Looking Back – Looking Forward: Revisiting Models of Evangelization in Africa

Proclaiming Christ throughout the world – or evangelization – is the mission of God entrusted to the church. As such it is achieved through the agency of human beings, situated in time and space. This means that the mission of evangelization, because it is necessarily culture-bound, takes different forms, models, or paradigms depending on the identity and convictions of the evangelizer, on the one hand, and the situation of the recipient, on the other. In Africa, it is European missionaries who undertook this mission, and its process has manifested itself differently at different times. This brief essay identifies three major models that have been used in Africa since the end of the nineteenth century (Common Era), and discusses their implications for Christianity.