Abstract
Background: The Apostolic Faith Mission International (AFMI) conference had as its theme called to the missional frontline in a turbulent world, but the topic of theological education never made it to the main agenda. The article engages with theological education in the context of a Western hegemonic epistemology that dominates its provision in the Global South and in the African context.
Objectives: The main objective of the study is to investigate how theological education provision was impacted by the Western paradigm in the AFMI and propose certain points of consideration that will assist them in having a relevant humanising pneumatological theological education for their missional role today.
Method: The study follows a comparative literature approach and seeks through it to uncover the roots of theological education in the AFMI and how it can assist in fulfilling their missional mandate.
Results: The study finds that the AFMI is an African Pentecostal Church that exists in all six continents and has members all over the world that is prepared in those contexts to fulfil their missional mandate. A humanising pneumatological theological education is decolonial and intersectional and contributes to missional transformation in those contexts.
Conclusion: The AFMI as an African Pentecostal church exists in the diaspora and can make a meaningful impact in missional and societal transformation; theological education has a role to play as part of their faith formation.
Contribution: The article fits well within the scope of AJOPS that aims to give an academic space for Pentecostal voices from the Global South, and the article contributes to the ongoing conversation about the role of theological education in fulfilment of the missional mandate.
Keywords: Classical Pentecostalism; missional; theological education; decolonial; humanising; pneumatological.
Introduction
The Apostolic Faith Mission International (AFMI) is an African church, which originated as a multicultural mission movement on the African continent. Through its missional focus, the AFMI developed into a glocal movement that exists now in almost 30 countries. The AFMI is considering how it positions itself as a movement called to the missional frontline in a turbulent world. Theological education can play an integral role but faces certain challenges today. This article considers what these challenges are and how theological education in the AFMI can become integrated to serve its calling to the missional frontline in a turbulent world. I would like to quote an African saying used by John Mbiti that ‘An animal smells like the forest it spends the night’ meaning that theological education in Africa should have an African smell to the glory of God. How does an AFMI theological education smells like, given her missional calling in a turbulent world?
The Apostolic Faith Mission: An African church, existing glocally
The AFMI is an African church; she originated on African soil but now exists in a global context with both global and local realities. I would prefer to call this context, a glocal context, which means it exists both globally and locally (Andrew 2022:138). This phenomenon is not new to the Christian faith because, the church of the New Testament existed in Corinth (locally) but it developed in the whole inhabited world (ecumenically) (Andrew 2022). Pentecostalism is not a homogenous movement but there is no doubt about the missiological roots of Classical Pentecostalism in the North-American origins (Kgatle 2022:2).
The AFMI was established in 1996, as a body to unite all the churches birthed from the missions work of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM of SA), existing now in 29 countries on six continents (Chikane 2019). There were three waves that gave birth to these international churches: Firstly, the first generation of indigenous lay converts from southern and eastern African countries received the Gospel in the AFM of SA and returned to their home countries and planted local AFM churches; secondly, formal missions into almost all the southern and eastern African countries by white South African missionaries, which were later interrupted by anti-colonial and anti-apartheid movements; and thirdly, the closure of the AFM central missions department in the 1990s and the continuation of missions through local assemblies (AFM of SA website). Chikane (2019:363) identifies a fourth wave initiated by Zimbabweans who left their country because of difficult economic conditions and planted AFM churches in European countries.
These international churches are now linked up through the AFMI to which member countries affiliate. The AFMI states on its website that it is a fellowship body of churches that unites worldwide and member countries affiliate but keep their autonomy, meaning that the international body does not interfere in the domestic affairs of each other1. Although the AFM of SA is the church of origin for many member churches in other countries, there exist no mother-daughter, older-younger churches relationship, but churches exist autonomously. Their relationship is one of fellowship, networking and partnership.
At the 2022 triennial conference held in Botswana, the AFMI met with the theme ‘Called to the missional frontline in a turbulent world’. During these presentations, no effort was spared to highlight the enormous challenges facing the church of Jesus Christ internally and externally and how the church can remain a faithful witness in the everyday lives of people, meeting them where they are in their situatedness or contexts (Weideman 2022:2). The turbulency referred to is mentioned in the speech delivered by the Secretary General of the AFMI and President of the AFM of SA, Dr Weideman, during the 2022 AFMI conference in Botswana. The turbulence the world is facing ranges from wars (Ukraine–Russia war), economic and political instability, ecological chaos with extreme temperatures, droughts and floods, the prevalence of gender-based violence, etc. Weideman (2022) opines that it is in this time of turbulence that the church is called to the missional frontline.
