Communities of Faith in Africa and the African Diaspora

In Honor of Dr. Tite Tiénou with Additional Essays on World Christianity

Casely B. Essamuah, David K. Ngaruiya, Essamuah, Ngaruiya

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781620329597
  9781498267113
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630873073
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Communities of Faith is a collection of essays on the multicultural Christian spirit and practices of churches around the world, with particular attention to Africa and the African diaspora. The essays span history, theology, anthropology, ecumenism, and missiology. Readers will be treated to fresh perspectives on African Pentecostal higher education, Pentecostalism and witchcraft in East Africa, Methodist camp meetings in Ghana, Ghanaian diaspora missions in Europe and North America, gender roles in South African Christian communities, HIV/AIDS ministries in Uganda, Japanese funerary rites, enculturation and contextualization principles of mission, and many other aspects of the Christian world mission. With essays from well-known scholars as well as young and emerging men and women in academia, Communities of Faith illuminates current realities of world Christianity and contributes to the scholarship of today's worldwide Christian witness.

Part 1

Africa and the African Diaspora

1

The Journey of Tite Tiénou

By friends, colleagues, and former students

“Exactly where God wants you”

It was midnight or later when the student left the library. He looked up and saw a light in his seminary professor’s second-floor office. Going up and finding a welcome, he confessed to being at a loss as to what to do with his life. “All that I am sure of is that God loves me and he exists.” Looking him in the eye, the professor responded, “That’s exactly where God wants you.”

Today the student, Scott Moats, finds himself chief academic officer of Crown College, a Christian and Missionary Alliance school outside Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On that midnight hour in 1986, it was Professor Tite Tiénou who assured Moats of the primary importance of his spiritual foundation. Tiénou taught theology and missiology at the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) seminary, in Nyack, New York. Being “exactly where God wants you” involves both spiritual foundation and year-by-year leading. Tiénou found his spiritual foundation in his pastor-father’s home in Burkina Faso, West Africa; his career path was to involve eight major moves and three continents.

Tite Tiénou was born January 16, 1949, in Sanekuy, Mali, then a part of French West Africa. A Muslim-majority nation, Mali wasn’t always welcoming. So in Tite’s early years the family relocated to the other side of the border, in Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta). The American missionaries in Bobo-Dioulasso, a city of nearly a half million, used the English “Titus” while the locals preferred “Tite,” the French version. Tite’s pastor-father, Pierre—who was actually his step-father, his father having died of a snake bite when Tite was very young—made sure that his children had nothing to do with Bobo culture, beliefs, and practices. The family viewed the wider community as rooted in African idolatry.

The Christian grade school that the Tiénou children attended, founded by the C&MA, was back on the other side of the border, in Mali. A newly arrived missionary, Milton Pierce, who relied on Pierre Tiénou for language mentoring, remembers helping a group of youngsters get to school in the rainy season. On one occasion the missionary’s car got only so far before the road turned to a waterway. Pierce reports, “We had no choice but to let the boys finish their journey by foot. They put their few belongings on their heads and, wending their way up to their waists in the water, disappeared into the distance.” Tite was eleven years old.

Following grade school, Tite attended the Cours Normal Protestant school in Daloa, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), and then the Lycée Ouzzin Coulibaly, in Bobo-Dioulasso, back in Burkina Fasso. His family lived some distance away, so missionary Pierce rented for Tite a one-room dwelling in the city. It was equipped with a kerosene lamp, a simple table and stool, and a bamboo bed with a hard mattress. Tite distinguished himself by winning prizes for academic excellence, all the while learning English from the Pierces.

At a time when missionary policy discouraged out-of-country education, the Pierces secured a work scholarship for Tite to attend the C&MA college in Nyack, New York, beginning fall term 1968. (The scholarship involved cleaning local IBM offices.) Paul Rentz, who was to be Tite’s fellow student, met him at the airport. One of the first things he discovered about this young man from West Africa was that he had no coat. On the way back to Nyack they stopped at Korvettes department store and bought a coat for the coming winter. Rentz remembers that Tite got him through French class. In three years Tite earned a BS in theology, cum laude.

Returning home to Bobo-Dioulasso in 1971, for the next two years Tiénou pastored the French-speaking Central Church of the Christian Alliance and at the same time taught English and French in the local college. Many in the church had grown up in non-Christian homes. Tiénou soon discovered that “ridicule based upon ignorance could not help me address the concerns of my parishioners.” The Catholic priest in town, Anselme Titanma Sanon, who had converted out of Bobo religion, was a great help. He showed Tiénou how Bobo religious vocabulary, symbolism, and ritual could be adapted to the ministry of the Gospel.

In 1973, again with C&MA initiative, Tiénou enrolled in the Faculté Libre de Théologie Évangélique de Vaux-sur-Seine, France. He graduated in 1976 with an MA in theology. This was strengthened by special studies at École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris.

Returning to Bobo-Dioulasso in 1976, Tiénou became the founding director of the Maranatha Institute. At the same time he served as professor of English at the local college and again pastored Central Church.

Four years later, Tiénou headed to the United States for studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. Within a year he was named teaching assistant to Professor Charles Kraft in the School of World Mission. In 1984 he graduated with an MA in missiology and a PhD in intercultural studies; he was also presented the Contextualization Award for 1984. Kraft affirms that “the promise we saw in him when he was in our classes has certainly been fulfilled in the career he has had. [He is] known for his keen mind and outstanding scholarship [and] his approachability and love for his students.”

1976: Member, World Evangelical Fellowship Theological Commission

1977–1980: Executive secretary, Association of Evangel­icals in Africa and Madagascar theological commission

1980s: Chairman, Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa

1985: Member of Mission Leadership Forum, OMSC, New Haven, CT

1986–89: Member of the International Advisory Council for Lausanne II, Manila

1989–92: Chairman, and Chairman Emeritus, International Council of Accrediting Agencies

1990, Jan–May: Senior Mission Scholar, OMSC, and Research Fellow, Yale University

1991: Member, African Studies Association

1994: Contributing Editor IBMR

2000–2009: Member, Board of Directors, OMSC, New Haven

2004, June 21–22: Participant in consultation honoring Paul Hiebert

2008: Chairman, Board of Directors, Christian International Scholarship Foundation

Current: Member, African Theological Fellowship

For the next nine years, Tiénou taught theology and missiology at Alliance Theological Seminary, Nyack, New York. Here it was that Scott Moats sought Tiénou’s midnight counsel. Former students like Moats and Joseph Modica, chaplain at Eastern University (Philadelphia), remember being challenged by his emphasis on co...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword - Joel Carpenter
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Part 1: Africa and the African Diaspora
• Part 2: Other Selected Essays
• A Bibliography of the Works of Tite Tiénou