Challenges of Black Pentecostal Leadership in the 21st Century

Phyllis Thompson

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780281070282
• eBook ISBN: 9780281070299
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A collection of five pictures which address issues and challenges pertinent (but not exclusively so) to the Black Majority Church in the UK. They sharpen understanding of the way the BM have come to do church, and also challenge whether the vision is to maintain the status quo or be a prophetic church.

1

The challenges of black Pentecostal leadership in the UK in the twenty-first century

JOE ALDRED

Introduction

Thank you for inviting me to address you on this special occasion of the opening of the Leadership Training Centre. May I congratulate all of you on what must have been sheer hard work to get this far. I suspect there’s more hard work ahead to make it a success. I pledge you my prayers and support in whatever ways I can be helpful: personally, and through my work at Churches Together in England. I have been asked to address myself to the subject, ‘The challenges of black Pentecostal leadership in the UK in the twenty-first century’, and I welcome the opportunity to reflect upon this important theme. I am not the first to attempt to identify and articulate the key challenges that face us, and I am sure I will not be the last. And so I come to this task humbly and prayerfully. I suspect that nothing of what I have to say will be new to some of you and certainly it will not be rocket science; however, I hope that our engagement together, with God in our midst, will bring some illumination, some new light to guide us on our way. I intend to lay before us seven key challenges, but I begin by unpacking the title of my lecture: ‘The challenges of black Pentecostal leadership in the UK in the twenty-first century’.

Challenge

In contemporary parlance we can tend to view the word ‘challenge’ in somewhat passive terms. However, in its true meaning ‘challenge’ implies an invitation or summons to do something, such as take part in a contest.¹ When the Philistine champion, the giant Goliath of Gath, challenged Saul and the men of Israel with the words, ‘Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to [fight] me’ (1 Sam. 17.8), that was a challenge that demanded a response, which eventually David made, sparing King Saul’s and Israel’s blushes. A challenge demands a response, and if a response is not forthcoming, the contest is awarded in favour of one’s opponent. So when today we speak of the challenges facing us, we are not referring to something passive, hypothetical or ephemeral; rather, we refer to matters that confront us and which demand our response. And we fail to respond at our peril.

Black Pentecostal

In the British context ‘black Pentecostal’ has two main meanings. First, it refers to those churches that are led and membered in the majority by people of African and Caribbean heritages.² Black skin colour is important in the British context because it is symbolic of a particular sociology, history and experience lived in relation to the adversity of white racism.³ Blackness is therefore more than skin deep. Second, ‘black Pentecostal’ refers to the movement that is rooted in the experience iconized by Azusa Street and related revivals, which emerged around and after 1900; the five enduring identifying theological marks of such revivals, according to the Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, are:

1. the works of grace: justification and sanctification
2. baptism in the Holy Spirit
3. premillennialism
4. healing
5. miracles.⁴

Black Pentecostalism in Britain derives from this tradition and, according to Christian Research’s 2005 English Church Census, compiled by Peter Brierley, is among the fastest growing trends in an overall declining national church attendance; for example, the New Testament Church of God showed an increase of 37 per cent in Sunday attendance between 1998 and 2005.⁵ But before we get carried away, it’s worth remembering that African and Caribbean people total just 2 per cent of the overall population of the UK and furthermore not all black churchgoers are Pentecostals.⁶ By extrapolating from Brierley’s figures, we can suggest that in 2005 51 per cent of the 300,000 Pentecostal churchgoers were black. There are at least that many black worshippers in the historic and other independent churches in the UK.

Leadership

Many are the theories on and about leadership. Here are a few popular views: some highlight the difference between a leader and a manager; some say leadership can be learned, while others say it is innate; some say God anoints you at the point of appointment, while others insist the anointing precedes the appointment. The purists speak of directive and participative leadership, task- or people-orientated leadership, transactional and transformational leadership, team leadership, and much beside. The likes of John Maxwell believe profoundly that leadership can be learned, and he provides, among other aids, a book called The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. It states quite simply: follow them and people will follow you.⁷ Another work is his 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, with the promise that if you cultivate them you will become the person others will want to follow.⁸ It may be instructive to highlight two examples from the ministry of Jesus that illustrate Christ’s attitude to leadership: ‘I am among you as the One who serves’ (Luke 22.27); ‘he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out’ (John 10.3). Jesus was as much at ease leading ‘among’ as well as ‘out in front’ of his flock. Which of these models current black Pentecostal leadership mirrors is a question I leave for further discussion!

The twenty-first century

I want to use four terms to describe the twenty-first century: postmodern, postcolonial, post-denominational and post-Christendom.

Postmodern

John Drane observes that Western civilization, based upon European Enlightenment values, has three philosophical facets: rationalism, which asserts that the only things worth knowing are what we can think about in particular analytical and abstract ways; materialism, which asserts that the only things worth thinking about are those we can see, touch and handle; and reductionism, which asserts that everything can be understood by taking it to pieces.⁹ These three concepts of rationalism, materialism and reductionism constitute the basic philosophical foundation of postmodernity. The word describes also the abolition or erosion of conventional certainties, replacing them with a new pluralism in an exciting world of endless possibilities and uncertainties. Walter Brueggemann argues that a postmodern climate recognizes that there is no given definition (of anything) and that rival claims must simply be argued out. Conversely, modernity was a time when everybody knew their place and stayed there; the slave, the servant and the poor knew their place beneath the slave master, the lord of the manor and the rich, and stayed there. Brueggemann calls this a period of ‘certitude and domination’, and cites Karl Marx, who astutely observed that the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.¹⁰ Since I and my sort were never part of that ruling class, I do not clamour for the return of modernity; I merely observe that everything is up for grabs.