The presentations offered practical advice and biblical principles on how to deal with challenges of race and culture; economic inequality and injustice; intergenerational concerns and the need for greater solidarity and a quiet voice, the effect of patriarchy on gender inequality, and gender-based violence that plays havoc locally and globally in the member countries. The question that comes to mind was, What is the role of theological education in all this? How can our theological education institutions help us to serve this calling to the missional frontline in a turbulent world?
Theological education in the Apostolic Faith Mission
The AFM International has her origins in the AFM of SA,2 planted now more than a century ago by two missionaries from the North American context, Thomas Hezmalhalch and John G. Lake. When they arrived here, they had a strong apostolic message from God, but they came from a segregated American context into a segregated South African context. There are voices that were critical about the ‘unintended’ continuation of subtle racist practices, as in the case of William Seymour, who had to receive his theological education from the passage because he was not allowed to join his white fellow students in the class at Topeka Bible School. Elias Letwaba, one of the first black pastors of the AFM, had a similar experience in the South African context. Although the movement had an equality of races, classes and genders in the original stages of the movement in America and South Africa, it succumbed to the societal influence of racism, classism and sexism. This influenced the presentation of theological education in the broader Pentecostal movement and the AFM of SA. The story about the origins of the theological colleges in the member countries of the AFMI is a story for another article, in collaboration with colleagues from the Apostolic Faith Mission Theological Association (AFMTEA). For now, the focus will be more broadly on the challenges faced by theological education glocally and what it means for the AFMI and her missional calling in a turbulent world.
An extensive account on the origins and development of theological education in the AFM of South Africa was recently written by scholars (Kgatle 2018; Nel 2014; Nel & Janse van Rensburg 2016). Nel and Janse van Rensburg (2016:8) state that ‘theological training in the AFM of SA has followed the same long and arduous journey over the past century that the Pentecostal Movement has generally followed’. Nel and Van Rensburg (2016) point out how theological education has developed into a single system that respects differences but provides equal opportunity to all prospective students of theology.
Kgatle (2018:2) expresses the need for integration in the curriculum, decolonisation of Pentecostal research and emergence of African scholars who can address cutting edge issues in their contexts. Kgatle (2021) asserts that an integrated theological education literally started with a black pastor, Elias Letwaba, who founded the Patmos Bible School, which serves as a model for synergy between theory and praxis because of its relevant theological curriculum and embracing of African identity and indigenous knowledge. Kgatle (2021) points out in how many ways theological education in Pentecostalism was influenced by a colonial epistemology that undermines the indigenous knowledge systems of Africa and led to the undermining of African contributions to the theological enterprise. The Patmos model proposed by Kgatle (2021) had in mind the Africanisation of the curriculum, which is not merely the adding of voices but rather the pedagogy, the way in which theology is taught. It is not an abstract theory, but the knowledge is rooted in local contexts of the social ills plaguing them. In a recent contribution, Kgatle (2023) utilises the Indigenous Knowledge System Approach to facilitate decolonisation of theological education, referring to the oral nature of liturgy, as one of the mediums to make Christianity more relevant to the African context.
Kgatle (2018:7) pleads for a contextual and diversified theological education that is ‘delinked from imperial/modern claims of universality that continue epistemic colonisation and the global matrix of power towards relinking with African thought patterns, rooted and grounded in Ubuntu …’. A contextualised theological education relevant to the African context is accessible for all, equip all God’s people to meet their immediate social and ecumenical needs.
Global North influence on theological education in the Global South
An AFMI theological training recognises her origins in Western forms of Pentecostal Christianity and deliberately decides to decentre and delink theological education from any constraints to the missional calling and commit itself to epistemic justice. Globalising dynamics help us to appreciate the horizontality of our interconnected world, presenting three aspects of a flattening world.
