"Mission station in crisis" : the case of Epworth Methodist Church mission in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This thesis is a missiological analysis of the crisis of the phenomenon of the mission station in post-independent Zimbabwe. Using qualitative methods that included archival, desk and ethnography, it explores the mission station in the context of the wider missionary enterprise of the nineteenth century, in terms of its limitations, weaknesses and challenges, but also its strengths. Focussing on Epworth mission of the Methodist church in Zimbabwe, it engages the wider mission enterprise, in relation to the manner in which mission was conducted during the missionary era and how that approach gave birth to the current church. With so much promise at the start, Epworth has become anything but success. The thesis considers the underlying causes of the current challenges facing Epworth and mission work of the church as a whole. The underlying missionary motivations and attitudes are explored, the proximity of mission to the colonial forces are engaged and how this affected mission praxis. The research revealed that mission station was a phenomenon adopted by missionaries on the mission field without proper missiological reflection on implications and ramifications for the future. As a result, as political, social and religious circumstances changed particularly with the coming of independence in 1980, the mission station struggled to withstand the pressure and hence the crisis. Considering that the Methodist church in Zimbabwe was born out of the missionary enterprise and that it is from the mission station that the majority of its membership has been constituted and nurtured, and from the mission institutions such as schools, clinics, children’s homes and theological colleges that its influence has radiated, it explores the limitations of such a model of mission in a post missionary and post-colonial paradigm. It proposes new and relevant models of doing church, which are contextual and border on decolonisation of the mind and a bias towards the poor. Missional theology as the new approach embodies such a range of contextual theologies and can be useful in the case of Zimbabwe.