GHANA’S NATIONAL CATHEDRAL: Even the President might have no clue what he is doing! | Part 2 of 3

Everyone’s talking Corona now (at the time of posting this). I find even scientists and doctors using words like ‘hope,’ ‘faith’ and ‘pray.’ In times like these we remember there is something beyond our five senses. Indeed, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” When you take a break from the virus that is being coronated, read about how the design of the National Cathedral Ghana CORONATES CHRIST the King in the African context.

 

 

CHRISTIAN SYSTEMS & STRUCTURES NEEDED

You have probably come across the line made famous by the late John Stott about certain people’s Christianity being “one mile long but an inch deep.” That, to a large extent, describes African Christianity (we’re not alone but Africa is my focus now). One of my biggest problems with Christianity in Ghana is the issue of large numbers of professing Christ followers yet such shallow discipleship and not enough positive impact on the spheres of society: arts & entertainment, business, education, family, government, media.

While desperately working on the issue of discipling the peoples of Africa themselves, we also have an equally important duty of discipling the structures and systems in Africa, from Archaeology to Zoology. In the famous words of former Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” I find that Europe, when it had the chance a millennium ago, and North America in the last 200 years, discipled the society’s structures and systems to the effect that today although these continents do not necessarily have the most numbers of self-identified Christ followers and are becoming increasingly secular, even atheists and agnostics ethically behave like Christians on account of the Judaeo-Christian influence over the centuries. Ask where the work ethic came from, for example, or even the notion of human rights. We have the opposite in Africa, where there are so many nominal Christians but our societal systems and structures are inadequately discipled. What has this got to do with the cathedral?

I was amazed when I heard the architect of the National Cathedral explain why that particular piece of land in Accra. Sir David Adjaye passionately speaks here about understanding the monumental core of Ghana’s capital, all a walking distance from the Independence Square: there’s the area our ancestors and heroes are buried (both military and civilian) and the State House and Parliament (with the international conference centre across it) where our current leaders to do their gig but what has been missing is the faith space, a “missing link in the nation’s architecture.”  For an ‘incurably religious’ country, therefore, the National Cathedral finally becomes that sacred space and the people’s place. I like that we are structuring and systematizing what we believe in and putting our money where our mouth is in concrete structures at our national core.

It thrills me that beyond the cathedral as concrete (hardware) though, there is also the idea of the cathedral as convenor (software) of crucial national conversations regarding faith and public life to, as my professor friend Esi Ansah put it in a recent Face Book post, “build the cathedral within.” Whether hosted under the auspices of the National Cathedral Ghana (in name) or as the venue or both, these are the things that will reengineer our mindsets and attitudes, structures and systems, to see the transformative power of the Gospel on society. It will be a mistake to construct a physical cathedral without building the internal one as a people and systematizing what a cathedral to the most High symbolizes in our national attitudes and values. On the other hand, it is equally erroneous to say all we need to do is “build the cathedral within” without an outward expression of an inward and spiritual reality. This isn’t either/or but both/and.

We are building a nation here, a cohesive entity that must have spirit; not just a conglomeration of social services! My maternal grandfather, Emeritus Professor J.H. Kwabena Nketia, shared with me how he highly appreciated that about Ghana’s first president, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. The latter knew we needed to garner the spirit of the people and not just their bodies. May the distillation of our Christian values and ethics into the physical cathedral structure and the centering of it in the monumental core of our national capital be a daily reminder and constant inspiration to think “freedom and justice” and all that is right/true and then to practice same always, to the glory of the God of Heaven.

