to the physical realm and disintegrates at death. As a missionary, this speaker sees his role as influencing the spirit rather than the physical body of Germany, i.e. he needs to pray rather than to go out and preach. In this way, 103 Third Wave theology influences can be detected in the militaristic language (“taking control”), and the sentence that God cannot act on earth because he gave man absolute authority. Cf. C. Peter Wagner, Confronting the powers: How the new testament church experienced the power of strategic-level spiritual warfare, Ventura (CA): Regal Books 1996, and Praying with power: how to pray effectively and hear clearly from God, Ventura (CA): Regal Books 1997. 104 On West African and particularly Yoruba anthropology, see Kofi Asare Opoku, West African Traditional Religion, Accra et al.: FEP International Private Ltd., 1978, pp. 91 ff.

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I see myself as praying and taking control of the spiritual atmosphere of Germany. [. . .] Really, I see the influence, my influence as a missionary pastor is not to go to the Germans and say ‘this is what you have to do, this is how it has to be done, this is going to hell, you don’t pray, you’re dead in sin, you’re this . . .’ This isn’t my duty. I see my duty as being back-up, praying . . .

Within such a worldview and theology, encounter, communication, and understanding on a person-to-person level could easily fall by the wayside. Why would there be any need to learn the German language, read German newspapers, meet Germans as friends, if one has already a fixed diagnosis about the spiritual state of the country and knows how to deal with that spiritual state? The idea of a nation spirit to be influenced solely by spiritual means could easily allow its adherents to combine a global evangelistic claim with practices that fall into a diasporal pattern: One could reject dialogue and integration because the spiritual atmosphere in Germany was influenced by evil powers, as could be seen by homosexuality, prostitution, consumerism and so on, while defining one’s own way of life as ‘Christian’ or ‘spiritual.’ In such a way, the expectation would simply be that by prayer, Germany would change in such a way that it corresponded to one’s own culture which was defined as ‘Biblical’ rather than by an ethnic label. But obviously, a theology of spiritual warfare is not necessarily antiintegration: It is striking that this interviewee with the strongest, most elaborate theology of spiritual warfare is also the most integrated and inculturated person in our sample. He speaks fluent and almost accentfree German, and works in a responsible position in a German company. Among his fellow migrants, he is a vocal advocate for integration. For example, in a seminar during the Convention of the Redeemed Christian Church of God Germany in 2002, he spoke about “Strategies for Breakthrough in Germany.” He began by describing four levels of integration, namely “lineage”—an attitude that “I belong to this country and will stay here”—, culture, economy and politics—in this last realm he encouraged his listeners to join either the Social Democratic or the Green Party, a labor union or other organizations and get active especially in local politics! In a second part, this pastor talked about “three steps towards integration” which encompassed “focused prayer” which needed to be based on good information about the country— “Read a German newspaper!”—, “structuring one’s life for success”, i.e. hard work and discipline, and “enjoyment of life:” People should go

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out to eat, to dance, to see a movie—they should let themselves be seen and not remain in a ghetto.105 Possibly, it is too simplistic to think that the idea of spiritual warfare would necessarily lead its adherents to combine a global evangelistic outlook with a diasporal attitude in which one can simply pray together with one’s own people without having to actually engage one’s environment. This would also not be the intention of the original representatives of the concept of spiritual mapping: If properly done, such mapping includes a thorough historical and sociological research effort.106 Therefore, educational background and personality structure may play a much stronger role in how migrants integrate than their theology. 5.5.2.2. “Possessing the land” A number of leaflets from different African-led churches show a concept of spiritual warfare which carries an underlying notion of conquest that could also be understood as the capture of whole by immigrants: 105 Seminar of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Bonn, 29 June 2002, held in English. Summary and quotes from field notes. 106 A list of key questions put together by John Dawson in his book cited above reads as follows: “1. What place does your city have in your nation’s history? 2. Was there ever the imposition of a new culture or language through conquest? 3. What were the religious practices of ancient peoples on the site? 4. Was there a time when a new religion emerged? 5. Under what circumstances did the gospel first enter the city? 6. Has the national or city government ever disintegrated? 7. What has been the leadership style of past governments? 8. Have there ever been wars that affected this city? 9. Was the city itself the site of a battle? 10. What names have been used to label the city and what are their meanings? 11. Why was the city originally settled? 12. Did the city have a founder? What was his dream? 13. As political, military and religious leaders emerged, what did they dream for themselves and for the city? 14. What political, economic and religious institutions have dominated the life of the city? 15. What has been the experience of immigrants to the city? 16. Have there been any traumatic experiences such as economic collapse, race riots, or an earthquake? 17. Did the city ever experience the birth of a socially transforming technology? 18. Has there ever been a sudden opportunity to create wealth such as the discovery of oil or a new irrigation technology? 19. Has there ever been religious conflict among competing religions or among Christians? 20. What is the history of relationships among the races?”

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Taking Charge of Nations for Christ.107 Our vision: A Pentecostal institution with the burden of fulfilling the task of the Great Commission in NRW, Germany and abroad. Possessing territories for the Ecclesia the Cabinet on Earth. Kingdom of God on Earth.108

A similar notion can be observed in the “Jesus March” regularly organized by the Nigerian-led Embassy of God in Kiev, Ukraine. According to a church spokesman, this march is meant to have an impact on the whole of Eastern Europe and beyond: “Through domination of the spiritual world, [ . . .] the church will dominate the physical world of Ukraine.” And further: “We believe that [one day] the March will become a national Christian holiday in the Ukraine. We are taking new territories for Jesus.”109 Here, spiritual warfare is conceptualized spatially in the physical realm: Nations and territories must be brought under the dominion of God expressed in the physical realm by the church. Those who once were colonized have appropriated a colonialist paradigm and turned it around. Two leaflets from Lighthouse Christian Fellowship show how such thinking developed. The theme of its “International Believers Convention 2001” was: It’s our TIME to possess our possessions. [Emphasis in the original]

Quoted underneath was a verse from Gen. 26:22: For now the Lord hath made room for us, in a fertile place with water and trees in the desert and we shall be fruitful in this land.

This verse is part of a story which describes a paradigmatic conflict between migrants and indigenous dwellers for scarce resources and obviously speaks to the experiences of black migrants in Europe. Spiritual warfare here has the dimension of conquering or at least finding a lasting place in the country to which one has migrated, where authorities and large parts of the populace are bent on pushing one out again.

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Heading of an undated flyer of Victory Christian Ministries Oberhausen. Undated flyer of the International Baptist Fellowship Center Essen. 109 Quoted in J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, An African Pentecostal on Mission in Eastern Europe: The Church of the “Embassy of God” in the Ukraine, in: Pneuma, vol. 27, no. 2, Fall 2005, pp. 306 f. 108

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The rejection and racism that African Christians encounter in Europe are seen as signs of demonic dominion over this continent.110 For the “International Believers Convention 2005,” the theme had changed just slightly: It’s time to possess the land for CHRIST

Underneath, the same Bible verse was quoted, but in abridged version: For now the Lord hath made room for us and we shall be fruitful in this land.

Clearly, the emphasis has changed. The goal of spiritual warfare is no longer understood in terms of finding a place for migrants in the country. Rather, the idea is now that migrants have a fruitful role to play in conquering Germany for Jesus Christ. They no longer need to struggle for their own place; they are part of a greater mission movement which will change the country far more extensively. 5.5.2.3. ‘Power’ and ‘stupidity’ In another consequence of conceptualizing evangelism as an encounter of spiritual powers, and therefore as a spiritual undertaking which needs divine help and intervention to succeed, many pentecostal / charismatic migrants state that it can be done by people with little or no education. Such thinking can already be found at the very beginning of the pentecostal movement: After all, during the Azusa Street Revival, speaking in tongues was understood as xenolalia which miraculously would make world evangelism possible within a very short time frame as it eliminated the need to learn foreign languages.111 Two interviewees with very different educational backgrounds demonstrated in their statements what I would call a notion of ‘evangelistic stupidity’ which comes close to the understanding displayed by the earliest pentecostal missionaries. The first, who only had a few years of primary school,

110 See also A. Oni-Orisan, You Must Prosper in the Land. How to Succeed in a Foreign Land, Köln: The Redeemed Christian Church of God e.V., 2007, p. 45. 111 See Michael Bergunder, Crossing Boundaries: Issues of Representation, Identity and Postcolonial Discourse in Pentecostal Studies. Paper for the Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism on ‘What is Pentecostalism? Constructing and Representing Global Pentecostalism in Academic Discourse’, Birmingham, January 19–20, 2006, and Allan Anderson, Spreading Fires. The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism, London: SCM Press 2007, particularly chapter 3.

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narrated how he evangelized a German professor, in his eyes the epitome of scholarship: I met this professor on the train [. . .] Then I prayed: ‘Lord, this professor is a [unintelligible word] professor, how can I understand the language, how can I go with him?’ But God anointed, and I realized, I am a messenger [. . .] Then he said: ‘Many Germans have tried to evangelize me, but did not manage to. But you achieved what you wanted. You have made me think.’

Even though the professor did not convert on the spot, his final words were clear proof to the speaker that no education was necessary if the Holy Spirit was at work. It is not surprising that he uses the term ‘anoint’ in this context. As we have said above, this term always carries the connotation of supernatural power. The interviewee ascribed the efficacy of his broken, stammering witness not to anything he did himself, but solely to the action of the Holy Spirit. In a sense, his inadequacy served as a counterfoil against which the miracle of the Spirit power could shine even more brightly. The story of a female interviewee was constructed in very similar ways: I work with nothing. [. . .] Saturday I received one woman, very rich woman, I was even surprised. She asked me to go there to pray! I say: ‘With my poor German! [. . .]’ I say: ‘God, give me grace!’ and I go, very bold. [. . .] I didn’t know what to say, but the Holy Spirit guide me in very wonderful ways. I myself, I was surprised. [. . .] Because the power not belongs to me. The Holy Spirit can work in stupid—even this morning I was reading 1. Corinthians, the stupid things of this world. God has ways to work in our stupidity, in our Naivität [naïveté]. I can speak in broken English, in broken German, I cannot express well for them to understand, but the Holy Spirit is there to turn all these stupid things into greater things! [. . .] If God is here with me, he’s going to make the difference, it’s not me!

For this interviewee as well, language abilities are at issue. The person encountered is described as “very rich,” while the speaker’s German is “poor.” Again, a scenario is created in which the evangelist cannot rely on her own strength as the person to be evangelized is of an intimidating higher social standing. But the evangelist can be bold and needs not be afraid because of God’s grace. She says it explicitly: “The power not belongs to me. The Holy Spirit can work in stupid.” These two short sentences could serve as a motto for many pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors. Despite their lack of education and language abilities and despite their marginalized status in society,

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they see themselves as empowered by the Holy Spirit to evangelize Germany. But such a self-perception can work in two ways: It can further integration in the sense that marginalization is played down and a person gains a higher sense of self-worth, but it can also take away the incentive to study, learn and integrate. In informal conversations with migrant pastors, one occasionally comes across a reasoning that language learning or a knowledge about the situation in Germany are totally unnecessary for a migrant evangelist, since the Holy Spirit can work through stupidity as well as through wisdom and education. But such sentiments do not remain unchallenged: For example, during the first kikk course, a heated discussion broke out when an older Ghanaian pastor whose German language abilities, after more than 20 years in the country, were still very rudimentary kept insisting that the largest and most ‘successful’ African-led migrant churches in Germany were run by pastors who had neither a theological education nor ever learnt German well. While admitting that his claim was not without merit, his fellow students insisted that refusing to learn was not a good precondition to reach Germans with the Gospel. 5.5.2.4. “Money must change hands!” An example of revival preaching Over the years, I have been able to observe a number of crusades and evangelistic meetings organized by African migrant churches. What has been striking was that in all cases, the message preached was framed entirely in a fullness-of-life paradigm. It has to be stated, though, that the large majority of attendants at these meetings were indeed African migrants, with very few Germans or other migrants visible. To see how an evangelistic sermon is performed in such a context, we will look at one example, from a week-long “International Conference” organized by the Nigerian-led Magnify Deliverance Ministries in Düsseldorf, under the theme “Be ye revived, oh Europe.” Present that night were about 60 adults, most of them Black, but with eight white people and two young Arabic-looking girls among them. The preacher, a speaker from Ghana, spoke English and was consecutively translated into German. His topic was: “Open your heavens.”112 The preacher told his congregation that it would be dangerous to live and work under a closed heaven. But heaven would not be open auto112 The quotes, summaries and comments below are taken from field notes in German and English made during the meeting, on 12 October 2004.

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matically: As could be seen from 2. Chr. 7:13, even God’s people might live under a closed heaven. One could belong to God and still live under a closed heaven. Dt. 28:23 showed that everybody had their own heaven. Many people were working hard, but still had no money in the end. ‘This will change!’ [Shouting, clapping, and raised hands in the congregation] But God would not open heaven for anyone: ‘You have to do it yourself !’ Matthew 16:19 spoke of the keys to the kingdom of heaven—in plural, not singular. These keys were for opening heaven. ‘The keys are in your hands. What key do you have? You have the keys to health, you have the keys to wealth, you have the key to success, but you don’t use them. You just shout to God for help. But God will give you such an anointing that you can have a frontal collision with the devil and just shove him aside!’ [Much shouting and clapping] ‘You have the keys—you are not an ordinary person!’ The preacher then continued to talk about Job as an example of a man who lived under an open heaven. He was protected; Satan could not do him any harm. This could be seen from Job 1:10. But the situation of his audience was different: ‘You are in Germany, but you are suffering more than when you were in Africa.’ [Shouts from the congregation: ‘That’s true!’] If the heavens were closed, nothing people had would help them. Even the prettiest girl would not be able to find a husband. God closed heaven for Job. But not for the speaker: ‘I am walking under an open heaven. When I fast, I become fast. If your heaven is closed, you eat and you still are weak.’ The key to open heaven was prayer. As could be seen from Luke 3:21, even Jesus had to pray before heaven opened for him. ‘Heaven will open for you if you use the key of prayer.’ The preacher then pointed to 2. Chr. 7:14:113 ‘Prayer is the key. If you pray, God will heal this land.’ [Loud shouts of approval, clapping and raising of hands] ‘You cannot continue like this. What belongs to us is in the hands of the unbelievers. They have it because of Adam’s sin. But money must change hands!’ [Loud shouts of approval, clapping and raising of hands. The next few sentences were spoken crescendo, with ever increasing jubilation in the congregation.] ‘Money must come to the people of God! [Shouts] We need to work under an open heaven and see the glory of God!’ [Long drawn-out shouts of approval, clapping, laughing, raised hands.] Once heaven was open, miracles happened. Even the clothes of Jesus had healing power, as well as the shadow of Peter. ‘When your heaven is open above you, your shadow will begin to heal!’ [Loud ‘yeahs’ from the congregation]

113 This is a favourite verse that shows up in many West African sermons and tracts. See, for example, Anu Ojo, If my people, Lagos (Nigeria): Vineyard of Mercy Publications, 1999.

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chapter five The preacher then returned to Job: ‘He had a heart of integrity, but his heaven was closed.’ Job 2:9: showed that Job’s wife understood this. Women knew about the spiritual lives of their husbands. Even if someone pretended he was always praying, the wife knew that in reality, he was asleep. Even if someone pretended he was fasting frequently, his wife knew that in reality, he ate a lot. [Much laughter in the congregation during these sentences.] ‘Job was leading a holy life, but still heaven was closed for him.’ Job 13:15 showed that Job thought God was killing him, but still he continued to pray, fast and tithe. He was a faithful man. In chapter 19:25 Job made another confession of faith, but still heaven was closed. Heaven was closed until Job used the key of prayer (Job 42:10). ‘Heaven will open when you begin to pray!’ [Loud shouts of approval, clapping and raising of hands.] ‘Your life won’t be the same, because heaven will open. You don’t have to bind the devil—he was bound before you were even born. Something will happen—I can feel it in this room! I can feel there’ll be an explosion in this room! Something is doing me . . .’ [The preacher jumps up and down and runs around on the stage. Loud laughter, shouts of approval, clapping and raising of hands.] Christians needed this attitude: ‘I will not cease prayer until the heavens open.’ Some people would prefer to sleep, claiming that God gave sleep to his beloved. But one should not quote Psalm 127:2, but rather Proverbs 20:13 which clearly said that one should not love to sleep. The preacher then proceeded to lovingly and mockingly, with much acting out, tell the story of a man who always slept: At work, on public transport, even during a prayer meeting. [Much laughter in the congregation.] ‘Elijah is the same human as you are. He wasn’t supernatural. But he prayed and heavens opened. If you use that key . . . you will see your glory. You will see a miracle. We are in for a boat-sinking blessing!’ [The last few sentences crescendo, under increasing shouts and jubilation from the congregation.] After the jubilation had died down the preacher asked all those who were in need of a miracle to come forward. With a few exceptions, everyone in the congregation came forward. It then seemed to strike the preacher that perhaps not all of those standing in front of him were already bornagain Christians. Therefore, he told people that before he could pray for miracles, those who wanted to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior should come forward. Consequently, a number of people stepped back, though most remained in front, even those who had been acting as ushers and choir members during the evening. The preacher led them in the typical, revivalist conversion prayer which included a general confession of sin and a spoken acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior. Then followed the high point of the evening, the ‘miracle prayer’ which the

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preacher first prayed for the whole group, and then with an individual laying-on of hands. About one quarter of those who had come forward fell when hands were laid on them—this happened with some force and was clearly intended—but only one person—the German translator!— seemed fall into a genuine trance, shaking for several minutes while only the whites of his eyes were visible.

Several points need to be made when analyzing this sermon as well as the interactions between the pastor and the congregation: First of all, the message concerned itself solely with material blessings. Health, wealth, success, even a spouse were all named as goods to be had under an open heaven. Not only did the pastor not preach a ‘salvation message,’ he even stated explicitly that salvation had no real relationship to these blessings: “One could belong to God and still live under a closed heaven.” Even Israel, even the faithful Job, and even Jesus Christ himself were under a closed heaven before they used the proper key to open it. Secondly, the understanding of prayer “as the key” had obvious undertones of magic, something needed to be performed in the right way to achieve certain results. “But God would not open heaven for anyone: ‘You have to do it yourself !’ ” The blessing was not a free gift bestowed according to God’s will, but the inevitable consequence of correct human actions.114 Through this key, humans could force God to act in a certain way. Using this key was not easy—prayer needed to be sustained, and sleep could mean that heaven will not open. Thirdly: At one point, the sermon turned to “this land:” “If you pray, God will heal this land. [ . . .] You cannot continue like this. What belongs to us is in the hands of the unbelievers. They have it because of Adam’s sin. But money must change hands!” This passage is the key to the whole sermon message and contains a number of implicit presuppositions: a) The poverty of the (mostly migrant and Black) audience members is against God’s will, against the divine order of things. Once God acts, money will move from the unbelievers to the believers. Therefore, the first implication is that all listeners are already Christians who just need to move into a fuller understanding of what their faith means. b) The unequal distribution of wealth is a consequence of original sin. It is a spiritual, not a political problem which needs to be dealt with spiritually, i.e. by prayer. c) The healing of “the land” consists in money changing to the believers. For them, individual advantage and 114 On traditional West African understanding of magic, see Kofi Asare Opoku, West African Traditional Religion, Accra et al.: FEP International Private Ltd., 1978, p. 147 f.

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the common good are the same. The prayer for the healing of the land is therefore not intercessory. The perspective is purely individualistic. d) The whole tone of this passage, while encouraging to migrants, could sound threatening to Germans. A sense of conquest underlies everything that is being said. The migrants will not just integrate themselves quietly into a given situation; they will cause a total upheaval of the current state of affairs. Fourthly: The message preached was what the audience wanted to hear. The strongly affirmative reactions made this abundantly clear. The applause from the congregation became stronger whenever the preacher pronounced miracles in the affirmative. This points to an underlying understanding of both preacher and congregation that by speaking these sentences, they already become reality. While sounding like “positive confession” in the Word of Faith Movement sense, these statements are more likely another expression of a West African understanding of the magic power of words.115 The raising of hands once the preacher utters such affirmatives serves as a physical sign of one’s openness to receive the very blessing pronounced at this moment.116 To sum up: The whole sermon could be interpreted as an initiation into a certain magic practice necessary to appropriate the material goods seen in Western society. In that sense, it was clearly intended for marginalized West African migrants trying to survive in new and difficult circumstances. At the same time, everything that was said also closely tied into the Word of Faith paradigm: The understanding that faith in God alone was not sufficient to receive the blessings, which were one’s right, the stress to rely on prayer rather than hard work to become rich, and the ‘positive confessions’ peppering the sermon could also be expressions of an influence of Word of Faith teachers. Clearly, the West African context had already been transcended. Nevertheless: The way this sermon was preached would not have worked as an evangelistic message aimed at internationalizing the congregation and especially recruiting German members. In this sense, this sermon contradicted the theme of the whole conference which aimed at the revival of Europe. The sequence of interactions at the end of the service shows that this contradiction might have occurred to the preacher himself. When he first called forward all those who were 115 116

2004.

See above 5.5.1.3. Oral communication from Kwabena Johnson Asamoah-Gyadu, Accra, December

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in need of a miracle, he stayed within the paradigm of his sermon. But his hasty reversal to precede his miracle prayers with a traditional ‘altar call’ hints at an awareness of the traditional revivalist understanding of the ‘salvation message’ which however was not first and foremost on his mind. The whole exercise seemed like a duty that had to be quickly dispensed with before the important part of the evening started, an adherence to a ‘global’ theological correctness that needed to be upheld. What Jesus’ lordship and salvation, sin and forgiveness meant in relationship to the miracles that the preacher promised and was going to pray about was never explained. While the sermon contextually addressed the needs and wishes of a West African audience, the altar call and conversion prayer were de-contextualized both in their abstract language and in their abrupt insertion into a ritualized exchange into whose logic they did not fit. What we have, then, is a global evangelistic claim, but a contextual, diasporal message. This contradiction cannot easily be resolved. 5.5.2.5. Intercultural encounter: Exorcizing Feuerbach, Marx and Freud We have already shown above how a conceptualization of evangelism in the spiritual warfare paradigm could possibly lead pentecostal / charismatic migrants to reject inculturation, dialogue and integration. An event that occurred during the first kikk course can be read as paradigmatic for an intercultural encounter with clashing paradigms and shall therefore be recounted and analyzed here. In the planning process for the kikk course which was steered by input from migrant, overwhelmingly West African pastors, an often repeated question was: “What makes the Germans tick? We want to understand this so that we can evangelize more effectively.” This query was never analyzed according to its underlying paradigm. Therefore, the Germans in the planning group heard it as a request for information on historical, cultural and political background which was duly incorporated into the curriculum for the first course. In hindsight, it seems likely that the question actually aimed at a ‘spiritual’ diagnosis, but this was not recognized at the time. One of the highlights of the first kikk course was the weekend in February 2002 which centered on religious criticism. The Germans in the preparatory group felt that the course participants needed to understand how the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach had popularized an

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understanding of religion as human projection, and how this concept was taken up and developed in different directions by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The teacher for the weekend was a German Protestant pastor who was eminently able to elementarize complex philosophical constructions, as well as to explain them from their historical and political context, and the participants listened with rapt attention. After the full day seminar, the participants gathered for dinner. During the meal, they announced that they would convene a special prayer meeting later that night. Now that they had understood what was blocking evangelism in Germany, they were going to wage spiritual warfare against the spirits of Feuerbach, Marx and Freud. The prayer meeting that night lasted almost two hours and was one of the most intense I ever witnessed. The participants, migrant pastors from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Nepal, Vietnam, and Indonesia screamed and shouted at the top of their voices, jumped, shook their arms and raised their fists until they were streaming with sweat. They clearly waged a battle—their prayers were not supplications or intercessions, but ‘authority prayers’: “In the name of Jesus, we assert authority over Germany! We declare that the spirits of Feuerbach, Marx and Freud have no right to oppress this country! We totally bind the spirits of Feuerbach, Marx and Freud and all spirits who have been following them! We declare that they will no more mislead the Germans, in the name of Jesus! We cleanse Germany from the spirits of Feuerbach, Marx and Freud, in the name of Jesus!” My field notes from this weekend reverberate with the deep shock that I felt. I was sure that we had completely failed to make the participants ‘understand’ the meaning of Feuerbach, Marx and Freud. My colleague who had been teaching was more sanguine and wondered aloud whether perhaps an exorcism of the spirit of religious criticism might be exactly what Germany needed. In hindsight, this event can be interpreted as an intercultural encounter in which two completely different paradigms collided with each other. The course participants had very well understood the important and influential role of the three authors whose thinking was introduced to them during this weekend. But rather than comprehending this influence in a historical, rational sense, they understood it spiritually: Feuerbach, Marx and Freud were not dead authors whose works continued to shape popular philosophy, but live demonic spirits intent at preventing conversions in Germany. The history lesson had turned into an exercise in spiritual mapping. Not intercultural understanding was

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needed to deal with these three figures, but spiritual power. Rather than accepting the paradigm of Western history and philosophy, the participants had appropriated what was taught into their own paradigm of spiritual warfare. While the teacher had hoped to make them understand how Germans think so as to enable them to react communicatively to a bias against religion or Christianity, the participants felt that after the spiritual battle, there was no need to deal further with this topic. Could the reaction of the kikk course participants be termed ‘inculturation?’ Or should it be seen as a clear rejection of integration? The answer to this question depends on which paradigm one follows. Westerners would not see an exorcism of Feuerbach’s spirit as a form of integration, while pentecostal / charismatic migrants would definitely say that in this way, they are engaging with Western culture. The question remains open as to whether a dialogue is possible in spite of the deep chasm between these two paradigms. 5.6. Conclusion: Evangelism, inculturation and clashing paradigms On 17 September 2000, an African migrant church in the small town of Viersen, Kingdom Exploiters’ Ministries, held a ‘Gospel Service’ which was widely publicized throughout town.117 The large Protestant church in the main city square was well-filled with many Germans who clapped and swayed along with the music provided, but kept quiet during the sermon, while a minority of Africans from different churches cheered the preacher along. After the sermon in which the preacher (speaking in English and translated into very ‘pentecostal’ German by a German lady) told his listeners that they had to make a decision between blessing and curse, he called forward all those “who want to give their life to Christ.” There was some murmuring in the first row where I sat with two local German Protestant pastors and several church elders, and a number of Germans sitting further back started to get up and leave. Six or seven people came forward, most of them Germans who had been conspicuous during the service by their ‘pentecostal’ behavior: They 117 The following is based on my field notes from the day, notes about subsequent phone conversations with the different actors, and my colleague’s field notes about a conversation with the preacher a few weeks later.

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had raised their hands while dancing to the music, and shouted loud ‘Hallelujahs’ during the preaching. The preacher led them in a prayer of conversion. Then, he asked all those to come forward who needed prayers for healing. The murmuring in the front row grew louder, and more Germans got up and left. The newly converted remained in front, while several Africans joined them. The preacher anointed each person with oil, laid hands on them and prayed for them while the Gospel group sang quietly in the background. Then, suddenly, an African woman who was being prayed for fell stiffly backwards, almost taking down the German woman standing next to her, and hitting her head hard on the floor right in front of the German pastor. Pandemonium broke out. The pastor started shouting for the custodian, one of the elders raced to the back of the church, shouting for someone to call an ambulance and the police. Most Germans still present now left the church in a hurry. I tried to explain to the people sitting next to me that there was no need to worry as the woman had probably just fallen into a trance and not fainted. In the meantime, the preacher continued his prayers, and two more people also fell down. Within a minute or two, all three had gotten up again and seemed perfectly alright. The preacher then quickly ended the service, facing an almost empty church. The people who were left congregated in two groups: On the one side of the church, the German pastors and church elders were expressing their shock and indignation. One lady said that to witness ‘this spectacle’ had made her feel nauseous. The pastor said angrily that he would never have allowed the Africans to use his church if he had known what would happen. On the other side of the church, the preacher, his wife, and some elders of Kingdom Exploiters’ Ministries stood together. When I joined them, they told me that they could not understand the reaction of the German pastors and elders. They had been elated to see that the Spirit moved much more strongly than they had anticipated. I tried to explain how the Germans felt and added that it would have been good to explain first what the pastor was doing, so that people would have known what to expect. The preacher’s wife reacted angrily and said if people did not understand what was going on they clearly were not filled by the Holy Spirit. The preacher added that he was not afraid of conflict: This was normal when the Holy Spirit was at work. After the outpouring of the Spirit on this day, the church would surely be filled to the rafters for the next Gospel service. There was no reason for him to

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try and accommodate German Protestant sensibilities; after all, he had just done what he was called to do. Less than two months later, the church council of the Evangelical Church in Viersen unanimously decided to terminate the contract which allowed Kingdom Exploiters’ Ministries to use their venues for worship. As news of the ‘scandal’ at the Gospel service spread, the migrant church was unable to find another place for worship, and finally had to move to a neighboring town. This event seems, in many respects, paradigmatic for what can go wrong with pentecostal / charismatic migrant evangelism in Germany. When paradigms simply clash, the result is not revival, but embarrassment and anger. In the case just described above, neither side was willing to at least try to consider the viewpoint of the other side. Having analyzed the pentecostal / charismatic migrant discourse on evangelism, the Viersen incident does not seem surprising anymore, but almost inevitable. It is rather surprising that such episodes do not occur more often. It is likely that many migrant pastors, when engaging with a German context, do indeed tone down their message and manage without rituals that they know would be alienating. There is more pragmatism in the practice than is admitted to in the discourse.

chapter six CONSEQUENCES

6.1. The current situation This study was begun as an attempt better to understand pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches and their agenda, with the aim to help deepen the cooperation between indigenous Protestant churches in Europe and pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches here. It was intended as a basis and motivating force for a theological and missiological dialogue that has hardly begun, not least because both sides do not really know each other. After more than nine years of the UEM Program for Cooperation between German and Foreign Language Churches, the situation in Germany is still described by most actors as difficult. There are such few examples of functioning, satisfying relationships between a migrant pentecostal / charismatic and a German Protestant congregation that these cases have to be treated as exceptions to a rule. The same is true for Scandinavia, and a similar assessment has recently being made for the Netherlands: “Despite good intentions on both sides, relations between the established Durch churches and immigrant churches often seem to be complex and problematic. [ . . .] Perhaps the model of thinking in terms of ‘the established’ and ‘the outsiders’ prevents any kind of true collaboration.”1 In other European countries, though, there seems to be a somewhat more optimistic outlook. While the Projet Mosaïc in France was only started in 2006, its main actors, the Federation of Protestant Churches, DEFAP, the development agency of the Protestant churches, and CEVAA, a large mission community, have recently decided to extend the program for five years. Antoine Schluchter, who was responsible for the project until summer 2008, reports that interest in cooper1 Hijme Stoffels, A Coat of Many Colours, in: Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Zürich / Berlin: LIT-Verlag 2008, p. 25.