Firstly, in the last half century, Christianity’s centre shifted from the Euro-American West to the Global South. Secondly, Protestant forms of this new ‘world Christianity’ are more evangelical, moving away from the colonial missionary enterprise. Examples that demonstrate this ‘new world Christianity’ are the Lausanne movement, which started in 1974 and reaffirmed again in 2010, the belief that the whole church, take the whole gospel, to the whole world.
Thirdly, the Pentecostal and charismatic elements in this new world Christianity cannot be ignored and denied. Keum (2013:5) refers to it as the ‘most noteworthy’ development in global Christianity. The latter point influences theological education for the Global South and the Global North. The West has more faculty, financial, capital, library and other resources that exceed what is available in the South and through globalisation sets the standard for framing what theological education should look like in the Global South, what Yong calls a form of neocolonialism.
There are also reverse currents of influence with Asians, Africans and Latin Americans going to Europe and America and taking their religious commitments with them, working their missionary vocations out along the way. Chikane (2019:363) concurs that those difficult economic conditions in some African countries such as Zimbabwe, forced AFM members to go to European countries for better economic opportunities and the need arise for them to worship together, which has the planting of AFM churches as an effect. This results in a gradual decentreing of Western (European) normativity in theological conversation, manifesting their cultural diversity and indigenous spiritualties (Yong 2019:32). The recent conversation about ‘reverse mission’ provides interesting insights to the way in which members from African church contexts organise themselves and re-contextualise worship and mission in Europe and North America (Biehl 2024; Oppong-Konado 2023).
In the past, missions were performed from a departure of ‘What is West is Best and to Hell with the Rest’ and with it came the white European colonial and Western epistemology, a hegemonic form of knowledge production and knowledge distribution. A position that is regarded as a subtle way of maintaining colonial and imperial mindsets and behaviours that play out today in what is called, a coloniality of power, collegiality of knowledge, coloniality of being and coloniality of gender (Seroto 2018:3). The result is the ‘thingification’ or dehumanising of people.
Naidoo (2022:224) asserts that Africa has thrown off the colonial subjugation of the West but remains extensively dependent on them. She quotes Anderson, who observed that Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are close to western forms of theologising, and not many new initiates are undertaken to provide theological education that is relevant to their two-thirds world contexts. Naidoo’s statement should be read within the wider framework of decolonisation. Decoloniality does not mean anti-Western or anti-white, but it simply means finding the voice of local contexts and appreciating their different ways of knowing, being and doing. For that to happen, some scholars propose a de-linking from Western European dualistic and hegemonic ways of knowing and doing. It is not necessarily a rejection but rather a way of embracing African indigenous values and knowledges that have become lost through colonialism and in the South African context through colonialism (Pali 2024).
Integration in theological education
The AFMI is a fellowship of churches that exists in over 35 countries and on six continents, which implies theological education done in these diverse contexts cannot follow a one-size-fits-all approach. The following contributions provide some interesting elements that might be useful when considering a framework for theological education that takes these contexts into account.
Hopkins (2019) identifies a ‘double calling’ for theological education that is first to God, and second for humans. Framing theological education in a fluid and dynamic way means that certain challenges need to be taken into consideration. These are preparing students for leadership in a world with a political economy and to discern the good news in a world with changing global realities; attend to the chasm between the have-nots and have-mores, with the economic gap widening between the rich and the poor; be clear about its purpose in higher education; equip citizens with practices of self-cultivation; teach students their (American) cultural history (that is also African); together with their African heritage, what is their immediate American identity; think human culture as the site of divine revelation; take seriously the realities of the two-thirds majority of the world; place a stronger accent on the use of multidisciplinary methodology; become more of a public enterprise; and engage all youth in a spiritual process.
