Practical Theology

Practical theology has evolved from emphasising pastoral ministry to addressing contemporary issues facing local churches so that they can bring about transformation within the communities in which they operate. In addition, efforts and proposals to support practical theology as interdisciplinary have progressed and are considered to be transformative. This article explores the Lekgotla and Magadi processes by leveraging the African Indigenous Knowledge System (AIKS), with the aim of presenting two Ubuntu-based research methods for practical theology to engage and contribute to the transformational agenda. It combines social constructivism and the Ubuntu worldview to propose the Lekgotla method and the Magadi methods.

African Christian leaders, leadership qualities, transformation, nondichotomous perspective of Ubuntu, South African political landscape About the Author Dr. Modisa Mzondi earned two doctoral degrees (one in Theology, the other in Religious Studies) from the University of Johannesburg. He is a founder and director of Back to Basics-Kago Leswa, and is also a pastor of Let My People Go Ministries. He also serves as Senior Lecturer, Supervisor, and as the MDiv Program Coordinator at the South African Theological Seminary (SATS). He has a passion for ministering to children, youth, and families. Dr. Mzondi is also involved in leadership development and training. His research interests lie in Ubuntu, African theology, (African) womanism, and Pentecostalism.

Over the years, theologians have made several attempts to link
William Seymour’s 1906 Azusa street revival to various roots. It
has been linked to (a) the socio-economic-political context of the
1900s in the United States of America; (b) African slaves’
spirituality, and (c) the Methodist revival. This paper continues
the quest to link William Seymour’s 1906 Azusa street revival to
another root, namely, Enoch Sontonga’s song, Nkosi sikelel’
iAfrika. The intended purpose is to point out that the
pentecostalisation of the African church on the African continent,
which changed the religious landscape of the African church and
redefined mainstream Christianity, is a divinely orchestrated
process. This divine process stems from southern Africa and
western Africa respectively. Desktop research is used to focus
mainly on the spread of the first wave of pentecostalism called
classical pentecostalism (the Holiness Movement).

Paul usually ends his letters with salutations to believers who meet in someone else’s house. Far from being individualistic, these greetings also include people from different house churches. Considered from a functional angle, these greetings cement relationships between house churches. Within an ubuntu worldview, the oral praxis of sereto (Sepedi) or isiduko (IsiXhosa) (praise-poetry) establishes and confirms relationships between members of the same community (family, clan or tribe). The question is how such praxes affect women who belong to such communities.

This article describes a study of deliverance praxis in the South African church, focusing on a qualitative analysis of the exorcism practices examined therein. Between November 2018 and March 2019, a smallscale empirical study was conducted in the forty-eight churches of Matatiele and Maluti in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, which arguably constitute a microcosm of the general South African church as regards diversity and representation. The study identified nonoptimal deliverance practices that need to be reviewed. As detailed in this article, its objective was to advocate Christocentric deliverance instead and to highlight the ecclesial praxis best-suited to these churches' situation. Consequently, this article advances a specific, selfregulatory diagnostic tool to create a more God-glorifying deliverance praxis and preclude the need for state intervention to regulate exorcism in South Africa.

This article looks at some lived experiences of five African women in Mohlakeng township, situated in the West Rand District Municipality of Gauteng, South Africa, between 1980 and 2018. Four are Pentecostal pastors and one is an Evangelical pastor. Their biggest challenge was to demonstrate that they were equally capable as their male counterparts in leading a local church and functioning as pastors. These women displayed aspects of African motherhood and Bosadi (womanhood) as three functioned as pastors and two functioned in other non-leadership roles alongside their male counterparts. The article applies a combination of participatory observation and literature review as a research method.

The gold rush in South Africa required many workers, both skilled and unskilled, to work on the surface and underground in the recently discovered gold deposits on the Witwatersrand. Mining companies ventured to lure such labour across South(ern) Africa. As such, in the past century, trade union leadership and religious leadership in South Africa shared similar objectives. Clements Kadalie is one of those workers who reached South Africa to offer cheap labour and ended as a union leader. The post 1994 South African democratic dispensation attracted many people to pursue better economic opportunities. Shepherd Bushiri is one of them. This article engages in some theological reflections on these two leaders and their influence among the poor and destitute in South Africa, and by employing case study analysis.

