Read­ing Time: 24 minutes

Facilities and spirit of the global system

In the words of Samuel Esco­bar, Chris­ti­ans oper­at­ing in the glob­al world should know how to use the facil­it­ies of the glob­al sys­tem without being caught by the spir­it of the sys­tem itself. This is a great warn­ing. It is equi­val­ent to Jesus’ warn­ing to the dis­ciples that they are in the world but not of the world (cf. John 17:15–16). What this means is that the use of ICT requires dis­cern­ment. One of the side effects of ICT is extreme indi­vidu­al­ism and the elim­in­a­tion of per­son­al con­tact. The first meth­od of effect­ive mis­sion is to under­stand and be cap­tiv­ated with the mis­sion of Jesus, to pro­claim the Gos­pel to the entire world.[16] While avail­ing them­selves of the mod­ern means of com­mu­nic­a­tion, mis­sion­ar­ies should be aware of this fact of mak­ing the salvif­ic mes­sage avail­able to all. The Church her­self is aware of the risk of these means of social com­mu­nic­a­tion. The Church does not doubt the immense con­tri­bu­tions of ICT because they con­trib­ute greatly to the con­sol­id­a­tion of the king­dom of God. Again, the Church knows it is her oblig­a­tion to pro­claim the Gos­pel, and she believes this task entails the use of the social com­mu­nic­a­tion to announce the good news of sal­va­tion and to teach men how to make prop­er use of them. The ICT should be prop­erly employed. Those who use them for evan­gel­iz­a­tion should know the prin­ciples of the mor­al order. They should form a cor­rect con­science on the use of these social net­works.[17] While they use the facil­it­ies of glob­al­iz­a­tion, they should guide against the spir­it of the glob­al system.

Effective planning

There is no aspect of human exist­ence that does not require adequate and effect­ive plan­ning. Most people are not suc­cess­ful in life because their desire to be suc­cess­ful is not accom­pan­ied by an effect­ive plan­ning. The fail­ure to plan is to have planned to fail. The first step towards a suc­cess­ful mis­sion­ary activ­ity is effect­ive plan­ning. God planned cre­ation. And Jesus planned his mis­sion. The apostles planned their mis­sion too. Even Paul him­self planned his mis­sion­ary activ­it­ies (cf. for instance Acts 19:21). There­fore, we must also plan our own mis­sion. Con­cern­ing plan­ning, Jesus asks “which of you, intend­ing to build a tower, does not first sit down and estim­ate the cost, to see wheth­er he has enough to com­plete it?” (Luke 14:28). With the advent of glob­al­iz­a­tion, mis­sion­ar­ies should review their mis­sion­ary plan to suit the new envir­on­ment. The Church must be flex­ible with her meth­ods to meet the needs of the time. How­ever, in doing so, care should be taken not to com­prom­ise the Gos­pel mes­sage. Effect­ive plan­ning means read­ing the hand writ­ing on the wall. And the hand writ­ing says there is ser­i­ous evol­u­tion and total over­haul­ing going on.

Part of the effect­ive plan­ning is the pro­vi­sion of adequate and effect­ive com­mu­nic­a­tion centres for the dif­fu­sion of the Gos­pel mes­sage, mor­als and val­ues. Cath­ol­ic Church and espe­cially Owerri Eccle­si­ast­ic­al Province is lag­ging behind in this regard. Although some of the Dio­ceses have their weekly journ­als[18], but is it enough? It should be a mat­ter of great con­cern that there is no single Cath­ol­ic radio or tele­vi­sion sta­tion in the entire Province. Even the web sites[19] of the Dio­ceses are not won­der­ful. Most of them are not func­tion­al. And almost none is updated. Some have communications/media centres.[20] But are they equipped and func­tion­al? The truth is that Cath­ol­ic Church is not well immersed in the mod­ern means of com­mu­nic­a­tion. Oth­er micro Churches, and organ­iz­a­tions and even indi­vidu­als have power­ful radio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions through which they pro­mote their products and propag­ate their seem­ingly good news. But it appears the Cath­ol­ic Church in Africa and par­tic­u­larly, in Niger­ia, is not yet con­scious of the changed and chan­ging nature of these realities.