Tomlin (2018) states that the purpose of theological education is the maturity of the believers and more broadly spoken, the unity of creation. He states that there is a link between the theological education of ministers in the church and creation, ‘the telos of the work of God in the world is to overcome the fragmentation of a divided and broken world, to bring it to unity in Christ’ (Tomlin 2018:115). Fragmentation in theological education is a theological problem if its main purpose is to serve the ministry of the church, which intends the reconciliation of creation – all things in Christ. Tomlin (2018:116) suggests that one of the primary goals of theological education is to enable students to live lives of wholeness and integration. Tomlin (2018:117) regards theological education as the development of people that is steeped in Christian wisdom, which is defined as knowing what to do and how to do it, to enable the church to come to full maturity in Christ. He proposes four areas of integration in theological education, that is, theology and ministry; academy and the church; prayer and theology; and evangelical and catholic. Christian wisdom (Tomlin 2018):
[C]an only emerge by a process of bringing together factors that are often held apart, to enable students to lead integrated, whole, healthy lives that issue in integrated whole healthy churches, and finally in an integrated, whole, and healthy world. (p. 125)
Barentsen (2021:171) observes that theological seminaries and faculties can no longer focus only on training well-equipped interpreters of traditions of faith in supposition of the work of clergy that focus mainly on the maintenance and adaptation of traditions to the needs of church members. Theological education nurtures faithful interpreters of Scripture and human and divine actions to prepare students to be better prepared to provide contextual and adaptive leadership in church and society. This implies that theological education should focus on case studies in theological disciplines; hermeneutical competence is not just directed at ancient texts or human beings as texts but understand habits and practices, to read it as forms of theological expressions together with other theological practices; to discern how God is working in that particular context, showing the relevance of religious and social identification for the student (Barentsen 2021:172).
Cahalan (2012:386) defines integration in theological education as the vocation and the process of student learning in which being, doing and knowing intersect. Herein is included the relationship between pedagogy, curriculum and institutional culture, with wise or prudent professional practice of ministry that serves the community of faith. The three areas for integration in theological education, identified by Cahalan (388), are integration for the self (ongoing vocational discernment and professional training in ministry); integration of context (where teaching, curriculum and educational culture intersect); integrated practitioners in the community of faith (going beyond the seminary wall).
Cahalan (2012:394) regards integration in theological education as both a process (being intentionally engaged through a variety of pedagogies, sequencing of courses that connects across disciplines and life experiences) and a goal (building scholarship that describes and analyses the practice of ministers, teachers, seminaries and congregations). Using the metaphor of pilgrimage, Cahalan (2012:394) tries to capture the ‘intentionality of educational processes, but also the wayward, unpredictable, and sometime shocking circumstances that shapes travel and the traveler’. The whole person as traveller embraces ambiguity and fragmentation of both the self and the community as indispensable parts of the whole in this journey.
Naidoo (2021:68) identifies three approaches to integration in theological education, firstly, exploring integration in the historical embedded theological disciplines; secondly, explaining the methodology of praxis to deal with the perennial theory-practice tension; and thirdly, underscoring the need for educators to interact pedagogically different with students, engaging the knowing, doing and being of their personhood. The one-size-fits-all approach does not work in theological education because of the different contexts in which it is presented. Institutions understand integration differently because of its context and should do intentional planning with all stakeholders to align goals from course purpose, to programme and institution, although resistance to change might occur from disciplines and faculty. Disciplines should know that studying theology is fundamentally practical because it is rooted in praxis and has a theory and practice component to it, all being sub-movements within an overarching practical framework (Naidoo 2021:77). Tensions between theory and practice can be overcome when students engage in action and interpret contexts through their own theological lenses (as co-creators of knowledge). Naidoo (2021:77) posits that ‘integration happens when practice, learning and reflective insight happen in and through intentional processes’.
Theological education as an integrative process helps students to make connections through pedagogical efforts, serving the interests of the students for whom the curriculum is designed not the educator (Naidoo 2021:78). It puts the learner and the educator at the same level as co-creators of knowledge and breaks the power continuum. The integrative process requires a lifetime commitment from both students and educators, a developmental commitment that is based on the readiness of the student, a curriculum and environment that is designed for the student to make connections, and develop the educational pedagogy capacity of the educator (Naidoo 2021:79).
Naidoo (2022:224) explores the concept of integration in theological education in the African context and asserts that the compartmentalistic limits of education restrict the communal and cultural duties of African leadership. Integration can in this African context be described as:
[A] way of talking about the construction of the self-in-community, which requires learning and reflection through intentional patterns and processes that can form leaders for precisely this context. (p. 224)
Integration, defined as ‘interwoven, connected, thematic, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, correlated, linked and holistic’, fits well into the African awareness of the unity of reality that is material and spiritual, in search of meaning for the self and society (Naidoo 2022:225). Points to consider for an analysis of theological education in the AFMI are as follows: The interplay of the three dimensions within formal and hidden curriculum namely academic learning, the development of pastoral skills, and character formation.