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ation between migrant and indigenous churches is growing.2 In Britain, Anglicans, Baptists and the United Reformed Church have been working hard at establishing and strengthening multicultural congregations,3 though they seem to have rather little contact with pentecostal and charismatic migrant churches. On the other hand, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) has a number of member churches from the older, more established black majority churches,4 and has recently started a “Migration Enquiry” which includes issues of migration and evangelization.5 In Italy, the Waldensian Church has been able, at least in big city congregations, to integrate large numbers of mostly black African charismatic immigrants. Waldensian pastors, though, privately speak about the difficulties and tensions still remaining, and observe that a growing number of migrants now prefer to worship in congregations with an exclusively migrant membership. What makes cooperation between pentecostal / charismatic migrants and Protestant indigenous churches so difficult? The current situation in Europe is a complicated one, with several identifiable layers of conflict. A first layer is made up of annoying practical difficulties. Pentecostal / charismatic migrants complain that it is so hard for them to find places of worship that are affordable, conveniently located and that allow them some flexibility in their activities. On the other hand, indigenous Protestant congregations that have rented their church buildings to migrant churches are frustrated that their requests for reduced noise levels, reliable time frames, and careful use of rooms are constantly disregarded. A second layer consists of disappointed notions about cooperation: While pentecostal / charismatic migrants came to Europe expecting to join European indigenous churches in prayer meetings and street evangelism, European congregations are often not interested in closer Personal communication, October 2008. See, for example, the report on “Multicultural United Reformed Churches” of the URC 2005 Synod, www.urc.org.uk/assembly/assembly2005/multicultural_urc.html, accessed 3 October 2008; or the report on the Baptist Union of Britain in Peter Penner, Ethnic Churches in Europe—A Baptist Response, Schwarzenfeld: Neufeld Verlag, Oktober 2006. For information on the Church of England, see http://www.cofe .anglican.org/info/cmeac, accessed 3 October 2008. 4 See www.ctbi.org.uk/24, accessed 3 October 2008. 5 See www.churches-together.net / Groups / 69721 / Churches_Together_in / Our_ work /Public_Affairs /Migration /Migration_Enquiry/Migration_and_Evangelisation .aspx, accessed 3 October 2008. 2 3

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contacts with migrant churches even if they have rented their buildings to them, or only show themselves interested in cooperation which ‘exotifies’ the migrants. African choirs are invited to sing, drum and dance at special worship services, while Korean or Tamil churches are always welcome to cook something for the parish festival. For example, Dutch researchers Martha Frederiks and Nienke Pruiksma have recently pointed out that while the leadership of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands has been encouraging contacts with migrant churches, few Dutch Protestant local congregations show any interest in a cooperation that goes further than “inviting maybe the occasional exotic gospel choir to grace a service.”6 Theological dialogue is relatively rare, and fraught with difficulties. In one instance in Germany, where an Evangelical Church district tried to install a regular get-together of German and migrant pastors to discuss theological issues on a local basis, the migrant churches involved felt examined and controlled and quickly refused further meetings. A third layer is made up of conflicting ideas about integration. In the short interviews, the interlocutors were asked what they expected from the German Protestant churches to improve their integration. Almost in unison, they answered that they wished for more openness, acceptance, real dialogue (“There is too much damnation of things that are different.”) and financial and organizational support. In the German Protestant churches, integration is usually understood as a willingness to engage with the existing structures without seeking immediate material benefits. Migrant churches should join the Association of Christian Churches or one of the German free church networks, migrant pastors should seek theological training in an accredited institution in Germany, and second generation migrant youth should join German youth activities. The Association of Christian Migrant Churches7 in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia was formed on the suggestion of and with strong encouragement from the State Commissioner for Integration, to serve as a united voice of migrant churches both in the political and the church arena, but has few members as most pentecostal / charismatic churches would rather engage in evangelism than in advocacy work. All over Europe, similar patterns can be observed: To be able to engage with indigenous churches, migrant churches have to Personal communication, August 2008. Arbeitsgemeinschaft christlicher Migrationskirchen (ACMK)— the fact that this name rings close to Arbeitsgemeinschaft christlicher Kirchen (ACK) is intended. 6 7

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be willing to adhere to indigenous forms of organization and communication, joining councils and associations, complying with bookkeeping and auditing rules, and attending innumerable meetings and roundtables. It is not surprising that SKIN (Samen Kerk in Netherland / Churches together in the Netherlands), the organization of migrant churches in the Netherlands, was established and is kept alive through financial and organizational help from the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, and could not survive without this. German churches’ financial support for migrant churches (where it is given at all!) is similarly subject to adherence to German structures. A typical example is the fund the Evangelical City Church District in Düsseldorf has set up to support migrant churches. Churches are eligible for (very modest) financial subsidies only if they are on the list of recognized churches, if their members are registered as Evangelical, and, in the case of project support, if they apply for it within a very strict time frame which requires long-term planning. A fourth layer of conflict has to do with notions of universality and particularity: Pentecostal / charismatic migrants frequently talk about their disappointed expectations that a shared ‘Biblical culture’ would bridge all kinds of differences, and that they would be welcomed as sisters and brothers into a church that understands itself as universal. They call their churches “international” and define themselves as “Christian” rather than as “Korean” or “Ghanaian.” On the other hand, particularly continental European Protestant churches that used to be state churches insist that cultural differences create a deep dividing line which cannot simply be ignored. Churches like the Evangelical Church in Germany, the Swedish Lutheran Church, or the Protestant Church in the Netherlands are strongly tied up with their respective country’s ethnic and cultural identity. Consequently, Christian migrants to these countries are expected to form their own churches as cultural and language differences are supposed to be more important than a common tradition: “If you cannot pray in your mother tongue, it just doesn’t feel right,” is a sentiment frequently expressed by European pastors or church members. It is not surprising that Protestant minority churches like the Waldensian Church in Italy which are less nationallyinclined have, from the beginning, been more open to integrate Christian migrants into their congregations. Finally, the social and material basis of these conflicts must be taken into account. While migrant church members struggle with issues of economic survival and social marginalization, active members of Euro-

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pean Protestant churches tend to be middle class and fairly secure both economically and socially. To ascribe certain intercultural problems to “cultural differences” ignores the huge dichotomy between the life worlds of migrants and indigenous Protestants. Just for example, a migrant pastor may skip a meeting with his indigenous colleagues because he does not have the money for a bus ticket to travel there, or because his boss has ordered him to work some extra hours without prior notice, or because he has to act as interpreter for a mother from his church who does not know enough German or Dutch to communicate with the doctor treating her seriously sick child. The migrant pastor’s failure to show up is then easily misinterpreted as either disinterest and unwillingness to cooperate, or a “typically African disregard for timed appointments.” Most migrant churches are economically shaky; never sure from one month to the next whether donations will be sufficient for the running costs of church life. In a competitive market situation, it is only too understandable that each church considers its own survival before engaging in cooperation with others. Very often, migrant churches show little interest in a theological dialogue with Protestant churches that is not backed up by financial and organizational support. The European ‘mainline’ Protestant churches are perceived as very wealthy, and their claim that they are unable to assist migrant churches by paying pastors’ salaries or turning over unused church buildings free of charge is met with incredulity. On the other side, most European Protestant churches are struggling with a steady decrease in membership and income which forces them into thorough restructuring—a process which absorbs enormous amounts of time and energy which then lack when it comes to partnership with migrant churches. Having to cut back their own church activities due to financial problems, there is little willingness to donate money to migrant churches. In dealing with this situation of economic and political inequality, a certain pattern could be observed in Germany that also exists in other European contexts. There seems to be an underlying understanding on the German Protestant side that ‘lowly material motives’ should not interfere with theological exchange and that questions of money should not ‘desecrate’ partnership. Whenever migrant and German Protestant church representatives meet, the migrants are clearly told that while some exchange and dialogue may be desirable, they should not expect much material assistance. This message has been constantly broadcast since the late 1990s, at meetings on all levels. While the

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migrants are seeking a holistic relationship, German Protestants erect a division between spiritual and material exchange. Consequently, Germans interested in dialogue and partnership with migrant churches get frustrated when migrants insist that their material problems have to be solved first: “We want to have a theological dialogue, and all they talk about is rooms for worship.”8 Clearly, the current situation is not conducive to theological dialogue between indigenous and migrant churches. The different conflict layers just sketched make any attempt at such dialogue difficult. But in addition to this, chapters 3–5 of this study have shown that in terms of ministerial authority, the understanding of (im)migration, and evangelism, the migrant interlocutors have displayed conceptions, ideas, worldviews and theological theses which are deeply ‘foreign’ to a European mainline Protestant outlook. In the following, we will contrast the results of our research with the European Protestant discourse on these topics to describe theological fields in which dialogue is urgently needed. We will do this by sketching simple typologies9 of theological reasoning and relating them to each other. This makes sense as the migrants’ notions were developed in contact with and demarcation from the Protestant discourse. The basic assumption underlying this typology is that the types are not mutually exclusive, but rather complementary. Both sides can indeed learn from each other and be changed in the encounter. After this descriptive part, we will take a closer look at a question that is transversal to the dialogue fields, but implicitly or explicitly informs any attempt at dialogue on both sides. Whose religion is Christianity in Europe? And who has the right to define what Protestantism in Europe means? Finally, we will shortly consider two further questions which are closely connected. Does a missionary outlook further or hinder the migrants’ integration? And, finally; are European churches ready to be evangelized?

8 This complaint was voiced by a local Protestant pastor who, for years, had tried to engage indigenous Protestant and migrant churches in joint programs, projects, and dialogue, with a rather low degree of success. 9 On typological construction in religious research, see K.E. Rosengren, Malinowski’s Magic: The Riddle of the Empty Cell, in: Current Anthropology, Vol. 17 No. 4, 1976, pp. 667–685.

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6.2. Dialogue fields: A description 6.2.1. Ministerial authority As we could see in chapter 3, pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors describe themselves as shepherds of their congregations, mediators of divine power, and spiritual leaders. They portray themselves as persons with a divine call to ministry, legitimized by miracles, prophecies, and gifts. In short, they claim an enormous authority and legitimize this authority within a paradigm that stresses spiritual competence over everything else. In a European Protestant paradigm, ministerial authority is based on academic theological training and proper ordination procedures, and questions of calling and spiritual practice are hardly ever discussed. As a case in point, the much-publicized 2006 EKD paper on the future of the Protestant Church in Germany talks about ministers solely in categories of professional quality, including what is called ‘spiritual competence,’ a term that is not defined any further.10 When it comes to the understanding of the pastoral role in relation to the congregation, Protestant pastors tend to see themselves first and foremost as professionals and usually reject any understanding of an elevated spiritual role, even though such a role is often accorded to them by their congregation members.11 The fact that pentecostal / charismatic migrant and European Protestant pastors think, work and function in such different paradigms makes dialogue difficult. Observation of many encounters over the past nine years shows that each side tends to describe the other as deficient. European Protestant pastors who come into contact with pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors see people who often have rather weak language skills that quickly lead them to assume that the migrants cannot be well-educated. This perception is reinforced by the fact that if migrant pastors work in a profession to make a living, they tend to work in unskilled or lowly-skilled jobs as their academic qualifications are often not recognized in Europe. Among the migrant pastors listed in the UEM data base are, e.g., a former high-school teacher Kirche der Freiheit. Ein Impulspapier des Rates der EKD, 2006. See, for example, the EKD study on the role of the vicarage (“Pfarrhaus”), Rat und Kirchenkonferenz der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (eds.), Empfehlung zu Fragen des Pfarrhauses, 2002. 10 11

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working as a mailman, a former business executive working as a janitor, three engineers working on factory assembly lines, a journalist cleaning houses, and two university graduates who have opened small shops. Conversely, only two migrant pastors are known to work in positions consistent with their training and experiences. Similar observations can be made in most European countries, with some exceptions in Britain where at least anglophone African and South Asian migrants do not have language problems. In addition, European Protestant pastors, in their evaluation of their migrant counterparts, tend to concentrate on their lack of formal theological training, drawing the conclusion that they cannot really function as partners in a theological dialogue. Migrant pastors don’t improve this situation when, having understood the importance of academic credentials and proper ordination procedures in the European Protestant context, they proceed to present certificates from unaccredited Bible Schools or ministerial associations not related to any major denominational church. Seeing that many migrant pastors have congregations of only a few dozen members further diminishes their standing in the eyes of Protestant ‘mainline’ pastors who often serve congregations of about 2,000 members or more, even though only a small percentage of these members are actually active in church. In this constellation, it is easy to dismiss the self-image of pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors as ludicrously inflated and not to be taken seriously. In formal and informal conversations over the years, European pastors have often expressed just such a sentiment. Migrant pastors, confronted with such attitudes, react with feelings of offense and injury. Conversely, migrant pastors look at what they describe as the lack of spiritual praxis of European Protestant pastors and feel validated: European Protestant pastors may have superior academic training, but spiritually, they have little to show. They do not know how to pray properly, they write sermons which are academic treatises rather than revelations from the Holy Spirit, they have no spiritual power to work changes in the lives of people, and they cannot heal or drive out demons. Such statements are voiced fairly regularly both in informal conversations and in more public meetings between European Protestant and migrant pentecostal / charismatic pastors, inciting feelings of offense and injury on the European side. In short, on the level of local contacts between migrant pentecostal / charismatic and European Protestant pastors, we find a constellation that makes it easy to engage in the mutual disqualification of

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each other’s ministerial credentials and to belittle each other. In such a situation, dialogue becomes very difficult. On both sides, it needs a willingness to accept, at least for the moment, the validity of the other’s paradigm without feeling personally diminished and hurt if one’s perception of one’s own authority and status is not shared by the other side. It could be expected that this would be easier for the Europeans who, after all, have a much more secure social and economic position than the socially and economically marginalized migrants. Interestingly, that does not always seem to be the case. Anecdotal evidence from such encounters suggests that European Protestant pastors who are somewhat unsure about their own spirituality have a hard time dealing with migrant counterparts who openly challenge them about this. As professional self-understanding is very closely tied to how one sees oneself as a person, constructive dialogue between pastors about what it means to be a pastor needs a basis of trust that must have been established beforehand, copious amounts of time, and a willingness to open up on a very personal level. Then, it might be possible to realize that both paradigms have their rights and their limitations, that they are complementary and need to be balanced in each person’s life as well as in church policies on ministerial development. 6.2.2. Immigration Looking at the expatriation narratives as well at what the interviewees say about their evangelistic calling, it is obvious that these migrant pentecostal / charismatic pastors see themselves as living in Germany due to divine calling and guidance, and not because the German authorities have allowed them to stay. Implicitly, they negate the right of the German government to decide who can come to Germany and who cannot, or even the right of the German population whether to allow immigration or not. Their right to stay is a divine right that overrides any human policy or interest. They are not here on sufferance, not even on the benevolence of pro-immigration activists. Like Israel in Canaan, they see this land as theirs, a place that God has given them. Germany does not only belong to the indigenous Germans, but also to them. Pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors in other European countries as well as in Northern America would likely tell similar stories. This understanding is easily on a collision course not only with the strong anti-immigration sentiment in Europe, but also with more wel-

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coming attitudes in the broader society. A reporter from the certainly pro-immigration German weekly DIE ZEIT, after interviewing a number of pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors, asked me: “Do we need to fear these people? They sound like they want to conquer us!” Clearly, in the understanding and interpretation of migration, different paradigms apply. European Protestant churches tend to describe migration first and foremost as a problem. This becomes very clear when looking at the website of the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe12 and perusing the large number of documents published by this commission. Documents by individual European churches underscore this impression. To take just one example,13 the language of the “Gemeinsames Wort der Kirchen zu den Herausforderungen von Migration und Flucht” (Joint Communiqué of Churches on the Challenges of Migration and Flight),14 jointly issued by the Evangelical Churches in Germany, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and the Association of Christian Churches is definitely telling. Immigration causes “severe problems;”15 world migration, in a headline, is labeled as the “problem of world migration,”16 and migration is analyzed through the lens of refugee problems (war refugees, environmental refugees, economic refugees). When it comes to a reflection on how Christians are to respond to this problem, migrants are described as people worthy of protection,17 i.e. as those who depend on our benevolence. The paper does admit that in a globalizing world the common good cannot only www.ccme.be, accessed 3 October 2008. Others are the letters of the Presidents of the Evangelical Churches in the Rhineland, of Westphalia, and in Lippe calling all congregations to get involved in the Intercultural Week 2007, www.ekir.de/ekir/dokumente/ekir2007-08-14brief-praesidesinterkulturellewoche.pdf (accessed 4 September 2007); the “Liebfrauenberg Declaration” on the challenges of migration and asylum of the Conference of Rhine Churches and the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe / Leuenberg Church Fellowship 2004; and a declaration of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, Durchgangsland oder Bleibegesellschaft? Plädoyer der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland für eine zielorientierte Zuwanderungs- und Integrationspolitik, 2001. 14 Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland und Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz in Zusammenarbeit mit der Arbeitsgemeinschaft christlicher Kirchen in Deutschland (eds.), “ . . . und der Fremdling, der in deinen Toren ist.” Gemeinsames Wort der Kirchen zu den Herausforderungen von Migration und Flucht, Gemeinsame Texte Nr. 12, Bonn / Frankfurt am Main / Hannover 1997. 15 Schwerwiegende Probleme, No. 62, p. 31. 16 Dimensionen des Weltmigrationsproblems, 3.1, p. 32. 17 No. 98, p. 45. 12 13

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be defined within the borders of a nation state, and therefore states: “Generally, it must be allowed—if just cause [sic]18 advises this—to immigrate to another country and to apply for reception there.”19 But this right is not unlimited, as governments have to take care that social structures are not overtaxed by too many immigrants. “Therefore, there is a right to emigration, but not to immigration.”20 The document then looks at “perspectives for the future.” The first paragraph, again tellingly, centers on “international cooperation to fight the causes for flight.”21 It must not be forgotten that the Communiqué was written as response to a dominant discourse not only in Germany, but in all of Europe in which migration is seen as a threat by bringing more competition for scarce jobs and cheap housing, by exploiting already underfunded social security networks, by undermining valued cultural traditions, and by driving up the crime rate. In response, the Communiqué constructs migrants as victims who need understanding and help, therefore turning them into clients and objects of church and social benevolence. The threat is eliminated by removing agency.22 Such problematic reasoning is the consequence of a theology which does not question basic political assumptions. The picture being drawn is one of a world torn by conflicts, a dichotomy between rich and poor countries, and ecological disasters. Migration as a South-North movement in response to these problems is seen as only the secondbest solution; preferably, the problems causing it should be taken care of so that everybody could stay in his or her own home and remain ‘rooted’ in a territorially and ethnically defined culture. If world problems were solved, migration would no longer be necessary. Incidentally, expatriation is never considered in European Protestant church documents on migration, but would likely be assessed differently. SouthNorth migration, though, cannot be constructed as positive and enriching. “Sedentarist metaphysics”23 are solely applied to those who are

18 This language implies that migration for any other reason than fleeing insufferable circumstances is ethically not admissible. 19 No. 138, p. 57. 20 No. 139, ibd. 21 Chapter 5.2, p. 61 ff. 22 The same operation can be observed in the CCME documents. 23 See L. Malkki, National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees, in: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 1, Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference (Feb. 1992), pp. 24–44.

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poor and darker-skinned and move to the areas where wealthier and lighter-skinned people live. The theological challenge of the German Communiqué as well as the CCME documents takes place within this unquestioned framework: As uprooted victims, the migrants are more worthy of protection than dominant discourse would have it. From a Biblical-theological perspective, though, there is another way of looking at migrants than from a sedentary viewpoint in which the church is called to protect the stranger. The Bible, both in the Old and the New Testament, abounds with ‘migrant theology:’ “At the beginning of the history of the People of God stands the call to migration. [ . . .] This [i.e. Abraham’s] emigration is not just an accidental event at the beginning of the story of Israel. It is the characterization of the People of God in Old and New Testament. They are people who have been called out of this world (ekklesia!) and are traveling to a new land. They are migrants who have not found it in this world and who persist in their search for a new homeland.”24 From Abraham who left his home in faith to become a nomad to Israel moving out of slavery in Egypt, and later into exile and back, from Jesus who had “nowhere to lay his head”25 to the travels of Paul, faith is understood as setting people in motion and making them homeless in the sense that they no longer simply belong to the place and the culture around them: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come.”26— “A believer is a migrant. Numerous are the allusions to this truth in the New Testament and in the early church. But when the church became established this emphasis disappeared. The fate of millions of people today [i.e. migrants] should rouse the church to rediscover this essential characteristic of her being.”27 If such theology was at the basis of a church statement on migration, different consequences would have to be drawn. If even the indigenous Christians saw themselves as essentially ‘homeless’ and ‘expatriate,’ their relationship to actual migrants would be one of equality rather than of benevolent largesse. “There is only one way in which the church can be of real help to the migrant. It is by becoming the Body 24 P. de Jong, Migration in Biblical Perspective, in: In A Strange Land. A Report of a World Conference on Problems of International Migration and the Responsibility of the Churches, Held at Leysin, Switzerland, June 11–16, 1961, Division of Inter-Church Aid and Service to Refugees, WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES, p. 24. 25 Matthew 8:20. 26 Hebrews 13:14. 27 Ibd. p. 25.

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of Christ; by identifying herself with the strangers as our Lord identifies himself with them. The church must become solidary with the migrant. She can only do this by learning from him what her essential role is in this world. [ . . .] The motivation for helping the migrant is different in the church from anywhere else. Where outside the church the main purpose is to make him forget that he is a stranger in the world, the church does not want him to forget it but rather joins him in his ‘migration.’ Needless to say that this in many instances requires a total change in the attitude of the church herself which has lost this character because of her identification with the world.”28 These strong words by the Dutch theologian Pieter de Jong were spoken at a WCC conference on the challenges of migration in 1961 (!), but they seem to have gone largely unheard. Looking at migrants from the viewpoint of a ‘migrant theology’ does not mean, of course, that wars, the dichotomy between rich and poor, and ecological problems do not need to be resolved. But if the whole Biblical tradition of migration as an act of faith in the living God is disregarded, and migration is understood solely within a framework of global problems, migrants can only be constructed as victims and clients of diaconal and advocacy work of the churches, not as active, free subjects who in faith have chosen a certain path. In such a paradigm, it becomes nearly impossible to expect migrants to enrich our country, its culture and its churches, and it seems preposterous to describe the arrival in Germany of missionaries from the South and East as divinely ordained, a movement caused by the Holy Spirit. The migrant interviewees, on the other hand, did just that. By interpreting their migration spiritually rather than politically, they retain a strong sense of agency: They are not victims, but people whom God called to achieve his aim of world evangelism. They are not migrants seeking a better life in a different place; they are expatriates who have been sent to fulfill a certain task. While many of them told narratives which stressed that coming to Germany was not their own idea, none of them intimated that it would have been better for them to stay home. Even if it was war or persecution that drove them away from their home countries, such political realities are only seen as ‘outside’ factors: The real reason for their migration was that God made them move. “If God had a message to spread to all people and races [ . . .] how would

28

Ibd. p. 25.

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He get people to move around the globe from culture to culture and from location to location? I guess, He would originate push factors so that people would leave the comfort zone of their tribes and culture, and migrate to other places carrying the message [ . . .] with them.”29 In the narratives, the fact of migration is a given, not something to be avoided. The trouble with this approach is, of course, that the all-tooreal problems of social, political and economic inequalities tend to be disregarded in favor of a spiritualizing interpretation of the situation. Somewhat simplistically, we could state that we find “sedentarist metaphysics” in the interpretation of migration on the European Protestant church side, and “expatriate” or internationalist metaphysics on the migrant pentecostal / charismatic side. A dialogue is necessary about both approaches. While the European churches need to be challenged to see migrants as actors rather than solely as victims, the migrant interlocutors need to be challenged not to disregard politics for the sake of individualist spiritual interpretations. Biblical tradition gives us models that show how this could happen. The story of Joseph,30 for example, binds together a narrative of oppression and victimization with a spiritual interpretation that insists that human evil can be used for ultimate good by divine intervention. 6.2.3. Mission and evangelism I just returned from the US. I ministered in some churches of AfricanAmericans in Mississippi, came to Atlanta and ministered in a Baptist church where the pastor is from Ghana. I will be going back by the end of the month to do a spiritual warfare program in Virginia.31

We have seen that the interviewees described their understanding of evangelism within revivalist paradigms: Their evangelistic work, whether in Germany, in other European countries, or even the US is aimed at winning new members for the churches they have set up, and / or “revival” within the existing indigenous churches. “Salvation” is understood as concerning both the spiritual and the material realm: Conversion means both eternal life in the future and a better life now. In their conceptualization of evangelism, the interviewees 29 A. Oni-Orisan, You Must Prosper in the Land. How to Succeed in a Foreign Land, Köln: The Redeemed Christian church of God e.V., 2007, p. 8. 30 Gen. 37–50. 31 E-mail from S.O. to the author, dated 4 September 2008.

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use a paradigm of spiritual warfare: Evangelism is not about dialogue, encounter and mutual development, but rather about confrontation, battle and victory. Furthermore, the pentecostal / charismatic migrant pastors have their own agenda when it comes to the future of the Protestant churches: When they talk about “bringing revival” to them, they mean a process of charismatization and evangelicalization which will wash away the currently existing bureaucratic structures, rules and regulations. There is a definite chutzpah in this attitude. Here are small, marginalized immigrant groups which believe they have been commissioned to fundamentally change large, indigenous churches with a long tradition and history, as well as the society in which these churches find themselves. But pentecostal / charismatic migrants do not look at what might seem humanly possible: They expect God’s miraculous powers to work through them; consequently, their dreams and visions can never be grand enough. On the European and North American side, we find a number of different responses to the migrant claims to re-evangelize these continents: Pentecostal and evangelical groups have cautiously started to welcome migrant ‘reverse mission churches’ into their fold as they share their diagnosis of a need for revival and hope to benefit from the spiritual strength of the newcomers.32 The Baptist Federation in Europe, in 2006, held a conference on “Ethnic Churches in Europe” which looked into the effects of migration on the evangelism work of Baptist churches on the continent.33 In Germany, the Federation of free Pentecostal Churches (BfP), has been admitting a growing number of migrant churches into their fold. The Coalition for Evangelism, the German branch of the Lausanne Movement for World Evangelism, has been actively reaching out to recruit migrant churches and migrant church leaders since 2005, though with rather limited success so far.

See, for example, the July 2008 issue of Lausanne World Pulse, an international, evangelical online magazine on world evangelism, with its themed articles on “The Effects of Migration and the Growing Diaspora on Evangelism Efforts”, www.lausanneworldpulse.com/07–2008, accessed 4 October 2008. Much older, but quite typical is the article by Jeff Fountain of Youth with a Mission, “Look who is coming to Europe,” www.ywam.eu/weeklyword/look-whos-coming-to-europe, accessed 4 October 2008. For a recent German publication, see Charisma 146, 4. Quartal 2008, under the title: “The Blessing is coming back” (Der Segen kommt zurück). 33 See Peter Penner, Ethnic Churches in Europe—A Baptist Response, Schwarzenfeld: Neufeld Verlag, Oktober 2006. 32

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A number of smaller evangelical groups, like Apoyo e.V.,34 also try to involve migrant missionaries into their projects. Furthermore, migrant churches are usually welcomed into local pentecostal / charismatic or evangelical evangelistic projects like “Jesus March,” “Together for Berlin,”35 “Halleluja Ruhrgebiet”36 (staged during the Soccer World Championship 2006) or “Prayer for the City.” But up to now, all of these projects have been dominated by Germans. At the same time, the migrants’ great visions and claims are taken with more than just a grain of salt. There is a strong sense that for them to become successful as missionaries in Europe, migrants have to be properly trained37 and effectively networked into European organizational structures. The Protestant churches in Europe, so far, have not reacted officially to the missionary claims of migrant churches and their leaders. In fact, such claims have rarely even been perceived, and where they have been observed, they are usually dismissed as sectarian and unimportant.38 The only exception to this rule seems to be the Migration Enquiry process of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.39 At the moment, the New Mission Churches are simply too small and marginal to be taken seriously. In Germany, contacts with migrant churches and a perception of their evangelistic aims and visions are mostly limited to the mission agencies of the Protestant churches. The United Evangelical Mission was the first organization to arrange a workshop on “reverse mission,” in the year 2000, though its papers and results were never published, and the impact of this workshop was therefore fairly limited. The www.apoyo.info, accessed 29 August 2007. www.gfberlin.de/english/index.html, accessed 29 August 2007. 36 www.halleluja-ruhrgebiet.de accessed 29 August 2007. 37 The Federation of free Pentecostal Churches (BfP), for example, does not recognize migrant pastors unless they have a degree from one of the BfP-recognized Bible schools or seminaries. Similarly, the website of the “Welcome Project” sponsored, among others, by the Evangelical Alliance in Europe, stresses the importance of training of migrant missionaries. Cf. www.welcomeproject.net/training, accessed 10 January 2007. (This website is currently dysfunctional but can be accessed through the Google cache under www.google.com/search?q=cache:3fNvTCAytg4J:www.welcomeproject .net/training+%22welcome+project%22+training&hl=de&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=de accessed 29 August 2007.) 38 As there are no official statements, this observation is based on personal discussions with pastors and church leaders from different Evangelical Churches in Germany as well as with colleagues involved in work with migrant churches in other European countries. 39 See above note 5. 34 35

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Bavarian Mission Agency, in cooperation with the theological seminary in Neuendettelsau has, since 2005, been running a training course for migrant church leaders titled “Mission from South to North.” Though the project distributes a newsletter, publicity has been relatively sparse. Locally, attempts by migrant churches to recruit German members actively have occasionally led to tensions with German host congregations and even, in some cases, resulted in the migrant church being asked to vacate the premises. As far as information is available, there have been no joint evangelistic projects of migrant and Protestant congregations. Conversely, several migrant churches which were looking for German partner congregations to engage in such projects were completely frustrated in their search. An important reason for this disinterest and the resulting tensions can be found in differing understandings of mission and evangelism. While within the pluralistic setup of the Protestant churches in Europe, different conceptualizations of mission and evangelism co-exist, it can be stated broadly that none of these perceptions are informed by a paradigm of spiritual warfare.40 Basically, within the Protestant (and also the evangelical) churches, mission is understood as being part of the “missio Dei,” God’s mission to the world which is lived out holistically in evangelism as well as in social and political action.41 In this context, evangelism is defined first and foremost as communication of the Gospel. While theologically, Protestant and evangelical Christians would agree that successful communication of the Gospel needs the Holy Spirit to open people’s hearts and is therefore always more than a merely human effort, preparation for evangelism is overwhelmingly by training, particularly communication training,42 while prayer plays a rather marginal role. For European Protestants, communication of the Gospel is not possible without an attitude of openness, dialogue and encounter. The 40 The exception to this case may be the charismatic revival movement within the Church of England, see www.glopent.net/Members/grsmith/research-project-thechurch-militant, accessed 4 October 2008. 41 See, for example, World Council of Churches (ed.), You Are the Light of the World. Statements on Mission by the World Council of Churches 1980–2005, Geneva: WCC Publications 2005. For a recent German Protestant example, see the communiqué of the EKD Synod 1999, “Reden von Gott in der Welt—Der missionarische auftrag der Kirche an der Schwelle zum 3. Jahrtausend,” accessible online under www.ekd .de/EKD-Texte/evangelium_kundgebung_2001.html, accessed 29 August 2007. 42 A German keyword here is “im Glauben sprachfähig werden”—to develop the ability to speak one’s faith.

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“other,” the person to be evangelized, is not to be seen as an object of evangelistic attempts which make him or her “like me,” but rather as a person who is, like me, searching for God, meaning in life, religious fulfillment. Evangelism always changes both the evangelized and the evangelizer.43 Such dialogical conceptualization of evangelism essentially excludes any understanding of spiritual warfare. Furthermore, due to European history, European Christians in particular are generally wary of any kind of warfare metaphors when expressing their faith. The migrant interviewees are aware of this fact, but feel that they cannot humor the Europeans when it comes to spiritual realities: Spiritual warfare is warfare! And Germans are told not to fight wars, that wars are bad. Wars—you don’t even want to hear the word war. Which, in the physical . . . which is understandable. But then the spiritual warfare is required (laughs), too, to fight spirits.

