Reformed Blacks of America
Reformed African-American pastors
African Americans In The Reformed Tradition
Posted on 08/06/2013 6:41:43 AM PDT by Gamecock
The “young, restless, and Reformed” movement is growing throughout in Africa
The testimony of these young men and women has been universally the same. They have listened to a few of the sermons and felt like men and women who have starved for years and stumbled into a room with food meant for a king. Hence, they have listened to everything that they can lay their hands on. They have also foraged the blogosphere for Reformed discussions and monologues.
After my last blog post, which went “viral” compared to my other blog posts, I have decided to write on something more positive that is happening across Africa—at least in English-speaking countries. This is the growth of the “young, restless, and Reformed” movement on the continent.
In the recent past, I have been in touch with a significant number of people across Africa, who are largely young professionals in their twenties and thirties, and who have recently embraced the Reformed Faith. They have sought me out and shared with me their excitement at their new discovery.
How has this happened?
This has been almost exclusively through the Internet. Having grown up within extreme Charismatic or mainline Liberal church circles, they did not know any better. However, a growing discontentment has caused them to search the Internet for sermons that would feed their famished souls.
In due seasons, they have come across sermons of men like John MacArthur Jr., John Piper, Paul Washer, Thabiti Anyabwile, etc. Sometimes, it has been because a friend in church or across town or even in another part of the country has made the discovery and commended the site to them.
Sometimes this search has been occasioned by a lively debate among them over Christian doctrine. With the Internet now available on Smartphones, they have gone searching for answers so as to return the next day with arguments to win the day. This has landed them in the laps of these preachers.
The testimony of these young men and women has been universally the same. They have listened to a few of the sermons and felt like men and women who have starved for years and stumbled into a room with food meant for a king. Hence, they have listened to everything that they can lay their hands on. They have also foraged the blogosphere for Reformed discussions and monologues.
Upon listening to a number of these preachers, they have invariably added to their vocabulary names and words that they either never knew existed or had been wrongly informed about. They have come to know about preachers like John Calvin, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, plus a whole host of Puritan writers, etc. They have read anything they could find written by them.
They have wrestled with and finally come to know and love the doctrines of grace and the basics of the Reformed Faith. All this has been happening while they are still going to the churches that believe the exact opposite of what they have now come to embrace. This has set them on the path of searching for churches on the continent that believe what they have now come to believe.
The challenge they now face
This is now their challenge. For most of them, the nearest churches with any semblance of Reformed principles are in cities hundreds of kilometres away. This is the cry that has come to my attention. It is largely a call for help. These young adults are crying for living shepherds who faithfully expound the Scriptures and take oversight work seriously to look after their souls.
This is something some of us have been praying for for ages. Whereas the Reformed movement in Zambia is growing by leaps and bounds, it looked as if it was an oasis in the midst of a continent-wide desert (but for a fountain here and there). This is now changing. Like old Simeon, I now feel like saying, “Lord, let your servant depart in peace for my eyes have now seen your salvation.”
Yet, this is not the time to quit. The work has only begun. It is a Macedonian call, summoning us to send out missionaries who will plant churches where these young men and women are and disciple them as they marry, raise families, and take up places of responsibility in their communities. Many of them have no idea what a proper functioning local church really looks like.
There is a need to be by their side as the doctrines of grace go from the head into the heart and transforms them into truly gracious souls. We know how, without proper guidance, the Reformed Faith has led many people into hyper-Calvinism and other terrible extremes. This is the time to nip this tendency in the bud.
The “young, restless, and Reformed” sprouting up all over Africa reminds me of the early years of the Reformed movement in Zambia in the 1980s. We counted our doctrines on five fingers and thought that was what the Reformed Faith was all about. We knew next to nothing about “sola Scriptura” in ecclesiology and worldview matters, but we wanted to turn the world upside down for what we had come to know as the Reformed Faith. This is what I am seeing all around.
I have met a few of them in person in my travels around the continent. You cannot miss the first love for the doctrines of grace, which we once had. They’ve found the centre of the solar system of salvation and everything in the Bible is now going around in perfect symmetry. The whole Bible has come alive to them!
Reformed “blacks” in South Africa?
It seems that one country on the whole continent that is leading in this phenomenon is South Africa. Whereas previously the Reformed Faith in this robust form was almost a monopoly of the “white” South Africans and “blacks” shunned the R-word because of its associations with Apartheid, yet these “black” young adults love the R-word and are changing the demographics altogether.
See, for instance, their Facebook discussion wall, “Township Reformation.” Their cover photo has the word “Reformed” screaming out at you. Then the subtitle reads, “Explicitly Calvinistic Language, Christocentric Themes, Strong References to Sovereignty.” This is not coming from graduates of Bible colleges with theological degrees. These are young adults expressing their newfound faith!
I recall spending some time with two of them recently while on a trip to South Africa. They pleaded with me to plant a Reformed Baptist church in their city and, more specifically, in their township. When I was leaving, we got a photo together. I saw it on Facebook a few minutes later with the words, “You see, I told you, I am also Reformed!”
