Mozambique Blog 10

I’ve never properly found out how the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique got its name.  Bearing in mind that its roots go back to the Swiss Mission (the 125^th anniversary of its work will be commemorated in 2012), we might have expected this French-speaking organisation to have given birth to a Church that wore the epithet Reformed, rather than Presbyterian. When I’ve asked in the past about this, I’ve been given the answer that it may just be to do with the proximity of English-speaking missionaries in the late 19^th century whose work in South African will have overlapped with the Swiss. But I also wonder if the Founding Fathers may have cottoned on to the fact that the Portuguese word reformado also means retired – perhaps not quite the way you want to describe a Church that seeks to become a force in the land. (But I guess it makes me reformado squared.)

Today I’ve been asking just how Presbyterian the IPM really is. I don’t have any ecclesiological reference books at hand, but the Wikipedia article on Presbyterian polity seems to me to have the right idea when it contrasts its subject with the Congregational way, and makes the point that “authority in the presbyterian polity flows both from the top down (as higher assemblies exercise limited but important authority over individual congregations, e.g. only the presbytery can ordain ministers, install pastors, and start up, close, and approve relocating a congregation) and from the bottom up (e.g. the moderator and officers are not appointed from above but are rather elected by and from among the members of the assembly).” Many of us would be wary of this top and bottom language, but we would still expect constraints on any local church that chooses to go its own way.

We were taken this morning on a Synod Pastoral Visit to Moamba, near the South African border. The church there, which is literally the wrong side of the tracks, has been struggling since the 1920s: it can’t afford to pay for a minister, and indeed has nowhere to house a minister, so the only ministry it receives is from a poor pastor who lives 50 Km away and makes his living through secular employment. His commitment is strictly Sundays-only. Your heart goes out to such people – and wonderfully they remain faithful and full of hope. All of which is being  expressed now in their plans to build a new church.

We crossed the tracks just as the train for Johannesburg drew in – but all the coming and going was on the side we had left. Another ten minutes’ walk through a very poor area brought us to a large open space, which our hosts proudly told us was all theirs. On one edge was a half built house which hardly looked the work of professional builders, while over the far side was the poor corrugated iron building that is hardly fit to function as a place of worship. Next to it were the foundation blocks of what is being designed as a substantial building. And with the visit, I should add, came an invitation to return and lay the foundation stone on November 6^th!

My heart sank at the sight of it all, because over my visits to Mozambique I have seen so many half-and-less-built buildings. A Church that knows its Bible well seems never to have reflected on Luke 14.28. Shouldn’t its people first sit down and calculate what they are capable of? Time and time again work is begun on projects for which there is no budget, no intention of ever using competent and professional labour, and which will use up all the resources that might have otherwise gone towards, for instance, costs of ministry and evangelism. All of this is being decided by local congregations, who leave no prospect of any kind of national strategy for development and mission.

Talking with the Synod visitors afterwards I sensed a degree of frustration on their part – and maybe bemusement that Presbyterian polity should have led to such a situation. They cited instances of building projects that have taken 15 or 20 years – and I suspect know of others that have simply no hope of completion. Yet on the other hand, who can disparage the faith of those who laugh at impossibilities, and cry it will be done? I don’t think I’ll be around Moamba on November 6^th, and I can’t help feeling sceptical about the whole project, but I’d love to think that one day someone from Northern Synod will attend the grand opening of its new Presbyterian Church!

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Crossing back I got into trouble (or at least got my Mozambican minders in trouble) by pointing my camera at the station. Apparently special permission is needed. But the story of the footbridge is worth retelling. It carefully crosses from the central platform to the right (Portuguese colonialist) side of the tracks – but there is no footbridge crossing to the side we had been walking through. People there didn’t really count as people. “About as bad as apartheid South Africa?” I suggested.  My hosts agreed – there was little to choose between them.

John Durell