A reason for the particularly German Protestant disregard of the missionary self-understanding of pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches can be found in the concept of “Volkskirche.”44 This untranslatable term carries both the notion of ‘folk church’ and ‘people’s church,’ and basically means that a church is more or less identical with a certain ethnic / cultural group. This notion, in several aspects, makes it difficult to accept “missionaries” from abroad. First of all, there is a strong understanding that even though Germany can no longer be considered a Christian country, it is still shaped by Christian tradition (which, by the way, has to be upheld against Muslim immigrants!). This tradition may need to be revived and modernized, but this can best be done by Germans themselves, not by immigrants. Secondly, within a Volkskirche, membership is not defined by certain behaviors or attendance, but simply by being registered. This means that “distanced membership” is a valid option—as long as somebody is registered as Evangelical, he or she has to be considered as Christian and therefore does not need to

43 For German examples, see Evangelische Kirche im Rheinland (ed.), Vom offenen Himmel erzählen. Unterwegs zu einer missionarischen Volkskirche. Arbeitshilfe, August 2006, particularly pp. 11–16. This model of evangelism is also nicely developed in Walter Hollenweger, Der Klapperstorch und die Theologie, Kindhausen: MetanoiaVerlag 2003. 44 Cf. Wolfgang Huber, Henning Schröer, Volkskirche I. Systematisch-theologisch II. Praktisch-theologisch. In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 35 (2003), pp. 249–262.

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be evangelized.45 A migrant outreach to what they would term “nominal Christians” is rejected as proselytism and “sheep stealing.” Thirdly, a Volkskirche is defined by geographical parishes which cover all of the country—consequently, there is no need for new congregations to be planted. New congregations only make sense if they serve a foreign ‘diaspora.’ Finally, the missionary claims of migrant pentecostals and charismatics are often rejected by the Protestant churches in Germany as they imply that the latter are deficient and need help from the outside. Whenever the imaginations of the German church analyzed in chapter 5.4.1 are introduced to German Protestant pastors, they are angrily dismissed. An element of racism can be detected in such rejections (“We don’t need uneducated Blacks to tell us what to do!”), an unwillingness to explore different world views (“I am not willing to go back behind the enlightenment to a magical world view!”), and finally a sense that the migrants do not understand the German church situation very well (“They only look at empty Sunday services but don’t see what we are doing during the week.”). As far as can be ascertained, a real dialogue about the missionary self-understanding of the pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches and what it means for the churches in Europe has not taken place anywhere. But such a dialogue is urgently needed: Topics will have to include the definition of “Christian,” ecclesiology, the relationship between a spiritual warfare and a communication paradigm, and the understanding of salvation and its consequences in the material realm. 6.3. Ecclesiology and the politics of difference: Who defines Christianity in Europe? In the section above, we have described three fields in which we see theological dialogue between migrant pentecostals / charismatics and European Protestants as overdue. But even to attempt such a dialogue one needs to be aware that the encounter between pentecostal / charismatic migrant and Protestant indigenous churches does not happen on an equal basis. Particularly in northern and western Europe, there is a strong discursive imbalance between the two sides. 45 This notion is, of course, strongly contested by the “missionary” wing within the Evangelical Church which aims at motivating distanced members to become involved members.

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The Protestant churches must be considered as the ‘church of the elites.’ They have access to discursive instruments and can still strongly influence public discourse. Pentecostal / charismatic migrants do not have such discursive power. They do not publish communiqués and discussion papers. They have no access to politicians or the mainstream media.46 They simply tell their stories in personal encounters. Clearly, their viewpoint has remained ‘subaltern.’47 In their encounter with migrant churches, particularly northern and western European Protestant churches project themselves, by limiting their outlook to Europe, as so much larger in terms of membership, so much stronger in terms of funding and organization, and so much more interwoven into the fabric of society that the migrant discourse can simply be dismissed as irrelevant. The migrant churches, on the other side, challenge this superiority by assuming a globalizing attitude. By defining themselves as international in character, and as part of a transnational, fast-growing network that spans the globe, the European Protestant churches are made to look small, provincial and backward while the migrant churches are seen as the embodiment of modernity or even post-modernity. The challenge of the migrant churches is an ecclesiological one, and it has political implications. The underlying provocation is nicely summed up in a question: “Whose religion is Christianity in Europe?”48 Since its inception, European Protestant ecclesiology has conceptualized the “real existing” church as a national and / or ethnic unit, while relegating the concept of a worldwide church to the abstract realm of the “believed church” and to the practice of “ecumenical relations.” Not surprisingly, migrant churches are usually imagined as monoethnic / mono-cultural churches, even though research shows that a

46

For the situation in the Netherlands, see Marten van der Meulen, Being Illegal is like Fishing without a Permit, in: Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Zürich / Berlin: LIT-Verlag 2008, pp. 49–59. 47 On the definition of subaltern, see Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge (MA) / London: Cambridge University Press 1999; and Edward Said, Foreword, in: Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri C. (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988. 48 Afe Adogame, Whose religion is Christianity? African Christian communities and the negotiation of German religious landscapes, paper delivered at a conference of EKD and ACK on cooperation between German and migrant churches, Wuppertal, January 2007.

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majority of migrant churches is multi-ethnic.49 Christian identity is closely linked to one’s mother tongue, culture, and home, and an “international Protestant Church” is somehow unthinkable. Rather, Protestant churches proudly bear national labels: Evangelical Church in Germany, Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Church of Sweden, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and so on. In Germany, for example, “evangelisch in Deutschland”50 (Evangelical / Protestant in Germany), is a slogan strongly promoted by the Evangelical Church in Germany, and basically means a German Protestant identity constructed as white and imagined as a kind of ‘cultural Protestantism’ shaped by Martin Luther’s theology, Paul Gerhard’s hymns and J.S. Bach’s cantatas, the Frauenkirche in Dresden and so on.51 In short, Protestantism in Germany belongs to the Evangelical Church which basically has no members of color. Within such an ecclesiology, migrant churches automatically remain ‘foreign’ and ‘other’ since, due to their members’ ethnicity, they do not share the cultural roots of the Europeans, and therefore have different liturgies, church life and theologies. An indicator of such thinking is the unease that, for example, many German pastors show when confronted with choirs from Korean churches in Germany which sing German classical church music at a level far surpassing that of most German church choirs. “Why don’t they sing their own music?” is a question frequently asked, clearly implying that German music belongs to the Germans. It is not surprising that the EKD brochure on “Churches and congregations of other language or origin”52 lists migrant churches according to their national background, regardless of whether they are Protestant, Orthodox, and African Independent or—in one case only—

See chapter 2.4. See Koppe, Rolf / Hahn, Udo / Helbich, Peter (eds.), Evangelisch in Deutschland —protestantisch und weltoffen, Breklum: Breklumer Buchhandlung und Verlag 2002. The EKD document “Kirche der Freiheit” uses the term “evangelisch in Deutschland” (Evangelical in Germany) as its catchphrase. Cf. the critique by Christoph Anders, Hinterm eigenen Horizont geht’s weiter. Rückfragen an das Impulspapier des Rates der EKD “Kirche der Freiheit—Perspektiven für die Evangelische Kirche im 21. Jahrhundert”. Stellungnahme aus dem Evangelischen Missionswerk in Deutschland (EMW), 2006. 51 This impression comes across strongly when one regularly reads the leading German Protestant magazine Zeitzeichen. Kommentare zu Religion und Gesellschaft. 52 Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (ed.), Kirchen und Gemeinden anderer Sprache und Herkunft, Frankfurt am Main: Gemeinschaftswerk der evangelischen Publizistik 1997. 49 50

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pentecostal. National differences, defined as cultural, are conceptualized as stronger than confessional or denominational unity. But if the church universal is concretized solely in terms of ‘ecumenical cooperation’ between different ethnic and / or denominational incarnations of this church, the relationship between indigenous and migrant churches in any given country remains asymmetrical, with the indigenous churches holding a position of power, and the migrant churches more or less marginalized. Where migrant churches are defined as “other,” they are excluded politically and socially, and denied any legitimate claim on local resources.53 They are here on sufferance only; they have a right to be protected as aliens, but they can never be full members of our society and church. “They have their culture, and we have ours” is a sentiment often voiced by European Protestants when commenting on practices in migrant churches which they find strange but do not want to engage with any further. While the presence of migrant churches may have pluralized the church landscape in Europe, their Christianity is not (and cannot easily become) “European,” as culture is understood in a static way, and ‘cultural change’ associated with ‘losing one’s identity.’54 The recent statement of the outgoing Secretary General of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Bas Plaisier, that his church is “far too white”55 and no longer representing world-Christianity as it is present in the multi-cultural composition of Dutch society, is not likely to be taken up any time soon by other continental European Protestant church leaders. As European Protestant churches have so far negotiated their identities in relation to their respective national contexts, a real opening-up towards migrant Christians would mean a process of radical re-definition of their own heritages and identities. This seems to be somewhat easier for small minority Protestants like the Waldensian Church in Italy, while Protestant churches in northwestern Europe, so 53 Cf. also Gerrie ter Haar, Who defines African Identity? A Concluding Analysis, in: Cox, James L. and ter Haar, Gerrie (eds.), Uniquely African? African Christian Identity from Cultural and Historical Perspectives, Trenton (NJ) / Asmara (Eritrea): Africa World Press 2003, p. 272. 54 For a discussion of static and dynamic images of culture and their influence on the understanding of ‘religious identity,’ see Michael Bergunder, Pfingstbewegung, Globalität und Migration, in: Bergunder, Michael und Haustein, Jörg (Hg.), Migration und Identität. Pfingstlich-charismatische Migrationsgemeinden in Deutschland. Beiheft der Zeitschrift für Mission 8. Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 2006, pp. 153–169. 55 D. Visser, ‘Ds. Bas Plaisier: “Onze Kerk is Veel Te Wit,” ’ Kerkinformatie, no. 160 (2008), p. 4.

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far, have seen the presence of migrant Christians not as challenge to their essence, but at most a challenge to their ethical (i.e. diaconal) behavior. The presence of migrant churches does not mean that the Protestant churches have to internationalize; they can remain the ethnic / monocultural communities they were and simply engage in ecumenical and diaconal relations with migrant churches. What we have just described could be defined as strands of a ‘culturalist ecclesiology.’ Within such reasoning, migrants are left with a simple choice: Either, they could choose to assimilate into the existing structures of organization and theological thinking, or they have to remain the ‘exotic other.’ The first choice is sometimes demanded, but where migrants indeed try to join European Protestant churches, they frequently experience rejection. Some migrants ascribe this to their skin color: Particularly black Christian migrants can tell harrowing stories of white Protestants recoiling and moving away when they sat down next to them in a church pew, or even having been denied the common cup at communion as others would not want to drink from it after a Black had done so. In other cases, they are told that unfortunately, nobody can translate for them, and that they should therefore move to another, “more suitable” [i.e. migrant] church. The implicit racism behind such rejections is often clothed in the argument that one does not want to force the migrants to give up their cultural identity by assimilating into a European church; a sentiment that is frequently expressed in discussions among European pastors and church leaders when it comes to the question of integrating migrant Christians. Consequently, the only way out for the migrants is indeed to remain the ‘exotic other’ with which European churches occasionally engage to show their ecumenical and multicultural openness. The European Protestant culturalist outlook denies any right of migrant Christians to define “European Christianity.” It has to be noted, though, that the politics of difference do not only play in the realm of culture, but also in the realm of theology— here they are encapsulated in denominationalism. While many migrant churches try to escape such politics by defining themselves as ‘nondenominational,’ another process of ‘othering’ can be detected when such churches are labeled as ‘charismatic’ or ‘pentecostal’ in a denominational sense. Where differences between Protestant European and migrant Christianity are described as theological, even deeper separations might be generated. In the words of a German pastor, reporting back to the new coordinator of the UEM program:

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chapter six In our talks [with the migrant church using our building] we did not find any way to bring our different theologies, (!)—and not irritations caused by culture or communication disturbances—together. Therefore we asked the [migrant church] to find another host church.

As there is little dialogue even between Protestant and European pentecostal / charismatic churches and organizations, with pentecostal and charismatic churches remaining on the ‘watch lists’ of Protestant churches’ officers for questions of sects and worldview,56 European church representatives have been asking why they even need to talk to migrant pentecostals and charismatics. In general, the pentecostal and charismatic movement is not defined as part of Protestantism in Europe, but rather as a movement against which Protestantism needs to draw a clear dividing line. Consequently, a double exclusion mechanism works against pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches: They are neither European nor Protestant; therefore again, they cannot claim a right to co-define what “Protestant in Europe” means. The migrants, of course, challenge this exclusion. If they have been divinely sent to Europe to bring revival to this continent and its churches, they are no longer just guests—rather, they are part and parcel of God’s mission to the whole world which includes the European churches. We will come back to this point in chapter 6.5. It is quite striking that the European Protestant churches which are so aware of the processes of economic globalization and have had so much to say to this57 find it so difficult to accept that the deterritorialized transnationalism of migrant churches is a form of ecclesial postmodernity that challenges their territorial identities. If they could recognize this, rather than considering the international identities of migrant churches as a lack of integration, they could understand them as models for the future from which they as white, indigenous churches could learn.58

56 See, e.g., the website of the Protestant Information Office on Religions, Sects, and Worldviews, www.relinfo.ch/index/charismatik.html, accessed 30 October 2008. 57 See, for example, the ample list of documents on www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/ jpc/globalization.html, accessed on 7 October 2008. 58 See also Hijme Stoffels, A Coat of Many Colours, in: Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Zürich / Berlin: LITVerlag 2008, p. 26.

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6.4. The functional question: Does a missionary self-image further or hinder integration? We cannot finish this study without asking a functional question: What bearing does a missionary self-image have on the integration of pentecostal / charismatic migrants? This question needs to be considered in two different aspects: How does a missionary self-understanding influence the willingness of migrants to integrate, and how do European society and European churches react when confronted with migrant missionaries? Looking at the migrants first, a mixed picture emerges. First of all, we have seen that the interviewees in Germany consider themselves divinely sent to the country where they are now residing. It is not just a place where they have fled to because no other option was available, and where they wait out their exile. It is a place where God wants to act and to use them. They live with a strong sense of purpose: They are here because they are meant to be here. Jeffrey Swanson’s study of American missionaries shows that those who have a clear call narrative show a high frustration tolerance;59 they are able to overcome difficulties and disappointments. We can observe the same pattern among pentecostal / charismatic migrants in Europe: They interpret the hostility and rejection they often face as less important than the divine call that brought them here. Since these migrants see themselves as sent to this continent to engender change here, they are unlikely to develop a diaspora or even ghetto mentality. It is not at all surprising that the churches they plant are explicitly meant to be international and open for indigenous people. As Danielle Koning in her study of the “new mission” of migrant churches in Holland60 notes, ghettoization and evangelistic crusades are opposite responses to the same experience of being a minority. Faced with the secularization of Dutch society, migrant churches clearly choose the latter response, though so far, their evangelistic success has been limited mostly to minority ethnic groups. Indeed, observations both in Europe and in North America show that pentecostal / charismatic migrant churches are not very successful

59 See Jeffrey Swanson, Echoes of the Call. Identity and Ideology Among American Missionaries in Ecuador, New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995. 60 Danielle Koning, Brining the Gospel back to Europe, in: Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Zürich / Berlin: LIT-Verlag 2008, pp. 103–114.

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when it comes to winning members from the indigenous population.61 Jehu Hanciles observation seems apt: “A good proportion of immigrant congregations are veritable ethnic enclaves given to self-maintenance and insulated from the wider society by non-English [or German or Dutch etc.] usage in their worship and fellowship.”62 No migrant-led church I have ever visited in Germany, even those that have a very international membership, has had more than 25 % German members, and most have less than 5 %. In some larger churches which could be observed over several years, Germans were seen to join, be very active for a while, and then leave again. Conversations with some such Germans elicited a deep sense of frustration that in the end, the migrant-led church did not become “home” but remained too foreign in both worship and leadership style. On the other hand, some conversations with migrant members in congregations whose pastors actively strive to internationalize point to a sense of resentment if too much accommodation is given to Germans. It may be too early to judge the situation since most migrant churches are still very young, but it could very well be that the international outlook of the pastors is not shared by a majority of migrant church members who have a much stronger need for a “home away from home” than their pastors would like to admit. Anecdotal evidence points to exactly such tensions, though much more research would be needed to bear this out. The spectacular exception—a migrant-founded and led church which is not only huge, but also has mostly indigenous members—is the Blessed Embassy of the Kingdom of God to All Nations (God’s Embassy) in Kiev, arguably Europe’s largest Christian congregation. Founded in 1994 by Nigerian-born Sunday Adelaja who in the early 1990s was observed preaching to small gaggles of listeners in subway stations63 it failed to attract many followers at the beginning, being mostly attended by a small number of former drug addicts. Eventually, though, the church began to grow, and today has members

61 See Danielle Koning’s study quoted above; and Stephen Hunt, ‘Neither Here nor There’: The Construction of Identities and Boundary Maintenance of West African Pentecostals, in: Sociology, vol. 36 (I) 2002, pp. 147–169. 62 Jehu J. Hanciles, Migration, Diaspora Communities, and the New Missionary Encounter with Western Society, in: Lausanne World Pulse, July 2008, pp. 5–9, downloadable from www.lausanneworldpulse.com/archives.php, accessed 1 September 2008, p. 8. 63 See Catherine Wanner, Communities of the Converted. Ukrainians and Global Evangelism, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2007.

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from all walks of Ukrainian society, including the mayor of Kiev. Very few of the church’s members are migrants. Catherine Wanner64 and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu65 who both have researched this church come to different conclusions when trying to explain its phenomenal success. While Asamoah-Gyadu sees the church as an expression of what a missionary movement of Africans from the South to the North can achieve, Wanner describes it as “a distinctly Ukrainian church constituting a local response to immediate postsocialist circumstances,” playing down the role of its African leader. As God’s Embassy is a singular phenomenon—as far as could be ascertained, no other large new missionary church in Europe with a majority European membership is led by a pastor from the global South—, it is too early to describe it as paradigmatic for the new South-North missionary movement. Clearly, though, with Sunday Adelaja one migrant charismatic church founder has shown how a missionary outlook can lead to successful integration. In 20 or 30 years it will be known whether he remained the exception, or set a trend. As an alternative to planting their own churches, pentecostal / charismatic migrant missionaries might consider working in a European Protestant of evangelical church. Outside of the UK and perhaps Italy, very few migrants have chosen this option. A likely reason for this is that such an employment is usually only granted after longer periods of full-time training in a European institution for which most migrants lack the financial resources. Except for some pentecostal theological seminaries which have been increasing their intake of migrant students in recent years, most European Bible schools and theological seminaries have not been able to attract many migrants, and have usually not even attempted to do so. Furthermore, employment opportunities for migrant pastors, even those with a European education, are scarce, as European congregations, both Protestant and evangelical, prefer indigenous pastors. As far as can be observed in Germany, no immigrant pastor from the South has been called to serve a Germanmajority church as its sole pastor,66 and only a few immigrant pastors 64

Ibd. J. Kwabena Asamoah Gyadu, An African Pentecostal on Mission in Eastern Europe: The Church of the “Embassy of God” in the Ukraine, in: Pneuma, vol. 27, no. 2, Fall 2005, pp. 297–321; and African Initiated Christianity in Eastern Europe: Church of the “Embassy of God” in the Ukraine, in: International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 30, no. 2 (April 2006), pp. 73–75. 66 The United Evangelical Mission has been facilitating the service of exchange 65

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work as assistants to a German pastor in evangelical churches. (The situation is different in the Catholic Church which has been importing priests from Africa and Asia for some time due to a severe lack of German candidates.) A second question that needs to be considered here is how a spiritual warfare paradigm might influence integration. Critics of the paradigm charge that it thwarts dialogue, communication and inculturation in evangelism as the culture of those to be evangelized is too easily identified with the realm of ‘darkness’ of which the missionary has to stay free. Robert Priest, Thomas Campbell, and Bradford Mullen67 describe how strong fears of witchcraft and demonic disturbance prevent American missionaries from making close personal contacts with those whom they want to evangelize, and complicate even simple social interactions like the receiving of gifts. They claim that such attitudes make any real integration of the missionary into his or her host society impossible. In addition, an understanding that evangelism relies more on powerful prayer than on successful communication could allow migrant pastors simply to set up prayer groups of migrants without any contacts with the indigenous German population. Such ‘missionary strategies’ can be observed within the worldwide pentecostal / charismatic movement, for example in the ‘prayer walks’ regularly organized by many ‘Third Wave’ ministries, which allow short term ‘mission engagements’ without having to learn a foreign language, and without ever having to establish a relationship with anyone outside one’s prayer group. In short, a spiritual warfare paradigm might allow migrant churches to combine an evangelistic self-image with practices that lead to ghettoization rather than to integration. As far as could be ascertained, no research has yet been attempted on this issue. Therefore, we must rely on anecdotal evidence and occasional observations. These suggest that a connection between a spiritual warfare paradigm and an unwillingness to open up to European culture and society cannot be established. God’s Embassy in Kiev is definitely a church with a strong spiritual warfare approach, but this has not hindered its Nigerian founder to draw in a majority of Ukrainian members. Similarly, the Redeemed Christian Church of God which is pastors from Africa and Asia in German Protestant congregations. But these pastors remain ‘guest workers’ on a limited contract that cannot be extended beyond six years. 67 In: E. Rommen, Spiritual Power and Missions, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1995, pp. 9 ff.

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strongly influenced by spiritual warfare theology actively encourages and trains its members in Germany to integrate into German society. Through workshops68 and books,69 church members are told to “make Germany their own,” learn the language properly, make German friends, read German newspapers, join German clubs, political parties and even labor unions. Actually, a well-defined spiritual warfare theology might lead its adherents to closely engage with the culture and history of their surroundings so as to ascertain which spirits need to be fought. On the other hand, I could observe that especially in smaller and struggling churches, a spiritual warfare approach served to draw very strict boundaries between the church and the surrounding society, rejecting almost any kind of integration. This suggests that there may be other reasons than the presence of absence of a spiritual warfare theology which determine whether migrant Christians do or do not integrate. A spiritual warfare approach may, in some cases, serve as an excuse for a lack of effort towards integration without being its cause. Finally: By defining themselves as missionaries and expatriates, as people with a divine task to perform in Europe, the migrants reject the role and image that is forced upon them by the dominant discourse on migration. They are not victims and clients, but actors. Joel Robbins has pointed out that pentecostal / charismatic Christians in general tend to construe themselves “as leaping over their immediate political environment,” thereby transforming “the local political field in ways not captured by common models.”70 A similar operation could be observed in the biographical interviews. The interviewees do not want to assimilate into their environment, but to change it. Ciska Stark, who analyzed 14 sermons from two different Africanled pentecostal / charismatic churches in Amsterdam, observes: “The theme of integration is almost absent in sermons in Christian immigrant churches”71 and concludes: “What follows is that these immigrant 68 E.g. RCCG German Convention 2002, “A Date with Destiny”, which included lectures on “Strategies to breakthrough in Germany,” “The key to lasting success,” “Renewing a battered self-image” (a lecture on how to not be defeated by racism), and “Networking for excellence in business.” 69 A. Oni-Orisan, You Must Prosper in the Land. How to Succeed in a Foreign Land, Köln: The Redeemed Christian church of God e.V., 2007. 70 Joel Robbins, The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, in: Annual Review of Anthropology, 2004, p. 136. 71 Ciska Stark, The Energizing Pulpit. “African European” Preaching on the Continent, in: Mechteld Jansen and Hijme Stoffels (eds.), A Moving God. Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Zürich / Berlin: LIT-Verlag 2008, p. 192.

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churches are not focused primarily on integration into Dutch society. Rather, they believe they are called to transform society worldwide according to Christian standards.”72 She assumes that this will have consequences: “The claim of the African European preaching style is the ultimate transformation of the loser into the winner and of the pagan world into the kingdom of God. The weekly proclamation of this perspective should have an influence on one’s life.” Stark’s analysis shows that very often in the European discussion, ‘integration’ basically means ‘becoming like us or similar to us,’ means being assimilated into a society without changing it. If pentecostal / charismatic missionaries aim to transform European societies, this is seen as threatening rather than as integrative; though such an approach clearly shows a willingness to engage with these societies and to become part of them. “We are not the problem, we are the solution” is a migrant church slogan that expresses this attitude of wanting to change and influence their host societies. By challenging the basic presumptions of the discourse on migration, pentecostal / charismatic migrants may be able, on the long run, to influence and change it. But whether this happens does not only depend on the migrants, but also on the churches in Europe. 6.5. The theological question: Are European churches ready to be evangelized? One of the most important paradigm shifts in the mission theology of the 20th century was the move from an understanding of mission as the task of the (Northern Atlantic) churches to a definition of mission as “missio Dei,” a movement in which God engages with the world and in which the church may play a part if it is faithful to him.73 The concept of missio Dei is important as it allows us to discern God’s Spirit as active in the world outside and independent of the churches: Where people are healed and liberated, where peace is made, God is seen at work even if no church or Christian was active in the process. The mission Ibd. p. 193. For an overview over the recent ecumenical discussions of this concept, see Jacques Matthey, Mission im Ökumenischen Rat der Kirchen, in: Dahling-Sander, Christoph; Schulte, Andrea; Werner, Dietrich; Wrogemann, Henning (eds.), Leitfaden Ökumenische Missionstheologie, Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser / Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2003, pp. 220–244. 72 73

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does not belong to the church, it belongs to God. Or, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury: “Mission means recognizing what God is doing and joining in.”74 If such a concept is thought through to its consequences, it would have to include the idea that a church, may it be local, regional or national, is not only an actor in the process of God’s mission to the world, but also its addressee. But within European Protestant mission theology such a conclusion has not yet been drawn: The addressees of the missio Dei are solely seen outside of the churches. But if, despite all of what they might find questionable about the migrants’ theology, European Protestant Christians were to read the blossoming of migrant churches on European ground as a movement of the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the New Mission Churches as one filament of the missio Dei, then the relationship between the indigenous and the migrant churches would have to be taken out of the diaconal helper—client realm and to be defined in missiological terms: How does their mission relate to ours, and ours to theirs? And how does their being in Europe shape the face of Christianity in this continent? Such questioning does not mean that European Protestant churches have to accept uncritically what the migrant pentecostals and charismatics are preaching and teaching. After all, the Holy Spirit, throughout history, has relied on human beings with all their faults and failures. Being part of the movement of the Spirit does not make anybody perfect; accepting the mission of the migrant churches as part of such a Spirit movement does not mean that their theology and practice may not be questioned or criticized. But a dialogue based on the recognition that the Spirit moves in the churches of the other as it moves in my own church leads to an attitude of respect and humility—the only attitude that will make a dialogue successful. But at least one difficulty can be identified: Considering how pentecostal / charismatic migrants imagine European society and church, developing an understanding of a common mission will not be easy. Where migrant pastors, with only superficial knowledge of the Protestant churches, claim to know that they are spiritually dead and what needs to be done to revive them, they will not evangelize, but antagonize. A ‘conquering’ attitude on the side of the migrants would definitely undermine their mission and prevent any real dialogue.

74

Quote taken from a lecture by Bishop Graham Cray, Iserlohn, 6 September 2007.

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In 2000, the German mission theologian Dietrich Werner formulated four “learning fields” for German Protestant churches in facing the “New Mission Churches”75 which actually are pertinent for all of Europe: First of all, the indigenous Protestant churches have to accept that they are no longer the only expression of Protestantism in Europe. Secondly, in addition to their “theology of sending,” the European churches need a “theology of receiving.” Thirdly, the European churches need to develop a practice of “ecumenical resource sharing.” And fourthly, the European churches have to move from a diaconal relationship in which migrant churches are cared for as clients who need help and support to an ecumenical relationship in which migrant churches are treated as equal partners. Werner’s challenges to the European Protestant churches, although eight years old already, are no less relevant today than they were then. In fact, little learning seems to have taken place in all four fields. For me, the most crucial question is indeed the question of a theology of receiving. Do European Protestants have the humility and the humor to accept that they need correction and assistance from pentecostal / charismatic migrants? Are Protestant churches willing to move from being a “giving” church to becoming a “receiving” church? An answer to this question cannot be given by this study, but only by the European churches themselves. But if the European Protestant churches, in their encounters with migrant pentecostals and charismatics, allow themselves to be reminded that they, too, are strangers in this world and citizens first and foremost of the Kingdom of God, a real dialogue and learning process may ensue.

75 Von missionarischer Abstinenz zur missionarischen Polyphonie in Deutschland. Missionsgeschichtlicher Epochenwechsel, ökumenische Zeitenwende und missionstheologische Schlüsselfragen am Beispiel der Rolle von Gemeinden anderer Sprache und Herkunft, unpublished paper for the UEM workshop “From reverse mission to common mission,” 16–18 May 2000.

appendix EXPATRIATION NARRATIVES

1. P.I. “I never dreamt like that before” 1 So when I gave my life to Christ, and, what happened was that the middle of that night I was in bed sleeping. I have never dreamt like that before. I was in dream, I dreamt, and I was in the midst of people, and it was a very white land, white sand, just like a beach, then the—some people came in, and I saw one man—I couldn’t see his face, he only stretched his hand towards me with the full of tracts. Tracts, that’s for evangelism, these tracts that you give to people. ‘There is a [unintelligible word] to evangelize to people.’ Then I say: ‘I don’t know how to do it.’ He said: ‘That’s what I want you to do now! Take it, go to that [unintelligible] junction, give it to people!’ So everybody I was giving it to, they were all white people. Then I asked him, I said: ‘The people are here, they are not Blacks, so I know how to deal with the Black people.’ He said: ‘No, but I call you to the, the, to give to the white people.’ Then I said: ‘But there is no white people a lot, but we have white people here, but they are not many enough.’ He, he said: ‘Here . . .’ He said: ‘But this is the place where there are many.’ Then I said: ‘But there are not many here.’ He said: ‘But here.’ Then after a while, I give it, I wake up. So I go to the church that day. I told my pastor this what I dreamt. The pastor told me that ‘God is preparing you.’ He said, he told me to preach the Gospel. Then I said: ‘No, I have a good job here, I will never leave.’ Because after school, I have a good job waiting for me. Really, I was working at the Ministry of Defense, I was a civilian paymaster with good pay, a good money. So, actually, and along the line, this friend of mine elsewhere traveled—he was now in Germany. Then, in the longer period, he called me, we spoke on telephone, and, eh, one night again I was dreaming then, eh, I was sitting in the midst of people, he came, he stretched his hand, and then he said: ‘Come over here.’ Then actually 1

Interviewed 2 January 2006 at his home.

