Sister Church
New City Parish, Mbandaka
by Dr. Gene Johnson
March 30, 2008
Text:  Matthew 28:19-20a

For the past year the Outreach Ministry has had a task force meeting regularly whose assignment was to choose a project or activity which would help our congregation learn about church work being done in other countries. For several reasons the focus of the group came down to the Disciples church in Congo. One of these reasons is the historic interest through the Robin Cobble Sunday school class, formed after the accidental death of missionary Robin Cobble in Congo.

And of course the church was made more aware of Congo missionary work when Sue and I became members here in 1965. Just before our return to Congo in 1967 for the third term this congregation was actively involved in a fund raising campaign to buy an airplane which played such a vital role in the medical work of our last term there.

In October last year I attended a meeting in Indianapolis at which the Africa executive and some other staff of the mission board, the President of the Congo Disciples church, the regional ministers of Michigan and Indiana, and several other former Congo missionaries were present. One of the chief topics discussed there was a sister church relationship between Disciple regions in the US and regions of the Disciple church in Congo. A few years ago the regional minister from Michigan want to Congo with a group, and met the regional minister of the Kinshasa area, who has studied theology in Kenya and speaks English. This resulted in a relationship which was more a personal one than a regional one.

The region of Indiana had been considering establishing a relationship with the region of Mbandaka, and this meeting was intended to find the best way of formalizing such relationships. For more than 20 years there have been regions in Germany who developed relationships with Congo Disciples regions. They call these relationships by the French word which means "twinning". Since the German churches, who get their money from federal taxes, have mission societies with a generous supply of funding, they have often supported projects in Congo such as the construction of buildings, the supply of transport, the provision of scholarships, and even having students go to Germany to study.

When I returned from the meeting and reported about it to the Outreach Task Force the question was raised as to whether it would be possible to have a congregation to congregation relationship with a church in Congo. Since my last visit to Congo four years ago I have been in occasional contact by e-mail with a young man named Oscar Pekombe. He was then the secretary for the medical department of the church, but has since become the secretary in the main church office. I wrote to Oscar and described the interest of our committee in establishing a relationship with a congregation in Mbandaka. I mentioned in my first message that we didn't have funds, and financial support was not why we were asking, but just that we wanted to learn what Congo churches are like on a more personal level.

Oscar consulted the President, and the reply came back in the affirmative. The congregation they chose to match us with is a parish called New City. They use the word parish while we usually use the word congregation. New City, or Nouvelle Cite in French, is a section of Mbandaka that was named as the city grew larger many years agi, spreading out from the center. Mbandaka is a 4 syllable word, the M being the first syllable.

After an exchange of correspondence which I will describe later the task force has wanted to make the congregation aware of this sister church. There have been several articles in the Crusader. When the worship ministry was considering how to fill the pulpit during the vacation of our pastors this week they asked if I would use the opportunity to present information to the congregation

At this point I think it would be helpful to give a bit of history about how the Congo Disciple Church developed. We need to go back to the 19th century, to what could be termed the Colonial Period. The nations of Europe had colonies throughout the world. Africa south of the Sahara was largely unknown except for the coast. It's interior had never been explored by Europeans until the famous Dr. Livingston went there. After he had not been heard from for years a newspaper sponsored Stanley to search for him. His travels led to the opening up of central Africa, and its division into numerous countries, all colonies of European countries. A large part of the tropical rain forest was awareded to King Leopold of Belgium, and he named it the Congo Free State.

This time of history might also be called the Missionary Period because most of the major Protestant churches of the US and Europe were stimulated by the great commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Disciples participated in this and sent missionaries to Japan, China, India, Thailand, South America, and Mexico, but all these countries already had well established religions and the missionary effort in most cases resulted in only a few congregations which were eventually absorbed into united church movements.

However the results were much different in the Congo where there had been no organized religion. The first Disciple missionaries arrived there in 1897 and spent a long time searching for a good place to establish a mission station, finally settling on a village called Bolenge on the Congo river bank right at the equator, and just a few miles from a major tributary that drains a large area of tropical rainforest. This tributary and its branches formed the pathway for expansion of the work over the years.

Here there was no established religion to combat but lots of other problems. Malaria and other tropical diseases were a constant threat and had no good treatments in those days. Learning to communicate with the people was a major challenge for their language had never been studied or written down. In the first year they were able to communicate well enough that they began classes, and had regular preaching and Bible studies. It took several years before the first Christians were baptized, but the enthusiasm of the joy they found in the gospel led them to tell their friends, and the church was soon growing rapidly.

As more funds and more missionaries became available new stations were established further up-river. During the depression years when money was scarce things slowed a bit, but with the prosperity following the second world war activity was again on the upswing. By this time the country had become Belgian Congo, and the Belgian government had established subsidies for education and medical work. All Congolese teachers and nurses were paid by the government. When Sue and I arrived in Congo in 1957 we could see the results of the years of training local people. All primary school teachers were Congolese. Missionaries were only assigned as high school teachers or school principals. All local churches had Congolese pastors with missionaries only involved in graduate theological education, and the general supervision of the evangelism in large upriver areas. Even most smaller villages had a congregation led by a man with grade school education called a catechist.

Everything changed in 1960 when the Belgian government granted independence to their colony with almost no preparation. No Congolese had experience in high government offices. The plan for gradual takeover by on-the-job training was completely upset by the army when soldiers rebelled against their Belgian officers and went on a vicious rampage across the country, leading to the evacuation of almost all Belgians and many missionaries. Sue and I were scheduled for our furlough, and although we were caught up in the evacuation turmoil we were able to get back to the US for a year.

