WRF (Africa) – Heritage Day Conference: September 2008 -- Closing Statements 

The Bible as the Word of God

We acknowledge in humble gratitude that Jesus Christ has called us as reformed Christians to serve Him in Africa by obeying his command to preach the Word of God above and before all else.
We also gratefully confess the Bible as God’s inspired and authoritative Word, given to us as God’s powerful means to save people through faith in Christ. God’s people are sanctified and equipped by the preaching of this same Word, and therefore we affirm the sufficiency of the Bible as the Word of God for the ministry of the church and for the whole life of man.

While we acknowledge the great material need of people living in Africa, we also note with great concern the moral degradation of African societies, as well as the absence of the Bible in the preaching and ministry of many Christian churches: the place of the Bible is often taken by mere human ideas and power religion. Because of this absence of the Bible, many who confess to be Christians still return to indigenous religious ideas and practices, seeking to solve their problems and fulfill their needs.
However, we believe that if people are not converted to and matured in Christ through the preaching of his Word, all our work will come to nothing.

We therefore recognize a great need for establishing Bible-centered churches, shaping Bible-centered ministry and preaching and forming a Bible-centered spirituality. Without this radical Bible-centeredness, we will be crippled as churches to deal with the many problems and critical issues of our time and our continent.

Christians and non-Christians living together in Africa

We affirm that God in his gracious dealing with all people on earth has given all people common creational values or moral principles that make possible shared existence in our world.
While stating this, we also affirm that these common values are radically marked by sin and in themselves not sufficient to redeem us from the bondage of sin, as salvation is only available through God’s redemptive revelation in Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, as Christians our own moral principles are rooted in gratitude for our gracious redemption in Christ, and are aimed at the glory of God – a foundation and purpose not shared by non-Christians.
Against this background, we affirm that we nevertheless recognize the following moral principles (among others) to be common ground for both Christian and non-Christian Africans, which make it possible for us to live in some harmony with each other on our continent:

* a fundamental recognition of human dignity (for Christians based on the idea of the image of God, for many non-Christian Africans on ubuntu)

* a basic religious orientation to life (as opposed to Western rationalism and rejection of religion)

* family values (for Christians based on covenant theology, for non-Christian Africans on ubuntu)

* a willingness to forgive

* ecological concern

* taking care of the poor and the needy (for Christians, based on God’s great mercy esepcially for the poor and the needy, and for non-Christians again based on ubuntu)

While accepting the factual reality of many religions co-existing in Africa, we reject the concept of religious pluralism which negates the differences between religions in a relativistic way and deny that any one religion can be more true than others. We also do not regard religion as a mere expression of culture, nor do we accept that all religions are equal ways leading to Christ.

Instead we affirm and confess the uniqueness and indispensability of God’s redemptive revelation in the Bible and in Jesus Christ, as well as the exclusive gospel of salvation through faith in Christ alone.
We confess with sorrow and shame that many reformed people of the past have misrepresented reformed faith in such a way that they have not been blameless in the history of colonialism and oppression in Africa, and in some instances still continue the sins of the past even today. Nevertheless, this fact does not make us ashamed of being Reformed Christians in Africa today. Following the way of repentance and seeking forgiveness of Christ and his people, we are ready to obey Christ’s calling to serve Him on this continent with the message of salvation in Christ alone.

Mission strategies for Reformed churches in Africa

We acknowledge the many and complex challenges presented by life on the African continent. These include poverty, disease, socio-political instability, religious syncretism and an often superficial Christian presence. Against this background, we recognize God’s Spirit-empowered calling to us to proclaim the prophetic, redemptive, lifegiving message of his Word throughout our continent.

We recognize the following as possible reformed missionary priorities in the African context:

* Strengthening existing churches and reforming syncretistic churches by equipping local leaders to deal with local issues in a biblical way;

* Fostering the development of an authentically African Reformed theological heritage;

* Consistent focus on authentic Christian education on all levels, from young children to university students, in order to enable the church to do intellectual battle and become involved in the transformation of society;

* A sustained focus on church based urban mission with an holistic ministry approach;

* Renewed emphasis on the Reformation motifs of “A Reformed church always keeps on reforming”, “Back to the sources” and “Come, Holy Spirit”.

We thank God for the example He has given us in Uganda: we are all greatly encouraged by the many examples of the power of Christ at work in this country, and praise Him for it! We pray that He will continue to use his children in Uganda to be a shining light in their own country, but also in the rest of Africa and the world.

At the same time, we also pray for our brothers in sisters in countries such as the Congo, Rwanda and Sudan, where Christian life is often still very difficult, often because of outright persecution.

Christianity and the African heritage

We acknowledge with great sorrow the wrongs of the past, where African history, culture and religion were denied and rejected (sometimes violently) by the first Christian missionaries who entered Africa under the auspices of colonial imperialist forces. This has caused great pain to African people, and destroyed incalculable riches of African life, culture, art and humanity. We recognize this as a great injustice to the people of Africa.

Nevertheless, in his infinite power and grace, God has still used even those earlier Western missionaries to bless Africa and the people of Africa, so that today the Gospel message of salvation in Christ is still present in Africa, and African churches are growing and flourishing all over the continent. For this, we thank God!