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I lifted up, I was on a podium, as I sat with him I said: ‘Yes, this is the right place, I can now spread the Gospel.’ And he told me: ‘No, you didn’t come here to spread Gospel, you come here as an Asyl [sic].’ And then I said: ‘No, I am spreading Gospel.’ So I was not just evangelizing. So I wake up and now I went to the pastor and asked him, I said: ‘What does that one mean, Asyl?’ As I don’t know the word ‘Asyl’. I said: ‘It is not an English word, because I checked my dictionary, I didn’t find it in my dictionary.’ Then he told me that he doesn’t know it, the meaning. So I begin to ask people, I never get the meaning. Because that word ‘Asyl’ I never know the meaning before. I wrote it down. So in the . . . One day, this man of God, he was here, in Germany, to preach—that’s about four years later. He came back home and called me and said: ‘Try to see me tomorrow then in the office.’ It was a Monday morning. I went to his office. He said: ‘You told me a word one day, say it again.’ Then I said: ‘I don’t remember, unless I have to go home and get it from home.’ So, promised I did, came with the word, I wrote it and said: ‘This is the word.’ The spelling was not correct: Asyl. He said: ‘Do you know what the meaning of that word Asyl?’ I said ‘no.’ He said he was in Germany. And he told me the meaning of the word. He said these are people that seek political asylum. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said ‘yes.’ He said: ‘That is the meaning of the word.’ I say ‘yeah.’ He said: ‘Could be you want to go to Germany?’ I said: ‘No, I don’t have that plan.’ I said: ‘My plan now is that—I finish the Bible school, I want to set up a ministry, and I want to preach the Gospel here.’ He said: ‘I don’t think it will work for you. Do your best to go to that area.’ I said: ‘I don’t think so.’ So we talk about it and forget it. Then, along the line, what—some time I was also weak, some time I was also strong in the Christianity. Sometimes I will fall back to the world, commit sin, you know this thing will also happen with me at that time, particularly at this time I was not, eh, actually married, I—I also sometimes fall into fornication, sometimes come back again: “Pastor, this is what I did to me today.” It was okay. “You can go and repent and God will forgive you, but don’t do it again.” Sometimes people [unintelligible word] me and I will be very bitter, I don’t want to forgive them. Then he was “Okay, what you need to do little forgiveness, this is what Christ did for you.” He was very helpful to me. That is Archbishop Idahosa,2 he is late now. 2 Benson Idahosa from Benin City, Nigeria, was a pivotal figure in the West African neo-Pentecostal revival. His extraordinary influence reached far beyond Nigeria. See

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So, at the, at the along the line, this thing happens. The young man wrote me a letter and said: ‘There is a school here. If you want to attend a German language course, then . . .’ I said: ‘There is some here.’ He said: ‘Just for you to know Germany. You can just do it on your holidays and go back. You can take your holidays and do it.’ I said ‘okay.’ I did, and I went to the embassy that very day. As I got to the embassy, there were many people there, so, so we’re about eight of us, I can still remember, at a lake in Lagos. Eight of us were the people with the same letter of invitation to get admission to the German language school in Germany. That was in a place in Fulda. And I saw those ones as they show the letter to the man. He will say: ‘No, you can’t attend there. There is a German language school here in Lagos, in Victoria Island. There is no need of going to Germany for it. You can go to Victoria Island, and there is another one again in, in the North, we have about six in Nigeria. Four even located in Jos, you don’t need it, they are even up to secondary school level in Jos, because we have a lot of Germany people there.’ So okay. So when it got to my turn, I just move, I go back and said: ‘Let you attend to everybody. When you finish, I will be the last one.’ So one of them came to me and said: ‘What is your letter? [The next sentence is completely unintelligible.] Don’t just go there, because they might not even attend to you.’ I said ‘okay.’ I—I was now the last person. Then I walk in, I show the letter to the man, he look at the letter—It was just very funny. Anyway, I got there, he say: ‘Hey, young man.’ I say ‘yeah.’ I say: ‘This is a letter, I want to go to Germany.’ He look at it and say: ‘What is that?’ [Unintelligible sentence.] He said: ‘There are many schools here in Nigeria, with language course, if you want to do that.’ I said ‘yes.’ He said: ‘Do you want to go to . . .’—I said: ‘I just want to know it, that’s all. Not really I want to go,’ and said: ‘I don’t really need the language, I just want to go and see Germany.’ Okay. After a while, then I said: ‘If it’s not possible, give me the letter and let me go.’ He said: ‘Just wait a minute.’ He was talking to somebody on telephone. When he finish it: ‘Come with me.’ He took me to the upstairs. When I got there, I sat down. He said: ‘You want to take coffee, tea?’ He took me direct to his office. So the guy’s name is Holger. We sat down for a while, then he Anderson, Allan, African Reformation. African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century, Trenton, NJ / Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press 2001, pp. 174 f. and 250, as well as the rather hagiographic article in the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, www.dacb.org/stories/nigeria/idahosa_bensona.html, accessed 11 October 2006.

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said: ‘Okay. Drink.’ After a while, he said: ‘You fill here, you fill here, you fill here.’ I fill, I give it to him. He said what he will do, he said: ‘Go home, bring a police report to me, and, eh, I will give you a visa, I will help you to get a visa.’ I said: ‘But you told the other people it is not possible, why are you doing it?’ He say: ‘Yeah, I just want to make you a friend.’ He said ‘you said’—because I told him I work in Ministry of Defence and blablabla, what I do and everything. ‘Yes, I would like to come to your place, where you work.’ I said, I said ‘okay.’ He promised, but he never come, he never came to me anyway. And, eh, two days later I went there again with the . . . I came with the letter, the police report. As I got to the place, there was a man, called—his nickname is ‘Major’, he is the security man. He said: ‘You cannot come in.’ So I was, I was trying to enter, he told me: ‘You came late, it’s not possible to go in.’ Then I said: ‘I want to go.’ This senior man came. I didn’t know how he want me to walk to the gateside, he just look at me, he say: ‘Hey. Were you not the man I asked to present the police report?’ I say: ‘Yes, but it’s too late, I will come maybe next week.’ He say: ‘Are you with it?’ I say ‘I’m with it but I came late.’ He said: ‘Don’t you know that you are supposed to be here at eight o’clock?’ I say: ‘I have to report in my office before I come here.’ I say: ‘Since I am late, just forget it, I’ll come next time, when I’m on holiday.’ He say: ‘No, you come.’ He told the man to open the door. The man opened it, I went inside. I came in to him, I filled everything. He said: ‘Give me 180 Naira. Then in three days I hope you get your visa.’ I say: ‘But I don’t have time to come here. Can you post it to me?’ He said: ‘Yeah, give me an address, and I’ll send it to you.’ Then I left. The following day I got the letter at home. The same day, he finish it and post it on me. The following day I got it and the visa was in. Well, I was not even willing to come. Really, what was in my mind was that I wanted to sell the visa to somebody else to go, because: I don’t want to lose my job, my job was a good job, I was getting a good pay. The government give me house and everything. I was enjoying life, it was good. So later, when I got it, I came. I said: ‘Let me just go there and see what is happening.’ Then I left Nigeria, that was on the 21st of Dec . . ., of November, 1991. So I arrived here—on the 20th I left, on the 21st I was here in Germany. As I arrived, I wrestled the way to the school, I couldn’t get anyone to understand me, I went to dial my friend, he invited me down, so we chat for a while, then I told him . . . oh, I saw where he is living, and he is living this Asyl . . . this Asylheim. Ahh! I say: ‘This is the way you live?’ He say ‘yes.’ I can’t do it, I say:


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‘Take me to a hotel!’ So I check myself into a hotel, because I came with enough money. I was with about 6,000 dollars in my pocket. So I just said: ‘Let me stay in a hotel.’ I was taking care of everything. So, along the line, when the time came to leave, I say: ‘I have to go back to, I will go back to Nigeria.’ I call my office, that when the holiday over, I will be back, but I would like to spend two weeks extra. That’s one month and two weeks. So in the process, I just to go outside and say: ‘Let me tell people about Jesus Christ, I love to do that.’ I go out and say that. So a month, during the one month over, so I was preparing to go, this my friend says . . . one day he engages with me with his talk and say that ‘you are here, and I don’t want you to go back to Nigeria.’ I say: ‘Do you worry when I go back to Nigeria I will tell them that you live in an Asylheim?’ He said ‘yes.’ I said: ‘That’s too bad of you; your brother is a prominent man in Nigeria and you come and live in an Asylheim.’ I said: ‘It is not good for you.’ He said ‘no.’ So . . . before the month runs out, this guy took my passport and my ticket, he sold it. So at the day I want to travel, he told me everything is okay, I can come to the airport here in Düsseldorf. We got here, there was nothing for me to fly. My passport—because it was with him, he said when we get to the airport, I can fly, though there was nothing for me to fly. So I had a very serious problem with him. He told me: ‘okay, this so, that . . .’ He said: ‘I don’t want you to go back, because you won’t tell them what I did.’ So I was very annoyed, upset, I walk out. I just ‘you can go. I can find, I can manage my way to the embassy.’ I get my way through. I tried the embassy two times. They turned me down. They say I have to bring them something, a proof. So I ask them to call my office in Nigeria, they called. You know, that time telephone was very difficult. They will not get my office through [rest of the sentence unintelligible] time. So I have to wait for another two weeks. I will run out of money. There was noting for me to move [rest of the sentence unintelligible]. Then later, police controlled me in the streets, because I have nothing to identify. Then I told them all my story. They say the only thing you have to do is to take Asyl. That’s the only way we can identify you, you can’t be living in the streets and everything. They took me to police, fingerprinted me and everything before they believe me. They took me to a place to stay. It was a terrible place. So two days later, I was seriously sick. I was also in the hospital. I was having a depression. A terrible depression. It was very hard. The doctor said the best thing I can do to recover is for me to, first of all, forget about the past, and consign here for a while, then you can go

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back to where you come from. So I just have to manage a way out. So, cut a long story short, that is how I started life here in Germany. Then I stay on Asyl. So I was not able to fly myself back because I wouldn’t have money. So in time I raise a little money to go back, I call the office and they say I am already, be . . . my appointment is terminated because I spend more [the rest of the sentence is unintelligible]. Do if I come out I look for job. So my Chef say there is no way he can help me. That was the time I called the president, because he was directly in charge of our office. Babangida was the president at that time. I called his office and they later related me to somebody to talk because he knows me very well at that time. He used to call me ‘small boy’, so he told me it’s not possible again ‘because your job is in the hand of your secretary general, it’s not me. So if the secretary general sacks somebody I have nothing to restore. So what you need to is talk to the man.’ I spoke to the man, he said ‘no. You have gone on leave for two weeks, two months, it’s not possible. So what you need to do, when you come back, when we have vacancy again, we can reconsider you, but now: no way!’ Then I said what, anything to pay me, he said they cannot pay me anything because I am the one that left. So they have the right to even sue for damage, but they will leave it. So there was no way to run back to. So I stayed. So later along the line, they told me: ‘Okay, what you need to do, you have to look for a woman, then you get a paper here.’ Then I said: ‘I can’t do it, because I’m a Christian.’ So along the line, I was able to find a church, in [ . . .] I started [ . . .], I just stay one week, the second Sunday I was there, Pastor [ . . .] called me and said: ‘I sense that you are a man of God.’ I say: ‘I don’t know, why?’ He said: ‘I can see it in you.’ 2. D.A.: “Nepalis don’t need a visa for Germany” 3 I wanted to evangelize all of Nepal, but regrettably, due to the persecution I could not stay, and for protection and also financial support— I did not want to stay in prison because of my family—I came to Bahrain. There I worked, I earned money and sent it to Nepal, for my two kids and my wife. Sadly, six months I was in Bahrain, my wife

3

Interviewed 17 November 2005 at his home.


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left my children and me. It was too much for her, and it was difficult for her, because I was the first Christian in the village we lived in. That’s why she decided to marry another man and go back to another village. But my sister and my mother brought up my children. I worked in Bahrain for two years, then I was sent to Egypt. When I was in Bahrain, I have many—I was a worker, but my wish and my task was to make Jesus known to people who live without him, and many came to faith. I was a testimony there, and that succeeded while I was there. I baptized many people. After the year in Egypt I came back to Bahrain. Then Saddam Hussein started the war with Iraq and Kuwait. Bahrain is a neighboring country of Kuwait, and the Bahrain government says: ‘All foreigners, all guest workers must go back to their country,’ and companies, they were closed. All bought masks—I could not stay. All guest workers went back or flew back to their countries, I mustn’t go to Nepal . . . Then I asked: ‘Lord, where shall I go?’ My aim was really not to go to Germany, my aim was somehow to go to America and study theology; that was my aim. But in such a short time I could not decide. Because we asked, could somebody be my sponsor, but nobody was there. Then we got information that Nepalis don’t need a visa for Germany. Then I came, 1990, December 1, to Germany . . . Then, I landed in Frankfurt. Then in Frankfurt, I was looking for a taxi, I had so many [unintelligible word] in my life. I somehow got out of the airport, I looked for a taxi, a man took me with him, I wanted to go to a hotel. He said ‘I’m a good taxi driver,’ but somewhere, on the highway, he said to me: ‘My car, my taxi is broken, could you push, please?’ I said ‘No problem.’ But some things he took with him, because he simply drove away, because he knew exactly I had money, and some things he took away. On the highway, he left me alone. Then I remembered Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ It rained, there was a lot of snow, I had a thin jacket because nobody had told me that Germany is so cold, but I had skimpy shoes, but never mind. I went forward, I walked and walked along the highway, veeery far forward I saw a small light, that was a gas station. I came to the gas station, I looked for help, whether I could find someone from Nepal. The workers at the gas station said ‘No, we don’t know anybody from Nepal,’ but two Americans asked me, they spoke English, then some Americans said ‘Yes, we can help you, we will take you to Kaiserslautern, in Kaiserslautern, there are some Nepalese, we know exactly where they live,’ and so they took me to Kaiserslautern at 1 a.m. in the night. The Nepalese were surprised:

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2 a.m. at night, ‘How did you get here without an address?’ Then I said that the Americans brought me. They said, ‘We don’t know any Americans here,’ but I didn’t care. Then I stayed there for a night, then I called my friends in Bahrain, ‘I will come back to Bahrain,’ but they said: ‘Stay in Germany, stay in Germany, Deutschland!’ And I said I did not want to stay because something had happened. But they said ‘That is so. We cannot . . . I will leave now, too, what will you do in Bahrain?’ So I stayed in Germany. Then I came to [ . . .], through an acquaintance, a Pakistani man who had met me in Frankfurt, then he asked [ . . .] . . . then I met some people from Nepal, they said that I had to urgently apply for asylum. And I did not know what that meant: ‘asylum application.’ When they heard my story, they said: ‘We can help you, but you must not say a word!’ They took me to a pastor, he was [ . . .] he said I should not speak English, we would get everything in order. Then the friends from Nepal told the whole story. After some years I got a letter from the [asylum] office, that wasn’t me, that was totally wrong. Then I realized I needed to put that right. So I put it right and told the true story. After some years, Christians were in prison, we came out in ’95, then the German regulations said that I have to go back to Nepal. It is not bad in Nepal, we can go back to Nepal. Then I said: ‘Okay, I will go.’ But the people in [ . . .], the Christians, said: ‘You have started a big work in [ . . .], we need you here. Regardless of the consequences, we want to keep you here. We cannot do this work ourselves. Yes, you speak several languages . . .’ So they applied to the Interior Ministry for a pastor visa, and they said ‘yes.’ I went to several church congregations, I hope I may say, I was . . . first of all in the Evangelical church, there were 20 people, 50, only the older ones were there. There was no praise, then I was used to do praise in a different way, and yes, also the service, I was used to a different one, here it wasn’t so. But after an hour, the service was over, that was a bit new. Then I realized: Where are the young people? Where are the people who speak about God? Then I started to think and said: ‘The soil is very, very hard here.’ But I went to a free church congregation, because I urgently needed a community. I went to a Pentecostal church, they asked me whether I was pentecostal. I said: ‘I don’t know what that means, pentecostal, I am a Christian.’ They didn’t want to accept me because I wasn’t a pentecostal. Then I went to a Baptist Church, they also asked me whether I was a Baptist. Said I: ‘No, I’m not a Baptist, I’m a Christian.’ They didn’t want to accept me.


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Then I went to a Methodist Church, they also asked me whether I was Methodist. I said ‘I don’t know Methodist, I am just a Christian.’ And so on and so forth. I went to a charismatic church, and a [unintelligible] church, I was searching. All rejected me. It was a bit . . . yes, they hurt me, to be honest. Then I called my pastor in Nepal and asked: ‘Tell me, what kind of Christian am I? Here in Germany you need a family name. I have no idea. At that time in Nepal, we only heard that we are Protestant, and there is Protestant4 and Catholic, and so many family names I had not heard, you know.’ Then the pastor said: ‘You are a Protestant, simply say Protestant.’ Okay. I have remained a Protestant. But afterwards, the Lord gave me a heart for the people, the brothers and sisters, to go back to the congregation and to forgive. Said the Lord: ‘Go there and forgive them.’ I did so, and pastor and the congregation, different congregations, they cried, and said ‘Yes, we are very sorry.’ Eventually, I was searching again, even though I was already a pastor in the American church, but I wanted to serve Germany. And also get to know German people, German mentality. I was still searching. I was with the American congregation, but that was not my aim, I wanted to get to know the German mentality. But I was still searching, and then I went to the Evangelical City Mission. I was still afraid that they do something, perhaps they ask something that I don’t know anything about, but they asked me whether I was a Christian. Then I said ‘Yes, I’m a Christian.’ They said: ‘Welcome, you are at home.’ They said [the rest of the sentence is unintelligible.] They gave me love, they were very, very interested in my life, they just showed love, and then I stayed in the Evangelical City Mission in [ . . .]. Then I moved, into the mission house, on the ground floor was the church room, upstairs I could live, because I had terribly many visitors and they realized: D.A. needs a big flat. I was serving almost 24 hours a day, I had so many people—I could reach them, tell them about the Gospel. That is my aim, too, my wish, that is my gift, yes, to simply tell about the Gospel. Many people have come to faith, we have baptized many people in the congregation, and I have also visited different churches where I had been before, and I forgave them, that’s okay. But my aim still is: How can we motivate youngsters? How can we support the Evangelical church, those big 4 Until the mid-1990s, denominational churches were not allowed in Nepal. There was only a non-denominational Protestant and a Catholic church.

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church buildings? Yes, I still have the wish to fill these big church buildings, but I have not succeeded. I am still praying and asking the Lord, regardless of where I go. [ . . .] The Germans have supported me financially, and they also have prayed somehow. The Lord simply . . . I still know how I packed my suitcase in 96 because I really didn’t want to stay here, then a preacher said on TV (I had an American TV program): ‘Hey you, please don’t go! The revival will start with you! What you are looking for, you will not get. You must change. You must have a heart!’ Then I realized that I really am . . . I have criticized the German Christians. Then God said: ‘I still love Germany, I still do. You must change!’ Then I went down on my knees: ‘Lord, forgive me! I really want to be [unintelligible word], use me, Lord!’ Then, because I really didn’t know the German mentality and background . . . afterwards, I realized that Germany needed me. Some time later then I met Claudia Währisch-Oblau, she offered us the kikk course, then I participated, then I understood what the background is, why the soil is so hard. They have taught us well, they were pastors from different countries, they really were our good teachers. Now I know how to deal with Germans, I can explain well because I understand the background, I understand the mentality, yes. [ . . .] was rather small for me, because I lived there for 12 1/2 years, and what I wanted to do, I achieved. The congregation there could not support me financially. And at a conference, [ . . .], the pastor of the City Mission in [ . . .] said—we met at a conference. He said: ‘What you are doing in [ . . .], they could also do with German Christians. What they cannot do is your task: In all of Europe, there are several thousand Nepalis, even in Germany there are several thousand Nepalis, about thousand of them just in the Ruhr area. Please, think about it, that is your task, we’ll see each other.’ Then they talked to their congregation about me. Then I told my boss, the director of the Kontaktmission, he said: ‘We need to pray first. Don’t just go, we don’t allow that.’ But afterwards, when I came here [the Ruhr area where he now lives] and suddenly some people became Christians, they said: ‘It is not enough if you come only once a month, we want to read the word of God every day!’ Then they said that as a church, they had prayed for two years, their building was empty, where their pastor had lived before, he moved away, he moved out, and they prayed ‘we need a missionary family here for us,’ and then suddenly, the church said suddenly: We should come to the Ruhr area, because there are so many Nepalis here, we should start a church with Nepalis, and at the same time, I should be spiritual


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counselor in this church and also do evangelism with this church. [ . . .] So we support the [City Mission] congregation here, in [ . . .], and at the same time, I am visiting Nepalis, I bring them the Good News. I don’t just work in the Ruhr area, but I have also started in Holland, and now I have received the news that 6,500 people in Belgium are also waiting for me. London alone has 30,000 Nepalis! And all of Germany, yes, that is my task. Long ago, 22 years ago, the Lord gave me the vision to evangelize all of Nepal, but the political situation in Nepal is not so good, therefore many young people have left the country. 13 million Nepalis [sic] live outside of Nepal! Many of these Nepalis are in Europe. These people I want to reach, that is my aim, that is what I concentrate on, to start churches with Nepalis . . . God had time. 3. P.W.: “God was saying: ‘Leave that place!’ ” 5 I did not start in Germany, I started in Nigeria, that is in 1990, when I was an evangelist, and then I went to Bible School, and then I was later ordained. And then I went back to Cameroon, I was working there with other churches, and then I came to Germany to continue the job, you know. It’s just the call of God, it’s nothing else but the call of God. You know when God call you, just like Paul, to come out of darkness into his marvellous light, then you have to obey the call. You have to obey the call because [unintelligible passage] and sacrifice. And God needs people to preach his word, it’s very, very important. CWO: Were you an evangelist in Cameroon? (Yeah.) In which church were you working? I was working as a free evangelist. I was an evangelist then in Nigeria, you know, I was working with Lamb of God Ministry, also with Foursquare Bible Church, and then I was also preaching on the street, helping in crusades, and when I went to Cameroon, I applied to the Deeper Life Bible Church in Ilimbe. They did not take me serious, because at that time I was still young, just 22 years old. So told me I was just a small girl, you know, and before they knew it, I left for Germany. When I came to Germany, and then I saw that things were not going well—I had to do worshipping in on Roman Catholic Church in

5

Interviewed 26 October 2005 at her home.

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Marburg, that is in Hessen, and then I left there, I also went to a Freie Evangelische Kirche, and I was worshipping there just like an ordinary member. Until when I came to [ . . .], then I also started with several pastors. I was with, in [ . . .] I started with Assemblies of God Church, that was under Pastor D. then God gave me a word that I have to leave there. So when I left, Pastor D.—by then he was also with Pastor H.— so I told him I was going. You know, he just was like I was crazy bit. God said something that I should leave, but I did not know where I was going. That was a call now for the music, so when I went I met Pastor A., and Pastor A. took me out, and we were going to sing and preach, you know. That was . . . with P.M., playing the keyboard at the church, and I asked him and he helped me, and then all of a sudden, the first musical, they said I was out. You know, that was when I understood that God was saying: ‘Leave that place, you have a call somewhere else.’ You know, so I left the church and went into that evangelistic ministry, and later, I’m also now [unintelligible word] in the church. CWO: How did you get a call to Germany? I think the call to Germany was the very call to the Bible School in Nigeria. CWO: Can you say something about how you came to Germany? I think my coming to Germany was just a miracle, because after that time, I had no vision for Germany, you know, I had no vision for Germany, even though my sister was studying here in the University of Marburg. Then I stayed there in Germany, I preferred to go to America in case I’m leaving Africa. It’s easy to preach there, and you can preach at any time. But I think when she was calling me to Germany, that I have to come to Germany, I was very, very reluctant. And the problem now is, I was in Cameroon, I was already back in Cameroon. And I said: ‘Come to Germany? No. I’m going back to Nigeria. Because I have left churches there that I’ve been working with, they have already people that I’m working with. So coming to Germany will just be like running away from the call!’ But I did not know that you can leave one place and also continue your call some place else. Until when I came, I entered Germany, and then I saw the way things are going, and I said: ‘God, have mercy, God, have mercy!’ until I stayed one year, two year, and then they were still calling me to come to America, you know, they were telling me to come to America, it would be easier, but I said no, I’m remaining in Germany. I think God wants me to stay in Germany.


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I went to America to visit, but I think there is a call here, and there is something here for me to do, than going to America. But I said I did not understood that coming to Germany, okay, there is a purpose for the Gospel, yeah. CWO: So what is the purpose of your being here? Yeah, I think . . . the purpose of me coming to Germany is really to preach the Word. To preach the Word, because at times, when we come like this, we get involved in a lot of things. We get involved in working, you know, and involved in looking for money—it’s also important, helping the family back home, and then we forget our call. And once you forget our call, to get back into the call, it’s going to take some years, some years for you to recover what you have had before. So I think my coming to Germany is for specific purpose by God. 4. S.O.: “There was this stirring on me that I need to really move out” 6 I like to really say that I am a son of, eh, a policeman—an expoliceman, of course, my father is now on retirement—and we had the opportunity of really traveling across the country, eh, that’s Ghana. And during my childhood, I came to . . . I, eh, I went to secondary school in [unintelligible] the middle belt of Ghana, in a place called [ . . .] Secondary School, and there I got to know a friend; one of my classmates called [ . . .]—right now he is a medical doctor—and his lifestyle really challenged me. So I wanted to know what was the secret behind this lifestyle. So, when he belonged to the SU, the Scripture Union at the secondary school, and so he encouraged me to be part, actually, he led me to Christ by his lifestyle, but initially, I withdrew, because on vacations, I traveled to where my father was, and that place, there were not such facilities of maybe meeting other Christians to continue. But later on, when I came back, I got myself rooted, and since then, I’ve been a Christian to this day. [ . . .] So it was there that really, I had a calling, I had a stirring in my heart, a heart really for souls that were lost. And to put it this way, when I talk about souls that are lost, referring to people that have not known Jesus Christ, and have not had any personal

6

Interviewed 2 March 2005 in my home.

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relationship and a continuous relationship with him. So I had this stirring in my heart for such people that, look, they need to come and know Jesus. So that’s really how the whole thing began. Then, apart from this, I’ve also been in, let’s say, various organization or Christian fellowship setups, because, when you grow up in the SU setup, wherever you go, you try to also look for other organizations like that. And in areas where there were no such organizations, really, I went into also, let’s initiate some of these non-denominational, interdenominational fellowships. I went to my own home village, that’s where my mother comes from fellowship. I went to my own home village, that’s where my mother comes from, and that place, there was no such organization, we had a Roman Catholic church, we had a Methodist church, we had a Presbyterian church, and there was nothing like, maybe, an inter-Christian fellowship, so I went there, and we initiated that. And also with my father, in [ . . .], too, I made sure I belong to the fellowship. So almost everywhere I go, where there is no such, this thing, we initiate such a move. Good. And then where there is no Baptist church, I made sure I fellowshipped with the Assemblies of God church, so that was how really I grow up. Good. I really don’t know whether this really fits in. Now coming back to my this thing . . . so now, I went to the university in Ghana as eh, and I really studied Chemical Engineering. So there, at the university we had, I attend two major fellowships, one belonging to the Baptist Union, and then one also, we call it Inter-Hall Christian Fellowship, Inter-Hall, yeah, Inter-Hall Christian Fellowship, but now they’ve changed it to GAFES, GAFES, eh, UST. GAFES is Ghana Association of Evangelical Students, yeah, so that was, let’s say, the, the body and of which we had this Inter-Hall Christian Fellowship. So I belonged to that groups also with the Baptist Student Union and also with the Ghana Evangelical Students Association, so there to have the opportunity of also learning much about God and also growing in my relationship with God. So by that time too, I was also, let’s say, working in the village ministry and outreach program whereby we’ll go to the villages and then preach and help in organization of church services. So we just like, in my student days, the stirring was there, and it kept on, so later on, when I completed my first degree program, then I worked at [ . . .]. That’s . . . I went there for my National Service. So from there, I went, came to Europe, to pursue my Diplom course also in Chemical Engineering at [ . . .] University. So like, when we came here, too, we saw that . . . okay, like the first attempt is as a Christian, you’ll just


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like to go where you see a church building. And having an evangelical background, in fact, I saw this Evangelical signboard over there, and so I went in there, as a Christian. And when I went in there, service was conducted. It was conducted in German. In fact, there were no people . . . how, I compare to maybe how such a service are conducted in Ghana compared to this place, there were no people in the church! Some few old people that were there, in fact, after the church service, no one even spoke to me, so I came out and I went home. So then, the idea came up: Can I get in touch with other people, maybe where— at that time I could not speak German like I can now—and, I was just looking at: Is that a possibility of meeting other people, maybe, whereby, maybe, we’ll have an English Association or wherever. So that was which we led me in touch with other Africans. And we saw that there was no any international community church around, but this is the, eh, around September 1991. Pauses and looks at me. CWO: And how did it continue? Great. So when I came here, really, like, I met a good friend of mine who is now in Belgium—he is now also . . . he has completed his second Masters Program in Theology, in, well, [ . . .], and you may know him. So really, when I came here, I looked for him . . . so by that time he was studying in [ . . .]. So I asked . . . so okay, first I had to do my language course, so then I asked: Where can I really do this course? So they said: Well, I can do it at [ . . .], because [ . . .] University also gave me an offer to do that, an Ausländische Institut here, but the cost was expensive. So then we compared, and they told me that, okay, when I go to [ . . .], the money I will pay here for, let’s say, six weeks of a course, I’ll pay that same amount and do maybe two levels in [ . . .]. So then I then asked them to really help me get a place of accommodation so that I will move over there. So when I went there he was also fellowship with the Free Evangelical church over there, so really we started, we were having, let’s say, we go to church, but when we come back, among the students, we have a form of fellowship, as we used to have in Ghana. Good. So from there, I came back here, then, when I came to [ . . .] after completing where, what we call PNDS, the Prüfung whereby, so that I can stay at the university. I came to [ . . .], I joined . . . there was an, a man who had also stayed in Ghana, worked with Reinhard Bonnke, called [ . . .]. He had an international, or let’s say, a church, and he had this kind of charismatic background, so, really, there was a interest to go in the [unintelligible word]. Along the line, it did not work

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out. So we had to find where we Ghanaians, or, let’s say, where we Africans can have a place of meeting. So then myself, eh, one brother, he is now in America, called [ . . .], and then Pastor [ . . .] who is in England, together with [ . . .] who is also now in America, [ . . .] who is also now in [ . . .] and some other people . . . we started this Christian Fellowship, like the SU type that we had back in Ghana, called [ . . .]. So that was how really the [ . . .] Church really was started. So I was the chairman, and then the husband called [ . . .] was the vice, and then we really initiated this fellowship. So it was a fellowship of whereby people from different backgrounds come together to fellowship. So that least we can still keep up with our Christian faith that we brought from Africa! And so initially we were meeting in various houses, then we approached one man—I think now he is in Ghana—he called [ . . .]— he was then a student at [ . . .] University, and he said, he made a contact with the AstA7 over there, and then to get us a meeting place. So that really worked out, and there we got a meeting place at AstA. So when we initiated this thing, we also made, eh, information available to the African community, and especially the Ghanaians, so they know that at least there is a place where they can really come, and then have fellowship, so that the faith that they had back in Africa will not really die away. So it was from there that really I moved out to start [ . . .] Ministries, cause there was this stirring on me that I need to really move out to do something that will not only be in a local place, but whereby the international community will equally, what, benefit from it. So I quite remember in the year 1997, this stirring was very strong in me, so I called the Reverend [ . . .] who happens to really be my pastor back in [ . . .], so I spoke with him—he was then formally in Canada—I asked him to come over—he could not come until he flew down to Ghana, so then I made an arrangement with him to come over. So when he came here, he studied the situation. So he was of the view that, okay like, he didn’t want me to really come out of maybe, [ . . .] Fellowship to really start a church, but he wanted me to be there to put in my, the resources and the calling in there. But it so happened it did not work the way he really advise, because the fact was that there was no leader in the group, and there was a form of a leadership chaos. So now, where do you really serve, where do you really work? So that was where, after

7

Allgemeiner Studentenausschuss—the self-administration of students.