 

AFRICA’S COME OF AGE

While the demolition of a few colonial buildings at the cathedral site is of sad note to some—but really, we have enough forts and castles and other buildings elsewhere as souvenirs of our sordid-but-should-not-be-forgotten past—in a sense it has been a statement that this young African country, Ghana, is cutting her teeth in this unavoidable intersection of gospel, culture and church. Any missiologist worth their salt should readily see the coming of age of African Christianity in this grand undertaking of a national cathedral. The idea wasn’t mooted by a white man nor the blueprint drawn by one; it shall not be built by Anglo-Saxons or Caucasians either. Although Africa actually shaped the European mind through the early church fathers like Tertullian and Augustine in the first 500 years of the Christian movement, our parts of the western coast of Africa were reached only in the last 500 years anno domini by sea-borne Europeans making some erroneously claim Christianity to be a “white man’s religion.” Christianity has been indigenous to Africa since the Ethiopian eunuch’s encounter with Apostle Philip in the first century!

Indeed, some white missionaries’ insistence on discarding our rich African traditions, the substitution of our meaningful local names with European ones like George (so-called ‘Christian names’), the condescending attitude towards our dress and manner of life etc. give just cause for rebellion against the faith they brought. But the missionary God Himself who made all people and is the originator of all that is good in all cultures (tainted by sin since the fall of man in Genesis 3) has revealed Himself in every culture so that all humankind may be drawn to Him. He has expressed Himself through each culture, including our approximately 80 languages in Ghana, that He may be seen, understood and worshipped.

The same day I attended the groundbreaking of the national cathedral on the eve of Ghana’s 63^rdindependence celebration, my Achimota School year group began the formal activities for our 25^th anniversary/homecoming celebrations and 93^rd Founders Day activities. It struck me how the founding fathers of the school that has produced more Ghanaian (and African) heads of state than any other, wanted an institution whose ideals were “the belief on which all else rest, in Jesus Christ as the revelation of all time and all people, of the love of God, and as the guide and pattern for our lives” and  simultaneously one where there was “respect for all that is true and lasting value in the old African culture, beliefs and ways of life.”

With the coming of age of African Christianity, the National Cathedral Ghana is a welcome discontinuation of European cathedral forms of the past, especially gothic architecture. Rather than spirals and bells, all that rings true and good in our old African culture, like the expression of divinity through umbrellas, has been adopted for this edifice. If Jesus Christ the King were to take on flesh in a Ghanaian culture, paramount chief of all of Ghana, how would that be expressed? You will notice from the cathedral design that the roof (as only one example) is wavy like the tapestry of royal umbrellas in durbars with the highest umbrella (highest point of the roof) being where Christ the King ‘sits,’ at the altar. This is one of the essential missiological thrills of the national cathedral.

For indeed, in the words of Kenyan theologian John S. Mbiti, “Christianity is always a beggar seeking food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures and times it encounters in its never-ending journeys and wonderings” (Mbiti 1970, 438). Finally, there is an edifice of national stature that has offered the proverbial Ghanaian hospitality to the Christian faith in a deeply symbolic way. Christianity has taken on the cover of Ghanaian culture and has become authentically African. This is not a white man’s cathedral; this is our cathedral to the God of all the earth and of all flesh! As Mbiti states elsewhere, “…Europe and America westernized Christianity. The Orthodox easternized it. Now it’s our turn to Africanize it.” Yes, we have!

 

A LIGHT TO THE NATIONS

Many comparisons have been made between Ghana and Israel, some of which don’t hold water. However, Ghana, like ancient Israel, has apparently been selected by God as a covenant people to be a light to the nations (we will need a whole different article about prophecies made about Ghana). As the lode star of Africa, the “Black star of hope and honour to all who thirst for liberty,” neither our geographic or population size should warrant the prominent place we hold in Africa as the first country south of the Sahara to achieve independence from colonialism or any other accolade we’ve been showered with. Whether it’s our consummate idea of a united, free and prosperous Africa or producing a United Nations Secretary-General in the person of the late Kofi Annan, Ghana has throughout her history captured the imagination of Africans and the world at large. It is remarkable then that now, a landmark of Christian ideals and worship and a site for pilgrimage in Ghana will draw nations to our light (sure, and we’ll make some money too!). May the Queen of Sheba types travel over land, sea and air to come and see the marvels of the Holy One of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob right here in Black Africa.

