Stirring Chai

I had opportunities to visit some dioceses in September, as part of an effort to get familiar with our companion dioceses. In fact, Mwanga is a new diocese, split from the Pare Diocese in 2016, and as such it does not have an ELCA companion synod. But we still want to be together with them on the journey of accompaniment. In Pare, I met with Bishop Charles Mjema and General Secretary Chambua Tumaini. They are both educators, and the diocese is intentional about focusing on youth and education as key parts of its core evangelism and mission activities. Our meeting place had many young people, as hundreds of them would gather for the following several days for a diocese youth conference. We got to know each other over fresh juice from their hostel. In Mwanga, I met with Bishop Chediel Sendoro and his leadership team. His is a small diocese geographically, and they estimate 24,000 church members. They estimate 80 percent of the diocese area is Muslim, and the place is very dry with a

Artist unknown. Retrieved here .   On August 18, I had the honor of preaching at Arusha Community Church, which is a non-denominational international church with English-language services. The text was Luke 12:49-56, where Jesus tells a crowd that he did not come to bring peace, but fire. I really enjoyed diving into this, and I think the Holy Spirit put some things in my life to make this particular scripture not just relevant, but urgent. Part of the text is about division within families that will affect believers. It feels like division is increasing and people are unwilling to look past differences in values. I think Jesus was warning the crowd that things won't be easy for followers of his, but he was not condoning conflict within families. I have a friend who is an elder who came from a polygamous family, and he told me a story. He said that when his father decided to become a Christian, he was made to choose which of his wives would be the 'official' wife.

Longtime friends from the Northern Illinois Synod's Global Mission committee met with Kellen and me over lunch at my mother's house on July 27. It was a time of reconnecting and celebrating our new roles. We're hoping that our work will enable us to be a bigger part of the companionship between Northern Illinois and Tanzania's North-Central Diocese. Photo by Chuck Steinbach Longtime friends from the Northern Illinois Synod's Global Mission committee met with Kellen and me over lunch at my mother's house on July 27. It was a time of reconnecting and celebrating our new roles. We're hoping that our work will enable us to be a bigger part of the companionship between Northern Illinois and Tanzania's North-Central Diocese. Photo by Chuck Steinbach

Stock photo In our roles as ELCA Regional Representatives, we are a face of the ELCA for and with companions in East Africa. We work with dioceses, national churches, faith-based organizations, and other missionaries in the region.  In the ELCA's model of Global Mission, Companionship means a mutually empowering, shoulder-to-shoulder journey with another in Christ.  But this ideal of Companionship can become complicated by colonial histories, power asymmetries, and cultural differences, which get in the way of the kind of togetherness that we hope to one day find in heaven. Our job is to help the ELCA and partners work toward the ideal of what Companionship could be, be a face of the church in our journey of accompaniment, and serve with the many people in this movement which binds together brothers and sisters across oceans.