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much prayer, and advice from other men of God, I moved out to start [ . . .] Ministries. So I told many people about it, these intentions, this vision that God is laying on my heart, this passion for souls, having an international Christian community church, and at the same time also reach out to people that are lost, because this passion has been there way back in Ghana. How’d we get it done? So some people got up with the idea . . . they said: Look, it’s good. We’ll leave with you. And so, we took off. Then I went down to the Evangelical Church, because, because before even I left [ . . .] to go to [ . . .], we had even secured a building with the Evangelical church where [ . . .] Fellowship was then meeting. But then, at the point in time, we did not want it just to be a fellowship, so we changed the fellowship status, because the fellowship was like . . . people are coming from different places, it is not a church, so you can come in and then go, so we changed it to an Evangelistic Ministry, so that it will not be a fellowship kind of this thing, but at least it move a step further. So it was from that stage that I moved out to really start the church issue, because it was not a church, so I had to move out and then start a church. Good. So, I talked with Pastor [ . . .] and some other evangelical pastors in [ . . .] of a need for a place of meeting. And they gave it to me! So we met . . . first of all, eh, we had a building in [ . . .], and then we had a building also in [ . . .]. We then made a meeting to decide which one to take. So they said, okay, since [ . . .] is nearer the city, why not take that one. So, we went into the building in [ . . .]. We have been there . . . the [ . . .] church has been there up to today. Yes. CWO: How did it happen that, as a chemical engineer, you ended up a pastor? It’s a very good question! Now let’s me put it this way that it’s been a stirring, a conviction upon the heart. Now, I think that I read chemical engineering based on maybe interest in that field as well, maybe to end up being an engineer, a processing engineer, whatever. But then I had this conviction and this stirring in me for souls that are lost, and also for keeping up the flock of God. So then it then came to a point whereby I had to make a decision, because the burden was on me to choose. Then I also saw that there was a need also for a sacrifice, so I had to call my wife, sit her down, and then to discuss this issue with her, that, look, this is what is happening within me. And at least, you also, you do see it. And prior to that I had also written some books, one was on the teachings of Jehova’s Witnesses, because like—maybe I’m going a little bit back, but forgive me—Like the stirring that I used to have, so it

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drove me out to really reach out to people, talk about Christ to people. And in that work I also met the Jehova’s Witnesses also active in this area. So then there was . . . then sometimes we’ll go out and there to look and see we’ll be having some form of debate, over some topics in the Bible. So then that gave me . . ., it is good for me to make a lot of research into their background, into their teachings, what they are in for, and the differences between their teaching and the evangelical theology. So that . . . and so I did not really end up only studying the Jehova’s Witnesses, but in short maybe going into the realm of the cults, eh, the Mormon Church, eh, there was the Christian Society, a whole lot of this thing, I ended up really reading a lot and making a lot of research into the background of these groups as the differences between their teachings and then the evangelical theology. So I ended up really doing that. So I quite remember—this was way back in, at the university back in Ghana. When some of the Baptist ministers heard about what I was doing they were really surprised, because they were considered—they themselves even as theologians were not really prepared to get themselves into these issues of trying to resolve control versus here and there—they were not! So, that also, I would say, gave me an opening into the Baptist churches, to preach on many platforms, how to really come and counter some of these religious groups that are . . . we may see them as Christians, but in reality, if we compare their teachings with the evangelical faith, there is much difference, how to really meet them and how to really also share your faith with them. So I, I had the opportunity to of preaching this in some of the Baptist churches, in [ . . .] specifically. So this stirring was there. So now, when I came over here, and I saw that the stirring was there, one had to also consider the consequences. Are you prepared to sacrifice? Now the fact is that, you have not been a formal theological school, whereby, maybe, a mainline denomination will accept me and then put me on their ministerial roll. I’ve not been to a formal theological school. But then the stirring and the conviction is there. The basis is also there. So for us, maybe, Biblical theology is concerned. So now what do you do? So that was where I had to sit down with my wife to really say: Look; that is a sacrificial work. Let’s go into it! And if the Lord is with us, a way will be laid through. So the fact is that we also need to sacrifice. Which she consented too, and that, okay, she is going to work to support. So now if the Lord gives it a blessing, then at least, we can move on. But if the Lord has not given the blessing—or not necessarily a blessing but an, if, let’s say financially we come . . . then


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we need to maybe re-devise the means of really . . . so making sure that we are able to move on with this development. So after prayer and after seeking advice here and there I decided to put off, to hang my engineering career, and then to go into full-time ministry. And to this I’ll say I am grateful to a lot of people. Upon sharing this idea with some of them, especially a person like, [ . . .] . . . he was someone who told me that, look, I’ll be there for you, and not only . . . okay, in fact, in fact a lot of people who had also, let me say, had seen my character, because they, they just can see the pastor and someone will just say he’ll follow you. But it depends on maybe a consistent type of lifestyle that you have led and they also seeing something in you that confirms that actually God is calling you to do something, and of which when they are a part, it will be a blessing to them so far as their Christian life is concerned. We have someone like maybe [ . . .] and a whole lot of people who really said: We will get committed to this program, and they gave themselves up. And so from there, we were able to really launch out. So like, if you ask . . . you may, might have read this in my, eh, seventh anniversary brochure, the first meeting that we held was on 1st of February 1998, and we held it in the house of a man called [ . . .], that time he was staying at [ . . .], near the city, in the city center, so that was where we held our first meeting. And then from there, we launched out to the Evangelical church, and then from there, we’ve been there, up till today. So I will say that . . . actually it’s a stirring or a calling or an inner conviction that made me put aside my career for this. CWO: Thank you.—Let me phrase it this way: For a German audience, where not many people are used to thinking in a framework of calling or inner conviction or stirring—for someone who is actually not thinking within this framework, could you explain how God put that stirring into your heart? How you became quite clear in your mind that this was your call? Actually [laughs] I don’t know really how to explain it. I’ll still be using the same jargon, the same terminology. But to make it a little bit simpler for a layman, I think that we all have a form of conviction, something that you are convinced about, and sometimes you are not even able to explain. It can come through a dream, through a form of—something that is just there, that drops into your mind; you just know that this thing is supposed to be a base. But when someone asks you to explain, you may not be able to really do it. So that is what I’m trying to say, that is a conviction, something that just dropped in there. Maybe I’ll still explain that it is something that is in there, but when

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someone is asking me to explain it, I’ll not be able to really explain, but I sense and have that feeling that this is where, this feeling that I’m having is leading me to. That’s maybe how I can explain. I’m not sure that I was able to answer your question, but it’s an inner feeling, something that is really driving you in, in a particular direction, where someone asks you to explain, maybe the tangible reasons for—maybe you will not be able to say ‘I’m doing this based on this advantage or that advantage or that advantage,’ but then you realize that your whole system is convinced that this what must be done. Someone, someone may think that, maybe, you are not reasonable, because, maybe, not clear, because you cannot really explain everything in detail, but the fact is that, having known God, and having known the way God also speaks, like little Samuel according to the book of 1. Samuel chapter 1, little did he know—that’s chapter 1 up to chapter 3—little did Samuel know how God really speaks. At the time, when he heard the voice, he went to Eli, then Eli, after 3 times, Eli perceived: This is God, God. So he instructed Samuel: When you go, maybe you hear this voice again, this is what is happening. So, that’s what I’m trying to say, that there was this inner [unintelligible word], I sensed it, I had a conviction about it, and it was then that I was convinced that God is asking me to leave what I am doing to do this. CWO: Was it like you had a vision, or heard a voice, like that? I will say that I had many of them. I had many of them. Seeing myself standing in front of congregations, talking to them. Seeing myself moving out to isolated areas, presenting Christ to people. I had a lot of such dreams and visions. But the conviction actually came from my heart, not based on this. CWO: Hm. And from what I have been hearing, you have also said it was confirmed by talking to other people. (Yes.) Would you say that this is important? Yes, I would say that even I did not go out and talk to people, but when people saw me, they said it. I quite remember, not very long ago, it’s about one or two years ago, some of our church members traveled to Ghana. It was our organist, together with our financial committee leader. They went to Ghana, and they went to see my mother. So when they went, they had some conversation with my mom. So they told my mom ‘Your son is doing a very good work. Our lives have been transformed in church, so your son is doing a very good work.’ Then my mother told them: ‘As for S., I knew it, from his childhood.


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You could see that he was always talking about Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ . . . and when he came to our village, a group that was not there, he initiated it.’ So when she later on heard that I am now in full-time ministry, she was not surprised because she saw it in me while I was even very young and back at home. . . . What was the question again? CWO: You’ve just answered it. The question was: Is it important that other people confirmed your call? My mother for one saw it in me, so I had the conviction and it was there. When I was at the University in [ . . .], our then leader, who is now a Reverend Pastor called [ . . .] used to say this in the fellowship that ‘look, you people are here, you are trying to get a bachelor degree in whatever course, but in addition, know that you have what we call the BA degree which is the born again degree.’ And that place, I would say that it was more like a, Bible school of a kind, because we used on Friday and Saturday, fellowshipping, and the speakers really helped us. And some of them were also people that were also in ministry. So there were some of the things that you sometimes come to talk about, the call of God, and then they would explain to us, like, if you have a call of God, some of the things you need to know, and some of the things you need to do. Not maybe going to a church, and you know that God has called you, and all of a sudden fighting over the pulpit with the pastor who is there—you don’t do that. You need to have time to learn, understand. There is some of this like Elijah and Elisha were brought— so you know that when you have a call, you also need to have a time of what—learning! Whereby you acquire certain skills, because there are certain things—preaching alone does not make ministry. I think there is more towards it. And with my little bit experience now I know what those men of God told us was very rich. We needed to know a lot. So now, some of the pastors just see what I was doing, and then they will tell me, and say ‘look, there is a call of God upon your life.’ Some of them will even prophecy over my life and say ‘look, that is what we are seeing God to do with your life.’ But it is not that they are saying it that influences me, no, I had the conviction already, but I saw that the time was not right. I needed to really learn more. And then coupled also with the fact that I came over here with a mission. So, one also had to wait and to look at the timing as well. You may receive the call, but maybe you don’t take time, you move out early [unintelligible sentence]. So one also has to really consider that. So people really confirmed it, but it

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was something I knew already. So whether confirmation came or not, I knew a time will come, I will move and do it.” 5. A.K.: “God wants us to be an international church” 8 I was a Christian even when I was in Indonesia, and then I came to Germany to study. That’s what I did, I studied electrical engineering at the university in [ . . .]. But as I came here, then I experience my renewal in my, my—how do you say?—spiritual growth, as back then I was such a traditional Christian, and I did not know what this living relationship with God means, yes, I was simply someone going to church. And as I arrived here, my friend told me about the, about the Bible, and then about the Holy Spirit, about the baptism in the Spirit, and I was so curious, and I was so open, and then I experience this, this baptism in the Spirit and so on. And then we started to gather together with other Indonesian students. The first thought was, we are in a foreign country, we are foreigners, why can’t we meet, then we can talk about the Bible and pray. That was the beginning of this church. It was just a prayer group of Indonesian students, and we had no other relationship. It was just for survival. That was the beginning of our congregation. CWO: And how did it continue? Can you tell me? And then it went on with this community, this prayer group, in such a way, that people finished their studies and then flew back home to Indonesia, and then new people came who started to study, it was a circle. And that was from the 80s up to the 90s, up to ’95, we are always about 20 people, people come, and finish, and go back to Indonesia. In the year 95 we celebrated the Indonesian Independence day; it was just 50 years, and we thought, why don’t we, too, celebrate this independence, this 50, it’s an anniversary, and so we did this extra meeting, with the thought, as Indonesians we want to celebrate our country together. [ . . .] And this was our turning point, when we celebrated our home country’s independence. We also had a seminar, and a worship service, and a celebration, and then we also had exchanges, and then, we were collecting different points, and then we developed this deter-

8

Interviewed 18 January 2006 in his church office.


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mination, that we as Indonesians, we should be a blessing for the other nations, that we as Indonesians here in Germany, we should not just think among ourselves, but why we are here: Not just to study, and then finish, and then, yes, nothing to do with Germany etc. But on this day, God opened our eyes that we should have a greater relationship. And this vision is ‘light for the nations.’ And we got it from Isaiah 49. So that was our turning point. And then we thought: Okay, nice, we have a new vision, that we are not just thinking as Indonesians, for Indonesians, but also are a light for the others, but what shall we do? What is the next step, how do we put this into practice? We didn’t know. And then we prayed, etc., and then, as we prayed about how to put his into practice, we received a Bible verse from the Lord, it is also in the book of Isaiah, it is also called the house of, eh, ‘God’s temple shall be a prayer house for all nations.’ And this key word, ‘prayer’—oh yes, we Indonesian Christians, we like to pray, and then we thought, why don’t we just start with this? Prayer, that we invite other churches, other German churches in [ . . .], and then we remembered that 3 October is the day of German unification. And then we thought: That is a good moment to invite the other German churches and pray and fast together. Okay. Then we started to write letters. First of all, we had to introduce ourselves, and then we also had to tell that we wanted to organize this meeting, prayer and fasting on 3 October, yes. But because we were so closed up back then, they didn’t know us. And when they got our letter, many reacted in such a way: ‘Ah, Indonesian church, or Indonesian group—does this exist in [ . . .], is this real?’ Then we introduced ourselves, who we are etc., and the reaction was super, and they came, yes. And this was the first time, that we as a church, that we as a host also invited a church, a German congregation, that we pray and fast together. It was also the first time that we had a worship service in German, yes. In German, but naturally, also some songs in English. That was extra difficult, yes, and then I also preached, in Indonesian, but naturally, with translation into German, then I preached how important it is that we [unintelligible word] for our country, for our city etc. Yes, that was a good event, a good start, that we, eh, have a heart also for Germany. [ . . .] Yes, that was in October ’95, and then we thought, that’s it and ready, and then we go back to our old ways, Indonesian etc. But somehow this vision was not fulfilled. God said: ‘No, no, not only that you are a blessing for Indonesians, but you must, yes, the whole church must be open so that all nations can come, yes?’ And that isn’t easy for us, because we are Indonesians, and we would like to stay among ourselves, with our

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culture, our food etc. Yes, it’s not so easy for us. But because God talked to us in this way, I told the others: ‘God wants that we are no longer an Indonesian church, but an international one.’ And concretely, okay, concretely this means that we don’t have Indonesian songs any more, yes, and then no Indonesian sermon, yes, and everything now must be in German or English. And that was, yes, a very difficult thing for us. And then since ’96 we have started, everything we have changed, from Indonesian to German. And now we do our praise and worship in German and English, and I preach in German—yes, with my accent, [laughs out loud] with my grammar—yes, and then it is also being translated into English. And now, our church is no longer Indonesian, it has become international. About 90 people are coming, and of these 90, these 90 adults, they are from about 20 nations. And most of us are students, about 75 % of us. 6. B.A.: “God arranged that situation so that we can stay” 9 What happened in my life . . . That, eh, I have to go back a few years before I ever thought of coming to Germany. First, I never thought of becoming a pastor. It was not part of my career prospect in life, so to say, I never saw myself as pastor at any time of my life. One, I was shy, I didn’t like facing a crowd to make a speech, and each time I was forced to do that, I started sweating, and my hands got clammy, so whatever would put me in front of a crowd, I avoided it, I shunted it. But I got born again in 1988, and from the moment I was baptized in the Holy Ghost in 1989, I developed a thirst for prayer. Now I didn’t know how that happened, but I, I respond to challenges, so to say, I believe I can do what other people can’t do, and I can do it better. Shortly after I got born again, one of my friends told me that there was some students in the University of [ . . . ], praying for five hours a day. And I said: ‘Five hours a day, is it possible?’ And I made up my mind that next Sunday, the moment I got home after church, I’m going to pray for five hours. I got home before 12 noon, and at 12 noon I was on my knees, and I didn’t get up until 5 p.m. Then I said, ‘Yes, now I prayed five hours like every other person.’ A few months, someone who is now a pastor in Lagos told me there were some guys in US that,

9

Interviewed 9 April 2005 in my home.


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when they start praying, Holy Ghost just comes down, and those are people that pray 13 hours in a day. I said ‘13 hours in a day? I have to do that.’ So I waited for a public holiday, and, eh, I divided the day into segments. I started at 12 midnight, I prayed from 12 midnight until 4 a.m., I went to sleep, woke up by 8, prayed from 8 to 12 noon, and went back to sleep, woke up by 4, prayed again from 4 to 8 p.m., rested, and prayed two hours before the day finished, so I prayed a total of about 13 1/2 hours, and that made me very happy. But what I do realize, as I was praying, I was developing a personal relationship with God, which usually comes with prayers. And with that personal relationship came a thirst for the word of God. By divine providence, I was able to get a Dick’s (?) Bible, Dick’s annotated Bible, and I started studying the Bible, and I fell in love with the word of God. With that love came boldness, because it was like I knew what I was talking about, and I had so much to tell people. By the time I moved from [ . . .] to [ . . .] in 1991, that’s in Nigeria, I was somehow ready to be used by God. I joined the Redeemed Christian Church of God in [ . . .] in 1992, and within a few months that I joined the church, I was given a house fellowship center to handle. The house fellowship grew, then they opened a mission station, and the pastor called me and told me that he would like me to head the mission station. That was how I became a pastor. I did the work from 1993 as a pastor till 1996. The church grew tremendously, this parish, and because I was reading—I, I love reading, that’s another thing I, I love reading books—and I came across some of the books by George Banner (?) who is a Christian in the United States of America. I have one of his books in my bag here, it is ‘Speak like Jesus’. And he talked about vision. He wrote about mission. He wrote about having a focus in Christianity, and that helped to shape my ministry, that ministry is not just mounting the pulpit, shepherding people, it is first and foremost doing the will of God. I look, I really do the will of God, if they know the Bible of God. So I said I wanted to search what is the mind of God, and with that came a vision to start planting church. The parish which I was pastoring then, we had about 250 members, and within 3 years, we planted 36 other churches. We opened 4 satellite campuses of Bible colleges, I became the coordinator for the Bible college, I became coordinator of what is School of Mission, I got so busy with the work of the church, and it was conflicting with my secular job. Having learnt and taught that Christians had to carry cross and follow the Lord, I now challenged myself. Now, what I might be going to do—I was, so to say, at the brink of destiny. I either go forward

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with the Lord, or I go back. I could no longer hold a secular job, and hold a ministry at the same time. It was becoming difficult. In those days, I would get to the office in the morning, and I would just fall asleep in my seat. Because we have to pray during the night, run around for church duty, and I spent more time in the office doing church work than the work of my office, and I felt that was unfair. The people were not complaining, because I headed the office there. At least I should be able to talk to myself, [unintelligible passage] So I resigned in 1996, September 1996, to become a fulltime pastor. I was not happy and there was nothing to look forward to in the salary that fulltime pastors have been paid in Nigeria. Ah, at Redeemed Christian Church of God, in those days, it was 4,000 Naira, which of course if you compare it to Euro, it’s less than 50 Euro. So I said I would be a full time pastor, and I’m not going to register as a fulltime minister with the mission, which means I’m not drawing a salary. But I would be doing the work full time, and my wife and myself, we shall live on faith and trust God to meet our needs. It was very difficult. That was when I learnt that very few Christians actually have the welfare of the pastor at heart. The pastor is relevant to many Christians only when they have problems. The moment that problem has been solved, the pastor becomes irrelevant. So those who give me gifts in those days are those either had given back—I would go for their baby dedication and they’d remember ‘oh, we have to give the pastor some . . .’ It was tough, but in the midst of it, God proved himself faithful. The call to come to Germany, the offer was first made to me in 1996 by pastor [ . . .] who used to be my regional coordinator in [ . . .]. He was leaving Nigeria, and he was to come to Germany. When he got to Germany, he had another offer to go to the US. And he said ‘Could you think of any other person to handle the work in Germany?’, but to me, since we had worked together in church planting, the Bible college and so on and so forth. So he made the proposal to the headquarters of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Lagos, and, eh, because of some internal arrangements, I was not part of the headquarters. I belonged to [ . . .] arm of the church, and the people at headquarters preferred to send somebody from headquarters. So they sent Pastor [ . . .] to Germany. He stayed in Germany for 6 months, and then had problems with his visa. It just was not approved, so he had to go back. I remained in [ . . .]. After about two years working as a fulltime pastor without salary, we ran out of money, so my family and myself, we returned to [ . . .]. When I got to [ . . .], I felt God leading me to now go and register with


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the Redeemed Christian Church of God as a fulltime pastor. Now, I did not understand what God had in mind, but I do—I had this leading. It was a tough decision. My wife wasn’t happy with it, and I don’t blame her. Ah, we came from an executive position, to, [laughs] I wouldn’t say we were paupers, but we had nothing. Even in [ . . .] we could not afford an apartment. We had to stay with my wife’s auntie, and my wife, myself, and my son—they were the ones fitting us. You know, for an African, it was very depressing. I got a job with a computer firm, but I felt this strong leading, ‘don’t take that job. Go and register as a fulltime pastor.’ And I did not want to work as a fulltime pastor because the welfare package for a fulltime pastor isn’t enough to write home about. But I felt I had to obey God, so I registered as a fulltime pastor. And the moment I signed the dotted, the dotted line, they sent me back to [ . . .] [laughs] for another two years. I was in [ . . .], at the end of the second year, when the call came. Pastor [ . . .] came to Nigeria from US and said ‘they are having problems with the church in Germany, and, they needed a pastor. The pastor who was there before, that’s pastor [ . . .], ah, has resigned. He has to go to Berlin with his wife as all the embassies are moving, and there is no pastor there. And the church now needs somebody who can handle it, because there haven been so many crises.’ He would be grateful if I could think about it and take that offer. As of that time, I was really getting tired of being a fulltime pastor in Nigeria. With people making so much problems, and I was beginning to ask myself: Did I make the right decision in the first place? Anyway, everything just seemed to coincide at that period, that the only door that seemed open was to come to Germany. Ah, when we started processing, I remember the wife of my state pastor telling me that ‘It is a good thing about you that you did not lobby to be sent to Germany.’ That I’d just been sitting down and waiting for them to call me. ‘We know those who’d love to go, but you did not love it, so we take it that God wants you to go there and . . .’ In a nutshell, that’s how we ended up in Germany on the 19th of August 2001. That’s the journey so far. CWO: I have a few additional questions. You said you joined RCCG later, so what was the church that you became a Christian in? I got born again in 1988 first time. For most, I . . . prayed in my home and gave my life to Christ. Then, the Household of God in [ . . .], that was, I believe, the only church that I could have gone to at that time. Ah, as an unbeliever, I was more among the party crowd, and that particular pastor in Household of God used to be a pop star, Pastor

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[ . . .] and we used to dance to his music at discos and parties, and it’s like that. So when he got born again, he was a natural attraction for the youth, for the party crowd, we could identify with him, he was in—for Nigeria, he was outstanding, because he was a pastor who was wearing jerry curls. And . . . CWO: What are jerry curls? He was wearing jerry curls on his head, like a woman. In Nigeria, it is only women who do jerry curls, who perm the . . . yeah. American men, they do the same thing, but Nigeria is a conservative society when it comes to that. So when they see a man see wearing jerry curls, it’s outstanding. He is now even a pastor, but we could identify with him, because people were in the discotheque together. So I started attending the church, and he’s a good, he is a gifted teacher and very charismatic. So I stayed there. I was worshipping in that church until 1991, when I had to move to [ . . .]. The Household of God had no arm in [ . . .], so I first worshipped with ah . . .. I have forgot it, either it’s Christ Church, ah . . . CWO: It’s not important. But then you joined Redeemed Christian Church. What was it about this church that you joined it? Very interesting question. It was not doctrinal consideration. I grew up in the west, I went to university in [ . . .] and I had never heard of the name Redeemed Christian Church of God. Never. The closest I got to know about the RCCG, was seeing their camp, the Redeemed Camp, where they hold the Holy Ghost Service, along the LagosIbadan express road. But the church which I was going to in [ . . .], it’s called Christ Church or, eh, Christ Chapel, Christ Chapel, that’s correct, that’s the name of the church. The service dragged too long. I was used to the setup in Household of God Fellowship, we start Sunday services at 8 a.m., but 10:30 we shared the grace. Pastor [ . . .] was timeconscious. Second service starts by 11 and by 1:30 p.m., they shared the grace. Now I got to this church in [ . . .], Christ Chapel, and we would start Sunday service by 9 a.m., and by 2:30 we’re still in church. And most people who were holding the microphone really didn’t say anything special. And it, it became too boring for me. One sister that I met in church, Victoria, then came to church one day and told me that she wasn’t in church the previous Sunday, because someone invited her to this new church, that has just started in [ . . .], that’s it an elitist church. Could I believe that the whole place was air conditioned? And


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the seats were made of velvet, and the most interesting thing was that they ended the service by 10:30 a.m. Now that one got my attention. The A/C I was not interested, the velvet seats did not . . . but did you say 10:30 a.m.? She said yes. I said ‘when did they start the service?’—‘8 o’clock.’—‘Ah, and it ended by 10:30 a.m.?’ She said yes. I said ‘what’s the address?’ So she gave me their address and wanted to see this. So the following Sunday I went to the Redeemed Christian Church of God in [ . . .]. Now what that pastor preached that Sunday, I didn’t know. The songs, I didn’t know. I remember, I was only looking at one thing, the clock. What will happen at 10:30? That was the only thing I was interested in. By 10:30 a.m., they shared the grace, and I said: This is my church. [Laughs loud and long.] It’s . . . that’s how I ended up in Redeemed just at the time. It was after I now joined, but I now started lining up by their doctrines, now learnt about the vision that God give to the founder, they knew they have a General Overseer, his name is Pastor Adeboye and every other thing . . . But truly there . . .. [laughs] God uses some strange ways [laughs] . . .. That’s how I got to it. Question unintelligible I was born in [ . . .]. I went to primary school in [ . . .], secondary school in that area, high school also in the west, university in [ . . .] which is also in the west . . . CWO: What did you read? Mass communications. I did not know God was preparing me to talk to a lot of people. I thought I was going to be a broadcaster. My passion was to produce films, that’s what I wanted to do. Direct films, write scripts and I never did it . . . CWO: What was your secular job? I was working with the Manufactorers’ Association of Nigeria. I was the branch secretary, the manufactorers in Nigeria have an association that caters for their economical and political interests, like a pressure group. I was handling the secretariat in [ . . .]. The Headquarters is still in Lagos. CWO: So a kind of public relation job? Yeah, exactly. Public relations, administration, basically, that’s what it is.

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CWO: Can you say a little bit . . . you came to Germany in 2001. (Yes) Now, things have happened, you are no longer with RCCG. You may not want to go into details, but if you look back at it and interpret it spiritually, what happened? [Very slowly and quietly] I believe, you know, that God works out his purpose and his counsel for our lives. Spiritually, what happened . . . that’s a very interesting question. I have thought about it in so many ways, but I have not been able to say I can articulate and sum it up in one word. I would try as best as I could to be able to explain it. One, I would say God has a purpose for bringing us to Germany. Before I left Nigeria, he made that clear. When it was apparent we would be coming here, and we were going to the embassy in Lagos, you know the preliminary, eh, application, I was praying in March— when I definitely heard, in March of 2001, when I definitely heard the Holy Ghost say: ‘Pray for 20, eh, fast for 28 days for your mission in Germany, and pray seven hours each day.’ So I asked ‘when do I start?’, and immediately I got another answer: ‘Start first of April.’ And throughout April, I fasted. My wife agreed to join me. Now the next challenge was to pray seven hours in a day for 28 days. So we divided the days, ah, the hours of the day, rather. We started praying like 12 midnight till 4 a.m., and we would go and sleep. In the afternoon, we prayed from 12 noon till 2 p.m., and then we would take a break. We would pray the last hour 5 p.m. to 6, to be able to cover these 7 hours. And God started showing us things that had to do with the work. And one of the things he showed us is that we are going to have a lot of problems when we go to Germany. And, he also told me, then, that he will show me a place in Germany, that I should go there, that I should enter Germany fasting, and for 7 days pray and fast and pray that place before I started doing any other thing. I, I had a retreat, just a 7-day retreat, as I entered Germany. So I believe, one, that spiritually God has a purpose for sending us to Germany. And as it is usual, whatever God initiates, the devil opposes it. So everything we’ve gone through, I saw it as an attempt of the devil to get us out of God’s perfect way. And God had to use a very traumatic means to make it possible for us to stay, that is the first interpretation of it. Secondly, . . . CWO: What was the traumatic means? Just so that I understand it . . . Yeah, the health of my son. We gave birth to E. on 3rd September of 2002, and the following day after he was born, the doctors diagnosed that he had a heart problem, and he was operated on his 17th day. [Interruption as his mobile phone rings. He switches it off and continues.] As


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the result of this operation his doctors say that he has to remain in Germany for access to medical treatment, which of course we would not have in Nigeria. And because of that, we have to stay, for how long, I don’t know. Even when we were recalled back to Nigeria in June of 2003, ah, it was clear that we could not go back. Because of E.’s situation, we were allowed by the German authorities, that Aliens’ Office, to continue to stay. And I believe that God arranged that situation so that we can stay. That’s the only thing that will have kept us in Germany. And it, it is twofold, looking at it. The mission that sent us cannot recall us, and even if we do get angry, or upset, or got unhappy with Germany, we cannot leave. So it is like God killing two birds with one stone: Nobody can push you out, even you yourself, you can’t push, so you sit down here. And if God does that, it’s because he has a purpose. And one thing that God has done that has encouraged me to continue to stay, to continue to hold on—I hope I can share this with you (Yes). When all the problems started, and things got so tight, I was going to get confused. December 2002, I was to travel to Berlin, I think it was December 21, 2002. I was to travel Berlin for a program. Usually, when I travel to Berlin, I leave very early in the morning, so I had woken up by 12 midnight so that I could pray till about 3, then I started getting dressed to go out and get a taxi and go to the Bahnhof, so I will sleep inside the train for the five hours. So while I was praying I asked God three questions: A lot of things were going wrong, in the church, in the work, the [unintelligible word] were making problems—we need not go into details—and I asked God 3 questions. Question number 1: Why am I here? Two: Why are all these things taking place? And three: What am I supposed to do now? Three questions. And within 30 minutes, God gave me the answer to the three. It’s one of those rare moments that he speaks and you know that he speaks definitely. And the first question, ‘why are you here?’ he said ‘It is to be a light to the Germans.’ Question number 2, ‘why are all these things taking place?’ he said ‘There is a treasure inside of you that has to come out, so you have to be broken.’ And he referred me to 2. Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7: ‘Now we have a treasure in an earthly vessel.’ And then question number 3: ‘what am I supposed to do now?’ He said ‘you begin to pray 12 midnight, every day.’ And that’s why till today, my alarm is permanently set to a quarter to 12 at night. I try to go to bed earlier, and even when I don’t go to bed earlier, I will still go by 12 midnight. Of course, not every day, there are some days I get so tired, when I get to the place of prayer, I fall asleep. That one is

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true, but at least almost every day, almost I would say, I try that I get to pray by 12 midnight. I could pray for one hour, for three hours, for four hours, it depends on how alert and awake I am. But 12 midnight, I’m at the place of prayer, every day. And that has started since 2002. And one grace that God also gave me was the opportunity to be part of a German prayer team, ah, Wächterruf in [ . . .], and we meet twice in a month. And for me, I see it as an important opportunity, so I don’t miss the prayer meetings. It gives me an opportunity to, one, be able to pray for Germany, two, to be able to give something back to the nation, because we received so much help and so much favor, particularly when E. was sick. The hospital bill alone, if we had been in any other country in the world apart from Germany, we will have lost that child. No other nation in the world could have done what the Germans did. 7. R.A.: “God gave me a burden” 10 One time I was praying and I felt the Lord was urging me to go to Germany. And the reason why it was very special for me was I never thought of coming to Germany because I knew that many people who left Ghana and they came to Germany, any time they went back to Ghana they were unbelievers! Some were good Christians, and when they come to Germany, and they go back to Ghana, they go back as people who don’t even know God! And I knew I saw so many things that were happening to them which were not so good, so I have asked some of them: ‘Don’t you go to church in Germany?’ And they said that, one, they couldn’t attend any German church service because it was done in German and they didn’t understand anything that was happening, and also sometimes they go to a German church and they didn’t feel welcomed, so some of them prefer to stay home, and it is really this—it has cost a lot of family break-up, so when I heard the voice ‘Germany’, I felt that this would be my vision, this would be my what I’ll be doing in Germany, so God opened the doors for me to come to Germany, and when I came, I started this ministry, [ . . .].