Postcolonial

A second signifier of the twenty-first century is the term ‘postcolonial’. This identifies a period after imperialistic colonial rule, particularly in relation to the UK and her former colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. However, as Anthony Reddie and Michael Jagessar point out, ‘postcolonial’ is not about the demise of colonialism as ‘post’, or past, since it embodies both ‘after’ and ‘beyond’; it’s not just about historical chronologies, but more about adopting a critical stance, oppositional tactic or subversive strategy.¹¹ Within postcolonialism is, according to R. S. Sugirtharajah, an ongoing battle for emancipation, and a continuing battle to dismantle imperial institutions and dominating structures.¹² And so this postcolonial space is a problematic one, because as Musa W. Dube points out, our current relationships involve the colonizer and the colonized, the ruler and the ruled, the centre and the periphery, the Global North and the Global South.¹³ There may even be resonance here too with the relationship between some churches’ general headquarters and their outposts.

Post-denominational

A third signifier of the twenty-first century is the term ‘post-denominational’. As with the other two themes, ‘post-denominational’ does not describe the absence of denominations; rather it describes a time when the power and rule of sectarian denominationalism is under serious question and strain as Christian belonging depends upon new and alternative factors. I remember when I sang, with gusto, a local denominational ditty:

Church of Prophecy,

Church of Prophecy is my belief,

Church of Prophecy till I die;

I was born and bred Church of Prophecy

And I’ll die on the Prophecy side.

I would not sing that now. ‘Post-denominational’ describes a period when the old certainties of sectarian boundaries are waning and some have all but vanished. The names are still there and new ones emerge every day, but the people so gathered under these various banners are increasingly seeing themselves as part of the ekklesia, less as the property of a denomination or person.¹⁴ It may be that one way to understand our post-denominational times is by applying Rick Warren’s ‘spiritual surfing’ theory. Here, people look for where the wave of God is and surf there, rather than join those trying to build waves.¹⁵ It may also be the case that denominational ties have been replaced by the cult of personalities and that Christians now divide their loyalties between denominations, personalities, ministries and ecumenical streams. What is not in doubt is that things ain’t what they used to be. As Hans Küng puts it, the future has already begun; he further argues that, even if the Church wanted to, it cannot stand aside from this worldwide reorientation which heralds a new era. Küng does, however, offer this hope: ‘what looks like a serious crisis may mark the moment of new life; what looks like a sinister threat may in reality be a great opportunity’.¹⁶

Post-Christendom

If this is a moment of opportunity, then it occurs against a background of not just postmodernity, postcolonialism and post-denominationalism, but also post-Christendom. Although it is true that Christianity is growing in the Global South, it is also true that in the Western world, where we live, Christianity as the contemporary cornerstone of custom, morals and culture is a thing of the past or at best on the wane. In its place are myriad faiths and spiritualities and a rampant, strident atheism: the ‘death of God’ brigade.

John Drane asserts simply but profoundly that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift of massive proportions. Drane reminds us that when nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of the death of God he implied the disintegration of the entire religio-philosophical basis upon which Western civilization had been built. He describes this regressive process in the following way: that in the earliest times humans sacrificed each other to the gods, then later they sacrificed their instincts and nature to the gods, and in a third and final stage they sacrificed God, leaving nothing to worship save stone, stupidity, gravity and fate.¹⁷ I hope I am not painting too gloomy a picture of our times; I am merely attempting to present a picture of the context in which this Leadership Training Centre is being raised up by God in the New Testament Church of God, in black Pentecostalism, in the Church in the UK.

A nation that has rejected God

Sometimes I feel as though I live in the nation upon which woe was pronounced because they forgot God and called evil good and good evil, darkness light and light darkness, bitter sweet and sweet bitter (Isa. 5.20). Sometimes it feels like the time referred to in Romans 1.18–21: ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness … because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God.’ I scarcely need remind you of the spiritual, social, political and economic chaos we are in locally, nationally and internationally. There are numerous international political and economic wars and intra-national tribal conflicts; 10 per cent of the world consumes 90 per cent of the world’s resources, with millions dying in abject poverty; the phenomenon of globalization means that multinational companies backed by unfair trade arrangements keep the rich rich and the poor poor.

A report by Iain Duncan Smith, titled Breakdown Britain, highlights issues such as family breakdowns, educat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praises for this Book
• Title page
• Imprint
• Dedciation
• Table of contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The challenges of black Pentecostal leadership in the UK in the twenty-first century
• 2. From maintenance to mission: resisting the bewitchment of colonial Christianity
• 3. Pentecostal hermeneutics
• 4. Women in leadership
• 5. Youth culture: friend or foe?
• Conclusion