Examining the Authority of Church Leaders in African Christianity

It has been said that the missionaries came to Africa with the mindset that Africans were without culture or at best, they had an evil culture that must be completely eradicated. They rejected anything African so as to introduce the Western culture which they considered enlightened. However, whatever teaching that the then missionaries and church leaders later introduced, would have to be processed through African cultural lenses. By that, the people applied their own cultural concepts to the teachings they received. This paper examines how cultural concepts of the authority of leadership help the African Christian to situate and interpret the teachings and practices of the universal church from their own perspectives. Authority is defined and examined from the perspectives of legitimacy and functionality. The question of who has the final authority in the church is also discussed to strengthen the corporate leadership practised and offer some solutions to challenges of in-fighting within the leadership of congregations.