10

Interviewed 16 February 2005 in his church office.


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CWO: Can you be a little bit more detailed? How did it happen? How did God urge you to come here? I had a burden. I, I heard a voice, the voice ‘Germany’, and straightaway God gave me a burden. So I went to the German embassy and made enquiries. How does it take, what does it take to come to Germany? And they said: ‘Bring your passport and bring a valid ticket.’ So the following day I bought a ticket, I took my passport, and I went to the German Embassy. And the forms that I filled, they, they asked ‘Do you know anybody in Germany?’ I said ‘no.’—‘Where will you stay in Germany?’ I wrote ‘hotel.’ And, I couldn’t complete so many areas on the form, because I knew that it was God’s leading. So, I filled the form, and they told me: ‘Say, when do you want to travel?’ And I said, I said ‘Friday.’ That was Tuesday—I said ‘Friday I will travel.’ They told me to come on Thursday to collect my visa. So it was no struggle and that made me know that it was the will of God. So when I got to Germany—it was [ . . .] Airport I came to, and as soon as I came out from the airport, I told the taxi driver: ‘Take me to the cheapest hotel.’ Over there, I locked myself in the hotel for one week, just seeking the face of God in prayer, and in fasting, and when I came out from the hotel, that’s how God connected me to Pfarrer [ . . .] and we’ll be friends to this time, and he has been helpful to us. CWO: How did you meet Pastor [ . . . ]? How did that come about? Pfarrer [ . . .] was then the superintendent of the Evangelical Church in [ . . .], and they were, they were assisting and supporting some Ethiopian Christians in the [ . . .] that couldn’t work out well, and the help that were given to the Ethiopian Christians happened to now follow me, because that church couldn’t—they were trying to hold a church for the Ethiopians and the Eritreans and Christians, and it transformed—eh every help was now transformed or transferred to, to me, because that church couldn’t stand. And ever since we’ve been friends and . . . yes. CWO: Were you a pastor in Ghana before you came to Germany? I did a lot of ministry in Ghana, and from Ghana I was sent to Liberia, I did some missionary work in Liberia, so from Liberia God opened doors for me to go to Spain. I did some missionary work also in Spain with a very big ministry there. From Spain I went to Ghana, and when I was in Ghana, I felt God was calling me to come to Germany, and now I know why God urged me to come to Germany. [ . . .]

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CWO: I can tell you don’t like so much to talk about your life, but I still want to ask a few more questions, if that is alright. You said God urged you, God put a burden on you: How did that happen? I mean, how did you get that burden? What—concretely, how did it happen? It, it came through prayer, and, you know after—eh like everyone knows after praying you have to sit down and listen to, listen to yourself, and also listen to an impression you believe the Holy Spirit is giving, so it happened just like that. And also God opened my eyes to see how couples came from Germany and, they—some killed each other, they, they killed each other, eh divorce and destroying cars and selling houses that they’ve built together, to build together, I saw a lot of devastation here. And they told me that in Germany, they have no mentor, they have no Christian to help them, and I discovered that the Ghanaians live in their own communities, especially when they came to [ . . .] here, there was a street called [ . . .], that street was—is known till today eh— homes for the hippies, that’s where they live, and many Ghanaians lived in that area, and they speaking Ghanaian language, they eat Ghanaian food, everything Ghanaian Ghanaian—you smells like you are, you’re in Ghana over there, because everything you hear is Ghana Ghana, you smell Ghanaian food, and I discovered that the people were very close up, they were a very closed society! And eh they, they talked in their own language, they, they need help, they go to Ghanaian and they had no—some of them had no contact to Germans! No one that—they couldn’t go to church. So our church was the first in, in this city to bring about having an African church in this city, and we were able to reach out to all these people out of us and now we have a lot of Ghanaian churches, and we even have reach out to Nigerians—we’re having a lot. We are a multicultural church, and we always teach the word of God in a very balanced way. What is the Gospel? The Gospel is a good news from God, a good news who are so—and also a good news to show us how to live with each other, that you treat everyone around you with respect, with dignity, knowing that everyone is also a person, no matter their color, everyone is a person, everyone is a human being, everyone must be treated with respect. My wife comes from Chile, South America, she’s white, and people have watched us from afar and they’ve seen how our marriage has been, and it has encouraged them especially. Some Blacks who’ve been married to Whites, some have thought it’s a taboo to be married to a White, but they have watched us, and we have been an inspiration to many people and I’ve taught our people, especially those who are married to the Germans,


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I have taught them how not to make a German a Ghanaian, or how not to make a German a Nigerian, but make the German a German, and you too, you too, you must be a Ghanaian or a Nigerian or an Ethiopian—just respect each other’s color, learn how to accept each other, whether—it has worked for many people. They usually say: in our country, this how we do it. But I tell them we’re in Germany, let’s do it the German way, having the word of God in mind, and let us help . . . CWO: How did you start [your church]? Can you tell the story? Yes [ . . .] is a form in the year 1991, as in [ . . .], we used their premises, and I made it very international in such a way that people around me were urging me to have a Ghanaian church, have a Ghanaian Bible, use the Ghanaian language, but I, I’ve felt that was not called to reach out to Ghanaians only, if I’m called to reach out to Ghanaians I will have remained in Ghana. We have a lot of Ghanaians in Ghana today. But I discovered that I’m here for the the Gospel’s sake. And I discover—we discover in the Bible that the Gospel is for all nations! So, we went the international way, that’s not been easy, but God has given us grace that I’ve always had good people, I’ve always had good people around me to help to preach this vision, and this, this is how it has been, and we have seen how God has blessed us and with—he is, he is still blessing us, and we have a long way to go and we believe by the grace of God we will get there. CWO: But how did you start? Who were the first people who came? Yeah, we started—I started with seven people. We were just seven in number, and the seven grew to, we got to the twenties, I mean we got to, we grew very steadily, I believe in steady growth, and this is how it became . . . but it’s amazing that we started with seven and in a small corner in [ . . .], and together with my wife, we fought on, we forged on, to encourage others to join us in the vision that we believe God has given to us. We believe we’ve been called for the nations, and as long as we’re in Germany here, we love the Germans very much, because we believe that in the past God has used them to bless us and God is still using the Germans to bless Africa, and so we believe this is our contribution, too, and this why I expect every African here, especially those who are in my church, expect them to have high standards, that people will look at their lives and they will admire African Christians. They cannot preach—we preach here is beyond our church services.

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Mondays are very important, the weekdays are very, very important, that’s what I been hammering on. After a nice Sunday service, what do you do on Monday, what do you do on Tuesday? Our neighbors are watching us, are you friendly, are you very forgiving, are you very tolerant? This is very, very important and this is what my people understand, and then my people know that—people who come to our church know that I’m a number one preacher on the love of God and also forgiveness, and I have been learning how to respect and esteem others better than you—apart from we loving the move of the Holy Spirit—this practical things helps us, because practical Christianity is what you do with your neighbor. Jesus said: Love your neighbor as yourself. If you’re a Christian and you cannot love your neighbor as yourself because your neighbor is having a different color or speaks a different language than you speak, you can’t relate to him, then I think you have serious problems, so this are the basic things that I teach and communicate with the people, and I’ve seen results, many many results. CWO: How big is [ . . . ] now, how many members do you have? Usually—sometimes, we lose track of our members because then and there we get newcomers, and sometimes some of our members also travel. But I can say that on Sundays, at least, hm, we have, at least 200 people visiting us, at least 200, and that we can count on, at least. And we have four church services, some come in the morning, they don’t show up in the afternoon, a Spanish service, and a morning church service, almost at the same time, and then Sunday afternoon church service, and Sunday night church service, different people come. So at the end, usually, we will have over 300 people that have visited in the church. 8. E.S.: “I felt a call strongly to Germany” 11 I felt called to ministry, and so I had study in the Maranatha Bible College. Three years, I got my B.A. in Theology, so then I moved into church planting, founded a church in [ . . .] and felt a call to go to Germany, specifically because I had a German family I was living with. And I felt a call strongly to Germany. I cannot explain that because it

11

Interviewed 2 March 2005 in his church office.


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is more of a calling from your, what you call it, from your spirit, from your heart. And so, well, I planned to go, to go to the Institute, I teach there, and by the time I was finished I had the opportunity to come to Germany, because it was, it was the lady I was living with, she was a German. Actually, we have to work out to get a missionary visa. Okay, that worked out, and I came to Germany. I came to Germany not having any church. Not a German church invited me, nor me knowing which church I am going to. You know, kind of work together with. But I just came, and as I came, I arrived here in 1988, August, and I—that was a Friday evening, and Saturday morning I went out to look for a place of worship. Since I was a Baptist back then, I decided to look for a Baptist church. And obviously, I went to the tourist information center, where they told, they told me of the Baptist Church in [ . . .]. So I just went there Sunday morning for service. After the service, a young man came up to me and—he just spoke ‘Hello, how are you.’ Actually, I didn’t expect an English-speaking person there, but I happened to find this guy who had been in England for some time, so he spoke English. And I told him who I was as a pastor, and a church, and why I am here in Germany as a missionary and stuff like that. And he said: ‘Well, that’s a good idea!’ And so the next week, I think in two weeks later—I kept going on to church—about two weeks later, I told him about my idea about starting something with English, because I do speak English, and so we arranged, we came into the flat . . . I was in a student flat at that time, sharing with a student friend of mine. So right in my flat there, we basically started a fellowship, and that was him and myself. And so all—we started inviting people, and I basically go out and invite everybody. So at our next meeting we were a bit—about six, and so he said that my place would be small. So we moved to his place, and then what happened was that I went with him in his car to the Asylheim, or you call it the political asylum seekers’ home, and we picked some guys, and we brought them in where we were doing it. So it’s sort of growing, growing like that. We moved then to [ . . .], of course, that’s where we were going to church, and they provided us a place, and we started a work there. Actually, what was very integral to our work there was the street work we did, actually. We go out, he plays the guitar, so he plays the guitar, many people gather, then I preach, I preach in English, he translates into German, and we invited people to church. That’s how we got people to come into the church. Basically, that’s how I came to Germany, basically. I felt the call to come here as a missionary. So that’s how my work here started. I moved to [ . . .] for some time, I did

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some work withthis one pastor, [ . . .]. He was there at that time [ . . .]. I worked with them for a while, and, well, at the same time I was in [ . . .]. Actually, I didn’t leave, but helped them, and then, obviously, I was in [ . . .], I started a church in [ . . .], I stayed in [ . . .] two and a half years, I think, and then, I just felt God asking me to come down to [ . . .] to start a central church and build a bigger mission. And that’s, that’s how it happens that I moved to [ . . .] in 1996, so, I started with only mission work in the streets. I didn’t have any church, so I was just going on the street and preach publicly, and, distribute tracts. I traveled to [ . . .], traveled there, just talking to people about Jesus and stuff like that. Until I found that I desired to start a church, which would be a base by which we would do our mission work. Initially, our heart was more strongly on—just, you know, kind of having conferences and seminars, inviting people, which we started that way and it was quite fruitful, go and get about people. But we felt led by God to start a church where people—at least that we get to bring to Christ would be, would be able to come and worship . . . So we started in my flat over there again, me and my wife alone. Well, we go out to speak to people, and we got three people to join us the next meeting, and one of them gave her life to Christ, and she was a Muslim before she gave her life to Christ. They became our foundation members. One from Kenya, the other one from Uganda, and then, the next meeting, we have two other people as well. They were Ghanaian, so we had four, and then going on six, and then we moved out of the place and then we came to [ . . .], and the number increased . . . So that’s how it, it grew. We actually got a lot of Germans, as well, coming in. We were able to reach a lot of Germans. Actually, at the beginning stages, I think my church was predominantly German, there were mostly Germans we and only had a few, a few Africans. But well, over the years, things have changed. What happened, actually, now, I would say, is, looking at the church in [ . . .], we have done a lot of mission work in [ . . .]; we’ve been able to reach other cities . . . [ . . .], we have a church there. And it’s the same pattern. I used to start a church there. We started with one person; I go there, I meet some person and start with him in his house, and then it grows and then we find a place. And then in [ . . .] as well, the same story. And in [ . . .], the same story; in [ . . .] now we have one going on there, and then in [ . . .]. This is the pattern we use in reaching people. Well, the church is completely self-supportive, and, basically, we believe strongly that our missionary work here is going to grow and going to grow, quite big.


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CWO: Thank you. What put the thought of Germany in your mind? How, how did you find out you had a call to Germany? Okay. I guess, most of the times we would say that God puts things into our hearts. I would say that, well, in the beginning could be so, but, yes, it’s a call from God in my heart to go there. But however, I can also contribute it to the fact that, well, I am living among a German family and thereby hearing about the spiritual situation in Germany, also as a contributing factor. Speaking from a practical perspective, I would say that that’s also another contributing factor. However, I might say it was strongly God’s, God’s leading. But hearing of the, what do you call it now, of the spiritual condition in this country, I think that’s another contributing factor that made me decide to do this. Yeah. . . . [short interruption as a church worker brings tea] CWO: Okay, the question I wanted to ask you: You said ‘the spiritual condition of Germany’ (Yeah) was a factor in making you want to come here. Can you say concretely what you mean by the spiritual condition of Germany? Okay, the first thing I would say is that . . . we’re hearing of the churches getting empty. We’re hearing of the fact that, eh, the number of the people, the number of people do not go to church, not just don’t go to church but aren’t even interested in God—well, that’s a sign of spiritual decline, when people turning away from God. Obviously, in the past, we know about people turning away from God, but a nation like Germany that brought about revival, I mean reformation, which are Martin Luther and so . . . and coming to hear in those, let’s say in the eighties that churches, church decline is becoming a concern . . . we were reading it in the Spiegel, because she is a, a worker in the embassy and we get the Spiegel, and she reads that and she talks about it, and we get magazines in English, and we read, and we see this, these issues, and we discuss them, she discussed them with us at home then. We actually even formed a Bible study group in the house which is made up of diplomats, and we discuss these things. So from there, I got to know that the church in Germany is dying, and all over Europe as well, but Germany specifically is getting some problems in that. And that, that’s what I mean by that: The churches getting empty, people not being interested in God, and most especially, when I felt that I have—there aren’t many youth! In fact, one of the things that was a bit shocking to me was the fact that the churches are full with old people. I didn’t get to know about it when I came here, but I knew about it in Ghana. But that was the opposite of what we knew in Ghana: Most of

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the churches are full with youth, and the old people really didn’t want to go to church, because they claim that, well, they didn’t go to church in the olden times. And so this is one of the factor that I felt, that, well, this is a place where one can actually go for mission work. But then, as I said, I had also this conviction in my heart that God wants me to do it. And I say this because if, if it wasn’t that, I would have given up and gone to England, or the, the US, because it got by easier in terms of the language and also the mentality and the culture and so. But, with all these challenges, knew that there was a reason why I should come here . . . CWO: You felt called as a missionary . . . I felt called as a missionary, I think, I hundred percent say that. Because I didn’t even know that Africans living in here that much. It wasn’t something I knew, not until I came here. Actually, my big surprise I had when I came to [ . . .] and I got to get involved with Africans a lot. But initially I wasn’t really involved with that much Africans, my involvement has been with Germans. For example, being in [ . . .] over there, I just . . . were always working, I was always working with German churches: Landeskirche, Freie Evangelische churches and everywhere Evangelical churches. 9. R.N.: “To come to [ . . . ] was not a choice.” 12 My background is not like . . . a Christian family so strong to be as I know now, but they were very religious, my mother, my father, my grandmother . . . Actually, my grandmother gave a strong impartation in my life when I was growing. And most of the things that happened, in such a way, that every Sunday, we had to go to church. In school, I attended a Presbyterian school, when I was growing, and on Monday morning it is necessary, it is necessary that you show to the whole school whether you were in church on Sunday. If you were not at church on Sunday, you have a punishment, so people went to church. We also went to church. I believe now I can look back at it as a foundation. Good, and so I grew up to be like that, and then I went to High School, and did our program in education and everything that we did. But one

12

Interviewed 16 November 2005 in his church office.


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time I had an experience with the Lord, and I became born again. Unlike before, at a crusade or in a church, it was a personal encounter, you know, like a vision, like a . . . I was not asleep, I was awake, and I heard this clear . . . like a voice calling me, and so this night, I made a decision for the Lord. A friend invited me, the first time we went for a prayer meeting. It was an all night prayer meeting, and then at this prayer meeting, I knew that what I had also clear that the Lord really was calling my attention to serve him. And since then I became a Christian, a born-again Christian, and then I got myself attached to the Assemblies of God Church, ever since I have been in an Assemblies of God Church. It’s the place I’ve had my training. So, in ’84, I had the opportunity to be a missionary in Togo, and I was based in [ . . .], in a central church. It was during this time I serviced there—I was there for five years—it was during the time I serviced there, that I had a contact with Operation Mobilisation, OM, which the headquarters is here, in Germany, in Morsbach. So while I did this outreach work with OM, I got to know Germany and the outreach work Germany did in mission, the vision and different things. I studied the whole history, and I found out that Germans were in Ghana, especially in the Volta Region where my wife comes from. So there was something so rich about Germany. But to come to [ . . .], which is directly your question, it was not a choice! It’s not like—oh, after my mission in Togo, the next place to go, wow, we’re going to [ . . .]—no, it was not on my calendar at all! Number one, the reason which I also told God, ‘please, don’t send me to Germany,’ when I saw that it was obvious that I was going to Germany, I was arguing with God: ‘God, how can you send me to Germany? Number one, I don’t speak German, I don’t know anything about Germany, apart from the contact with OM, I don’t know anyone. There is no link, there is no direct link to Germany.’ Number two, my wife was studying in London, and so when I returned from Togo and I had to go overseas, I felt U.K. was . . .. My wife was there, okay, it was my fiancée, we were not . . . my wedding has not come on . . . so I said: ‘God, if you’re sending me somewhere, why not to the place where my wife-to-be is? I mean that will be great, you know, after her studies, we have our duration.’ Every door was closed for me to go to U.K. or anywhere else. But then I saw myself in Germany, in 1989 in October. So when I came, I first drove to Morsbach, I went to the OM headquarters, I asked for some of my friends, those with whom we had worked together, but most of them were scattered to New Guinea, Canada, you know, people were

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far away. But there was one man who had just returned from India. And this man, he just wants to begin some, you know, foreigners’ work in Germany. And then, I was introduced to him, I look for him, I found him, and . . . I went to [ . . .], I stayed for three weeks and met some pastors there—these are all Germans, and a missionary from America. They prayed every Tuesday, so I was with them in the prayer meeting. For three weeks, I was there, and I was only in my spirit praying that ‘God, what do you have for me here in Germany?’ And . . . this started to give a background of OM work, and different things that went on. And during this time, a comprehensive report was given about [ . . .]. . . . Ostertreff for OM, Easter Convention, which happened in [ . . .], that same ’89. They were giving a report, they were here, and different things happened, the outreach in March in the street and all these things. And so this was the first time I heard about [ . . .], I didn’t know anyone there, I didn’t have any contact. And I think it became something that sticked into my spirit, so when I was sleeping, and when I prayed, I have something, a strong urge—I didn’t know exactly what the impression was. So one time I called my friend, the pastor, and I said: ‘Is there any way that we can visit [ . . .], just to look?’ Because he took me to [ . . .], he took me to [ . . .], he took me to [ . . .], we were traveling, I mean during my stay. So I said: ‘Can we visit [ . . .] one day?’ and he said: ‘Yeah, why not, this weekend?’ and then we fixed it. It was around my birthday, November, just like now. And then we came. And we met one Baptist brother, very wonderful brother, and he loves the Lord so much, he hosted us, we had a good time with him, in his house, and then on Sunday, he took us to Baptist church, it was fine. On Monday, my friend said that we should be going back. And I said: ‘No, I’m not going back with you.’ He said ‘Why?’ and I said: ‘I want to know a little bit about [ . . .], so please, I’ll call you.’ So after service on Sunday, in the week, this young man took me around the city [ . . .]. He took me to [ . . . ] Dom [cathedral], to the university area, and he is ready to talk about the history, how old this is, this is a very old empire, many kings were crowned here, the coronation, so I got . . . it was so exciting, I really want to know more, he took me to different spots. And I told my friend: ‘I’m not coming, I mean this place is so rich, and, I want to be here.’ But before I forget—that same evening, before we left [ . . .] for this place, there was a missionary, an American missionary, he met me at the entrance, as we were going to the car, and he said ‘Ey, young man, where are you going this evening?’ and my friend said ‘He wants to go to see [ . . .]. He has been talking . . .. He’s got a feeling he


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just has to see this place, see what the Lord has for him.’ And then the man said: ‘Hey, [ . . .] is a very hard place to begin from.’ And I smiled, like always, and he said ‘I’m not joking! You can smile. You can go to Cologne, you can go to some other cities, but I know [ . . .], we have a good history, people have tried to be there, but latest five years . . . you cannot establish from [ . . .], you can start this from somewhere and maybe shift . . .’ And I smiled and we left. But in the car I thought, I didn’t have any strong message about [ . . .] in my prayer, because, you know, in the last three weeks, I was praying and fasting, and believing God, but this message for me, it was great! I said: ‘God, now I know, that you want to send me to [ . . .]. Not because of comfort, but because there is an assignment. If the place is hard, I believe, it is where you will begin anything from.’ Then I came, and then indeed, apart from all the beautiful historical information I got from my friend, when we began the work here in [ . . .], I saw that what the old man had said is true. For one thing, my decision was clear. Through that I knew that God is faithful, right now I can say God is faithful, looking back to 16 years, and I say: God is faithful. So I came here with that strong impression, it came to me at night, praying, after they told me about [ . . .] Easter Convention. That’s it, and now I am in [ . . .]. [laughs] CWO: So how did you start [ . . . ] Fellowship? So how did I start [ . . .] Fellowship? From that same friend, [ . . .], when I came, he was doing African Christian Fellowship here. And so we traveled around, did different things, and so when I moved here, I knew I would do something. So I came, I talked to this Baptist friend, and he—around the same year, he and this Baptist friend were saying, ‘oh, we want to start English house fellowship—Hauskreis.’ So when I came, he said, ‘wow, look at it, we have just begun and we have an English pastor!’ It was like excitement, and we were talking about, and we laughed over it. When I came, . . . I contacted my pastors, my general superintendants at home, and I told him, we want to begin a work here. So they told me important was first to start to check all the foundational work, what is necessary, get in contact with some churches. So I start to get in contact. I knew this Baptist church, the pastor, an old man, very spirit-filled, he was so generous, he welcomed me to the Baptist church, so I fellowshipped there every Sunday. So I got to know one other man in a pentecostal church [ . . .], and then gradually I got to know one other pastor from the Evangelical Church. [ . . .] So he became a very . . . he was like a father and mentor to me, from the Evangelical

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church. So when I met all these people, I called them and I said: ‘I have something to share,’ and they gave me audience. And I talked with these three people, the Baptist pastor, the [ . . .] church, which is a free church, and then the Evangelical church, and this is a strong voice in the city. So they said ‘okay, young man, what is it?’, and I told them that ‘I’m a pastor, I’ve been in mission for five years, I went back home, and the Lord sent me here. I have come, and I want to establish a community. And I believe, having prayed I believe that God has sent me first of all to the African or the English community or some people from my background. The reason why I see it is, from this short time I have stayed, some of our people don’t have direct access to the already established German community. Number one, language, number two, culture, number three, I mean this family thing. So I want to . . . I have been praying to God to first help me get these people, and when they have a place, where they can gather themselves together as a community, they will see the need to be [unintelligible word] and integrated, to be in a community where they will not be lost, but they see themselves as part of it. So this is my assignment.’ And they said ‘wow, we never thought of this!’ And then they started to share with me. ‘Yeah, we had a student here from Kenya, he came to our church for three months, but we don’t see him again.’ Or another person . . . so they gave me such testimony. I said, ‘Yeah, this is what I need. I mean, when they are alone, they don’t fit in, but when they are many, they see themselves as a body, it’s easy to fit in.’ So they said ‘we agree, that would be helpful, and we support.’ So the Baptist pastor, the [ . . .] pastor, and the Evangelical pastor also agreed. Then I started to [unintelligible passage] and to attach it to my resident permit, because I told them that I’m a missionary sent here. So when I think, when I came three days, I went and did my registration, Anmeldung, so they said with my work, they will look [unintelligible passage] person. So I got some papers from those pastors, they signed that we agree, and I sent my letter from Africa, so I also got them to receive me, so I added it to the Foreign Office, then my certificates, I gave them to the Baptist church, they were so generous, they translated everything for me, and I added it all for the Ausländeramt. I waited for the response, it took some time, I mean the whole long process, but eventually, they agreed, it was agreed by the church, or by the churches in the city, this foreign work is accepted and it should be done, because they were not doing it officially. And so we started. [ . . .] Church gave us a place of meeting, a small place. And then we started, we started with a home fellowship,


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and then it started growing, and then the [ . . .] Church moved, so we came to the Baptist church. We don’t have a place, no problem, they also gave us a place, we started meeting there. Then there was another French group, which was, like, more Baptist-attached to the Baptist church. And so we had to share the Sundays, they met two Sundays in a month, we met two Sundays in a month, and I said, I talked to the elders, I said ‘Two Sundays in a month is not a good idea, because . . .. it’s a pioneer work, it needs a lot of concentration. You work, not relax. So we are very thankful for the support, but we are looking for a place, and when we get it, we’ll let our brothers have four weeks, and then we’ll also have four weeks.’ I talked to Pastor [ . . .]. So he—the first contact gave me the opportunity to relate to all these people in this place. And I moved to the Evangelical Church in [ . . .], we had our services there every Sunday. So we started with a small group. . . . Ahm, I was attending Volkshochschule [adult education school], because of the German language. So when I close from school, I take my bath. If I meet someone, an African, I ask ‘Do you speak English?’, if he say yes, ‘Can we share something?’ I gave tracts, I went to the bank hall, I started visiting some Asylheims [asylum seeker homes], I invited people, praying with people. They couldn’t come to church in the beginning. So what I did was: I’d go there Wednesday, Friday, and I had meetings there, in the Heims, until people would start to understand the Bible; and those, there were some Christians, and ‘oh, you’re a pastor!’, so they were so interested, and after some time, I started to invite them to church. And interesting, I had to go there with my car and pick them to church [laughs], and after church, went to the car and pick them! This car was not mine, it is my friend who hosted me, he borrowed it to me, so I always went and picked them, and bring them back. So we started, just in a small family, three people, and then we grew gradually from the Hauskreis [home fellowship], to the Baptist church and so on. . . . Yeah, I forgot something: We started with ‘African Christian Fellowship’, for a short time, then I realized, no, this is not African Christians, it is international. Because, the future is that we don’t want to be separated, the future is that we want to rather be integrated, we want to be together. There’ll be some people, Germans who’ll be interested or who would know Jesus Christ through our outreach, and if we say ‘Africans’, it will put them off. So we changed the name from ‘African Christian Fellowship’, and it became ‘International Christian Fellowship’. I have to write also to the Ordnungsamt [Municipal Office] that the name has changed. So that is how we have started.

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CWO: When did you move into this building? We move into this building in the year 2002, on the fourth, that’s when we moved in. But we have used every church building in [ . . .], I mean, we have used every church building in [ . . .]! The reason was, sometimes, if it was in Evangelical church, they have a special program and they say ‘Sunday, you cannot use.’ Then immediately I’m looking for different places, the Catholic, the Baptist, some other Evangelical churches, so we went to different places. So we were in [ . . .] that this vision came that we want to buy a temple. And people want to buy a place where we can have time. That’s like we do in Africa, even in the middle of the week, we can have services. Even during the day, people can come for counseling, we can have a place like the club we have there, the students can meet there, internet, they can have a place of fellowship, they don’t feel alone. So when I gave the vision to the church, they were excited. They said: ‘Why not? We can do it. We can do it! And we’ll stand behind the vision.’ And then we started to put every extra money that we had on the side—and very interesting, I went to the bank, I told them ‘we have some money, we want to buy a church building, and we want to put it in a special fixed deposit.’ And they said: ‘What? You want to buy a church building?’ And they said ‘It’s a small money, but okay . . .’ so they put it into an account. And on that day, I called the committee, and we put a code on it, and I said ‘This amount—whether I am here or whether I am not here—nobody can withdraw from this account until it is ready to be transferred to buy a church building. Even if we have to pay electricity and we don’t have money, that money is not for electricity, it is not for heating, it is not for anything but church building.’ And we saved, and we saved—I think we saved for . . . . 96, 97 . . . we saved our own money, and the day we wanted to transfer money to the owners of this building to buy, we went to our account, and we had 150,000 Deutschmarks on our account. And then the bank said ‘okay, we will give you 100 % sponsorship with your capital.’ It’s okay because we need some money for the renovation—so we took that money, the sponsorship, and also some sponsorship from the BfP,13 and we moved here in 2002, and since then we have been here. It’s a blessing. [laughs]

13 Bund freikirchlicher Pfingstgemeinden, Federation of Free Pentecostal Churches, of which R.N.’s ministry is a member church.


