The Africa God Wants

Master Obi
This is Dr. Master Oboleetswe Matlhaope, otherwise known as Dr. Master or Dr. Obi. I am a citizen of the world, so I prefer people to choose among those names, which one is easier for them. You can call me Master. You can call me Obi. I was called Obi from childhood, so I resonate with all those names.

David Capes
Dr. Master Obi. Good to see you. Welcome to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”

Master Obi
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

David Capes
You’re here, studying for a month or more, working on some writing projects.

Master Obi
Yes, it’s a fantastic place. Quite an experience. I had not known about this place until I came here. I heard about it when I was scouting around, choosing the best place to do some research and writing. Langham Partnership recommended this place, and there’s no regret for coming here.

David Capes
Langham is a good friend of ours and a good partner in ministry. There’s a lot of folks who don’t know you. So for people who don’t know who you are, tell us a little bit about you.

Master Obi
I come from Botswana, that is a country right in the center of southern Africa. I come from a town called Ghanzi. It’s in the southwest part of the country. In that region, specifically, I come from a village, it’s a small village, but the best place on the planet.

David Capes
What is Botswana known for? Is there a particular export or is there a particular thing that people would say, oh, that’s Botswana.

Master Obi
Botswana is well known for diamonds. If you Google it, some of the biggest diamonds were discovered in Botswana, and the other thing that we are well known for is beef. We pride ourselves on beef. I spoke less about beef when I tasted Texas beef!

David Capes
Oh, okay, did you like it?

Master Obi
I did.

David Capes
You did like it. Okay, good, good. So do you have a family?

Master Obi
Yes, first, I’m married to a beautiful lady called Boipuso. And the Lord was very generous. God partnered with Boipuso, and they gave me the best children. Prince is my first born, David is my second born, and Abigail is my third born, and my friend, my closest friend.

David Capes
And now today, you don’t live in Botswana. You live in Kenya.

Master Obi
Yes, by assignment, I live in Kenya, Nairobi. The headquarters of the organization, which I will introduce is in Nairobi, Kenya.

David Capes
Tell us a little bit about that organization that you’re working with. You’re the head of that organization.

Master Obi
Yes, I am the Secretary General of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa, AEA. This is an umbrella organization for all Evangelicals and Pentecostals in the continent of Africa, all together at a continental level.

David Capes
Now this is a voluntary association, right? People connect because they want to connect.

Master Obi
It is a voluntary association, but it’s an umbrella association, meaning we are in 51 of the 54 countries of Africa. And in each country, you have an umbrella body. Now in that particular country, Evangelicals and Pentecostals come together under that alliance of fellowship. And then at the continental level, those alliances are called the Association of Evangelicals in Africa. Besides the umbrella national alliances, we also house para church organizations like World Vision, Compassion International, Wycliffe, Africa Enterprise and many other associate members.

David Capes
What is the job of the Secretary General?

Master Obi
The Association of Evangelicals is structured under a board, but the members of this board are in different countries. Because the board is interspersed like that, the board appoints a Secretary General to run the organization in the interim between board meetings. The Secretary General then reports to the board.

David Capes
How often does the board gather to meet?

Master Obi
The constitution provides that the board meets once a year.

David Capes
Is that in Kenya, or is that some other place?

Master Obi
The board meets anywhere, and they dispose of the mandate of the board, as per the Constitution. And then from there, they go back to their countries. The Secretary General runs the organization, makes decisions, forms partnerships, creates programs. Then they get reports together for a board update once a year.

David Capes
So do you also run the board as the Secretary General. Or is there somebody else who runs the board.

Master Obi
In terms of governance, the board is under the Chair of the Board.

David Capes
Oh, I see. People don’t realize how large Africa is. It’s a large continent, and I describe it by saying you could put three United States in Africa and still have room left over. And there’s a billion people in Africa. How many of those would be Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians? Do you have a sense of that number?

Master Obi
Yes, the commonly held statistic will put the number of Christians over 700 million. In terms of our constituency, the common statistics says there are 182 million evangelicals, and 202 million Pentecostals.

David Capes
So, Pentecostalism is very strong in Africa?

Master Obi
If you add 182 million, plus 202 million, that’s the Association of Evangelicals. That’s 380 million, so it’s quite a big chunk of the Christian body in Africa.

David Capes
You guys need to send missionaries to North America. You need to send some people over to help us over here, because you’ve got a lot more Christians over there than we do.