O that that we might have a taste of the future glory of Zion Isaiah prophesied, right where we are: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. For behold, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you, and His glory will appear over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around: They all gather and come to you; your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will be carried on the arm. Then you will look and be radiant, and your heart will tremble and swell with joy, because the riches of the sea will be brought to you, and the wealth of the nations will come to you (Isaiah 60:1-5, NIV).

Among the sites within the National Cathedral Ghana will be Africa’s first Bible Museum and Documentation Center and replicas of significant places in the Bible like the walls of Jerusalem and the Garden of Gethsemane, right where we are, without a flight to ‘the Holy Land.’ The stone from Jerusalem that was brought in as a foundation stone during the groundbreaking has symbolically brought Jerusalem to Accra. Emmanuel! If God is with us, Jerusalem stone or not, then our land too, Ghana, has become holy ground.

TO BE CONTINUED here.

 

In case you missed it, Part I may be found here.

 

Reference

Mbiti, John S. 1970. “Christianity and Traditional Religions in Africa.” International Review of Mission, 59, no. 236 (October 1970).

GHANA’S NATIONAL CATHEDRAL: Even the President might have no clue what he is doing! | Part 1 of 3

There are seismic spiritual shifts among the nations in nearly every generation which redefine socioeconomic and other key realities. We are in the midst of one right now but few notice it. As they say, “the fish in the water doesn’t see the water.”

 

The story is told of a delegation from a ‘backward’ African tribe that experienced the delight of their first plane ride en route to Britain. While their English tour guides thought they were making a great impression on these negroid visitors by the imposing size and stature of their financial buildings, civil service infrastructure and entertainment edifices like the Wembley stadium, these visitors’ eyes glossed over; seemingly disinterested. Unbeknownst to their hosts, they were by now really eager to see what they finally verbalized as “the God House.” When they eventually did, Westminster Abbey, I believe, they asked a question none of the Brits could ever have contemplated: “Why is the God House not the biggest building?” For them, the centrality and prominence of faith needed to be expressed in the sheer size of the space allocated to it. For others the measure of prominence and centrality might be portrayed in location and to some, the material and financial worth.

Whichever way, the African is arguably ‘incurably religious’ and that centrality of faith must be expressed as such. For the African, and Ghanaian for that matter, spirit takes the first place, for nature, the state, and man are all spiritual (Abraham 1970, 50-51) and the temporal and the non-temporal are fused (52). Some have even gone to the extent of claiming, “The African is a radically religious person, religious at the core of his or her being. Africans’ communal activities and their social institutions are inextricably bound up with the spirit world. […] Africans seem unable to explain life and its mysteries without some reference to the supernatural” (Pobee & Ositelu II 1998, 9).

 

HOW WE GOT HERE

It is not surprising then that like the Thessalonians in the first century when the Ghanaian people also “turned away from idols to serve the living and true God” we have sought to incorporate the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ in our body politic. In fact, the original text of Philip Gbeho’s peri-independence national anthem (we still use his tune but the lyrics were changed after the first coup d’etat in 1966) were unequivocally to the Lord God of the Christian faith (who other faiths cannot bring themselves to call “father”):

Lord God our Father we pray thee,
Be thou our guide in all our ways,
May we unite together, proclaim the dawn of our new day!
Children of Ghana arise and uphold your cause
And blaze the trail of freedom far and wide,
O God our Father harken to our call
and bring us peace here in our fatherland.

When the president of the Republic of Ghana announced at the dawn of Ghana’s 60^th independence anniversary in 2017 that he had plans to put up a national cathedral, “the God House” of the Ghanaian people if you like, I wasn’t excited. Initially. The intellectual in me (if I can claim that) sat on the fence to give this a deep think. When I asked in my August 2018 article, amidst serious brouhaha among the citizenry, whether this was a virtuous or vulgar venture I wasn’t kidding.