Integration is an important approach to foster relevant ministerial training, requiring educators to rethink aspects of design and methodology and commit to curriculum changes. These changes involve, firstly, that new contextual modules be grounded in the African worldview and epistemology with increased African resources; secondly, the use of engaged pedagogies that include apprenticeships and problem-based learning; thirdly, team-taught interdisciplinary or thematic teaching that focuses on cooperation and interdependence; and lastly, a focus on holistic personal development that includes non-academic aspects of the curriculum (Naidoo 2022:231).
Aleshiri (2018:33) asserts that theological education is influenced by the social location of religion in the culture, the needs of religious communities and developments in higher education. He prefers a formational theological education model more than the ‘professional theological education’ model that intends to blend into the social status of a culture. Aleshiri (2018:36) describes formational theological education as intellectually engaged but that it reflects a different academic effort and telos. It includes not only educating to install intellectual grasp of theological disciplines and competent pastoral skills but also accommodate authentic humanity, relational ability and spiritual maturity. It calibrates current academic practices and repositions educational efforts to cultivate pastoral skills.
Gornik (2018:106) asserts that ‘the telos of theological education is God’s peace and abundant life for all of God’s creation, including cities’. Drawing from Acts 18:1–1 that God has many people in the city, he situates the city and the church as the context for the telos of theological education. Accepting that God was already at work in the city makes theology a joyful, hopeful and forward-looking experience. In the process, he learns about and was shaped by what God was doing in the city. It provided a window into the living dynamic of world and urban Christianity in the 21st century. New churches from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean are growing; have global connections; have combined prayer and networks with creativity, agility and entrepreneurial energy (Gornik 2018:108).
Gornik (2018:109) also explores how a diverse community can learn together and sustain their charism by their institutional life, offering spaces for intercultural learning, where the gifts and stories of the whole body of Christ are welcomed and honoured. Such a community offers integrative or holistic learning, which requires commitment, time, interpretive skills, nurturing transformation in the knowledge and practice of ministry (Gorkin 2018:110). He observes that the integration of theology, spirituality and life is essential for theological learning. Institutions can offer spaces where flourishing lives and communities that embody our deepest beliefs are organised and achieved.
Gornik (2018:112) grounds his intergenerational perspective to theological education ‘within a narrative across generations: a ‘full-growing’ into the humanity of Christ across history and continents, and ones perhaps always between times’. He sees intergenerational faith as the core of the narrative of faith identity, answering questions about family, culture, belief and their beloved churches, moving between times of continuity and change. Part of their ecology of learning was to engage in a multifaceted and multiyear project on the transmission and translation of faith among second and third generations, integrating in their curriculum what they learn about families, youth and intergenerational church.
Chrispal (2019) expresses the need for transformative pastoral training in the ‘two-thirds majority world’ because of the lack of deep discipleship under the Lordship of Jesus Christ that could transform their worldviews; minimal education as a result of the downtrodden communities they come from; and the leadership deficit in the regions where the church is growing. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity found that over two million pastors in the majority world lack biblical training; 90% of churches worldwide have leaders with no formal training; and with the increase of the conversion rate, the need for pastors has also increased (Chrispal 2019). Formal theological education is detrimental to the health of the church, but the need for non-formal approaches is rising because of the large numbers of pastors who need training that is neither accessible nor appropriate to their circumstances. Traditional theological training emphasises reading and writing, while it is difficult for oral-based learners and carry different worldview presuppositions.
Chrispal (2019) observes a paradigm shift in theological education that recognises theology is for the whole church, not just for the pursuit of elitist leaders in the church; theology as a cerebral pursuit should focus on character formation undergirded by a biblical theology; the paradigm of student fees, donations (fundraising in the West) and expenses is no longer viable because students are becoming bi-vocational and donors are more interested in outcome and impact learning; transformative theological education is needed that focus on outcomes rooted in missional and ministerial formation; and focus should shift to emerging churches from marginalised and oppressive contexts. A two-thronged approach is needed that comprises formal and non-formal theological education, focusing mainly on the contextualised styles of learning in the majority world and not being elitist or traditionalist but to recognise the need for transformation of the church, rooted and grounded in the Word of God (Chrispal 2019).
