end-month news December 2025

Dear Friends,

Picture of myself and a local bishop in Yala, Kenya, with a visiting preacher from Tanzania. (The latter was once my student in a pastoral training school in Tanzania.)

Theological Education in Africa – Serious Dilemma!

Many theological colleges, Universities (and other institutions) in Africa are dependent on outside funding. When outside funding is available for free, few locals are interested in making serious contributions to schools and colleges unless they are employed and paid. Outsiders use their own reasoning to assess what ought to happen at these schools. Their funds are offered tied to this understanding, even if also trying to be lenient to local people’s views. The national government also makes rules that try to please their foreign donors so as to ensure more funding. So, theological colleges must try to please their own donors. They must also please government officers who are pleasing their donors. They must also satisfy students. Students often know that success in life requires pleasing donors. They want to know how to please people in the West. This requires learning a Western not a locally-relevant curriculum. Preparing people who can work in local conditions can be of second, third, or even infinitely minor importance.

Many, probably all, theological colleges in Africa are under pressure in these kinds of ways. This forces them to use English, even when English is not used in churches. They have to learn how to run a church in America, when Africa is not like America. In order to pass exams, they often have to pretend to not be who they are. Pastoral training schools I work with feel these pressures intensely. Please pray that God’s Word not get lost in this massive pressure to appear to be modern and donor-pleasing.

Some colleges in theology and ministry, have introduced many other courses, in health, business, and so on. Even before they have students for the latter courses. Pray that students will come when colleges open in January. Pray that this legacy of missionary work be redeemed through finding a pertinent and relevant way of providing theological instruction that challenges African contexts.

In terms of education, it might be helpful to explain, that traditional ways of life in Africa do not require a lot of formal education. This makes it very difficult for African people to devise curriculum themselves. They instead borrow foreign curriculum, that may have little local fit.

Mum

Thanks for those of you who are praying for Mum. Mum is now in a care home in Fareham, Hampshire. This is temporary, for a period of evaluation. Her situation seems to be particularly complicated and difficult, hence the evaluation required. As I write, on 24^th December, she is admitted to hospital with a chest infection.

Prospective Ministry

My new position, in which I am keeping my laptop at home, is enabling me to do a lot more ministry than previously. Give thanks for this enabling, that saves a lot of miles back and fore by bicycle! Please pray for security at my home. Frankly, my laptop is not particularly valuable … but potential thieves might be drawn by the presence of a Westerner, for which read ‘someone with a lot of money’.

16^th February, I have been told, is the opening day for our two weeks of teaching in Tanzania at the Mennonite Theological College. I hope to do some visits and ministry on my way there, and on my way back. In May, God willing, I will be back in Babati in Tanzania. In the mean-time combining keeping up with computer work and doing local ministry is wonderful. Thanks for your prayers.

Jim