Master Obi
Yes, true. But before we do that, we have a bit of work that we need to do. Because the understanding of mission needs to be deconstructed and reconstructed in our context. Because what we are seeing when Africans go elsewhere in the name of missions, they go after fellow Africans. So, you see Africans in the United States, and you look at the membership of their churches, it’s Africans. And they go back and they say, we are missionaries. We are in missions. So that’s why I say we need to reconstruct the understanding of missions.

When Western missionaries went to Africa, for me, I see purity of missions. Here are people of a different color going to people of another color, and they are so focused in reaching these people, even though they have no commonalities, no language, no cultural commonality. But they did everything it took to reach these people. The Africans who are doing missions outside Africa, need to understand missions and that it is not an easy task.

They need to therefore be properly equipped mentally and spiritually to know what they are going to do, so that they go and reach America. And America is diverse. It is Hispanic, it’s black, it’s white. You can’t have a missionary church in America which is only black. That’s why I think we need a bit of work in Africa for our missionaries to understand that as Africans now we are tasked by our Lord to reach the world.

David Capes
Talk about leadership of churches in Africa. Are there enough pastors and church leaders in Africa and church?

Master Obi
We don’t have enough church leaders in Africa. I can tell you, the church in Africa is growing exponentially, and the growth outnumbers the pastors. We have a lot of those that are genuinely called to the pastoral work but are not trained. So training is a need that is a challenge. We have serious growth, and very few trained leaders to match the growth.

We will not be able to do that with formal education only. We need to now be intentional with non-formal theological education, and that’s something that we are taking seriously. We have quickly put together a curriculum, a non-formal theological education curriculum. There are some organizations in the continent who are also doing non-formal theological education, but even that needs to be a bit organized in terms of standards. So, you have all these people doing the non-formal theological education which does not have standardized, verified curricula.

We have an accrediting body as AEA. Now this is the body that does accreditation of theological education in Africa. For many years, this body only had formal theological education standards, but now I have tasked them to develop a non-formal theological education curriculum standard. Anybody else in Africa who is providing non-formal theological education can subject their curriculum to those standards, and then we can move towards standardized curriculum in Africa.

David Capes
That will just raise the quality of the thinking and the theologizing and the preaching and the teaching on the continent altogether,

Master Obi
Precisely, in order to match the growth.

David Capes
What’s interesting to me, Master Obi is the fact that we have more schools here in the United States, but fewer students. We have more seminaries and more schools that could give a very formal theological education, but those schools are shrinking. But over in Africa, you need more schools. You need more teachers. You need more people. People who are raised up within the African context, who can teach within that context, teaching the languages, teaching the cultures, teach against that, and show how the gospel really fits and works in Africa.

Master Obi
That is very, very true. It would be great if we can transplant some of these seminaries and put them around intentionally. This one in the east, this one in the west, so that we can meet the need! But having said that, it is true. I tell my people that we need a curriculum that is contextualized for Africa, that meets the needs of Africa. Because African church leaders are dealing with people who have a background of witchcraft. They are dealing with people with a background of religious extremism. You are dealing with a continent of people that have an environment that is infested with corruption and so on and so on. We need a curriculum that is tailor made to produce a leader equipped to handle people like this.

David Capes
Because they’re going to encounter people like this?

Master Obi
Yes, so that we can then also transform Africa. As AEA, we have a long-term vision: the Africa that God wants. For us to achieve that we need leaders who are trained to transform Africa.

David Capes
And if you were to tell our listeners one thing they need to do to pray for Africa, what would that be?

Master Obi
The church in Africa is growing. It should continue to grow. One thing that we need to pray for is, in as much as there is horizontal growth, we also need the vertical growth. The deep-rooted Christian faith and also a faith that is connected to heaven. So, we need to pray for numerical growth, as well as quality growth. Secondly, we need to pray for persecution. Christians in Africa, in a number of countries, are going through horrible persecution.

David Capes
Yes, we hear about that on a weekly basis.

Master Obi
We need to pray for the brothers and sisters who are going through those persecutions. We need to pray for our brothers and sisters under repressive regimes. There are countries where my brothers and your brothers are in hiding. In order for me to meet them, I go through a third person. I talk to this person, and then he will talk to one person, who will then talk to them to say the Secretary General wants to meet you. They will pick a date, they will have to go to a place which is safe, and then they can make a video call. It’s so emotional, and in most cases, they go with pseudo names, and I have to protect them. I can’t even put their names on the website, because once they are exposed, they go to jail and they disappear for forever.