Globally, the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) also known as Covid-19 affected every facet of human life. Everyone had to find new ways of doing things, as many nations introduced lockdown regulations as a means of curbing the spread of the corona virus that causes Covid-19. Included in the regulations was the closure of places of worship, which challenged the clergy from different denominations in South Africa to imagine how to do ministry in this new context called the "new normal". Not only that, African township Pentecostal-Charismatic pastors, like other members of the clergy, were also expected to guide and encourage church members in these times of uncertainty. In addition, they were also expected to care for church members, the community and for themselves and their families. This article reflects on how African township Pentecostal-Charismatic pastors may minister in the Covid-19 context by applying the modified theologies of Mashau and Kgatle's Ubuntology.

The recent mass rape of eight women from a team shooting a music video on an unused gold mine dump near West Village, in Mogale City, in the West Rand District Municipality, of Gauteng Province, South Africa sparked a national outcry about Gender-based Violence (GBV) in the country. The men who gang-raped the women are called zama zamas (loosely translated 'trying to attain luck'). The incident has raised two disturbing developments in the post-1994 South African context. First, statistics show that 1100 women were sexually violated in the first three months of 2022 in South Africa. The current president of the country, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa, declared GBV a national pandemic in his Covid-19 pandemic speech. Second, it also reminded the nation about the trend of business enterprises placing profit at the expense of poor and vulnerable workers. The article focuses on the second development by applying two Ubuntu values and a Christocentric approach to compare gold mine companies and the zama zama enterprises in the region. It also concludes by proposing an alternative to the problem of illegal gold mining in the region.

In his work Bantu Prophets, Bengt Sundkler, a missionary, bishop, and academic, who pioneered the study of independent churches in Africa, mentions that one African Independent Church existed in Randfontein, a town that now forms part of the current Rand West City Local Municipality in the West Rand District Municipality of Gauteng, South Africa. This article contributes to Sundkler's work by tracing the work of three Christian leaders from the same area. It also leans on John Mbiti's work (the Kenyan-born Christian philosopher and writer who was an ordained Anglican priest) that popularised an African proverb, through his work titled African Religions and Philosophy, that "It takes a village to raise a child." Additionally, Shutte's emphasis that the community is the centre of Ubuntu resonates with the above Africa proverb Shutte argues that it complements the core European ethical notion of individual freedom which according to Nicolaides has Aristotelian overtones and shows how the two notions can be amalgamated to form an ethic based on a better understanding of our humanity. Mbiti's proverb underscores the sentiments of this article by celebrating the association of Alson Nene, Buti Tlhagale, and Moss Ntlha with Titi/Oukasie-Mohlakeng (part of Randfontein). From an Ubuntu perspective (ka Setho/ngeSintu) these leaders upheld seriti/isithunzi sa (the moral force of) Titi/Oukasie-Mohlakeng (Randfontein) in the same way as other community leaders and members associated with this area. The article uses literature analysis and some personal communications with some informants associated with Titi/Oukasie-Mohlakeng (Randfontein) to demonstrate how Alson Nene, Buti Tlhagale, and Moss Ntlha, three male Christian leaders associated with the same area, contributed, and continued to missions, theological development and Christian leadership.

This article posits that the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (known as the CRL Commission) and the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture (known as the Zondo Commission) provide a plausible theological basis to analyse the morality of some sections of the post-apartheid South African nation. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the post-apartheid South African nation the "Rainbow People of God," hereafter called the "Rainbow Nation." More so, the ANCled government adopted to advocate for the "RDP of the soul" through the Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM) to address the new nation's moral challenges as it was embarking on the implementation of the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) to address the socioeconomic-political conditions of the "Rainbow Nation." The article uses literature analysis as a framework to provide an analysis of how the moral regeneration initiative placed alongside the quest to attain human flourishing permeated some sections of the "Rainbow Nation." The analysis points out that the Moral Regeneration Initiative did not aim to stir some sections of the "Rainbow Nation" to internalise the moral values the Moral Regeneration Movement promotes.

Historically, African Classical Pentecostal Churches (the African sections of the Apostolic Faith Mission, the Full Gospel Church, the International Assemblies of God, and the Back to God-Assemblies of God) did not used clergy vestment. The use of clergy vestment emerged among African Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches when Gladstone Botwana, the founder, and head of Zoé Bible Church in Soweto, was elevated to the office bishop in 1996. Currently, the use of clergy vestment has become a norm among African Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches in South Africa. This article uses desktop research method to analyse the ecclesiological and theological journey of clergy vestment among African Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches in South Africa between 1996 and 2022. It shows that association with African Pentecostals from the United States of America and the Commonwealth Dominican influenced this trend and provided them with a Christian leadership accountability platform accompanied with a new ecclesiastical and theological identity.

