Zambesi Mission (ZM) celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2017.
It was established in 1892 as a self-supporting, self-propagating mission in Malawi (formerly Nyasaland), a place then described as ‘beyond the habitation of white men’.
Ahead of his time
Mercifully, the mission’s founder Joseph Booth was years ahead of his time when, writing in 1897 in a paper called ‘Africa for the African’, he shared his views about equal rights for Africans, who he regarded as best placed to spread the gospel in their lands.
Although sending missionaries to Malawi has been a vital part of ZM’s history, this is no longer the case today. Instead, there’s a small team of African workers in Malawi; furthermore, it has become an enabling mission, working solely through local partners, supporting them in their gospel ministry.
Prayerful and vibrant
ZM works with several partners in Malawi and northern Mozambique. Two are independent church denominations, the Zambezi Evangelical Church (ZEC) and River of Life Evangelical Church (RoLEC). These churches have many spiritual strengths. They can be very prayerful and vibrant, yet they face many challenges. In a time of great rejoicing, ZM’s Field Director Simon Chikwana recently attended the baptism of 35 believers at Namulu Zambezi Evangelical Church. But, with much concern, he noted that ‘not even a single one of them had a Bible. How will these young men and women get rooted in the Word if they do not read the Bible? How will they defend themselves against false teaching if they do not read the Bible? What contributions could they make to the growth of the church?’ In this environment churches can fall prey to prosperity teaching and syncretism with African Traditional Religion.
ZM’s priority is to help strengthen the church in Malawi through sound doctrine and the Word of God. Through its Word for Word scheme, supporters in the UK can subsidise the cost of a Bible in Chichewa or Chitumbuka, allowing a Christian in Malawi to buy one for a fraction of the normal cost: about £1 instead of £6. Through this initiative over 8,800 believers acquired their own Bibles last year.
Access and teaching
Not only does ZM regard access to Scripture as vital, but it also seeks to ensure that believers are taught biblical truths in their churches. ZM’s partnership with the Evangelical Bible College of Malawi (EBCoM) is unusual, since ZM is also a co-owner of the college. Based in Blantyre in southern Malawi, EBCoM is run collabora-tively by five different Malawian evangelical church denominations and three overseas missions (SIM, Brethren in Christ US and ZM). The college aims to help men and women to develop their understanding of the Lord and Scripture, giving them a concern to reach the lost with the good news about Jesus Christ, so that they serve God faithfully as pastors and evangelists in Malawi and northern Mozambique.
ZM also partners with Children for Christ Ministry, who have two focus areas: firstly, running Bible clubs for children in and around Blantyre; they also train Sunday school teachers (almost 1,000 in 2017) to present the truth of the gospel to children in an exciting and interactive way, particularly recognising the lack of resources available in Malawi.
Between equals
ZM’s approach to mission work is particularly distinctive. Instead of adopting a concept of Westerners ‘helping the needy’ in Africa, ZM believes that its working partnerships are interdependent relationships between equals: those who are ‘all one in Christ Jesus’. Mission Director Mike Beresford says: ‘Many Christians in the UK think we have the answers to all the world’s problems. We rarely stop to consider what God might want to teach us through his church in Africa; we rightly decry the issues of syncretism and the prosperity gospel. Yet we fail to notice the syncretism that Christians in the majority world have with the world and the idol of materialism. We can also overemphasise the status of the individual in our post-Enlightenment ‘me-first’ societies’. ZM aims to nurture inter-dependent ‘partnerships in the gospel’ between African Christians and those from the majority world.