David Capes
Boko Haram seems to be one of these groups who is not officially part of the government, but they’re still persecuting. You do have governments who are oppressive and would want to jail Christian brothers and sisters.

Master Obi
We have governments which are repressive. You talk of Eritrea, and it’s not a secret, and they should know, if they hear my voice, that we know our brothers and sisters are persecuted and do not have the freedom of worship. Our brothers and sisters are hiding. They have been killed. They are refugees in neighboring countries. So, it’s not just the jihadist, it’s repressive regimes such as those. And then you have jihadists around the Sahel. Sometimes the jihadists take advantage of weak states. When the government is weak, that’s an opportune space for extremists. They find Christians worshiping. They kill as many as possible so that particular church will close. This is reality. This is happening, and these are Christians like you and me, killed for what they believe, Jesus Christ.

This is the reality of Africa. So when you pray for the Christians in Africa, the persecuted church, they should know it’s real. We need resilience. Northern Africa was Christian. But no more, and that’s what they want, to displace Christians in as many places as possible. They are trying to break the Sahel line, and that’s a highly contested line now, of course. Now there’s sporadic extremism, even down south in the southern part of Africa, in Mozambique, Cabo Delgaldo. Already we put together an awareness summit, and I brought people from the Cabo Delgado just to tell their story. And it was horrible what they were telling us. In one example, a pastor is beheaded right in front of his wife. As that was not enough, the wife is carrying a child in her arms. The child was taken from the mother and chocked in front of the mother. The child was then cooked and the mother was told to eat her child. This is more than barbarism. This is more than inhumanity. This is evil. And this is not something that happened in the 18th century, in the 19th century. It is now.

David Capes
It’s happening now. It’s happening in the world of AI and in the world of the internet.

Master Obi
I’ve been to Niger, I have met my brothers and sisters of the capital, because they were given an ultimatum to denounce Christ, or on the following day, we are coming for you and your family, And the only thing these Christians could do was to run. I visited where they are living in plastic shelters. And these were decent people who had homes and families, but they had to flee to these inhuman shelters because of their faith. And it’s not only in those countries that I mentioned. In the Central African Republic, there is a displaced Christian community. I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, eastern region, and we do what we can with what we have. Sometimes we feel that we are doing nothing.

I went into this makeshift rehabilitation center for child soldiers. My eyes can’t leave this little boy in front of me. I’m addressing them, you know, giving them encouragement, and motivation. We are teaching them upholstery to give them alternative skills so that they can have a way of living without a gun in their hand. My eyes cannot leave this boy, and I’m told he was a child soldier for seven years. And I’m trying to figure out how young he was when he began to be a child soldier. I broke. I literally broke. I held that boy in my left hand as I was speaking to his peers and others. I couldn’t leave him. I loved him, and I believe that was the love of God. I had $50 in my pocket. I took that $50 and put it in the hand of this boy. I didn’t know what else to do. This is the heart of God, the God that you and I serve. This is how God feels about these brothers and sisters going through difficult situations.

Because this was just a makeshift upholstery rehabilitation facility, where we are trying to give them this equipment and it’s not up to standard, but it’s what we could give. And the following year, when the war was raging, and the rivals were closing in on Goma, the influx of women and children was just overwhelming. The General Secretary of our national alliance in the Democratic Republic had to take a bus that time. I was in neighboring Rwanda. In the morning, I had a knock on my door. When I opened, it’s a man and five others, And he says, Dr Master, we need help. The premises of the Alliance are filled with human beings. My own house is filled. We don’t have any more space. We need help. Give a voice on our behalf.

Fortunately, from nowhere, I had a thought of Barnabas. When I called, they were very kind. What can we do? I said, let’s build a school so that these children can continue their lives when they find themselves with nowhere to go. They sent for $48,000 and we were able to put together a facility for these children. And we were able to also buy sewing machines for the women because they have lost their source of livelihoods. We bought 100 sewing machines for these women to train on how to sew so that they can sell what they make, and have a source of living. You know, just humanity, being human. So these are some of my experiences on the ground, and they don’t end there. There are many examples of what is happening in Africa.

David Capes
Well, the next time you come back to the Lanier Theological Library, we’re going to want to hear about more of these stories. Because they’re fascinating, they’re heartbreaking, but they will cause us, I think, to pray. To pray for you as the leader, but also to pray for all those who are facing the kinds of struggles that you’ve described today. Dr, Master Obi. Thank you for being with us today on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”

Master Obi
Thank you. Thank you for having me and thanks to our listeners.