I will not repeat my thought processes and content then (you may revisit it here) but since undertaking graduate studies in world Christianity and missional leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary in the USA and at our own Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology Mission and Culture in Akropong, Akuapem, I have concurrently taken the time to research the matter and spoken with the real people at the helm and have become convinced that the National Cathedral Ghana venture is Godly, timely and defining in a way that I dare say, tafracher, even the President of the Republic himself who mooted the idea has no clue.

 

VISION IS PROGRESSIVE

According to His Excellency, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, his three compelling reasons for this cathedral are  (I’m paraphrasing what I heard him say in my presence at the March 5, 2020 ground-breaking of the national cathedral): first, to thank, praise and honour Almighty God for sparing Ghana major calamity, including civil war and famine  (unlike most of our West African neighbors who we’re no better than) but rather blessing us with peace and relative prosperity; secondly, to galvanize the 71% Christian majority towards united effort in national development and finally to redeem a personal pledge he made to Almighty God that if He helped him win the 2016 election after two unsuccessful attempts he would erect a national cathedral to His honour.

All of these are good, and in my opinion, in that order. But as a missiologist, one who sits at the intersection of gospel, culture, and the church, there is so much more going on in the world of faith and religion that makes the idea and timing of this cathedral so iconic, it cannot be a coincidence and certainly not ignorable.  I seek to therefore elevate this conversation beyond partisan politics and above the utilitarian rhetoric, especially on social media, typically by an elite that are book-smart but may not necessarily be spiritually discerning and tend to be more secular humanist in outlook than they even realize. Of course, I write from a Biblical worldview with an unashamedly Christian bias. Everyone is biased; it’s only worse when one doesn’t know it or wouldn’t acknowledge so.

 

THIS IS OF GOD, THE MISSIONARY GOD

First of all, it is Almighty God who forms nations (Acts 17:26) and nation states, “people groups who recognize themselves as a coherent community with a political meaning, and are generally larger than tribe or clan” (Lyman Stone). The missionary God forms nations for His three-fold purpose to bring:

1. Himself glory through the praise and worship of their lips and love and lives thereof,
2. creation a blessing (especially human beings, who are made in His image and likeness) and
3. evil to an end by vanquishing it and establishing His kingdom of righteousness, justice and equity.

The Christian God forms nations for His glory to be displayed in and through them to the extent that even at the end of time, when the new and heavenly Jerusalem is revealed, the nations bring their leaders and glory (from languages to whatever cultural idiosyncrasies) into the city (Revelation 21). What will Ghana(ians) bring?

I am one of those who interpret the name G-H-A-N-A as an acronym for God Has A Nation Ahead. There is so much yet to be actualized in this great land. The National Cathedral Ghana can easily become a Tower of Babel experience if it does not fulfill God’s three-fold mission delineated above. Those people who settled on the plains of Shinar and became Babel (‘a people of confused noise’) sought glory for themselves and not the Most High God (they wanted make a name for ourselves) and did not want to be dispersed to spread God’s glory and be a blessing to the whole earth. The moment our sense of nationalism overtakes God’s global mission and our pride gets in the way of His purposes, you can be sure this project and its people will be scattered and the venture aborted. To the extent that a National Cathedral advances God’s three-fold purpose on earth as it is in Heaven, it is worthy of support. “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?’ Jesus asks us like he did the first century Jews. Woe betides us if it becomes ‘a den of robbers.’ The National Cathedral Ghana is a significant missiological statement, in brick and mortar, that the Kingdom of God has more fully come in Africa and from here, Ghana as the geographical centre of the earth, will radiate to all the nations of the earth.

 

AFRICA LEADS TODAY

Throughout history, God has moved the centre of his missionary activity: Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome… He has particularly done so when His people lose mission vision. While the East was at the helm in the first 1,000 years after Christ’s ascension, the West led the missio Dei for the next 1,000 years in sheer numbers as well as missionary activity. In this 21^st century, everything has changed. Missiologists the world over agree: The centre of gravity of Christianity has shifted from the Global North to the Global South i.e. to Africa, Latin America and Asia. For the first time, the top two continents with the most Christians are Africa and Latin America, breaking a 1,000-year record Europe held. I am in the throes of completing a book on how Africa has transformed from a mission field into a mission force.

