BIOGRAPHY OF REINHARD BONNKE

 

Reinhard Bonnke was a German-American evangelist known for carrying out extensive gospel missions throughout the African continent. He was born on 19 April, 1940 in Konigsberg, East Prussia, Germany to a family of devout Christians. His father Hermann Bonnke worked as an army logistic officer in Germany.

Soon after Bonnke was born, the region of East Prussia went through mass evacuation owing to the fear of the Red Army approaching the German lines towards East Prussia. Bonnke with his mother and siblings were taken to Denmark and he spent some years in a displaced persons centre before settling in West Germany. Following the end of the war, his father became a pastor.

Reinhard Bonnke became a born again Christian at the age of nine after his mother spoke with him about a sin that he had committed. At the age of 10, he sensed a call from God to serve as a missionary in Africa.

For his higher education, Bonnke moved to Swansea, Wales in the United Kingdom to study at the Bible College of Wales. He came in touch with a teacher named Samuel Rees Howells. Samuel who was the director of the Bible College of Wales and was a deeply spiritual man, inspiring Bonnke to further develop a deep sense of spirituality inside of himself.

Bonnke also met famous preacher, George Jeffreys in London and told him about his divine calling to spread the message of God accross Africa. George Jeffreys encouraged him and also prayed for him. After graduation, he pastored in Germany for seven years. 

Reinhard Bonnke began holding several meetings in Rendsburg, Germany. He became extremely popular locally which led him to recieve invitations to speak in Christian gatherings from all over Germany and the world. 

During one of his meetings, he met Anni Suelz at a gospel music festival and admired the grace which she showed when a mistake led him led to her losing a music competition. He offered to preach at the church she attended and over time, they fell in love. They married in 1964 and had three children.

Bonnke made a move to leave Germany for South Africa but the Velbeter Missions Board in Germany told him that they had no positions in South Africa. He was offered a position in Zambia but he declined. In 1967, he finally moved to South Africa. On getting to the country, he developed an antipathy towards the apartheid system in the country which in turn caused a friction between him and the minister who oversaw him in South Africa. Bonnke subsequently accepted a position to oversee three churches in Lesotho.

In the first few years of his work, he encountered poor results from his evangelistic efforts and felt frustrated at the pace of his ministry, then he had a recurring dream featuring a picture of the map of Africa being splattered with blood and heard the voice of God saying "Africa Shall be Saved". This dream inspired him to leave the ministry and adopt a large scale evangelistic approach.

In 1974, he moved to Gaborone, Bostwana's capital and asked a pastor there to arrange a meeting with city officials. He wanted the permission to hold a large crusade at the National Sports Stadium where he wanted to bring more than 10,000 people. The pastor asked him to hold a smaller meeting as there was no way a crowd as large as 10,000 were going to show up to the crusade.

Bonnke took it as a challenge and began to publicise the meeting extensively. He came in contact with pastor Richard Ngidi, who helped him bring the audience. On the first day, a few hundred people showed up but within the next three nights, the stadium was packet with 10,000 people. 

In the same 1974, he founded the mission organization, Christ for all Nations (CfaN). Originally, the organization was based in Johannesburg, South Africa but the headquarters were relocated to Frankfurt, Germany in 1986. This was done to distance the organization from South Africa's apartheid policy at the time. Today, CfaN has at least 9 offices accross five continents.

Bonnke began his ministry holding tent meetings that accomodated large crowds. In 1986, he commissioned the construction of what was then the world's largest mobile structure, a tent capable of seating 34,000 people. This was destroyed by windstorm just before a major meeting and the team decided to hold the event in the open air instead.

The event was subsequently attended by over 100,000 people, far greater than the 34,000 seating capacity tent could have contained. The 34,000 seat tent was later reconstructed and used only once in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1986. Apart from South Africa, Bonnke also expanded his evangelical activities in more African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria.

In 1991 during his visit to Kano, a state in the Muslim dominated northern region of Nigeria. There were riots in the city as Muslims protested over remarks he had made about Islam in the city of Kaduna on his way to Kano. They misunderstood his remarks to mean he blasphemed Islam. A rumour was spread that Bonnke was planning to "lead an invasion" into Kano state. 

Muslim youths gathered at a place where they were addressed by several clerics who claimed that Bonnke was going to blaspheme Islam. About 8000 youths gathered at the Emir's palace. After noon prayers, the riots ensued during which many Christians sustained various injuries and several churches were burned. Official report states that at least 8 people were killed. Christians were thrown into wells and the attacks were spread between multiple locations.

Despite the state governor absolving Bonnke of any blame for the incident, his subsequent attempts to return to Nigeria were denied as the Nigerian Embassy refused his visa applications. In 2000, a new civilian government in Nigeria was elected to power and President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian invited Bonnke to return to the country. Bonnke returned to Nigeria and held crusades in Benin City in the South. 

In another crusade he held in Lagos, Nigeria in 2000, more than 6 million people were in attendance. Bonnke subsequently held many crusades in Nigeria after 2000 and conversation rates were higher than many other African nations.

In 2009, Bonnke appointed Daniel Kolenda as his successor and in 2017, he held his farewell gospel crusade in Lagos, Nigeria. He died on 7 December 2019 at the age of 79. The month before his death, he announced on his official Facebook page that he had undergone femur surgery and needed to learn how to walk again. 

Following his death, Daniel Kolenda took over the leadership of the ministry. More than 400 evangelists have been trained by Christ for all Nations and more than 91 million decisions for Christ have been counted.

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