The Rev. Mtipe Koggani (left) offers a prayer at Grace Africa Christian Connection during a Sunday afternoon service in January. GACC is a start-up of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri centered on African and Afro Caribbean immigrants in the St. Louis area. Photo: Facebook
[Episcopal News Service] Grace Africa Christian Connection in St. Louis, Missouri, is only two-and-a-half years old, but already it has an average Sunday attendance of about 40, with another 80 people involved community life. Its mission is to serve African and Afro Caribbean immigrants living in the United States, and today people from at least 15 countries call it their church home.
GACC, as it is known, is a church plant of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri that came about through a chance meeting in early March 2020 of then-Bishop-elect Deon K. Johnson and seminary student Mtipe Koggani. That morning Johnson attended Emmanuel Episcopal Church near his home and struck up a conversation with Koggani, a lifelong Anglican from Tanzania who had come to the U.S. to study at Eden Theological Seminary, just across the street from the church. He asked Koggani if he knew of other Africans living in the area, and Koggani said he could name at least 50 people.
Sensing a mission opportunity, “I said, ‘Let’s get you into the ordination process and ordain you,’” Johnson told Episcopal News Service. Koggani, who had been an active lay pastor at his home church and had planned to return to Tanzania after he graduated, told ENS the reason he was going to seminary was to serve the church. Johnson’s offer, he said, “was an opportunity to serve my African brothers and sisters,” so he said yes.
Even though COVID-19 restrictions were announced the next week, plans for Koggani’s ministry progressed. He graduated from Eden, served a year in the Episcopal Service Corps at the DuBois Center in Illinois, and then graduated with a Diploma in Anglican Studies from Virginia Theological Seminary in 2022.
Johnson noted that while Koggani was in Virginia, he created a group chat for Africans back in St. Louis so he could stay connected to them. He also worked with a team of eight people who spent that year listening to what people wanted in a new church community. “We didn’t want to go with the colonial method of us going to them and saying, ‘We are bringing you this,’” Koggani said. “We wanted to have mutual ministry.”
Once he was back in the St. Louis, Koggani found space at Grace United Methodist Church where GACC could worship on Sunday afternoons. And they started offering free piano, drums and guitar lessons to kids in the community as a way to potentially get them involved in the church. “They now are the ones who are part of our band during worship,” he said. “They started when they were 10, 11 years old, and they’re 13 or 14 now.”
They are so good that other churches have invited them to play, he said. And they are so dedicated that they never miss church “unless they are out of town or very, very sick.” Family members who have seen how happy the kids in the band now attend church.
Grace Methodist also has given them space to set up a recording studio, where the band can record practice sessions and where Koggani hopes to create videos, podcasts and other multimedia evangelism opportunities that can be shared on social media platforms.
“It also is a way of supporting African immigrants in the area who have talents in music, in video production and things like that, but who cannot afford studio sessions somewhere else,” he said. GACC doesn’t charge for using the space, only asking for a donation.
Music plays a big role in worship at Grace Africa Christian Connection. Band members include children who took music lessons at the church and then went on to play during the Sunday afternoon service. Photo: Facebook
Worship services follow the Book of Common Prayer, relying on Rite 3 of the Holy Eucharist, given it allows for the flexibility to incorporate elements of African style worship. “It’s different and similar to a typical Episcopal service,” Koggani said.
He and others in the church also have a ministry to international students coming to St. Louis, often reaching out to them even before they leave their home country. For Lynne Mumbe, now finishing her master’s degree in marketing at Webster University, that included finding her a place to live after she arrived from her home in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2023.
She was days away from leaving and still had nowhere to stay, so she searched social media to find anyone in St. Louis who might help. “I was connected with Reverend Mtipe,” she told ENS, who offered to provide short-term housing for her. He also stayed in touch while she was traveling, and a church member picked her up at the airport and took her shopping for essentials. She ended up renting the place where the church had hosted her initially.
Now, she and others helped by GACC feel called to do the same, she said. “We decided to transfer that [help] to other people, being that now we are members.”
Like Mumbe, the Rev. Kenneth Chimwaga first learned of the church when he still was in Tanzania – he and Koggani both come from the capital city, Dodoma – before heading to St. Louis to study at Eden Seminary. Once in Missouri, he reached out to Koggani and has been attending GACC ever since.
A priest in the Anglican Church in Tanzania in his first year at the seminary, Chimwaga told ENS he enjoys making connections with people from across Africa. He also really likes the style of worship there, especially the singing and dancing and the use of piano, guitars and other instruments. “We feel like we are at home,” he said.
Johnson noted that when people attend GACC, they don’t just worship and then go home. “They come to build community,” he said. “There’s always food, there’s always fellowship – they usually have to kick people out and say, ‘go home.’”
Chimwaga praised those responsible for helping to create GACC. “Father Mtipe is doing a very, very good job,” he said. “And Bishop Deon, who allowed this ministry to be established – congratulations to them both.”
When asked if he planned to stay in the U.S., Koggani noted that he now is married and isn’t certain what comes next. But he added, “As someone said, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, right?”
The diocese provides financial support for the church, Johnson said, which includes $200 in monthly rent for worship and office space at Grace Methodist. And even with uncertainties over finances caused by stock market fluctuations and proposed cuts to federal government jobs in the area, he said, “I’m going to try my best to figure out how we can keep funding this.”
Johnson acknowledged that the church is only two years old, “and most new church plants close within their first five years.” The Diocese of Missouri also is supporting two other church start-ups – Faith Church of India in Ballwin, and Journey Church in Fulton.
He believes The Episcopal Church needs to devote more resources to planting churches. “We spend more money supporting congregations that are struggling than looking at congregations that we could be planting,” Johnson said. “I’m not suggesting in any way that we abandon the congregations that we already have, but we’re going to have to put our financial resources in alignment with what we actually need to build the future.”
— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.