The year 2018 was the first year recorded with more Christians in Africa than on any other continent. That is phenomenal, that a continent called ‘dark’ that had barely 9 million Christ followers at the beginning of the 20^th Century would now have over 650 million in 2020! The places that have had their historic cathedrals are today slowest in Christian growth but have significantly deep roots. Shall the place leading the world in the Christian faith not have a place to celebrate it, symbolize it, embody it and consolidate it and from there be a launch pad to the rest of the world? I feel privileged to be alive to see a day no one could’ve envisaged a century ago! Let this cathedral stand for the dawning of this new era of African leadership of the global mission of God and symbolize the celebration of this epoch!

TO BE CONTINUED.

Part II continued here.

 

References

Abraham, Willy E. 1970. The Mind of Africa. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Pobee, John S., & Gabriel Ositelu II. 1998. African Initiatives in Christianity: The Growth, Gifts and Diversities of Indigenous African Churches; A Challenge to the Ecumenical Movement. Geneva: WCC Publications (Risk Book Series, no. 83).

Growing SMALLer

What Transpired in Court: a Blow to Blow Account

The day after my trial I sent a newsletter to all my family, friends and ministry partners around the world who had been praying for righteousness, truth and justice to prevail, giving them a ‘blow to blow’ account of happenings on that eventful day, November 28, 2018. You may read it here. Acquitted! Discharged!! Free!!!

Leadership is Likadis Likadat

The idea of ‘leadership ellipse’ is perhaps the most striking leadership concept I’ve come across most recently. How in the world is one supposed to ‘balance’ the inner spiritual life and the outer demands of leadership and tame tensions like being in the world but not of it, faithfulness and fruitfulness, impact and profit, being and doing… and remain sane?!

 

LIKAWHAT?

So after paying lots of money to take a course in Mentoring these were among the final words of admonishing (from Dietrich Bonheoffer): “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community” and “Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.” Huh? Now, which is which? Give me back my money! LOL!

Welcome to the business of life and leadership–paradox and ambiguity. To live in one extreme or the other is the easy option (any ‘fool’ can, excuse me to say); but to be able to hold two extremes in balance in your head, heart and in life is the real deal and few are able to handle this well. Yet that is an essential ingredient for success. In fact, sometimes these apparently contrasting dimensions of life are not even to be balanced per se but to be continually held in tension. To be comfortable with the uncomfortable tension and do well therein, that is the issue!

Pursuance of a life and leadership of integrity is living as activists and contemplatives, following and leading, managing our outward leadership responsibility and inward spiritual reality as well as having external organizational success principles and internal spiritual disciplines jiving. Robert Fryling, in his insightful work, The Leadership Ellipse, brings these to the fore and challenges leaders to integrate our lives in the sense of one’s outer and inner worlds being one, synchronous. Fryling’s metaphor to describe a life holding these foci and tensions together is the ellipse.

 

CALL IT WHAT YOU MAY—BUT IT’S THERE!

Why does Fryling use the ellipse (an elongated circle) metaphor and how useful is that in all the cross-cultural contexts in which I serve? I ask because there are too many times when one is caught off guard trying to use a metaphor (like ‘snowball effect’) that does not cross cultures well. I don’t want a situation of trying to relate a concept that I appreciate so well from a Western context but struggle to transmit.

Fryling’s love for, and deep understanding of, geometry led him to employ this amazing metaphor because an ellipse “is defined by two distinctly different focal points that are of equal importance. One point is not inferior to the other, and both are needed if there is to be an ellipse.”

For Fryling, “one focal point is our inner spiritual life, our longings, our affections and our allegiance to God. The other focal point is our outer world and organizational life, what we do and how we do it. Together these focal points define an ellipse that circumscribes our true spiritual leadership. It represents the dynamic tension between our soul and our actions, and gives us a mental image for personal, spiritual and professional integrity in who we are and how we lead.”