Day (2021) uses testifying, a familiar mode of speech for Pentecostals, whereby the testimony service was at the centre of the worship experience. The testimony service was verbal and demonstrative, a way of proclaiming the truth of an experience of being liberated by the Spirit. It was a collective experience, whereby the individual testified about God’s goodness while it was also a collective awakening and affirmation; it became knowledge about God and who they are as a community. It was a way of experiencing divine presence, how God is experienced in community and how they can overcome anything that seems to destroy or assault them, having the ability to hope.
Day (2021) encourages black faculty and students not to be silent but to testify about intersectional racism that continues to plague the theological academy and find ways how to make these spaces creative, dynamic and life-giving homes. Theological institutions should not just acknowledge and rectify racial disenfranchisement but also build educational ecologies that desire to be authentic communities. Day (2021) states ‘part of knowing how to build just and caring educational ecologies involves listening to contemporary radical social movements oriented towards practices of gathering and inclusion’. Testifying connects with the theme of the AFMI being called to the missional frontline in a turbulent world. Pentecostals find in the first witnesses of the apostles and the apostolic tradition the origins and the foundation of their calling into the world. Amos Yong finds in the narrative of Acts certain directives for a humanising pneumatological theological education.
The value of a comparative literature analysis is that it provides an opportunity to work interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and transdisciplinary, where one can find useful contributions for design and development of curricula that fits into a glocal, multicultural framework for theological education. Contributions from the above conversation partners indicate that there is a need for a paradigm shift in the AFMI, that theological education is for the whole church as it exists in multiple and diverse contexts.
The value of an integrated framework for theological education in the AFMI is integration of the self-in-community, where the focus is on knowing, doing and being, thus breaking compartmentalistic attitudes. It fits also into the African understanding of holism, where the spiritual and the materialistic are one, and where the formal and hidden curriculum is considered. In such a curriculum in theological education, African indigenous knowledge systems, engaged pedagogies and team-led teaching and learning practices with holistic personal development are considered. A process of integrating theological education for the AFMI can best be described as a pilgrimage, where the way forward is well-planned and implemented with contextual sensitivity, but also keeping in mind that the way forward is exciting but unpredictable, given the diverse glocal context in which it exists.
Acts: Directives for a humanising pneumatological approach
The AFMI is a fellowship of churches that find their roots within the AFM of SA, which is a classical Pentecostal church. Within the Pentecostal movement, the Holy Spirit, as the third Person in the Trinity, is experienced as present and being actively involved in the ministry and mission of the church. Kgatle (2024) calls Pentecostals, people of the Spirit, who are baptised in the Spirit and speaking in tongues but question how that experience is connecting with the environment. The same Spirit that leads Pentecostals should lead them to an understanding of holistic salvation that brings body, soul and the environment together. He argues in another contribution that Amos Yong’s understanding of pneumatological imagination can be helpful for a Spirit-inspired logic in Pentecostal theology. The contours of a pneumatological imagination are portrayed in three ways, it is perceived in the experiential domain (many senses), cultural domain (many tongues), and in the communal domain (many interpenetrating voices) in the work of Yong (Kgatle 2023). For the sake of our topic of theological education, I will give an outline of how Yong (2019) applies pneumatological imagination to theological education and comes up with a humanising pneumatological approach that is helpful for how the AFMI could envision it within their glocal context.
Yong (2019) finds in the narrative of the outpouring of the Spirit, as it is recorded in Acts 21-4 directives for theological education, which is helpful for the positioning of the AFMI as a glocal community that is called to the missional frontline in a turbulent world. Yong (2019:78) derives firstly, that the Spirit came upon those who were gathered together to pray. He describes it as a spatial and temporal togetherness, a link with the contemporary network society that links disparate spaces and times across multiple time zones for the work of teaching and learning.
Secondly, he derives from Acts 2:17/Joel 2:28 that the Spirit was poured out on all flesh, meaning that the participants did not just hear but also feel the Spirit coming, drawing them fully in, engaging them as embodied and effectively involved. Yong (2019) states that Pentecost bridges the transcendent and the immanent, the divine and the human, God’s spirit and human spirits. The Spirit is poured out on both teachers and learners as creaturely human bodies, which become recipients of the divine spirit and live the mission of God as Spirit-ed vessels. They are now touched as embodied humans in their physicality, intricately connected with their human hearts (feelings), loves (devotion) and hopes (anticipation and purposes).