Globalized mind and approach

By defin­i­tion, mind­set is the habitu­al or char­ac­ter­ist­ic men­tal atti­tude that determ­ines how a per­son inter­prets and responds to situ­ations. Glob­al­iz­a­tion and ICT have no prob­lems in them­selves. The prob­lem is with those who make use of them. Address­ing the Cor­inthi­an Chris­ti­ans, Paul said “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1Cor 9:22). Becom­ing all things does not mean or imply becom­ing like all people. It is only a neces­sary tech­nique to reach, con­vince and win oth­ers over. By becom­ing all things to all people, Paul devised a means of bring­ing across the Gos­pel to every­one, mak­ing him­self part of that oth­ers’ giv­en con­di­tion. Applied to our con­text, becom­ing all things is tak­ing advant­age of glob­al­iz­a­tion and ensure the mes­sage of sal­va­tion is con­tinu­ously regen­er­ated in the lives of people. Ours is a world that con­stantly presents new chal­lenges and our soci­ety trans­itions from one glob­al com­munity to anoth­er. Mis­sion­ar­ies should become all things by immers­ing them­selves into this con­stant change and glob­al trans­itions. As dis­ciples, mis­sion­ar­ies should seek for new and bet­ter oppor­tun­it­ies to announce the Gos­pel. They should have glob­al­ized mind and glob­al­ized approach.

Conclusion[21]

Glob­al­iz­a­tion is not just a fad or a media buzzword, but an accur­ate descrip­tion of a rel­at­ively recent change in the way nations, states, the inter­na­tion­al sys­tem of states, indi­vidu­als, and human­kind as a whole inter­act with one anoth­er and how they con­sciously under­stand them­selves. It describes both an object­ive set of rela­tion­ships and a sub­ject­ive aware­ness of them. The rapid­ity and massive­ness of these new dynam­ics threaten the iden­tity of humans both as groups and as indi­vidu­als. At the same time, they make pos­sible the par­ti­cip­a­tion of ever great­er num­bers of people in their own devel­op­ment, not only eco­nom­ic­ally and polit­ic­ally but also cul­tur­ally, spir­itu­ally and reli­giously. Glob­al­iz­a­tion pro­motes free­dom and demo­cracy with the aid of new inform­a­tion tech­no­logy which were unavail­able dec­ades ago. While there is a devel­op­ing glob­al cul­ture, glob­al­iz­a­tion is not neces­sar­ily homo­gen­iz­ing; it also pro­motes and appre­ci­ates diversity. For Chris­ti­ans and to Chris­ti­ans, this new con­text poses chal­lenges and oppor­tun­it­ies. Among oth­er chal­lenges, it chal­lenges us to com­mu­nic­ate Chris­ti­an prin­ciples in a form that is per­suas­ive and that leads to the con­ver­sion of human hearts. It chal­lenges us to exem­pli­fy in the life of the insti­tu­tion­al Church the justice rep­res­en­ted and preached by the Church.

At the same time, glob­al­iz­a­tion offers new oppor­tun­it­ies for the Church’s mis­sion. The fas­cin­at­ing new com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies offer the greatest pos­sib­il­ity of all time to take the Gos­pel to every nook and cranny of the uni­verse. The fun­da­ment­al mis­sion of the Church “to give wit­ness to the truth, to res­cue and not to sit in judg­ment, to serve and not to be served”, to be the bear­er of hope and “light for all nations”[22], should be facil­it­ated by the latest com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies of glob­al­iz­a­tion. For some Chris­ti­ans, glob­al­iz­a­tion rep­res­ents noth­ing less than lay­ing the most recent brick atop an ever grow­ing Tower of Babel. For oth­ers, it is a sign, not unlike the appear­ance of a new strand of col­our in a rain­bow – a sign of God’s plan to reach the entire world with his liv­ing Word. To com­pre­hend glob­al­iz­a­tion bet­ter, Chris­ti­ans must move bey­ond the pop­u­lar rhet­or­ics of glob­al­mania and glob­al­pho­bia. If “cul­tures, eco­nom­ies, and polit­ics appear to merge across the globe through the rap­id exchange of inform­a­tion, ideas, and know­ledge, and the invest­ment strategies of glob­al cor­por­a­tions”[23], then, the mis­sion of the Church of dis­sem­in­at­ing the Gos­pel mes­sage should not be left out in this trend of glob­al­ized era of inform­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion. As explained above, the Church recog­nizes the indis­pens­ab­il­ity of ICT in the pro­clam­a­tion of the Gos­pel. How­ever, she laments the side effects. The Church fears that if people’s “minds are ill dis­posed, and if good will is lack­ing, the out­pour­ing of tech­no­logy may pro­duce an oppos­ite effect, so that there is less under­stand­ing and more dis­cord, and as a res­ult, evils are mul­ti­plied.”[24] The glob­al­ized forms of com­mu­nic­a­tion should not be evaded. Rather, those who use these means of social com­mu­nic­a­tion should know how to avert the danger out­lined above by the Church.