Conrad Mbewe is pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church (KBC) in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa. KBC is presently overseeing the establishment of about twenty new Reformed Baptist churches in Zambia and its neighboring countries. He is the editor of Reformation Zambia magazine. This article is reprinted from Mbewe’s blog, A Letter from Kabwata.
He’s right, but It’s not just happening in Africa. Reformed Protestantism is growing in places like Hungary and even Papau New Guinea. It’s my understanding that Calvinism is now being taught in some Hungarian schools.
By the way, I love Conrad Mbewe. I’ve listened to a number of his sermons via sermonaudio.com. Because of the Internet I’ve come to realize I have more in common with Christian brothers in Africa than I do my pagan neighbors. And when I study Christian history I feel that same kinship with believers of the past.
Upon listening to a number of these preachers, they have invariably added to their vocabulary names and words that they either never knew existed or had been wrongly informed about. They have come to know about preachers like John Calvin, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, plus a whole host of Puritan writers, etc. They have read anything they could find written by them.
They have wrestled with and finally come to know and love the doctrines of grace and the basics of the Reformed Faith. All this has been happening while they are still going to the churches that believe the exact opposite of what they have now come to embrace. This has set them on the path of searching for churches on the continent that believe what they have now come to believe.
That sounds like this:
"...I discovered the Reformed tradition of "Old Princeton" while in Bible college...I can still remember an all-nighter that I spent immersed in the works of Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and W. G. T. Shedd. I drank in their wisdom and erudition with an almost giddy sense of excitement and renewal, constantly whispering to myself, "Where have you been my whole life?" It was as if I had finally discovered why I had a brain."
-- from the book Letters to a Young Calvinist by James K. A. Smith
Reformed Blacks of America
Reformed African-American pastors
African Americans In The Reformed Tradition
I would like to be added to that ping list
Thank you. I should have asked about it long ago.
Nothing would do more for the black church in America than an understanding of God’s sovereignty. That said, nothing would do more for Evangelicalism than an understanding of sovereignty and grace.
On a sidenote, I’ve been reading Lewis Sperry Chafer’s ‘Systematic Theology’.
As one of the godfathers of dispensationalism, he still considered himself to be a Calvinist. He wasn’t a believer in covenant theology, but he did not consider himself an Arminian who thought that the promises of salvation are ‘ours for the losing’. (I made up that little quote, it wasn’t LSC’s, as far as I know).
Interesting. I didn’t realize Chafer was a Calvinist. Then again, I shouldn’t be too surprised. Dr. S. Lewis Johnson was a 5-pointer who taught at Dallas Theological for decades. I am under the impression Dr. Johnson had a significant impact on the thinking of John MacArthur.
I'm always amazed at how calvinists look to other people for their theology, rather than Scripture.
I guess that's why they get it so very wrong.
No offense to Dr. Chafer or to you, but I find non-covenant theology “Calvinists” as non-sensical as Anglo-Catholics. One has to ask, how can you go so far, and not see the whole picture?
If your going to Calvinist—you really should see the utter importance of God’s covenants...just like if your going to be Catholic, you may as well believe the pope (not the Archbishop of Canterbury).
I can tell you in a (very) Reformed seminary (I graduated in ‘09) the most obnoxious predestinarians out there are the reformed baptists (most always dispensational). Calvin himself didn’t discuss predestination until book 4 of the Institutes, as after all, predestination is God’s business, not ours.
I wish people wouldn’t worry about predestination so much, and focus on the good news of Jesus Christ—even while holding to the 5 points, AND covenant theology. They all go very naturally and logically together.
I’m always amazed at how ignorant non-Calvinists are of best scholarship of the bible, and instead of reading the bible in communion and conversation with other Christians, read the bible like they alone have first encountered it.
I guess that’s why they are so un-biblical.
I can give you *at least* two examples of the how the 5 points of the TULIP are anti-biblical.
Go.
Why? Is this a caucus thread? If so, I will gladly go.
Not at all. Present your verses.
Reformed Protestantism is growing in places like Hungary and even Papau New Guinea. It’s my understanding that Calvinism is now being taught in some Hungarian schools.
Hungary was one of the places that part of the Reformation took hold very early on.
In Greek : πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ ὑστεροῦνται τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ
Greek word for "all" is πᾶς and is found conjugated as the first word of that passage.
Titus 2:11 : For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
In Greek : Ἐπεφάνη γὰρ ἡ χάρις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ σωτήριος πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις
Greek word for "all" is πᾶς as is conjugated as the second-to-last word of that verse.
Same word. Same meaning for "all." While all men have sinned and come short, all men also have had the saving grace appear to them. Limited Atonement is a myth.
Let's choose another--Irresistible grace
Hebrews 6:4-6 : It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
Hmm. The author here is saying that those who have shared in the Holy Spirit--those that are saved--can fall away. Obviously God's grace can be resisted. (On a personal note, I don't understand why anyone would want to, but that's a different discussion).
Are all in Christ?
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