Background: Statistics from the Pew Research Centre indicate that in sub-Saharan Africa, 796
million out of 822 m people claim the same Christian religious affiliation. Pentecostal Christians
total 107 m. These figures suggest that religion shapes the worldview of many sub-Saharan
inhabitants. Many are adherents of Ubuntu, which does not dichotomise lived experiences
from the influence of the spiritual (the Supreme Being, spirits, and the ancestors). On the one
hand, the World Health Organization has labelled South Africa as the rape capital of the world
because it accounts for the highest figure of gender-based violence (GBV) globally. Intimate
partner violence (IPV) and non-partner violence, characterised by rape and attempted rape,
constitute a significant portion of sexual violence, which is the primary and highest category
of GBV in South Africa. The second, third, and fourth categories are physical violence, socioeconomic and financial violence, and psychological/emotional violence. Various South
African courts have sentenced several pastors from the Neo-prophetic Movement (NPM) for
non-partner violence.
Objectives: The aim of this study is to reflect on non-partner violence within the NPM in
South Africa and to respond to this scourge by applying Ubuntu Pentecostalism as a
framework.
Method: This article thus poses the question: How might South African Pentecostals address
the scourge of non-partner violence within the NPM? It, thus, uses Ubuntu Pentecostalism.
Results: The article shows that is that is possible to mobilise members of NPM and the
surrounding community to counteract the scourge of non-partner violence among NPM in
South Africa.
Conclusion: The article concludes by providing a four-step strategy to curb th scourge of nonpartner violence in the NPM in South Africa.
Contribution: This strategy contributes to curbing the scourge of non-partner violence within
the NPM in South Africa.

This article contends that addressing environmental concerns in the South African context requires acknowledgment of the intertwined issues of land grabbing, littering, illegal dumping, and inadequate service delivery. It suggests that Pentecostals, as members of diverse communities, should shift their focus from spiritual matters to initiatives aimed at caring for the earth. Therefore, the article delves into Mogale City and Rand West City Local Municipality in South Africa as a case study, illustrating their contribution to the ongoing environmental degradation. The increasing incidence of land grabbing in these areas poses a threat to the pollution of the Wonderfontein spruit/stream, which flows from Kagiso through the townships of Swanieville 1, extensions 2 and 3, and continues east of Mohlakeng township to the west of Bekkersdal township. Inadequate service delivery has resulted in a backlog of waste removal, leading to concerning levels of littering and illegal dumping in both municipalities.

It is a usual trend among South African Universities autumn graduation to include a component of conferring honorary doctoral degrees to distinguished academics, alumni, and members of civil society. This article focuses on the trend in 2024 because the usual trend also occurred during a national outcry about a foreign institution, Trinity International Bible University, a non-Council on Higher Education accredited institution, conferred a doctoral degree to one of South Africa’s distinguished actors, Sello Maake-kaNgcube. The institution has been conferring such degrees to Pentecostal pastors and members as well as other civil society leaders, between 2010 and 2024. This article argues that the actions of Trinity International Bible University should be considered in view of the legacy of apartheid, Bantu Education and the desire to achieve social status through ecclesial and academic titles among African Pentecostal leaders. Using an interplay of South African politics and education historical analysis, and a Pentecostal history analysis the article reflects on the phenomenon of conferring honorary doctoral degree to African Pentecostal leaders in South Africa.

The study's objective was to explore the death and mourning rituals performed by the Balobedu people of Bolobedu South in Limpopo province, South Africa. Method: Utilising Osmer's framework, the article initiated research into these rituals by purposefully selecting 39 participants from five villages, namely, Ga-Motupa, Kgwekge, Relela, Morutjie and Motlhomeng, with the aim of ascertaining the reality of the situation. Results: To develop a biblical counselling model that could assist members of the Emmanuel Assemblies Church residing in the same area in addressing death-related rituals that require their involvement. Conclusion: This model integrates Magezi's seven pastoral care approaches and Scott and Lambert's counselling steps. Contribution: The article contributes to the effort by offering practical solutions tailored to the specific African ministry in Pentecostal context of South Africa.