It is indis­put­able that fif­teenth-cen­tury Jesuits and Domin­ic­ans were har­bingers not just of Cath­ol­ic Chris­tian­ity, but of European Christen­dom and its Con­quista­dors and that nine­teenth-cen­tury Prot­est­ant mis­sion­ar­ies did not just take up their Bibles, but also their pith hel­mets as they trav­elled to far reaches of the earth under the shad­ow of the Uni­on. The Chris­ti­an story has been mixed with oth­er stor­ies and some­times appro­pri­ated for fallen pur­poses. In our bid to take advant­age of the glob­al resources, we must con­sider the pos­sib­il­ity of mixed mes­sages and false stor­ies we may be send­ing the world.  One might ask the present gen­er­a­tion, for instance, about the nature of the gos­pel mes­sage being com­mu­nic­ated in widely-touted films depict­ing the gos­pel story of Jesus. It is cause for cel­eb­ra­tion that these films are reach­ing more people with the gos­pel than ever before and in word-for-word gos­pel trans­la­tions into loc­al lan­guages. We must also reflect on the fact that the tech­no­logy and tech­nique that make such mul­ti­me­dia gos­pel exper­i­ences pos­sible are also part of the story being com­mu­nic­ated. When reli­ance on tech­no­logy and tech­nique are linked, as they usu­ally are, with what Samuel Esco­bar has called “mana­geri­al mis­si­ology,” the story we tell can quickly become dis­tor­ted, lead­ing to what he calls a “deper­son­al­iz­a­tion” of people into “unreached tar­gets” in order to be able to report stat­ist­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant “decisions for Christ” to fund­ing agencies.

Per­haps the real under­ly­ing danger is that while we pro­claim one gos­pel story, we may very well be liv­ing anoth­er and those to whom we wit­ness can­not always tell the dif­fer­ence between them.[25]  As Esco­bar reminds us, “a great chal­lenge to Chris­ti­an mis­sion­ar­ies in the com­ing years will be how to remain first and fore­most mes­sen­gers of Jesus Christ and not just har­bingers of the new glob­al­iz­a­tion pro­cess.  They will have to use the facil­it­ies of the sys­tem without being caught by the spir­it of the sys­tem. This is a ques­tion not only for mis­sion­ar­ies from afflu­ent soci­et­ies but also for those from poorer soci­et­ies who are temp­ted some­times to rely mainly on the eco­nom­ic facil­it­ies and the tech­nic­al instru­ments avail­able to them.”[26] Our mis­sion­ary activ­it­ies must pen­et­rate and per­meate those areas that mould the world­view of cul­tures and soci­et­ies. Out­side the Church (Reli­gion), our pro­clam­a­tion should also touch such areas as Arts, Media, Edu­ca­tion, Fam­ily, Gov­ern­ment, polit­ics, and Busi­ness-Fin­ance. If our mis­sion is lim­ited only to the reli­gious sphere, then, we shall have “…less influ­ence in a soci­ety because we only have an impact on one aspect of the mech­an­ism that influ­ences the think­ing in the soci­ety”[27] thanks to globalization.

