Bishop Sengulane of Lebombo Says Church Is "Challenged"
Episcopal News Service. March 11, 1977 [77090]
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- OK, Church leaders, a little quiz. How do you get liturgical materials printed in seven languages and distributed over an entire country when the Marxist-Leninist government forbids printing of religious materials?
The Rt. Rev. Dinis Sengulane, Bishop of Lebombo, Mozambique doesn't have the answer yet, but this latest challenge to his beleagured church hasn't stymied him.
Bishop Sengulane was a day past his 30th birthday when he was chosen one year ago this March, to be suffragan bishop of the sprawling diocese that runs from Tanzania to the Republic of South Africa along the Indian Ocean and includes anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 Anglicans.
To minister in such circumstances in a poverty-stricken and developing nation would be difficult. When you add the condition that the Marxist-Leninist government is strongly nationalist and very cool to the church, many would call the prospects daunting at least. Not so Bishop Sengulane.
"I don't want to say we are a church in crisis," the bishop said in a recent conversation at the Episcopal Church Center in New York. "I prefer to say we are challenged."
The bishop noted that the attitudes of the government were reaching deeply into the lives of the newly independant people and the church was trying to react to that.
Visiting the United States to participate in the National Council of Churches conference on the Church in Southern Africa, Bishop Sengulane was in New York to attend a memorial service at the United Nations Church Center for the Most Rev. Janani Luwum, the Anglican Archbishop who was mysteriously slain in Uganda in mid-February. He is a slight, soft-spoken and introspective man who has been diocesan bishop only since June of 1976 and who celebrated his 31st birthday while he was in New York.
He is confident that he will win a long battle against ill health and confident also that the Church in Mozambique is growing stronger and more effective in spite of the challenges it faces.
"The people are growing in faith and maturity. I have done fewer confirmations than were done before, but the people who have presented themselves do so under great pressures. They have thought of the risks and problems and they still make this witness."
Further, despite the decline in confirmations, the bishop said there had been an increase in the number who seek training as catechists.
In many of the third world churches, it is the catechists -- dedicated trained lay persons -- who undertake the day-to-day responsibility for a congregation. They teach, prepare confirmands, preach and regularly lead worship since one priest may serve more than 20 widely scattered congregations and only sporadically manage to get to a congregation to celebrate the Eucharist.
The catechists -- as well as the clergy -- stand out as the visible church, and the decision to undertake this role in the face of official opposition gives Bishop Sengulane the hope that the church's faith is growing deeper and more mature even while its numbers remain low.
It is a similar deep, mature faith that helps the young bishop confront the challenges of the church. "We need to know that the Lord is using us and we need to ask him on our knees how he means to use us. Then the solution will come. "
By this statement, the bishop doesn't advocate just sitting back and waiting for the solution. In the case of his liturgies, he says, he will probably have to go to the government and ask them to print his material. "They will probably refuse and I will have to ask them to tell me why in writing. I know the answer, but I would want it on paper."
The ability to work out solutions is part, he feels, of the way God created us. When an opportunity presents itself, we just have to grasp it. He promised to be with us always, and who am I to try to go against his will?"
He has a suffragan bishop to help him, but is still deeply concerned that -- because of distance and cost -- he is able to spend very little time with the people of the northern part of the diocese. "A pastor should be near the people, but I can spend only about three weeks a year in the northern part. "
He is convinced that the first priority for the future of the diocese is a division into two dioceses to help resolve this difficulty. He lists as other priorities the training of lay people and spiritual renewal of the clergy, many of whom operate without contact with their peers for months on end and are demoralized by this and government pressures.
In addition, he is thinking deeply about the Province of South Africa, of which his diocese is a part. The apartheid policies of neighboring governments are an additional pressure on his people and he has given some thought to aligning with another province. "But where do you go? The Province of Central Africa has in it Rhodesia, and the Province of Tanzania is a national church into which we might be an intrusion. I want to advance the church in Lebombo, but not at the expense of other churches."
When asked if the church in the United States could do anything for him, he asked first of all for prayer. He asked further that church leaders begin to explore the possibility that events in Africa, persecution, apartheid are the concern and burden of Christians everywhere and that "America is powerful and looked up to and can speak to these things."