African Harvest Continues Apace

By Neil Earle

(Ed.: It is always a pleasure meeting missionaries indeed, lifetime “living sacrifices.” This is the story of one of them.)

PASADENA, CA: “A model for global Christian consciousness” was the accolade paid to Dr. Michael Cassidy of African Enterprise at the Fuller Theological Seminary’s official semester start on September 23, 2012, at First United Methodist Church here on Colorado Avenue.

African Harvest

Dr. Cassidy, a 1963 graduate, was awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award at the Fuller service in lieu of his leadership of African Enterprise (AE), an evangelistic and mission agency which he launched during his student days here in 1961. It started with $1 given by a classmate, Alan Rosenberg, who pastors the Christian Missionary Alliance in Glendora, CA. AE is at work in ten nations across Africa practicing “multilevel evangelism” in Africa’s cities and making inroads into Africa’s challenging social problems while preaching the gospel. Widows, orphans, street children and sex workers in countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe are given job training and counseling to help make them effective in leading their nations in the future.

On October 2, 2012, Fuller’s Dean of Intercultural Studies reported that in 1965 Muslims were two times the size of Christians across Africa. Today, he said, the numbers stand at 380,000,000 Christians and 320,000,000 Muslims. Not to be too triumphalistic but the efforts of groups such as African Enterprise have made a difference. AE has been a pioneer in training African missionaries in their home areas through the help of local church bodies. That’s why their staff stays small while their efforts reach from top to bottom across the continent.

International Team leader Stephen Mbogo from Kenya reported to an AE fiftieth anniversary meeting in Monrovia, California on September 26 that an AE sponsored prayer breakfast helped make a Christian of the Minister of Telecommunications Communications in the new nation of Southern Sudan. Things are happening across Africa and Michael Cassidy has said of the continent, “We have every problem except boredom.”

Neil Earle with Michael Cassidy (second left) and Herman and Isabell Hoeh at First Presbyterian, Hollywood, 2002.

“Fifty for Africa”

At the anniversary banquet on September 28, 2012, Michael Cassidy did not let down his friends, allies and supporters who came to hear once again of the inspiring but tiny beginnings of this major outreach. Born in Maseru, Natal inside South Africa of privileged English stock, the young Michael Cassidy pondered his future opportunities. As he says, “in a fit of absent-mindedness” he headed to Cambridge University in England to study law. He had been there only three weeks when a new friend and member of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union led him to a more active faith in Jesus Christ. Soon after that Billy Graham came to Cambridge and the young Cassidy had found a “new hero.”

Soon after that, in 1957, Michael Cassidy was staying with relatives in New York when Billy Graham preached at his Madison Square Garden Crusade. There Dr. Cassidy received his life’s call. As he tells it: “One night in the basement of Madison Square Garden, with counselors and counselees dotted all over the place in pairs, I seemed to hear a voice saying: “I want you to do city evangelism in Africa.”

This led to Dr. Cassidy’s studies at Fuller Seminary and the beginning of African Enterprise from a small team of caring students who held their first board meeting in January, 1961 with Fuller president Charles Fuller an ardent supporter. Next came a 50,000 mile scouting trip of Africa and a memorable scene on the beach at Monrovia, Liberia. There Dr Cassidy walked fifty steps in the clear West African sand and then asked God for fifty years for each step to do ministry across the whole continent.

A Third Generation

The covenant held and Michael Cassidy gave his first evangelistic sermon at the city hall of Pietermaritzburg on August 12, 1962 where – ironically – he spoke again this year on the exact same day. A fifty year jubilee indeed! Dr. Cassidy’s new project is finding and encouraging “third generation leaders to carry the mantle of African Enterprise to the corners of Africa.” “Even Khartoum [capital of the Sudan] has been opened to us” he exulted in Monrovia.

There have been setbacks and dangers along the way. One authentic martyr for AE was a close ally of Dr. Cassidy’s – Anglican Bishop Festo Kivengere who was gunned down by Muslim extremists in Uganda after persistently and publically rebuking the then-dictator Idi Amin. His children boldly carry on their father’s work. Among Dr. Cassidy’s quieter but truly historic achievements was working behind the scenes during the tense negotiations over the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994. The AE director brought in a Kenyan diplomat to reconcile key leaders in order to achieve a political breakthrough that averted near civil war in South Africa.

Now officially retired, Dr. Cassidy is still a major presence in the mission and his steadying, fatherly influence will no doubt guide AE for years still future.