Cheap Christianity

One of the adverse effects and weak­nesses of glob­al­iz­a­tion on the mis­sion of the Church is weak Chris­tian­ity. What is this weak Chris­tian­ity? I will respond to this ques­tion with a cita­tion from Ernst M. Con­radie. In response to glob­al­iz­a­tion, Chris­ti­an mis­sion­ar­ies may wish to mar­ket their par­tic­u­lar brand of Chris­tian­ity. They would sense the oppor­tun­it­ies offered by glob­al­isa­tion in terms of com­mu­nic­a­tion, audio-visu­al aids and so forth. They would thus become some­thing like sales agents on behalf of Jesus and com­pany. If so, they would need to recog­nise that there is indeed a huge mar­ket for cheap reli­gious products (a warm spir­itu­al­ity would sell very well indeed, much bet­ter than calls for dis­ciple­ship, or a bloody cross), but only a small niche mar­ket for products where the cost of dis­ciple­ship is high. On the Afric­an con­tin­ent, this align­ment between Chris­tian­ity and glob­al­isa­tion has become extremely pop­u­lar. Preach­ing the gos­pel of prosper­ity seems to be highly attract­ive and offers a tan­gible real­ised eschat­o­logy: If you give your best to the Lord, the Lord will richly bless you! The life­style of pas­tors and the ordained class should demon­strate the valid­ity of the claim that going to church is good for busi­ness, which may well be true as you will meet oth­er aspir­ing busi­ness lead­ers there on neut­ral grounds. In this way, reli­gion legit­im­ises the upward social mobil­ity of the lower middle class and the con­sumer­ist desires of every­one.[28] The implic­a­tion of these words is that glob­al­iz­a­tion is not really the most dan­ger­ous threats to the mis­sion. The worst danger is the life­style of mis­sion­ar­ies and Chris­ti­an lead­ers them­selves. Like proph­et Mala­chi said, the lips of reli­gious lead­ers, espe­cially the ordained class should guard know­ledge, and people should seek instruc­tion from their mouth, for they are the mes­sen­gers of ’āḏōnāy ṣeḇā’ȏṯ (Mal 2:7). Unfor­tu­nately, with cheap Chris­tian­ity and the unquench­able desire to be fam­ous and rich, the same reli­gious lead­ers have turned aside from the way; caused many faith­ful to stumble by their instruc­tions; cor­rup­ted the cov­en­ant…, says ’āḏōnāy ṣeḇā’ȏṯ (Mal 2:8). This derail­ment should not be attrib­uted to glob­al­iz­a­tion, but to the selfish­ness and the inad­equacy of those involved with the propaga­tion of the Gos­pel and the use of glob­al systems.

Without doubt, we are now liv­ing in an age where a new world cul­ture is being man­u­fac­tured after the wish of god­less men and women. The con­tem­por­ary age is a world of tech­no­lo­gic­al cul­tures that are in a world­wide com­pet­i­tion with one anoth­er. And in this com­pet­i­tion-con­front­a­tion, the Gos­pel and reli­gious val­ues seem to be at the receiv­ing ends. Sec­u­lar­ism has taken its per­man­ent res­id­ence in Europe and in most parts of Amer­ica. As I noted above, a proof of this is the elim­in­a­tion and omis­sion of God in the European con­sti­tu­tion. Although not yet well pro­nounced, sec­u­lar­ism is gradu­ally creep­ing into Africa and into Niger­ia. This is sum­mar­ized by someone with the term ‘Churchian­ity.’[29] Churchian­ity is a form of reli­gion cre­ated after oth­er sources oth­er than the Bible. In oth­er words, churchian­ity is a devi­ation from Chris­tian­ity. While Chris­ti­ans are mis­sion­ar­ies, churchi­ans are pro­fes­sion­als who pro­mote their pro­fes­sions instead of the Gos­pel. Churchi­ans are busi­ness tycoons who have the semb­lance of Chris­ti­ans. This also is a con­sequence of glob­al­ism, or rather, the abuse of globalism.

The post-resur­rec­tion com­mand to “go and make dis­ciples of all nations…” (Matt 28:19) is all inclus­ive. By all-inclus­ive is meant tak­ing the mes­sage to every­one and mak­ing use of the avail­able means at the time and in the place. The dis­ciples under­took their mis­sion in a glob­al world pro­duced by the expan­sion of the Roman world. Today, the con­tem­por­ary dis­ciples must ful­fil their own mis­sion in a glob­al world pro­duced by the expan­sion of com­merce and Inform­a­tion-tech­no­logy (Info-Tech). If we desire to be pro­duct­ive mes­sen­gers of the Gos­pel, we must con­tinu­ally align ourselves with the meta­morph­osed and meta­morph­os­ing world. It is only through this way that we can be able to pro­duce the most fruit pos­sible to the glory of God. Many of the post­mod­ern gen­er­a­tion are spir­itu­ally sterile. Mis­sion­ar­ies must know how to use the glob­al sys­tems to inject new life into them. Finally, des­pite the chal­lenges and dif­fi­culties, mis­sion is still pos­sible in a glob­al­ized and glob­al­iz­ing world. Sha­lom!

Uchenna C. Okpalaunegbu

[1] Howard A. Snyder, Glob­al Good News: Mis­sion in a New Con­text (Abing­don Press, 2001), p. 62; Neil J. Ormerod – Shane Clifton, Glob­al­iz­a­tion and the Mis­sion of the Church (2011).

[2] II Spe­cial Assembly for Africa: “The Church in Africa in Ser­vice to Recon­cili­ation, Justice and Peace”, Lin­ea­menta, n.53.

[3] Cf. John Paul II, Redemt­or­is Missio (Decem­ber 7, 1990), n. 37.

