From Church Mission Society
Harvey Kwiyani has recently joined the teaching team at the Church Mission Society and is currently lecturing on the CMS Pioneer Mission Leadership Training Course. He is teaching pioneer students about his experience of cross-cultural mission from an African perspective.
Originally from Malawi, Harvey spent three years as a pastor in a Vineyard church he planted in America. Before this, he had worked in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and England for seven years. He has a PhD in Mission and Leadership from the Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is now based in Birmingham, where he has set up Missio Africanus. This is a mission training initiative that helps missionaries and Christian leaders from around the world understand the cultural barriers they encounter in the West.
Harvey says of his work, “Migration brings many Christians from the rest of the world to Britain, yet cultural diversity is poorly represented in the churches. One of the reasons for this is a failure to negotiate our Christian identity and hospitality across cultures and nationalities. We end up creating our own expressions of church. Unfortunately by doing this we’ve failed to share the gospel with our British neighbours – the very reason of our presence in Britain.”
Jonny Baker, director of mission education at CMS, comments, “It’s great having Harvey working with us at CMS. He brings a very different perspective and is helping CMS embody a cultural diversity that engages with churches that represent the wide variety of cultures and ethnicities present in the UK. For our students, it means becoming more aware of our own cultural expectations and prejudices by seeing the world and how that connects with our faith through the eyes of others.”
As well as the training Harvey is developing in partnership with some leaders in the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Church of Pentecost, he has recently published a book entitled Sent Forth: African Missionary Work in the West. In it he suggests that church history, especially from the first five centuries of Christianity, is full of African leaders working in the West. With this history in mind, he explores the contemporary Western context and how African Christianity, if allowed, will play a significant role in missions among Westerners. This is in line with the "blessed reflex" that the old missionaries of the 1800s hoped for, when Christians from then unevangelised lands in Africa and Asia, would come to reinvigorate Christianity in the West.
-The CMS Pioneer Mission Leadership Training Course is a creative way of equipping and mobilising Christians for ground-breaking, transformational and sustainable mission. It offers a wide range of learning options, from individual modules to a diploma and MA.