While almost every schooled person, irrespective of culture, may ‘get it,’ I’m glad he uses other metaphors which everyone can appreciate, like form and freedom, the fixed bone structure and flexible muscles of the human body plus basic theology of the full humanity and full divinity of Jesus Christ.

 

PREDICTOR OF LEADERSHIP SUCCESS

This sense of dissonance between a leader’s outer world and inner world is normal. “We live with paradoxes all of the time,” says Fryling; even Jesus the ultimate leader wasn’t spared. His prayer for his followers was “to live in the world without at the same time being of the world.” In many ministries, like mine, there is a constant struggle between being faithful and being fruitful.

Those are leadership ellipses right there when “waiting on God to move or to shift something inside me while at the same time still needing to lead in the public arena” (Ruth Haley Barton). In fact, Barton goes on to mention how “we might notice tension between what the spiritual life requires and what it takes to be (or at least appear!) successful in the current cultural milieu. On our good days, we might experience these tensions as a place of paradox where creative solutions might be found, but on other days they feel like polarities that are impossible to manage.”

In rapid fire, she continues: “…there is real tension between what the human soul needs in order to be truly well and what life in leadership encourages and even requires. There is the tension between being and doing, community and cause, truth-telling and putting the right spin on things. There is the tension between the time it takes to love people and the need for expediency. There is the tension between the need for measurable goals and the difficulty of measuring that which is ultimately immeasurable by anyone but God himself.

“There is the tension between the need for organizational hierarchy with all the power dynamics this creates and the mutuality and interdependence of life in community to which we as Christians are called. There is the tension between knowing how to “work the system” and entering into trustworthy relationships characterized by trust and a commitment to one another’s well-being. There is the tension between the need for an easy discipleship process through which we can efficiently herd lots of people and the patient, plodding and ultimately mysterious nature of the spiritual transformation process. And there is the challenge of knowing how to speak of these things in fruitful ways in the very inside places of power without becoming polarized in our relationships with one another.” Phew!

 

 

INTEGRITY AGAIN!

Living in the tension of this and that, yin and yang, and learning to be comfortable in the space and place, while taming the tension has a lot to do with living a life of integrity. Remember, integritas is about being one whole (integers); not fractionated. And it’s hard.

My seminary president put it this way in his book, Called: “Authentic discipleship delivers us from a compartmentalized life. Rather than having a life with segments and partitions—divisions between sacred and secular, personal and public, image and reality—we’re called to one whole and integrated life. It has to be said, of course, that we usually don’t want such a life and prefer the separate compartments. Such divisions provide room for our conflicting and contradictory instincts and desires. This is how we try to manage our several selves. It’s the hedge-your-bets approach to life, highly appealing but ultimately disappointing. It’s like approaching life as a series of snacks rather than committing ourselves to a full meal” (Mark Labberton).

 

GAME ON

Fryling, Barton, Labberton, Scazzero and others have assured me that the paradoxes and tensions that I sense as a leader are not only real but normal…and can be successfully grappled with. I’m more willing to embrace elliptical leadership. How about you?

After studying several leaders I have come to the conclusion that the degree to which one is able to be comfortable with and live, love and lead well in the tension of this and that, yin and yang, determines their ultimate leadership success or otherwise. From my little experience and research, the best leaders in the world are those who are not only able to get comfortable with being uncomfortable living in such tensions but mastered the art of dexterously handling both well.

As long as we are alive we will live with ambiguity and grapple with paradox. Part of our discipleship—learning to live and lead like Jesus—is to master how he lived his elliptical leadership life as the God-Man, knowing it can be done; and it must be done.

 

Works Cited

Barton, Ruth Haley. 2008. Strengthening the Soul of your Leadership. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Fryling, Robert. 2010. The Leadership Ellipse: Shaping How We Lead by Who We Are. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Labberton, Mark. 2014. Called: the Crises and Promise of Following Jesus Today. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.