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CWO: Some questions for clarification: Did you come to Germany directly from Ghana? Yes, as a missionary. I was sent by the Assemblies of God. What happened was, they didn’t put so much strain, like a roadmap, to tie you— today, as I’m talking, one of our big men, he was the Assistant General Superintendent, he is our guest now, he came to visit our church— they knew that some of us were on mission, they said that, okay, at the moment we are not sending missionaries officially where they would support—but those of us that are pioneer, who are on mission, who want to do that, they give us our support, so I have a direct support from Assemblies of God into this place. So they introduced me to the equivalent of the Assemblies of God in this place, which is the BfP. And so I have a direct support from my church. CWO: Did you have some kind of theological training? Yes, exactly, I was trained by the Assemblies of God, and then I went to Togo. My training was not campus training, but it was in-the-church training, so when we needed some program, we’d got to the Bible school, and then we’d come back because I was so much engaged in the practical there—I was a church planter, and so in the Assemblies of God, in my local church, they would send us to (if it were to be Germany) [ . . . ], a team of about 8–10 people. We go there. Our’s is just underground work, see the necessity, meet the king, the chief, talk with the people, tell them, and then we will prepare for a crusade, do the crusade, and then we will stay there, train people, establish the church, and then, when we are ready, a pastor will be called, and we go back to the local church. So I was doing this—and I didn’t think I would be in a full-time pastor, because I was so much happy with the administration, organization, and church planting. So when I left from Togo and I went to Ghana, immediately we had to start a new work in the place I was, because I was not coming from [ . . .], I was coming from [ . . .], so when I came to [ . . .], and then a new pastor was there, and when he saw me, he went ‘Ah, you’re back, wow!’, so we started a new work. We were just finished—I was doing a seminar for training Sunday school teachers, I came home, I slept on my bed, with my back on my bed, and I felt this strong impression that I had another assignment, and I was going to go international, was traveling, and I was wondering where. So, at the back of my mind I was so excited because a) I would go to London, go to my wife, you know, my fiancée, but everything changed, you know, everything changed. And besides

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my training in Assemblies of God, also, I have done a one-year training with Grace Bible College in the US, also, because I feel it is necessary for my work. CWO: Did you have any other kind of training? Yes, I have three other programs. I was trained as a stenographer / secretary, I mean that those days, when I finished my education, I worked with the High Court, so I’m the one who sits there, and they are talking and talking, and I am taking shorthand and write up all these documents. I also trained in hotel management. After working in the court, I wanted to do something greater, and so I trained in hotel management. So I am the one sitting and planning the whole concept, restaurants and such things. And I am also a trained cook, continental [laughs]. So these are areas that I did with administration, and I did also computer with added graphics, so I work with Corel Draw, Photoshop and such things. So if I’m not a pastor, I could just sit over there and open a shop, open a restaurant, or teach, and I taught in college, too. After my training as a stenographer, I was on scholarship, and I taught in the same college. I type more than write, you know . . . CWO: So all of these come in handy when leading a church . . . [laughs] Yes, yes. You know you will not know what God wants you to do, so all you have to study or learn, it later becomes so useful. If I should have a fulltime secretary from a pioneer work, how are you going to pay? So I thank God that I learnt a business. [laughs] 10. J.S.: “I was posted to [ . . . ]” 14 I am a Nigerian, born in 1963 to a family of . . . there were eight people in our family, and my father happens to be a worker in UTC Nigeria, and married to three wives. My mother happens to be the first wife. So we had a very nice home until were faced with challenges of polygamous home, whereby there was fight between the wives, and that led to so many things. You know in Africa, they go to any length to fight. That really affected our lives at an early age. For example, at an early age the devil almost destroyed my life, I was given, at the age of

14

Interviewed 29 March 2006 in his home.


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eight, you see me just like a little child of four, or two, because I would be playing with sand outside, and eating some of this sand. And this led to so many things, and I thank God for my mother, although she was a Muslim before she was converted to a Christian. It really interests me that during these ordeal times she really, really stood by me. She called me a nickname which is . . . ‘This child must not die.’ Because, when I had my first year birthday, my mother gone blind, and it was through that ordeal, while I was crawling on my first year birthday, I had . . . there was a preparation for the birthday ceremony, and I was crawling down to where they were boiling water, and I pour everything over myself ! And so, it’s a great . . . I had a great, a very terrible time in the past. Anyhow, my mother stood greatly by me, and she was a very nice mother. Before she died, I thank God that she was converted back to Christianity, and so . . . All these led to how God really touched my life, because at the beginning of everything it looks as if I’m going to die, there is no hope, but then I thank God that God helped me to be able to pass through all these ordeals and to be able to stand, to be able to be alive, even up to today. Because I can remember very, very well, in those tough days, my mother being blind, taking me everywhere where she goes, we are looking, we are going from one native doctor, doctors, she wants to see whether she could recover her sight, I mean regain her sight. Until one day, when a man came, he was charging the whole family some money that we would not be able to afford. We couldn’t afford that because the family, they have spent all that they, we had. But this man promised that if we give him somesome amount—I cannot remember precisely that amount of money, but then it’s a lot of money—and pleading . . . my big sisters and my big brothers, who were there, all pleading, and the man said no, that is his price, if they are interested, they should come back to him. And I was reminded of this story by my mother before she died. As the man was about to step out the door, the one-year old child spoke, and said: ‘Babajo’—this is translated in English: ‘Father, please!’ And this surprises the man, and he had a change of heart. And he give the . . . he is a native doctor, and he did everything without charging the family anything. And through that, my mother regained her sight, and we . . . we were united again. I have two sisters and four brothers, and the other . . . wife of my dad, they also had their own children. Unfortunately, some of them died in the process of trying to fight themselves. But we give glory to God, that . . .. At the beginning of my life, I never love anything about Christianity. Because I grew up to know, I grew up in a house where

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all we know is just wake up and sleep and walk . . . So I never had any interest in Christianity. But God . . . when the Lord visited a friend of mine, who actually taught me to eat, he was encouraging me about life after death. What will become my life if I have to die, and that really got my attention, and I was converted in the year 1983. So during these years, I gave my total life to God, and I begin to serve. During my secondary school days I wasn’t a Christian, until I was converted. And so, after my conversion, I had the zeal to serve the Lord. And so the church . . . first I went to Baptist Church, and later I was going to a Foursquare Church, that’s in [ . . .], and later I joined the Christ Apostolic Church, where I started to go to their seminary school, and we trained to become one of their pastors. And so today, by the grace of God, I’m a pastor of Christ Apostolic Church, and I’m serving overseas under their, the Christ Apostolic Church. So that is just a brief history how I became a pastor. . . . CWO: Question about how he came to Germany As I said before, I came to Germany through Christ Apostolic Church, and this happened when some of our fathers, they visited Germany and discovered that some of our brothers and sisters overseas, they don’t go to church. And some way or other they are complaining because they don’t understand the language, they don’t . . . so the church authority prayed, and you know, decided that they will have foreign mission. They already had one in England which really helped them to establish one in and around Europe. They had also in the United States and all over. I would say this is the call that God give to the founder to this church, Apostle Ayo Babalola, who God gave a revelation that the church will be planted all over the world, and it started in Africa, in Ghana, in Sierra Leone, all over in Africa, before they started moving overseas, through some of the members of the church who traveled overseas, and so the church began widespread abroad through members of the church that came abroad. CWO: So how did they pick you to go to Germany? Yes, the issue is that most of us, when we hear of overseas, we’re excited, and we really want to go, because we think that one will be better off, so to say, because one way or the other, it might be more comfortable. From our thinking . . . until you get to the field, you really have to face the challenges there. That’s one of the things that we don’t take into cogneisance, that living abroad has some challenges, even though


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it might look very good from outside, to live and stay abroad is not as easy as we thought from the beginning. So I would say, part of it will be to spread the good news of God, and at the same time to see yourself better off, so to say, you are abroad and so . . .. Until when you get down here that you begin to face some of the challenges. CWO: Question unintelligible Actually, the church here was in operation before I came. So, but they’re in need of a pastor. And so they wrote a letter to the church in Nigeria that they require a pastor. And also they have some contact here with people who are very familiar with me in Nigeria, so they made the contact, and I said . . . you know, just like ‘We know somebody and he’s okay’, and then I went to the president, and he said ‘Why, if everything will be okay for you, whatever it requires, let us go and do it.’ And so they processed my missionary visa to travel abroad. That was in the year 1999. CWO: What happened then? Directly I was in the church, trying to help them fix all the things that are necessary to be done, and as a pastor I started evangelism, and to bring revival to the church in [ . . .]. Because as of then we also have some branches in [ . . .], and in [ . . .], but I was actually posted to [ . . .]. CWO: Some questions about his biography UTC is just like an organization where they sell heavy products, you can say, like Metro here in Germany. It’s a company. CWO: In which church were you converted? I was converted while I was still in the Baptist church. I was baptized in the Baptist church, and later, I had to baptize myself again when I got to Christ Apostolic Church, because they require baptism by immersion. Actually, what they did was taking us to the riverside and it was not the way . . . Christ Apostolic Church don’t accept it any way it has been practiced, but I don’t want to go into all these details. The Christ Apostolic Church require me to, if I want to be a minister, that I should be baptized by them. CWO: And what kind of training did you get? A Bible school? Yes, this is a Bible school for Christ Apostolic Church pastors only. If you go there, you either be a pastor of Christ Apostolic Church,

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or a pastor-to-be of Christ Apostolic Church. That is where you are issued with this official certificate as pastor of Christ Apostolic Church, after you have completed your course. And this . . . I did between 1992 and 1993, that was when I was in the school. After attending, you are ordained, and you serve. Of course, you have to serve under a pastor, and the pastor must give a recommendation continually about . . . I served in [ . . .] and [ . . .]. I was just being posted there. It was in [ . . .] that I . . . The Bible School is at Ikeji, the headquarters of the church in Nigeria. 11. A.O.: “We would go into the world” 15 I started off as a good person [laughs]. I never really stopped myself to be bad. I started off as my father made sure that I went to church. We were members of the Anglican Church, that is the Church of England, which, because of the colony that we were in Nigeria at some point of time, we took a lot of English norms and cultures, and my dad was or is educated in the English university, the University of London, so he also picked up a lot already in the system. He valued education and he made sure that we all went to school, because he saw that education helped him in his life. I have three sisters; I am the only son, so we were four, in a small African family [laughing] because African families are usually much bigger. I went to secondary school, I went to university, and in university I started asking question. I wasn’t too intelligent, but I got involved with various, I read a lot because I said my dad valued education, he was a librarian in the university, so we grew up in a university, actually. So in my reading I stumbled across a lot of things, spiritual things, I asked questions, I wanted to know more, I studied, I got more information. I had friends who were Christians, but they couldn’t convince me because I had read a lot, I had studied a lot, I could always win an argument. So when I left school, university, and I was doing some program—you serve the government for one year—I, I moved to somewhere else. I’d always been very close to home, very close to my parents and all that, but this time I moved to somewhere else, and I was on my own and had to start life off and even decided to think that I have everything, but then I’m still, I still

15

Interviewed 21 December 2005 in an upmarket café close to his workplace.


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feel that something’s missing. So when I got back to home after the one-year service, I met a friend of mine who told me, ‘you know, I know this church. They, they might—I mean people like you are there, they might tell you what you’ve been looking for. I’ve been, I’ve gone there, I like the place, I like the music, it’s good, the people are young, you might meet someone or meet the answer to what you are asking for.’ So I went to the church and I was impressed. I was impressed because there were young people there, many churches are filled with old people, and we saw a church that was full of old people as a church that was dying, I mean there’s nothing new there. So when I got to this church and there were young people my age, just finished school, professionals, highly educated, I mean I could argue with them, they knew where I was coming from, we could talk, so they told me: ‘Well, we don’t have to argue with you. This is the Bible. You’ve had one since you were five years old. Why don’t you try and read it?’ So my curiosity, and I wanted to know, and I decided to read the Bible. And then I convinced myself that it is true. And, and then I became a Christian and started off, you know, the works, and then what happened was: I—because of the initial search that I went through to know about Christianity, everywhere I got to, either house fellowship or church, I stood out, because I knew a lot, because I searched more than normal people would search. So I think based on that I was always called to take a Bible study or take the prayer or start off this or start off that, and, and then I got married, started a family, met someone in a church, and we both went to the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Also because there were young people there, and friends. Some of our friends told us: ‘You know, this church, they’re young people there, the pastor is young, the pastor is educated, he understands what you people are going through, starting a young family. I mean, go there and see how things are.’ So we got there, we met a man [laughs] which we call a ‘crazy man’ called pastor [ . . .], and he is very educated, very learned, very intelligent man, and he could bring a group of adults, 300 professionals together—and which is a feat of its own because professionals [laughing] are difficult to control! And put all of us, and shared a vision with us, a vision that pastor Adeboye had, a vision of taking the Gospel into the whole world, the vision of reaching out to other cultures, a vision that only people like us could do, because (1) we were young, (2) we were educated, (3) we could take up the challenge, (4) we could go into different cultures and fit in. So, and then he kept on showing us things that God had said, really I looked at that from a

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far distance and said ‘this vision is good, but I don’t think I’m part of . . . [laughs] this, because I’m staying here, I have all my roots in [ . . .], I’ll succeed here,’ and so one day, he said: ‘You see, we have a church in Germany that needs a pastor. Go there for three months. If you don’t like it, come back. And about that time, I was setting up something like a consultancy, which was always my desire, to run a firm, a consulting firm with professionals, and . . .. So I stopped work as a banker, I was going to set up something of my own. So he said ‘Before you set up something of your own, just take the time off, go to Germany for three months, see how it is. If you don’t like it, then come back and, and then we’ll see how it goes.’, you know. So I came to Germany, and I’m still in Germany today [smiles]. It’s been a different experience, and I think you might have another question coming up there—oh, okay. I should just continue? Okay. So when we’d gotten to Germany, the church was in [ . . .], and that’s why we are in [ . . . ], because, or we live in [ . . .], because this is where we lived since we came. When I came in, the church had already started, it was started by the wife of the ambassador . . . oh, the Nigerian ambassador to Germany, who, and she was in [ . . .]. I think she started it off as a women’s group in her house, and then it grew into a meeting, people meeting on Sundays, and then into a church, and so they needed a pastor. Because the pastor who was there was going back to Nigeria. So I came in for three months, and started off with the work. My view had always been, or my vision had always been the one pastor [ . . .] had shared with us, that is, we would go into the world, and we would make disciples of men. So when I got into Germany, I saw that you can’t make disciples in Germany, because you have a barrier, you have a language barrier—that’s the biggest barrier that I supposed I saw. If you don’t understand the language, if you don’t understand the culture, you don’t have a thing . . . you don’t know what’s going on. So, if you want this missionary thing, if you want to make disciples in Germany, you have to speak the language well. My wife is British, and when we came, we were told that she had to register, she had to, because she is a European citizen, she had to register with the foreign department. Well, when we got to the foreign department, they told us: ‘Both of you have to register, because you are married. And, what we do when you register, we give you a 3-month stay permit, and then if you want to stay longer, you come back and we’ll give you a 5-year stay permit, and then you can work here, you have the—whaddayou call it—Arbeitserlaubnis [work permit], you have the Aufenthaltsbefugnis or Erlaubnis [two kinds of residence permit] to stay


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in Germany.’ So we went there to, to get the 3 months, and then we continued. Which I still felt, well, maybe I wasn’t going to stay here for long, maybe I was going back, so well, but I mean, have the leeway to decide whether I’m going to stay or go back. So then things happened that caused us to stay. One of the things was that the ambassador’s wife was called back to Nigeria, so there was no other person that would be in [ . . .]. Then if I left, so I was kind of, like hooked up there, being the only one there to continue the work there. But I didn’t like the setting [ . . .], and it was full of diplomats, and I didn’t think [laughs] that I would be called to diplomats; to people that were focussed on having a group of themselves. I felt, I would be called to a group of people that live here, and not people who are posted to Germany for two years and go back to their different countries. So, after a while I told the General Overseer I wouldn’t stay in [ . . .], so he should get somebody who would stay in [ . . .], but we would stay in Germany, we would settle down in Germany and set up a parish and look at how to reach out to people in Germany. So, he agreed to that, and sent someone in, and we moved to [ . . .], so that’s how we ended up in [ . . .], because then we could start off afresh. But in [ . . .] I also observed that we had to learn the language very well, otherwise we would start off a church and it would be in English. And when it would be attractive that we were speaking English, and if we were an English-speaking church, because people would be attracted to that, but I felt the first thing was to learn German. So I invested . . . we invested a lot of money learning the language, we needed, I did to the Oberstufe, the highest level, I did the exam called the psh, the final level of German speakers [grins], I got into the university because I felt I could make it better, further my education, and also learn the language speaking to the other students and make it better. I do a Ph.D., a doctorate in political science, which I’m still on, I haven’t finished, and I’ve also reduced my input, but I’m still on, I’m still registered. And so we perfected, or to the best extent we could, the language. And then with the, speaking of the language, we then started to have contact with the German congregations. First we had contact—because we spoke English—with people who spoke English, and then when the language became better, we started to focus on the German institutions, the German environment, we started to reach out. As I could go and talk, I could apply, I could speak right, and so we started to reach. Now that’s where we are now, in the same sense now. Now, we can go into a place, I can go into a place and confidently express myself in German, maybe teach in German,

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preach in German, pray a bit in German, so building up that contact to the society itself. We’re looking at, in the future, doing more things in German, and also in English, but basically moving into what we really are, which is to be a missionary church, to reach out to the German society and environment, and that’s where we are now. Okay. CWO: Unintelligible question Okay, I did civil engineering, a BSE, and a Master of Business Administration, it’s called an MBA, which is a postgraduate course. CWO: And what was the church that you attended where you became a Christian, was that the Redeemed Christian Church? No, that was—it was called [ . . .]. The old, the kind of Christianity— we’ve got three phases of Christianity coming to Nigeria. The first phase is the organized, what we call here the government-recognized churches like the Baptist, the Anglican, the Assemblies of God, what was actually organized Protestant or Catholic. And that was the church our parents went to, and they took us to. But there, not many questions were answered in the sense that you did the normal liturgy which included, maybe, the Gospels, and some, maybe some Bible reading, but nothing depends really on what the Reverend wants. And then the second phase, I based on, because I think that that was not answering the questions many people were asking, the second phase was called the Scripture Union. Now the Scripture Union was very kind of strict, you don’t put on earrings, you don’t wear gold, you don’t—a lady would have her hair short, you don’t put on jeans—I mean there were just too many ‘you don’ts’, to make it very strict, to make sure that people focused on being Christians, and we called it SU, Scripture Union, and that frightened many of us [laughs] and we couldn’t imagine being put into that kind of sect, for it was. And then the third phase is more of the Pentecostal American Faith Movement, with the Kenneth Hagin, and Copeland, and preached on faith, you know, and they were more, I would say, liberal. Liberal in the sense that, really, it is your heart, it is your heart being related to God, a relationship to God, and that was, for us, in a way, we could understand. The second thing was they depended, really, on the full Gospel, which is you had to read the scriptures, you had to make the decision for yourself; it wasn’t some pastor saying ‘this is what you do, this is what you don’t.’ It was that you made the decision yourself, because you knew the information, you had the facts from the Scriptures. That appealed to many of us at that


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time, and [ . . .] was the first church to really break out into that and to allow people to make up their minds and to know God themselves. Why I guess we left [ . . .], because it was a place where people came in, but it wasn’t really a place where people grew spiritually. That is you would become a Christian, you would enjoy it, you would like it, you would read the Scriptures, you would know it, but you know after that, you didn’t have to live the Christian life, and that required you to, to be disciplined and to put effort and to [unintelligible word] something, so it wasn’t just the rosy ‘come in and be saved’, it was now holiness, and the work, and what do you do, and how do you go on, and how do you reach other people, and how to get other people Christians, and how do you teach them when they are Christians—and that was a different thing from what [ . . .] was about. So many of us, even [ . . .], and many of us ended up in Redeemed, started off at [ . . .], because it was like a transition phase there, we could gradually ease in to Christianity, to live the life of a Christian. CWO: When did you come to Germany? We came to Germany first in 95, 96, it was February 96. CWO: And how long did you stay then? I was for a very short time in [ . . .], about one year in [ . . .], broken in between, and some time I had to go back to Nigeria to sort things out. Because you know when I was coming initially I didn’t think I would stay long, so when I saw that I might stay long, we had to go back and sort a lot of things out before we finally came to Germany. And we understood that we were not going to be sent by some person . . . what I mean is that our Unterkunft [lodging] was not going to be met by the church. Because in the first experience, the first 3 months and the things that happened after that, we saw how almost, how expensive it would be for any church at home to send a missionary to Germany. I mean the other way would be, will be easier, in a sense, sending a German to Nigeria, because it’s a lot cheaper, but sending a Nigerian to Germany [grins] costs a lot, and, and I mean just many things, insurance and dadada, so we knew that we were not going to have someone to take care of that, so we were going to have to first get into the system, into the society, work out how we would take care of ourselves, and then, after then, start off really with the church work, with the missionary work. So it was a phase of about 3 years of just going to language school, looking for a job, I mean just

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basically breaking into the society before actually doing church work or evangelistic work or missionary work. I always felt, [laughs], I, I— just happen to be here, happen to be the person, but as time went on and as I also kept thinking about it, I saw that God must have prepared me for this sort of thing. I looked at, first the language; I found out that I picked it up very quickly. Not very quickly as in how to speak it, but I kind of understood the language very quickly. And, two, I, I could understand it because of the background that I had educationally. I know people that have problems with the language, not because it’s a difficult language, but because educationally, they’ve not been developed to be able to understand . . . I hope you understand what I mean. And thirdly, I see myself, I would say an optimist in the sense that: I came, I saw the situation, I saw how difficult it would be, and, but I was [unintelligible word] it could be done and that it could happen, it could work out. I, looking back, believe God must also have seen that, in the sense that he must have seen that these things are available, and if this man puts himself to it, he can do it. And, so making a tent, I think that’s what most of my friends in England would say: ‘You’re building a tent’, because you, you use the tent to, to finance yourself, the making of the tent to finance yourself, to put your family and everyone—to make everyone happy [laughs], and then you, like Apostle Paul did, also then try to evangelize and do the church work. And also get to know the people. Actually, Apostle Paul was someone I studied very well, he’s my mentor, he’s—and incidentally, he came to Europe as well from Jerusalem, you know. And he was able to go into cultures, he was able to mission, to evangelize in various cultures. And I looked at his background—as I said, he was my mentor— I tried to see: Do I have some of the things, the characters he has that allowed him to do that what he did. And I found out, yes, there was also make me know that the language was necessary, because Apostle Paul could communicate in this language as well, citizenship also, education as well. Also his passion to read and to understand the principles of spiritual things, so I see myself similar to him in some ways. In some ways I think I have to work on his determination, and his doggedness, and his, how he could be outspoken at times—I think I might have these qualities within me just [laughs]—I have to use them yet.


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CWO: Question unintelligible—about when the switch came to being a pastor. As a banker, actually, I started as an engineer, a civil engineer, and I was building roads and bridges for some time. And then I found out that, I mean, that I, I wouldn’t get too far. I don’t love building bridges and being on the site, I would have loved it being in a planning position, or looking at something where, a more programming and seeing what is going on. I also found out that many civil engineers have problems, not because they’re not intelligent, but they don’t understand monetary things, so they don’t have the, they’re very good technically, but they don’t understand management. So I felt, let me take a management course. So I took a management course and started working in a bank. I always felt I would end up in a consultancy of my own, in this consultancy I would be advising engineers about their—I hope I don’t get too technical here—about their cash flow, that’s to understand their cash flow, to plan their investments, their projects, help them, you know, to get money from the banks and how they could get their mortgages and see how long-term loans—many things that I found out engineers didn’t have, because I didn’t have it as an engineer. So it was about that time where I resigned from the bank and said: Okay, now I need to be—to fully focus on my business which will be to build up this consultancy, to make sure that this consultancy works, to make sure that I have my, my cost of my base. Also, I saw it I would also be able to have a bit more time for work as a pastor. Now, I was doing pastoral work before, also when I was in the bank. Like, after work, I would just drive to the church, and on Sundays I would also be there, and then, after work, and sitting together with pastor [ . . .] like just about telling him about dreams and visions and after a while, everyone was motivated. I was not the only one, we had many other people that became very motivated and said ‘this thing is possible.’ And, you know, and he would draw charts and tell us problems and very well-placed and very well explained so that we could believe it. So at that point, where I said, okay, I would move into my business, I was asked to take 3 months off, and I would be paid for, that was the agreement. ‘We’ll pay you for 3 months while you plan for your consultancy, while you plan for your business, I mean for whatever you want to do, but then we’ll pay you for 3 months to do that.’ So that was at a point where I was not employed. Although I would say also that speeded up the process of me saying okay, I would leave the bank and then start with this consultancy. Because I felt, okay, I have 3 months paid for, I haven’t to go to the bank, and having to do church work, I could get a feel also

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if I would love being full-time or if I would have to, you know . . . So that was why this could happen. It wasn’t like I was in the bank and then someone said: Leave the bank and go to . . .. Yeah. What we had was not a formal Bible school that would give you a certificate. It was something called like a ‘workers’ course’, where you had workers’ meetings and you were trained in various aspects of running a church, of theology, of [laughing] devious (?) episkopalische theories, not too much into the details of—there wasn’t anything outside the Bible, no theology outside the Bible, it was in line with Scripture, and I was teaching. And as I already said, I’d been a worker in the church, already in [ . . .] and also in Redeemed, and we had gone through so many Bible studies which, well, not formally organized, you go somewhere and you’re a student. No, no. CWO: Question about ordination Yes, I was ordained as a pastor, within the Redeemed Christian Church of God, by Pastor Adeboye, that was in 95. CWO: Question unintelligible When we came into Germany, I first saw the need. How did I see the need? I saw the need for prayers. Before I came to Germany, my pastor, [ . . .] called me and said ‘I’m going to give you a gift, that will help you in your life forever.’ And I felt, you know, he was going to give me money, or he was going to give me some thing that I need, because I’m going to Germany, I’m setting up my consultancy, and I need money, I need such things. And he said: ‘Come to me tomorrow and I’ll give you that.’ So when I came to him the next day, he showed me two men. He said: ‘These two men will teach you something that will help you forever. They will teach you how to pray.’ So I felt this . . . [laughs] you know, we-pray-enough kind of feeling. But those guys taught me how to pray. For two months, thereabouts one and a half month, we met every evening, at about four, after work, and we prayed every day, for about three, four hours. And you know, they taught me how to take a city, how to pray principalities—you know, these were things that I had never thought about. How to understand spiritual things, what to pray for when you get to a place, how to pray for it, how to speak authoritatively, how to speak in the Spirit, how to command, how to bind, how to, how to get a breakthrough. And, basically, how to just be disciplined to pray long hours of prayer. So the first day I, I thought it was just pray and go, and then we prayed so long, I knew


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this was really hard work! And I knew it will require a discipline to do. So when I got to Germany, I had a group of people, and we started on this discipline, to kind of prayer, and then I saw the need, I saw the need to pray. I, we, decided to have various, ah, various—I call it divisions of what our prayers would do and what prayers can do if one is determined, and one is consistent with it. I will just say, you know, you may believe it or not [laughing], there’s only we were praying, because all we were doing was praying, two, three hours also. Like I finished with the guys, I decided doing this as well in Germany. And one thing we saw, or I saw, graves being open—yeah, yeah that might be too—but that was it, graves being opened and people coming out of it from the floor. And I thought to myself: Ah, I mean these are not graves as in graves being open, but this is people that are dead being brought to life because we were praying, which means if we stopped praying, those people wouldn’t come out of these graves, or those things wouldn’t happen. Before I left Nigeria there was also—one of the people I was praying with saw a gorilla, that, as we prayed, it coughed out people, and when we stopped praying, it stopped. And he explained that vision to me and said: ‘You know, when you pray, this gorilla will release people. If you don’t, it will not.’ Which I took with a bit of salt, because I wasn’t really, ah, visionary, seeing visions, seeing prophecy, I wasn’t, you know [grinning]—most of the time I was just calling myself a regular person. Because I’m not into dreams and visions and seeing the future and all this kind of—things. I’m really this basic [laughs] optimist person. So I don’t really see myself as some spiritual spooky—you know you get to meet some really spooky people that, I mean I just stand back . . . I don’t get that. I don’t condemn that, but it’s just not my style. But those were significant things in my life, that, I mean, made me see the need in Germany. Also the fact that when, when I said I would stay in [ . . .] until they got a pastor to come in, they didn’t get a pastor quickly, which entailed me to staying a bit longer and, you know, the longer you stay, the more you, you get drawn into the system, and you have to do some things. I mean the pastor came in about 1 1/2 years after I made this statement ‘I will stay until someone comes’, you know. What I mean 1 1/2 years, the process with his papers and everything just didn’t work as quick as it should, you know. And then I felt, seeing the need going into [ . . .], start something off, seeing what God can do, and reach out to people. Basically, I see my . . . the reason I’m here, in Germany, is to affect the spiritual atmosphere, is to pray and to

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affect the spiritual atmosphere. So really, I don’t see myself as building a church, right? I see myself as praying and taking control of the spiritual atmosphere of Germany. So that is where I see myself. 12. V.K.: “For me it was so wonderful to go to Germany” 16 What happens to me . . . I born a family of 15 children, my mother was a Catholic, my father has no religion, he was dealing with the spiritism that time when I born, and I grew up. My family very warm, but I never have kind of teaching of God’s word. I never had a Bible in my house. And my mother was a Catholic, but just for marriage, somebody or somebody born. But she had something very special: She pray with us children every night before we are sleeping, ‘our Father in Heaven.’ And I learned to pray this prayer—I never is left one day in my life without to pray. Because my mother always teach us. And after we pray, she teach us to say: ‘With God I sleep, with the Holy Ghost inside of me, guide me, in Jesus’ name.’ And we learn it since a child, then it was very deeply in my heart. And I grow up, my family was very poor, I working any kind of a job, I work in factory, I work as a maid, domestic in houses, I take care of the kids, I do the washing, cleaning and the cooking, I work in factory. Afterwards I was working in the shop selling—and slowly, slowy I started to [unintelligible sentence] As I started . . . the first time I went to [ . . .] Because we used to live in a farm, in [ . . .], and there they used to have a panther, Ameisenbär [pangolin], and so it was very dangerous. We could not go to school, having no teacher, then when we come back to [ . . .]—because I born in [ . . .]—then the first time I went to work in one house, and I ask the woman if she allowed me to go to a school. Because that’s my time when I work, it was like a slave type. You need allow for everything, you need to do your homework before you leave the house. And you should come home one time per week—I sleep there. Every Sunday, after lunch, after about 2 o’clock, I come home, and I come back another day 7 o’clock. Then I spoke with the woman. I find she was very friendly, she said: “I have a daughter, she can teach you.” Then the daughter starts to teach me, when she has feeling and when she wants, but help me a lot. I learn to read and write. After a while

16

Interviewed 28 November 2005 in her church meeting room.