Today, in the post-colonial period, we affirm the need for serious dialogue with African indigenous religion, recognition of African history, culture and religion and giving our redemptive witness as Christians while trusting the Holy Spirit to convert minds and hearts to Christ.

We also affirm the great need for indigenous African expressions of Biblical Christianity, for truly African biblical theology, for restoration of Christianity as a non-Western religion and for promoting the Bible as a book which is not at all foreign to African life and culture.

A call for authentic Christian spiritual discernment

In the process of dialogue with African indigenous religion and the many expressions of African Christianity, we affirm the great need for exercising the biblical and Bible-informed gift of spiritual discernment, even though many will call us judgmental for this. This call for reformed discernment is necessitated by the widespread presence of syncretism, which includes indigenous religious ideas, African mysticism and spiritualism, clear heresy and attempts of Satan to mislead and confuse the elect by disguising himself as an angel of the light (2 Cor 11:14).

We realize that we need to be constantly reforming churches in order to be authentically reformed: constantly returning to Scipture and the God of Scripture, always emphasizing the inherently missional nature of the church, rediscovering the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and giving due attention to relevant, biblical and missional theological training.

The church and Christian unity

We acknowledge that we do not serve Christ or his church in Africa so that our names can be remembered, but we give ourselves in his service so that the name of Christ can be glorified in Africa. We therefore repent of all pride and selfseeking motives that may still be in our hearts, and seek only to magnify the name and honour of Christ, our Lord.

We understand the church to be (among other definitions):

* a people belonging to Christ as Head of the Church, which is his body

* an active and spiritually gifted priesthood serving God

* people in community under the Lordship of Christ who have received the Holy Spirit

We note with great concern and sadness the abuse of power by and the power struggles among many church leaders in our African churches. In contrast, we affirm the biblical teaching of pastors as servant figures, members of ministry teams working together in Christian fellowship and unity, called by Christ to equip his people for works of service (Eph 4:11).

We are greatly saddened by the lack of unity in and among our churches, which is a sign of sin and worldliness (1 Cor 3:3), denies our fundamental identity in Christ and causes great pain in the lives of many of God’s children. Often, Christian unity only exists in theory, while pride, racism and lack of repentance prove to be more the rule than the exception.

Nevertheless, we affirm that the basis of our real unity as Christians is Christ Himself, who removed the differences among us to make us one in Him and calls us to maintain this unity, also across national, language and ethnic borders (Eph 2:13-16; Gal 3:28-29; Eph 4:1-4), not denying our many differences, but celebrating them as a blessing of Christ to enrich his church.

While affirming the fundamental unity of Christians in Christ, we believe that there can be no unity between believers and unbelievers, between righteousness and evil, between light and darkness, between Christ and Satan.

Authentic African theological training

We thank God for excellent theological training already being done throughout Africa.
We recognize the remaining great need for authentic, credible, relevant Reformed theological training in Africa to provide in the diverse ministry needs of rapidly growing African churches.

In the light of the Church in Africa becoming a mayor role player in the global context of our world, dialogue and Christian fellowship and partnership with international providers of Reformed Theological training and Reformed Churches around the globe is also of vital importance. We recognize the need for high quality academic formation, but regard spiritual formation and skills training as equally important for excellence in pastoral training.

Because of socio-economic, demographic and ministry conditions of African church leaders, we affirm the need for theological training also to be available through in service and distance learning programs.

Christian education

We believe that there is a great need for Christian education in Africa, where 40% of the total population is younger than 14 years and where many children are categorized as children at risk.
This Christian education must be centered in God as He reveals Himself to us in Christ and in Scriptures.

We believe that such Christian education is part of the solution to Africa’s problems.

We affirm the need to commit to the children of Africa to provide Christian education that will develop children at risk into children of hope.

We affirm the need to work for Christian education that will produce a radically Biblical, non-dualistic Christian worldview which is needed to transform African societies and produce passionate Christian national leaders.

Ministry to people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS

We are filled with great sorrow and pain at the millions of our people who are infected and affected by HIV and Aids, and also at the denial, ignorance, superstition, fear and stigmatisation which often still surround this disease on our continent.

We believe that only God Himself can change the desperate situation of our continent, our nations, our communities, our churches, our families and our children, as He has done in Uganda.

We therefore call on God to revive the people of Africa through his Holy Spirit, to bring us to repentance and renewed commitment to Christ and his gospel.

We also call on all God’s children (who are called to be prophets, priests and kings in Christ) and on the leaders of our nations to commit themselves to whatever effort is needed to stop the advance of this dreadful disease and bring healing to our peoples.

We pray that Christ through his Word and Spirit will transform us all into priests who are willing – in the name of Christ – to give ourselves totally to others in compassionate and accepting self-sacrifice as He has given Himself to us.

The above statement was approved by by the Executive Committee of the African Regional Board of the World Reformed Fellowship:

Dr. P.J. (Flip) Buys (Chairman)
Prof. Dr. Derrick Mashau (Secretary)
Prof. Dr. Christopher T. Rabali (Treausurer)
Rev. John Maloma (Additional Member)
Rev. Naas Ferreira (Additional Member)
Rev. Makhuva (Additional Member)