Thirdly, Yong (2019) derives from Acts 2:5 that the speaking in tongues event (glossolalia) emphasises the multicultural nature of this Spirit-ed community, listing humanity in her vast ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity. He sees the eradication of differences as contravening the ecclesial mission in the New Testament (Jews first and then Greeks – Rm 1:16; 2:9–10/ No longer Jew and Greek – Gl 3:8/ Col 3:11) of forming a new people of God that includes them all. Yong (2019) states that the church is ‘color blind’ in the sense that both groups are included but not that colonial ideology and white normativity are ignored. The multilingual discursivity of the fellowship of the Spirit constitutes ecumenical catholicity, which in turn constitutes multiracial, interethnic and cross-cultural dialogue. Theological education should undergo what Yong (2019) calls ‘a de-centering of Western normativity’, especially the decolonising of ‘Eurocentrism’ that is enshrined in the modern ecclesial and higher educational enterprise.
Yong (2019) finds in Luke’s perspective of Pentecost (Ac 2:17–21/Ac 2:29–31) an understanding of the divine reign as egalitarian, democratic and a just ordered community. It is intergenerational (both sons and daughters are included); promote gender equality (women are not second-class citizens, receive the Spirit together with men); and demands economic justice (slaves are included, erasing the distinctions formed by economic powers). Acts 17:6 records how these disciples of Jesus Christ were turning the world upside down so that wrongs were righted, the marginalised empowered and the lowly lifted.
A humanising pneumatological approach to theological education fits well into a Pentecostal setting as the AFMI, which forms part of Pentecostal Christianity. As a community gathered by the Spirit, they understand the importance of being connected in time and space; accept the Spirit falls on both learners and teachers, which brings mutual respect as co-creators of knowledge and embrace ambiguity and fragmentation as opportunities to learn from each other. They are involved in theological education as embodied persons, engaged holistically to improve self, community and creation. The phenomenon of speaking in tongues testifies to the multicultural, multilingual and multi-ethnic nature of theological education. It breathes an ecumenical catholicity that respects unity in diversity and cultivates tolerance and openness to those who are different in belief and praxis. Appreciation for the intergenerational and intersectional nature of the missional calling, established and directed by the Spirit.
Conclusion
The AFMI will have to investigate the Western epistemological roots of its theological education and deliberately delink their theological training from the ‘West is best’ tendency. The curriculum they teach to their pastors and lay members should take cognisance of the ‘flat’ world they are operating now, not reject or resist the fourth industrial revolution but really use its benefits to connect more deeply and widely, locally and globally. They should move beyond just formation of pastors for ordained ministry but focus on an aspect that is characteristic of Pentecostal Christianity, the democratisation of ministry, where the whole church spreads the whole gospel to the whole world. Such a holistic missional focus can address the challenges more effectively, as highlighted by the AFMI conference.
A holistic missional focus takes an integrative approach to theological education seriously, integrating being, doing and knowing. Such a focus integrates theory and praxis; embraces ambiguity and fragmentation; focuses on community and creation; prepares contextual and transformative leadership; respects theological sense of students as co-creators of knowledge; rejects a one-size-fits-all approach; becomes spaces of intergenerational and intersectional learning, including young and old, male and female; and becomes spaces of integrative holistic learning where lives flourish and communities reflect their deepest beliefs.
When the AFMI allow the Spirit to lead them intentionally towards the goal of theological education, fulfilling the double calling of serving God and humanity, broader also, the whole of creation, they will be open for surprises by the Spirit and accept no challenge as final. They will then understand the process of being, doing and knowing that is integral to theological education, keeping an eschatological expectation that is not only focused on the here and now but also in full expectation of the future.
Acknowledgements
Competing interests
The author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
Author’s contributions
D.N.A. is the sole author of this research article.
Ethical considerations
This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.
Funding information
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. It does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.
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Footnotes
1. Available online: https://www.afmintl.org/p/about-us
2. The AFM of SA was planted in 1908 by Hezmalhalch and Lake and forms part of the churches that identify themselves as Classical Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, Full Gospel Church of God and the Christian Assemblies (Kgatle 2022, 2023; Resane 2018).
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