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—I was already 14 years old—then the first time I went to a school. In Brazil they call [unintelligible], that is school for people when they are old, they go every night to school to learn, very busy! Then I went and I spent two years—I made the four years in two years. They find me I was very bright, very good. Then I was already 16. Then I went to Gymnasium, 4 years I make in 2 years, and after I make also another level, they say it’s college, it’s three years, I make in one and a half years. Because I really, I need, and after a while, I ask for some people, got some information, they helped because I couldn’t pay everything Brazil, in my time it was pesos, it was nothing for free. But some people helping me with scholarship, they give me help. Then I went to university, I studied—here they say Germanistik—in Brazil we say letters, Portuguese and Literature. I start, and with much struggle, I start—then I start to teach in Brazil, in primary school, and I teach in the morning, afternoon, and evening, because I need the money, I was really . . . everything I got late in my life, very late! Everything! But God was helping me a lot. But still I didn’t know Jesus Christ. And I travel a lot, I did everything, I had a canteen, I do . . . I getting money here, getting money . . . I sold clothes, I had very ambitions! And I like to read, I read a lot! All the Brazilian literature, Portuguese, English, British literature, I read a lot! Then I start to travel, from [ . . .] I used to go every weekend to [ . . .]. I buy a lot of things in [ . . .], I start getting money here and there, then, one time, around ’79, I came to Germany, with 1,300 dollars in my pocket. Only my ticket was oneway. Really crazy, but I didn’t know I was crazy! For me it was so wonderful to go to Germany! [laughs] Many people were asking me: Why Germany? Because I lived in [ . . .] where they have Volkswagen, all this big company from Germany. There, I used to know a lot of Germans, German restaurants, German people, and also, I used to have . . . the Deutsche Schäferhund [German Shepherd]. I used to have a little place and I used to sell dogs. I put in the newspaper, in the German newspaper: I go to a place, I tell them, they put it in the newspaper, in German, and all of the Germans should buy my dogs. I used to get a very good money! That’s how I started to have feelings for Germany. When I took my flight, one-way, only 1,300 dollars in my pocket . . . when I arrived in Frankfurt, oh! My goodness! What have I done! In Frankfurt, I started there, I go to the train station, and I start to say: My mother tell me to take this train—just like that, stupid! Then I took a train. I say I don’t know where to buy a ticket or anything, I just sit down in the train. Then one Africa man start to speak to me. I

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didn’t know one word in English. One word in German. Then I show my dictionary to him, and he write what he want to say: ‘Where are you going to? What have you come to do here? Who are you?’—Just this kind of question. Then I told him: ‘My name is V., I come from Brazil, I look for a place to stay, I even look for a job.’ Then he say: ‘Oh God, I live in one place very far from here, in [ . . .]. And there I am going.’ I didn’t know where is this [ . . .], I say ‘Give me help!’, and he say ‘Yes, I can help you.’ Then I just follow him. Came the man to charge me, I pay, when he took me before one place, in [ . . .], somewhere close to IKEA, in [ . . .]. Then he took me there, it was one Asylhaus [home for asylum seekers]. But I didn’t know, in Brazil we never heard these kind of things. I didn’t know, Asylhaus, what is that? But when I came, there are a lot of people, then he say ‘you can sleep here,’ and I thought how nice these people! [laughs]. My goodness! Then I see at night, come a lot of men, want to come into my room, and he try to protect me. I believe that God really put an angel to me, because I never knew. Then I say ‘My goodness, what is that?’ I couldn’t sleep the whole night, afraid! Then another day I spoke with people. He say ‘ah, here, this room, here you see men, cannot come women or the marriage people, when they see you, they want to . . .’ Then I say ‘I cannot stay here.’ They say ‘where do you go?’ Then they find one place where there lived one girl, and he say ‘I be going to look for a job for you.’ He went to IKEA. I worked at IKEA. No paper, no nothing, but I have no idea, the meaning of a paper, visa or so one. I had no idea! I went there, I stay there for some time, I earn the money, I buy a ticket back after six months, and I come back to Brazil again. Then I went—I need two more years to finish my university—then I went back, I finish, then I say: ‘Now I have the idea what it means go out somewhere.’ Then I prepare to have some understanding, then to come back again, and then I go out—a friend, a German guy, he invited me to come. I came, it didn’t work with him at all. Then I said: ‘Okay, I am leaving.’ Then I knew some people. I went to one girl, to live in her house, one Iranian, a woman, I know her to today, a very close friend of me, she helped me a lot. She come that time, her family come from Persia, the Shah of Persia. And they need—they have Asyl here that time. Then they have everything, very comfortable, very rich people, they helping me a lot. Then I went back to IKEA. I started to work at IKEA again, every single day two hours. After I got another job, and like this, I start. And I stay a long time here, working here, working there, I had no time for nothing, just work


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work work. I never went to a German school—I have the money, but I have no time. Then I stay there. After a while, I met many people, I knew a lot of people, then in ’84, I went to—I met a man, a director for Goethe-Institut . . . a friend of mine, he told me: ‘If you want, I can send you to Goethe . . .’ Of course I want! And . . . but in this little while, I met many Africans, then it was the time for [unintelligible word] so I got crazy for Africa. Then I went to Africa! Look at me! [laughs] In ’84, I just went to Africa. I went to Nigeria. I lived three years in Nigeria. Then I . . . I am the kind of person who never stop anywhere. I went to Nigeria, I met many people, many Brazilians, they give me a job in the embassy. Then I met many Americans, many Germans . . . there I used to do my job very wonderful. I work for the Brazilian embassy, I drive there, then I went to the German embassy for some people, and also I went for the Americans, they give me a job like . . . I can say a secret service. I work for them, I can say somehow I have a specific job to do for them. Because I am Black, but I was not African. And I was not American. They need somebody who fits for that job for them. To have some kind of spy there, not really a spy, but they need some connections; some doors need to be opened for them, that not need to be American. It was not possible for Americans to go. And I also for now Africans. And as a Brazilian, I fit what they was looking for. Then I have diplomatic car. Everything was wonderful for me, all the doors open for me. I travel the whole of Africa, 21 countries, from Nigeria all over to Ethiopia, to Addis Ababa, all over! I know many things, I work for them, I was very well paid, I had a diplomatic car, I go all the parts diplomatic, I was VIP, and I have the contacts with the Germans, Lufthansa, I travel all over the world with . . . the Lufthansa people. They have been in Brazil, they spoke very good Portuguese, and they gave me courtesy flights. Then I travel all over without paying anything! Then my life was in God’s hands. One day, about ’87, I saw a program—I have no cocktail Saturday. I was living in [ . . .], because Monday to Sunday, they were having cocktail parties, I was in all of them . . . [laughs] But one day, they had no party, no cocktail [laughs]. Then I watched television, but television in Nigeria was really nothing, then I just have some noise in my house. Then, suddenly, a man said: ‘You, I am speaking to you! God has a message for you!’ Then I say ‘to me?’ . . . and I really start to laugh. And he said—and I was going here and there and I come back—and he said again: ‘You, still God wants to speak to you!’ Then I sit down, I say: ‘Oh really, if God wants to speak to me, I really want to see!’

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I challenge. And he say ‘You come and see what God have for you.’ And gave the address, and went. That place, was very heavy in Nigeria, because they had this kind of a political situation, they kill, today a little better, but it was very hot in Nigeria. Then I learnt the place they give the address, I learnt that place I supposed not to go to that place. They have a lot of soldiers, and they have military all over, and the government was leaving that area, but I didn’t know anybody who touched that area. They used to kill. And I learned it . . . when I saw where I was I said ‘my goodness, I cannot move now, because when I turn my car, they are going to shot me. What can I do?’ Then I start to say: ‘My God, help me!’ Then come, from nowhere, come one little boy, he started to smile, then I open my door, I say ‘I am looking for the American school, where they have Sunday service.’ And he didn’t speak, he just show. Show me like that, and I turn, go to the next gate. The way he show me I understood, then I turn my car, shake myself, and I went, it was the next gate, perhaps 600 meter or one kilometer, it was the next gate. Then I sit down in the last place, I stay there quiet. I said ‘not me, let me just see what the people are doing.’ A lot of people! It was an American school, the Americans used to give it for Sunday service. In front of the lake, it was really very nice. And I stayed there, the pastor spoke, and after they said ‘this is the last time here, we going to move to another place in [ . . .].’ Then I went, it was one house, then some people divided the church, I went to the group that was very close to me, I used to live in [ . . .]. I went there, they spoke, my girl friend accepted Christ before me. She told me. The man asked: ‘Who want to accept Christ?’ And I stay very quiet. Then my girl friend say: ‘She wants to accept Jesus Christ.’ And she pulled me. I got a shock, because always I spoke to her about Jesus, I really, I get very interesting now about religion, about Jesus, I show some films, very warm. She say ‘oh, you, my goodness!’ because she saw me, Monday to Sunday, I was on parties, cocktails up and down, she knew I have nothing to do about God. And she was very surprised, and she told, and then I didn’t know what to say. But anyway, the man asking me: ‘You want?’—I couldn’t say one word, I just shaking my head. And he pray for me, and I feel like two hands leaving my heart. And I accept Christ. On Tuesday, I was really crazy for Jesus. Oh, how I love you, Jesus! My goodness! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, I did everything with Christ. I have the understanding about salvation, like he got [unintelligible word] for me, everything about him. The first time, I have a Bible. Then I bought my Bible. I finally read, I started to read it from Genesis to Revelation,


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every time I read it, you don’t know how many times, I love the word! Really, I’m crazy for the word! I say: “Lord, nevermore I’m going to leave you, and I’m going to say to everybody about you. I nevermore I go back the way I was before.” Because, of course, as I born, I have no religion, no direction, I learnt nearly kind of religion. I went into Buddhism, into Spiritism, reading cards, reading hands—any kind of things. Some kind of spirituality! But when I met Christ, I understood the difference. I know very well the difference between the salvation, Christ, the blood of Jesus, cross of Calvary—God did it open for me. Like all my experience, it was very useful, because I knew. Then I have a promise between me and Jesus: I’m going to tell everybody your words. Then I start in my house. Then I come back to Germany. It was September, 27th of September, 1987. We come back to Germany. I didn’t know where to go, I went to my old former girl friend from Iran. I went to her house, I said: ‘Oh Samira, I need one apartment, where can I find it?’ She say ‘oh, you can stay with me!’ I say ‘nonononono, I cannot stay with you. I belong to Christ now. I need him, my life is very much in order, with you I can’t, because you go to disco, you go here, you go everywhere. I can’t do that anymore.’—‘But why? Please, don’t make me laugh!’ I say: ‘But please, I can nevermore I go there, I promised him!’—‘But to who you promised?’ Because she come from Muslim family, she has no understanding about Christ. Then slowly I start to tell her, she didn’t take me serious. Then she told me: ‘You see, in my building here is one apartment, let’s speak to the man, a Jewish man.’ I said: ‘If you are going to speak to him, he is a Jew, German, he never will give to me, a black woman. I can’t go there.’ Then I say ‘we will find a friend of mine, a German, and I will send him, he will speak to this man for me. After I come, I take care of the apartment.’ She say ‘okay, as you prefer,’ then just like, I speak to the man, everything, I say ‘a friend of mine is coming,’ and the man accepted. When he saw me black, he got a shock. But he was quiet. After, he didn’t know that I was a Christian, but he saw my way of living, impressed him. I was different from anybody he knew, I believe. Then I came in September to Germany, in October, I met my husband. When I met my husband, I saw my husband, I knew he is my husband! Because I had a dream, one year before, what for me a man. When I saw him, I said: ‘Jesus, that is my husband!’ I told [ . . .] ‘this man is my husband.’—‘How you know?’ I say ‘I don’t know, but I saw him in a dream some time ago, with two kids in his hands, one for each side, and the Lord told me that’s my husband.’ Then I met my help after three months in the

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house, we got married, it’s really true, we were very much in love, due to they. We are on honeymoon [laughs]. But my husband come from family, a Christian family, the grandfather was a pastor, his father was a pastor, Apostolische Kirche [Apostolic Church], but he grew up in faith. But in these times, because he was very disappointed with some things, he left, he never anymore have anything to do with the church. And he went on all kinds of wild life. And when we got married, I told him ‘I am a Christian,’ and I told him the way of my living. He likes, but he never follow me anywhere. And that time, we have the meeting in [ . . .]. When I came, I met Sister [ . . .], she died some time ago, I believe you knew her, okay she died some time ago. She told me ‘oh we have a meeting here in [ . . .].’ It was there some people from Eritrea, Ethiopia. Then we had a meeting, a service there, and it was very nice. I love it very much, I never miss anything! Their meeting, Sunday service, I help! I love it, Jesus! And then after a while, come Pastor [ . . .]. Pastor [ . . .] was a young man, his father was a pastor, he still was not a pastor, but he knew the words very well. Then we elect him as a pastor, we from this group. And he likes, he really loves Jesus, loves the word. He starts to guide the others in faith and prayer through the word, and it was very nice. And after a while, we went to Brazil, I and my husband, not took long, we live two years in Brazil, and my daughter born in Brazil in ’90. And after two years, we came back to Germany, but we didn’t come to live in [ . . .], we went to live close to France, in [ . . .], direct to the border. In ’92. Then we come back, we live in [ . . .], then after a while, we come back here. But in [ . . .], I always attend the American Church. Anytime I was there in [ . . .] I attend a German church, very living, very powerful church, I love it at that church! And in [ . . .], every Sunday I came to American church. But . . . full of the Holy Spirit, you know how the Americans are, I love the church, my husband like to come with me, but some time he doesn’t like to come with me. Then I come back to [ . . .] here. 13. A.M.17 I come from Congo, and in Congo, since the eighties we’ve had a great revival. Back then, in colonial times, we had two big churches

17

Interviewed 14 November 2005 in his home.


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or two big religions, so to say, Catholic and Protestant, most grew up in the Catholic church, me too. But in the eighties—you could say before that time most people went to church, but they were not practicing, they were, let’s say, Christians for the Saturday [sic]. In the eighties there was a very big revival, as I said, there were churches almost everywhere, and people also had this longing for God, so to say, a personal longing. And, at the end of the eighties I also experienced revival in my own life. From then on I started to serve God. At the beginning of the nineties, let’s say from the end of the eighties, I also started to work in a church. Then I worked in a church in [ . . .]. When I got here—I came here as an evangelist, and therefore I had to, first of all—that’s normal—learn the German language. I didn’t know what would await me here personally, await me here personally, and therefore I had to learn the German language. I learnt German for almost a year, at [ . . .] University, and I made contacts especially with my country people, and I also had . . . the need was very great to support the people spiritually. And this is why I began to talk with people about the Bible, moving from house to house. We started in one flat; then more and more people came, we couldn’t stay in the house. We went to a church, and over time many people came. We had to move from one church to the next and . . . the congregation came into being, and therefore I had to stay, from then on until today, really I had to stay in Germany and take care of the people with the Bible and so on. CWO: You said you came to Germany as an evangelist. Could you elaborate on this? Yes. When I was converted, for example in our church, in Congo, we had activities almost every day. For example, I went to university in Congo, I have a university diploma that has nothing to do with religion, that’s another university. I did my matriculation and then I did three years at the university, and when I had to do with the Bible— in our church we had activities every day, every day from Monday to Monday, and then you can learn a lot in a year or two. There are seminars, there are preachers, and there are also missionaries, for example from Europe, especially from Sweden and France and also from America who are coming regularly, who are doing regular activities. We participated in these activities, and sometimes one gets a certificate, and otherwise we did a lot of activities, that means we preached to people in hospital, in prison, on the big market, open air or, let’s say, in the harbor, we did it there for a few times. And those

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who led us, for example our elders, the elders in the church, they could ascertain that for example, this person has this gift, and another person has another gift. And what did they do? They prayed for us, and they sent us to these suburbs of [ . . .], and when we went there, there was no church there, it was a . . . a small town with 10,000 people, there was no church. And in 1989, . . . I was the one who led this delegation, and we founded a church there, and there I showed my abilities, so to say, and from then on they called or described me as an evangelist. From then on I started to take more responsibility, from then on. This is how it started. CWO: How did you get the idea to move to Germany? This is also a good question. God has sent us all over the world, he said: ‘You will be my witnesses, not just in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, but everywhere, the whole world.’ I wanted to go perhaps to France, and that would have been very easy for me, because I come from Congo, and in Congo we speak French, or to England, because I learnt English as a second language in school. I also had many contacts in Germany, not just friends who studied in my university in the Congo, but also family, relatives in [ . . .], and therefore it was perhaps easier for me to travel to Germany. [ . . .] When I came to Germany, but also before in the Congo, I participated in many Bible seminars. And when I was in Germany, I attended a correspondence school—I don’t know whether the address still exists, but it is in Morsbach.18 I did this Bible course, and not only this Bible course, but there was also a conference where you had to show your abilities. And there was a big conference, and I had the chance, to—how to say—to be one of the speakers . . . perhaps this is not the right word, but I had to about the Bible, and sometimes I was the main speaker in this conference, and that also helped me very much, and that’s what I did. And we did this course, this correspondence course, for almost a year. [ . . .] I, for example, am a pastor in a church, I did my studies in the Congo, I came here, I could have done the same as everybody else, for example, to ask for asylum and to get money, but I didn’t do that, because I knew that I . . . I need to remains as a pastor, and I need to . . . live from that.

18 Mudiandambo refers to the Emmaus Correspondence Bible Course which is administered in French language by the Zentral Afrika Mission in Morsbach, Germany.


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CWO: Did you come on a pastor visa? I had to apply for asylum. First of all, I could not apply for a visa as pastor, because back then there was no church. That’s why I got . . . as I already said, I did a German language course at [ . . .] University, so that means I also had a place to study there. In the beginning, I had a visa as a student, but over time, as the church grew, I needed to work for them all the time. Thanks be to God, during this time I met my sisters and brothers of the church in [ . . .] and they got involved in my situation and were very active to get my visa changed. At first, it was thought that it would be impossible, but God helped. And there was also support from VEM, who supported us, I really don’t know, but I just know that I got a letter from UEM, and also one from the Bible Center in Morsbach,19 and also from the [ . . .] church. And that is why a visa could simply be changed from student to pastor.

19 Here, Mudiandambo refers to the Zentralafrikamission which runs Bible Correspondence courses which are being taken by many migrant pastors. See also http://www.zamonline.de/dt/emmaus.php, accessed 23 November 2006.

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Evangelischer Ausländerdienst, Germany: www.ead.de Faith Revival Ministries, Dortmund, Germany: www.faithcentre.de Fédération Protestante de France: http://www.protestants.org Federazione delle Chiese Evangeliche in Italia: www.fedevangelica.it Geistliche Gemeindeerneuerung im Bund evangelisch-freikirchlicher Gemeinden, Germany: www.ggenet.de Gemeinsam für Berlin, Germany: www.gfberlin.de/english God TV: www.god.tv Halleluja Ruhrgebiet: www.halleluja-ruhrgebiet.de Het Kerkhuis, Amsterdam, Netherlands: www.kerkhuis.nl Institut Biblique et Théologique, Bochum, Germany: www.ibtb-online.de Jesus Calls Ministries (D.G.S. Dhinakaran): www.jesuscalls.org; www .prayertoweronline.org Kingsway International Christian Centre, London, U.K.: www.kicc.org.uk Lausanne World Pulse: www.lausanneworldpulse.com LeSEA Ministries, USA: www.lesea.org Lighthouse Christian Fellowship, Mülheim, Germany: www.houseofsolution .org Misión Carismatica Internacional (Cesar Castellanos): www.mci12.com Missionswerk DIE BRUDERHAND, Germany: www.bruderhand.de Missionswerk Freundes-Dienst International: www.freundesdienst.org Missionswerk Werner Heukelbach, Germany: www.missionswerk-heukelbach .de Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries: www.mountainoffire.org New Covenant University, Florida, USA: www.newcovenant.edu Protestantse Kerk in Nederland: www.pkn.nl Redeemed Christian Church of God: www.rccg.org Rhema Germany (Kenneth Hagin Ministries): www.rhema-germany.de Samen Kerk in Nederland (SKIN): www.skinkerken.nl Service Protestant de Mission Défap: www.defap.fr Spiritual Warfare Ministries Online: www.sw-mins.org, Spiritual Warfare Net: www.spiritual-warfare.net Stadtmissionen (City missions), Germany: www.stadtmissionen.de The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for all Nations, Kiev, Ukraine: www.godembassy.org/en/embassy.php Trinity Broadcasting Network Europe: www.tbneurope.org United Evangelical Mission: www.vemission.org/en United Reformed Church, U.K.: www.urc.org.uk Welcome Project of the Evangelical Alliance in Europe: www.welcomeproject .net/training Women of Purpose (Lighthouse Christian Fellowship): www.womenofpurpose.de Word of Life International Church, Oberhausen, Germany: www.wolic.de World Council of Churches: www.wcc-coe.org World Harvest Ministers’ Network: www.whmn.net Youth with a Mission, Europe: www.ywam.eu Zentralafrikamission, Morsbach, Germany: www.zamonline.de

SUBJECT INDEX Agency, 136 f., 141, 150 f., 153 f., 156, 182, 315, 317 Anointing, 61, 69, 79, 82 f., 126, 129 f., 147, 274, 280, 295 Apostle, 52, 62, 67, 77, 80, 84, 91, 96, 111, 268 Authority (pastoral), 53, 62 f., 65 ff., 83, 86, 88 f., 90, 107, 117 ff., 122 ff., 127 ff., 145, 147, 167, 281 ff., 288, 300, 310 Biography, 44, 83 f., 133 ff., 220 f. Calling, 35, 45, 61, 63, 65, 69, 76, 77–115, 142 f., 150, 153, 159, 160, 162, 164, 166, 170, 173 f. 176 f., 184, 187, 190 f., 193, 197, 199, 208, 219 f., 238, 240, 242 f., 262 f., 266, 311, 313, 349, 352, 355, 369, 373, 377 Church splits, 117, 121, 127 f., 167 Commissioners for Sects and Worldviews, 10 Contextual, contextualization , 233, 238, 244–254, 299 Conversion, 41, 44, 86, 87, 94, 103, 107, 123, 145, 152, 169 f., 188, 199, 202, 209–213, 219, 234, 281, 284 f., 296, 299 f. 302, 318, 386 Cosmology, 275–278 Deliverance (from demons), 20, 24, 43, 59, 110, 112–114, 246 f., 251, 276 ff., 281, 285 Demon, demonic, 31, 44, 73, 96, 108, 110, 112, 247, 266, 279 ff., 286, 292, 300, 312, 332 Dream, 37, 45, 85, 88, 90, 94, 98– 107, 110, 112 ff., 115, 144–147, 214, 220. 239, 337 f., 356, 395, 403

Ease of travel, 148, 153, 181, 189, 217 Ethnic, ethnicity, 4 ff., 9, 13 f., 21, 34, 48, 51, 56, 180, 183, 214, 227 f., 237 ff., 240 ff., 260, 272, 289, 308, 315, 319, 322, 324 ff., 329 f. Evangelism, evangelize, 45, 58, 85, 90. 95, 145 f., 152 f., 155, 157, 160, 163, 179 f., 184 f., 192, 203, 206 f., 225–254, 259, 263, 265 f., 270, 271–304, 306 f., 310, 317 f., 319, 322 f., 332, 334 f., 337, 342, 347, 394 Evil forces, 277 Expatriation, expatriate, 133–223, 240, 313, 315 ff., 333 Healing, 43, 44, 59, 61, 81, 95, 96, 98, 112 ff., 123, 165, 233, 245, 247, 281, 285, 295, 297 f., 302 Inculturation, 201, 222, 236 ff., 299, 299–304, 332 Identity, 5, 21, 38–46, 47, 86, 135 f., 139, 141, 169 ff., 201, 226–228, 237 f., 268 Integration, 21 f., 28, 30, 139, 169, 171, 182 f., 185, 195 f., 198, 216, 273, 289, 294, 301, 307, 310, 328, 329–334 Legitimation, 83–116, 125, 153, 163 Migrant, 136–139 Migration, 313–318 Missio Dei, 321, 334 f. Multicultural ministry 14 Network, 18, 19, 24, 33, 38, 42 f., 56–60, 79, 94, 100, 125–130, 141,

426

subject index

163, 181, 185, 188, 189 f., 191 ff., 195, 197 f., 209, 271 f., 307, 320, 324 Ordination, 24, 61 f., 77–83, 89, 104, 115, 119, 127–130, 216, 311 f., 396 Pastoral ministry, 61–83 Power, divine, 82, 116, 130, 280, 311 Power encounter, 44, 46, 284–286 Possessing, possession, 283, 290–292 Possession (demonic), 279, 281 Prayer, 2, 18, 20, 24, 27, 30, 43 f., 61, 64 f., 66 f., 71, 72 ff., 83, 87, 92, 97, 105, 108 ff. 114 f., 122 ff., 129, 130, 166, 167, 169, 170, 176, 181, 189, 190, 192, 198, 209, 233, 251, 257, 258, 267, 272–275, 276, 278, 281– 283, 284, 286, 287, 289, 295–299, 300, 302, 306, 320, 321, 332, 353, 355, 358 f., 360 f., 367–370, 377 ff., 389, 396, 397, 398, 404 Prophecy, prophetic, 43, 44, 61, 63, 80, 82, 90–94, 100 f., 103, 104, 113 f., 157, 238 f., 277, 357, 397 Salvation, 45, 212, 232 f., 243 f., 246– 253, 254, 262 f., 265, 270, 284 f., 297, 299, 323, 402, 403 Spiritual atmosphere / climate, 269, 286, 287–289, 398 Spiritual father / mentor, 62, 64, 65, 78, 99, 101, 103, 106, 110, 147, 166 f., 182, 194, 195, 207, 320, 379, 394 Spiritual gifts / gifts (of the Spirit), 40, 44, 46, 70, 77–83, 130, 263, 265, 274, 311

Spiritual mapping, 268, 288, 290, 300 Spiritual warfare, 31, 46, 192, 236 f., 268, 267–269, 271–304, 318 f., 321–323, 332 f. Spirituality, 19, 24, 70, 71, 72, 122 ff., 141, 215, 313, 403 Subaltern, 134, 142, 324 Testimony, 32, 38, 41, 43, 61, 85 f., 95, 98, 152, 153, 209, 230, 343, 380 Territorial spirits, 267–269 Training (theological), 9, 11–18, 41, 45, 58 f., 72, 74, 77–83, 85, 87, 94, 97, 128, 144, 157, 163, 168, 188, 219, 264, 307, 311 f., 321, 331, 377, 383 f., 387 TV ministry / evangelism / preachers, 57, 59, 95, 98, 156 f., 212 f., 276, 283, 286, 346 Visa, 20, 44, 49, 72, 94, 100, 119, 124, 148 f., 152 f., 155, 172, 175, 180, 184 f., 189, 195, 197, 200 f., 204, 214 f., 217, 221, 223, 234, 340, 342, 344, 362, 369, 373, 387, 400, 407 Vision (in the literal sense), 2, 4, 37, 45, 72, 85, 88, 90, 91, 94, 99–104, 106, 146, 200, 214, 220, 240, 269, 356, 365, 377, 395, 397 Vision (metaphorical), 120, 142, 157 f., 161 f., 167, 169–171, 179, 188, 197, 198, 202 f., 205, 208, 228, 241, 242, 262, 269, 291, 319, 320, 347, 348, 353, 359, 361, 365, 368, 371, 382, 389 f.

INDEX OF NAMES, PLACES, AND TERMS Anglican, 14, 202, 275, 306, 388, 392

Dhinakaran, D.G.S., 58

Baptist, 5, 8, 42, 47, 52, 94, 184 f., 191–195, 244, 272, 291, 306, 318, 319, 344, 350, 354, 373, 378–382, 386, 387, 392 Brazil, Brazilian, 49, 57, 107–115, 208–215, 398–404 Britain, U.K., British, 6, 13 f., 34, 59, 99, 110, 147, 189, 201, 204, 222, 278, 306, 312, 320, 331, 377, 390, 399

Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), 3, 8, 12, 311, 321, 325 Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, 1, 16, 178, 314 Evangelical Church of Westphalia, 1, 9

Cameroon, Cameroonian, 48, 49, 105–107, 158–163, 215, 272, 347– 349 Catholic , 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 36, 37, 46, 178, 209, 238, 258, 276, 314, 332, 245, 347, 350, 382, 392, 398, 405 Cho, Yonggi, 57, 81 Christ Apostolic Church, 87, 198– 207, 386–388 Christ-for-All Evangelistic Ministries, 273–275 Church of England, 5, 14, 306, 321, 388 Church of Pentecost, 52, 55, 80, 82, 219, 223, 238 f. Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI), 13, 306, 320 Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME), 5, 17, 47, 314, 315, 316 City Mission, 156 f., 345 ff. Congo, Congolese, 49, 56, 61, 94, 129, 130, 149, 215, 216, 219, 220, 250, 272, 285, 404, 405, 406 Copeland, Kenneth, 57, 213, 283 Council of Pentecost Ministers (CPM), 19, 24, 56, 128, 158, 165, 258, 272, 287

Faith Movement, 247, 283, 298 392 Federation of Free Pentecostal Churches (BfP, Germany), 52, 90, 98, 188, 320, 382, 383 Federation of Protestant Churches in France (FPF), 6, 15, 17, 306 France, French, 15, 35, 91, 217 f., 221, 269, 306, 404, 405, 406 Germany, German, 8–13, 47–55, 354–270, 305–336 Ghana, Ghanaian, 2, 7, 19, 20, 29, 48, 52, 55, 74, 84 f., 87, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 115, 119, 120, 125, 129, 130, 163, 164, 168, 178–185, 188 f., 200, 216, 218 f., 234, 251, 256, 258, 260, 266, 273, 276, 294, 300, 319, 349, 351–358, 369–371, 377, 383, 386 f. IFGF-GISI (International Full Gospel Fellowhip – Gereja Injili Seuntu Internasional) , 260 Indonesia, Indonesian, 7, 49, 94, 168–171, 241, 250, 256, 259 f., 270, 358–360 Italy, Italian, 6, 15, 16 ff., 49, 51 Kikk course, 11, 20, 58, 122, 123, 156, 294, 299–301, 346

428

index of names, places, and terms

Kingdom Exploiters’ Ministries, 301–303 Korea, Korean, 7, 11, 19, 35, 48, 49, 50, 56, 57, 58, 75, 81, 105, 116, 117, 184, 227, 250, 257 f., 273, 307, 308, 325 Latin America, Latin American, 4, 11, 28, 49, 50, 51, 58, 210, 255 Lighthouse Christian Fellowship, 31, 47, 260 f., 291 f. Magnify Deliverance Ministries, 294–297 Nepal, Nepalese, 49, 94, 95, 97 f., 152–158, 300, 343–347 Netherlands, Dutch, 5, 14 f., 30, 34, 49, 269, 305, 307, 308, 309, 317, 324, 325, 326, 329, 330, 334 Nigeria, Nigerian, 6, 7, 20, 29, 42, 47, 57, 59, 76, 89, 98, 101, 103, 105, 126, 144, 146–153, 159, 161, 172 ff., 188, 198–206, 211 f., 218, 256, 266, 271, 272, 276, 280, 288, 291, 294, 300, 330, 332, 339– 342, 347 f., 361–368, 370, 371, 384, 387 f., 388–393, 397, 401– 403 North America, 4, 7, 36, 37, 255, 319, 329 North Rhine-Westphalia, 3, 18, 19, 47, 50, 55, 193, 307 Projet Mosaïc, 15, 305 Protestant church(es) – German / European, 3, 9, 30, 35, 42, 45, 47, 152, 167, 180, 183, 184, 209, 215, 306, 307, 309, 311, 314, 315, 319, 320, 321, 323–328, 335 f. Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), 14, 308, 325, 326

Redeemed Christian Church of God, 6, 20, 172 f., 202 f., 290, 292, 318, 332, 361–364, 389–391, 392 f., 396 Rhema / Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 39, 58, 111, 128, 209, 214, 283 SKIN (Samen Kerk in Nederland), 14, 34, 308 Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan, 49, 50, 111, 121, 217 f., 252 Tamil, 48, 49, 50, 56, 58, 59, 95, 96, 97, 98, 116, 117, 120, 272, 274, 307 Ukraine, Ukrainian, 6, 141, 263, 291, 330, 331, 332 United Evangelical Mission (UEM), 1–3, 8–12, 20, 21, 22, 33, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 58, 104, 116, 121, 122, 129, 133, 147, 163, 209, 215, 217, 235, 305, 311, 320, 328, 331, 336, 407 United Reformed Church, 14, 306 USA, American, 4, 6, 7, 29, 34, 35, 46, 49, 57, 63, 91, 96, 98, 101, 102, 139, 140, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 161, 189, 192, 211, 212, 214 f., 235, 250, 251, 254, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 270, 271, 276, 277, 278, 284, 288, 319, 329, 343, 344, 345, 346, 348, 349, 352, 361, 364, 378, 379, 392, 401, 402, 404, 405 Waldensian Church, 15–17, 306, 308, 326 Word of Faith Movement, see Faith Movement Word of Life International Church, 117, 124

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