When we returned in the summer of 1961 calm had been restored by the presence of United Nations forces and life on the upriver stations was not much changed escept that the new government, without the income from the copper mines of Katanga and the diamonds of Kivu, was unable to keep up with salaries and other benefits the mission had formerly received. The country was not peaceful, however, and in 1964 a rebel army in the northeast began an invasion toward the capitol city, and their course took them right through our Disciple area. So another missionary evacuation was required.

With the coming of independence it became obvious that Congolese leadership in the church must be given more responsibility but this was done in a more carefully planned way. A constitution and by-laws were written creating the Disciples f Christ in Congo as a church to replace the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission. This turnover was completed in 1964 with the election of a Congolese General Minister and President of the church, a highly respected man who had earned a Doctor of Theology degree at a Belgian seminary. In the late 1960's a census of church membership showed that there were about 2/3 as many members of Disciple congregations in Congo as in the U.S.

As the years passed the country remained in turmoil, with increasing poverty and deterioration of government services. The church was the most stabilizing force with the poverty of its members being its chief obstacle to normal functioning and growth. Sue and I returned for our third term from 1967 to 1971 and then came back to Galesburg for good. I continued to keep in touch with friends there but it was difficult because the postal service was one of the government activities that didn't work. People could only send us mail by handing it to someone traveling to the U.S. who would mail it here, and we could send replies only if we knew of someone traveling there.

I returned to Congo 3 times over the years for brief visits, the last being 4 years ago. Each time the country seemed to have slipped further back Even the church went through hard times with struggles for leadership and misuse of funds. On my last visit I was in a meeting where the church leaders reported on a three day session of pastors and church leaders during which they confessed and repented of their shortcomings and set a new course. The current leadership, whom I met on that visit, are doing a very good job under difficult circumstances and the future of the Disciple church looks positive.

This brings us back to the main subject for this morning, the New City parish of Mbandaka. When we learned it had been chosen to be our sister church Linda Mowrer volunteered to write them a letter asking some questions to help us learn something of what their church is like. The reply was a two page letter with pictures which has been printed out and posted on the bulletin board.

Their church building is located about a mile and half from the General Secretariat office building which is in the downtown part of the city. The head pastor is Rev. LIKOMBA MPONGO Michel. He is 52 years old, married and father of 4 children. He has a theology degree from the Congo Protestant University and has been a pastor since 1982 beginning first in his home town of Boende and serving several congregations before being assigned to New City. There is also a woman associate pastor named Rev. Bafalanga.

The letter has a detailed list of the activities at the church each day of the week, beginning at 5:30 in the morning. Remember that at the equator the sun doesn't come up till 6 all year round, so people have to walk to the church in the dark. Some of the meetings are for Bible study, some for worship, and some for discussion of current topics like AIDS, women's health issues, hygiene, and such. The pictures below show at the left a men's group outside the building, in the center a meeting of women where the average attendance is 100, and on the right a young people's group which shows the chancel area of the church

The Sunday morning worship service is quite a bit different from ours. There is a Sunday school for children early in the morning with 80 to 100 children in attendance. There is a much smaller adult Sunday school.. The regular worship begins at 9. There are lots of songs, prayers, announcements, special music, leading up to the offering. This involves people standing by groups and parading, almost dancing up to the front where different baskets are held for the different categories of the groups. The offering along can take half an hour, but it is a time of real joy and celebration. From my own experiences in worship services there in recent years I can testify that joyous is the one word that best describes their worship. The sermon may be long but nobody seems to mind if the service goes past the noon hour. The communion comes just before the close of the service. In spite of the tropical heat the pastors, elders, and diaconate all wear robes over their clothes. Oscar says that when the service begins the attendance is a bit sparse, but people keep coming in until they have about 600 at the peak o the service.  The young people like a very animated service so in addition to choral groups they have in recent years had what they call majorettes, as shows in the pictures below.

The congregation was organized in 1967 when a missionary builder supervised the construction of their church building. The pictures below show the church buildng on the left, the primary school and kindergarten in the center, and an inside view of a church service on the right, probably taken during the offering.  

They are currently building a residence for their pastor whose present residence is seriously deteriorating. So far they are doing this with local effort, but expect to have a big problem when it comes time to need lumber for doors and windows, and roofing material which must be purchased. Oscar states that the church members would like to do better for their church but the poor state of the economy prevents them from doing so. The left picture below shows the deteriorating wall of the present residence for the pastor.  In the center is the laying of the cornerstone, and on the right the present state of construction of the new house.

I asked Oscar if he could give me some specific information about the church finances. This picture shows the finance committee that set up the budget for this year. Oscar is the person at the far left, with the associate pastor next to him, and the head pastor next to her. They proposed a budget for 2008 of $6,764 which Oscar admits was optimistic, and so far the giving has been about 65% of the goal. The pastors don't receive a fixed salary, but between them they are paid 60% of the weekly offerings. This year that has been about $62 a month for the head pastor and $44 a month for the associate. There is also an emeritus pastor which I presume means retired, and he is paid $12 a month from the 20% of the weekly offering that is reserved for church operating expenses. It is easy to see from these figures how poverty limits the ability of the church to the things it would like to do.The photo shows the finance committee with Oscar Pekombe on the left, the associate pastor next to him, and the head pastor next to her.

Two comments in the letter referring to problems stimulated our task force to ask for more details. One was about the statement that 45% of the women are illiterate, but their literacy program was inactive. Oscar replied that the lack of basic supplies and funds to pay a teacher had caused the program to halt. A second question was about transportation for the pastors. Oscar said they make home visits and hospital calls to parishioners on foot for they don't have even a bicycle. Bicycles can be purchased in Mbandaka for about $100. Since the terrain is flat a simple one speed bike works fine.

Since our congregation initiated this relationship it is up to us to take the next step. The task force would welcome suggests of how we might keep learning about them. I am always available to act as the intermediary in translating, and responses usually come back quickly.