Meeting Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa

Here in the United States, we often hear stories about the vibrant growth of the United Methodist Church in Africa. There is a desire on the part of many Methodists here to look to Africa for signs of the powerful work that the Holy Spirit is doing in the church. But for many of us, "the church in Africa" exists only in news stories and missionaries' blogs. [I've been to Africa twice - to South Africa in 2000 and to Egypt in 2006 - but neither trip was to be in ministry with UMC congregations.] As interested as many American Methodists are with what is going on in the African church, I think most congregations here find it easier, in terms of the time and expense necessary for establishing foreign ministry connections, to commit to mission and ministry partnerships with the church in Latin America.

The United Methodist Church in Africa took on real flesh and blood for me earlier this week when my wife, Emily, and I were honored to meet Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa from Zimbabwe. Bishop Nhiwatiwa is in North Carolina this summer, both to visit his daughter and to have a sabbatical retreat. He spent some time here on Duke Divinity School's campus, utilizing the library for study and meeting with various scholars on Duke's faculty.

Bishop Nhiwatiwa is the episcopal leader over both the East Zimbabwe Annual Conference and the West Zimbabwe Annual Conference, a part of the UMC that is growing by 10% per year. He was first elected bishop in 2004, before being re-elected last year (meaning, in the way the Central Conference episcopacy is organized, he is now considered a bishop for life).

Over lunch last week, we were able to engage Bishop Nhiwatiwa on topics as diverse as the current UMC constitutional amendments under consideration, Africa University, the economic situation in Zimbabwe, and the joy of getting to spend some restful time in study and reflection amidst a hectic episcopal ministry.

I got to be with Bishiop Nhiwatiwa again at the end of the week, when he visited the closing session of the Summer Wesley Seminar held here on Duke's campus. After a round table discussion where the scholars and graduate students engaged a number of topics related to theology, doctrine, and the current state of the church, Prof. Richard Heitzenrater turned to Bishop Nhiwatiwa to ask him for his own reflections on our discussion and how it relates to his experience of ministry in Zimbabwe.

Bishop Nhiwatiwa began by saying, "Wesley is alive in Africa. There is a hunger to know him."

He said he did not realize the truth of this statement until 2004, after he was elected bishop. Some of his preachers told him at that time about having a worship service outside a storefront in a particular village, and they told him that they felt they were carrying the gospel to people just as John Wesley did when he took to field preaching in order to reach needy hearers.

As he continued mentioning particularly Wesleyan characteristics of the church in Africa, Bishop Nhiwatiwa went on to add this: "Class meetings match up well with African society, because in Africa, life revolves around community. You cannot separate Africans into individuals and expect something good to happen. So the class meetings work well [as a practice of Christian formation.]"

In the context of some question-and-answer time, the bishop also mentioned two more notable facets of the UMC in Zimbabwe that tend to attract converts: first, he calls it a "teaching church," meaning that it tells you its origins and how it developed. It wants its adherents to understand the gospel by understanding the story of the church and how it came to focus on the ministries that it practices. And second, he said that the UMC in his homeland encourages an "experiential religion." It doesn't keep religion "out there" but instead insists that "religion is something that involves us."

These two opportuntities to visit with Bishop Nhiwatiwa and hear his thoughts on ministry and the church were priceless. For anyone who is interested, there are a number of good articles available online that focus on Bishop Nhiwatiwa's ministry and the church in Zimbabwe. Here are a few:

-- A great interview by Hendrik Pieterse with Bishop Nhiwatiwa, in which the bishop answers questions about both the blessings and challenges facing the church in Zimbabwe.

-- A story about the renewal of the covenant agreement between the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference and the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area at the 2008 General Conference.

-- A 2006 story focusing on the church in Zimbabwe as a place that has tremendous spiritual resources and steady growth, but which also faces tremendous challenges in terms of material resources.