[4] Dav­id Held – Dav­id Gold­blatt – Anthony McGrew, et al., Glob­al Trans­form­a­tions (Polity Press, Cam­bridge 1999).

[5] Thomas Lar­son, The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Glob­al­iz­a­tion (Cato Insti­tute, Wash­ing­ton D.C 2001), p. 9.

[6] Paul James, “Arguing Glob­al­iz­a­tions: Pro­pos­i­tions Towards an Invest­ig­a­tion of Glob­al Form­a­tion” in Glob­al­iz­a­tion II (2005), pp. 193–209.

[7] John Paul II, Post-syn­od­al Apostol­ic Exhorta­tion, Eccle­sia in Amer­ica (Feb­ru­ary 4, 1999), n. 33.

[8] Inter­net­o­logy is the fusion of internet-network-technology.

[9] Inter­net lan­guage and slang are col­lec­tion of words and expres­sions cre­ated and pop­ular­ised by inter­net users.

[10] Lausanne Com­mit­tee for World Evan­gel­iz­a­tion, Glob­al­iz­a­tion and the Gos­pel: Rethink­ing Mis­sion in the Con­tem­por­ary World in Lausanne Occa­sion­al Paper, n. 30, p. 36.

[11] Lausanne Com­mit­tee for World Evan­gel­iz­a­tion, p. 47

[12] Vat­ic­an Coun­cil II, Decree on the Means of Social Com­mu­nic­a­tion, Inter Miri­fica (Decem­ber 4, 1963), n. 1.

[13] Dur­ing this peri­od, Areo­pagus rep­res­en­ted the cul­tur­al centre of the learned people of Athens. Today, it might be taken as the sym­bol of the new sec­tors in which the Good News must be proclaimed.

[14] Cf. Acts 17:22–31.

[15] https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/.

[16] Roger E. Dick­son, Dick­son Bib­lic­al Research Lib­rary (Afric­an Inter­na­tion­al Mis­sions, Hutchin­son – KN 2013), pp. 1100–1101.

[17] Inter Miri­fica, nn. 2–5.

[18] The Lead­er (Owerri Arch­diocese); Lumen (Umua­hia); For­um (Orlu); the Sage News­pa­per (Okig­we); Guide (Ahiara); and the Rex News­pa­per (Aba). The online ver­sions of these Journ­als are not wonderful.

[19] http://www.catholicdioceseofaba.org/; http://www.ahiaradiocese.org/ – as at Sat­urday, May 13, 2017, this site is dormant; once you open it, you will see the notice, “account sus­pen­ded. This account has been sus­pen­ded. Con­tact your host­ing pro­vider for more inform­a­tion”; http://catholicdioceseokigwe.org/; http://orludiocese.org/wordpress/; http://www.owarch.org/;  http://umuahiadiocese.org/. This web­site is not functional.

[20] For instance, Owerri Arch­diocese has an IT centre loc­ated at n. 5 Orlu road, Owerri. This is taken from http://www.owarch.org/. I have not been to this place, so, I can­not cer­ti­fy if it is func­tion­al or not.

[21] Cf. T. How­land Sanks, “Glob­al­iz­a­tion and the Church’s Social Mis­sion” in Theo­lo­gic­al Stud­ies 60 (1999), pp. 650–651.

[22] Vat­ic­an Coun­cil II, Gaud­i­um et Spes, n. 3.

[23] Dav­id Held et al., A Glob­al­iz­ing World? Cul­ture, Eco­nom­ics, and Polit­ics, p. 6.

[24] Vat­ic­an Coun­cil II, Pas­tor­al Instruc­tion on the Means of Social Com­mu­nic­a­tion, Com­mu­nio et Pro­gressio (Janu­ary 29, 1971), n. 9.

[25] Lausanne Com­mit­tee for World Evan­gel­iz­a­tion, pp.37–42.

[26] Samuel Esco­bar Aguirre, The New Glob­al Mis­sion: The Gos­pel from Every­where to Every­one (Inter­Varsity Press, 2003), p. 63.

[27] Lausanne Com­mit­tee for World Evan­gel­iz­a­tion, p. 48.

[28] Ernst M. Con­radie, Mis­sion in a Glob­al­ised World: A New Vis­ion of Chris­ti­an Dis­ciple­ship. A Key­note address delivered at the con­fer­ence of the Aus­trali­an Asso­ci­ation for Mis­sion Stud­ies (AAMS), Sydney, Septem­ber 22–27, 2011, p. 5.

[29] Roger E. Dick­son, Dick­son Bib­lic­al Research Lib­rary, p. 1770–1774.

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