TESTIMONY FROM AFRICA: ‘You Have Been Stealing from God’

By Robert Reese

Bafundi Mpofu is headmaster of Petra Primary School, a Christian school in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He is also the first vice president of the World Convention of Churches of Christ/Disciples of Christ, which means that he will assume the office of president in 2008. Finally, he is an elder at his local church, Makokoba Church of Christ in Bulawayo, and president of the Association of Churches of Christ in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces of Zimbabwe. I sat down for an interview with him after we attended Sunday worship at Makokoba Church of Christ on July 24, 2005. He had a remarkable story of a personal awakening to the need for greater self-reliance on the part of Zimbabwean churches in light of the Great Commission. He is passing on this awakening to his local church and his association.

The origin of the churches of Christ in Zimbabwe goes back just over a century to a stonemason named John Sheriff, a native of New Zealand, who arrived in Bulawayo around 1897. Sheriff was a self-supporting missionary who had a vision of African evangelists planting churches all over Africa, beginning in Makokoba. He trained African evangelists in Bulawayo, sending them out to other parts of Zimbabwe and to other nations.

He helped to plant and build the Makokoba Church of Christ. Bafundi is a product of this missionary outreach, having grown up in the church of Christ, and receiving his education at Dadaya Mission, founded by other New Zealand missionaries who followed up Sheriff”s work. Now he is an influential church elder at the very place where Sheriff started his work.

A Visit

The ties to New Zealand and Australia remain strong today. Bafundi became a key fund-raiser on behalf of the Zimbabwean churches of Christ, frequently traveling to Australia and New Zealand. He received an invitation from the Overseas Mission Board of the churches of Christ there to visit in June 2003 in order to raise funds for motorcycles for evangelists.

He was trying to help his association overcome a period of stagnation by promoting organized evangelism. His association targeted an area for intensive church planting that is not only receptive to the gospel, but also is situated between existing congregations. He initially asked for three motorcycles, but the response to his messages in Australia was so positive that he immediately reached the goal of three vehicles, and decided to go for nine!

During a month of fund-raising, Bafundi visited a small church of Christ in Melbourne. Noting that this congregation had only 30 members, he asked a former missionary, who was his host at this church, how they could afford to support the two pastors with so few members. The prompt reply was that all members tithed, which led to further discussions.

An Investigation

The missionary wanted to know about the situation at Makokoba Church of Christ. Bafundi confessed that his local church only partially supported one pastor, with an American missionary supplying half his salary, despite having 280 members in the church. The missionary asked many questions over the next few days about the type of jobs and salaries that members had and the weekly offerings.

Bafundi answered that there were teachers, headmasters, nurses, business managers, and even a magistrate in the church, but the offerings were small. This was the trend throughout the churches of Christ in Zimbabwe where 300 congregations supported only nine full-time pastors.

A Challenge

The Australian missionary was trying to decide how Bafundi would respond to what he had to say, praying that he would receive it well. Finally, the two of them were on a boat leaving Tasmania for the mainland, when the missionary revealed his heart to Bafundi. He began by saying that members of the body of Christ ought to be able to challenge and educate one another. He saw Bafundi as a motivator who could influence the Zimbabwean churches to change the way they operate. Then he prayed that God would anoint the Zimbabwean leader to carry an important message to his people.

After that promising start, he surprised Bafundi by saying, “You have been stealing from God!” He had seen by his calculations based on Bafundi”s answers that neither Bafundi nor the Zimbabwean Christians were tithing, and he stressed that the command to tithe had never been removed, since Christians are told to give as they have been prospered. He urged Bafundi to convince his people to begin tithing and to support missions, because they had been recipients of missions giving for a hundred years.

Bafundi had never heard the matter of tithing put quite like this, so he resolved to tithe himself. Furthermore, he preached on tithing at Makokoba in August 2003 upon his return to Zimbabwe. He presented the missionary”s message to the board of elders at the end of that month, and all the leaders agreed to start tithing as an example for the rest of the congregation.

He then began to spread the message to other churches. The results amazed him and the other elders. First, Makokoba asked the American missionary to stop his contributions to their pastor, because they were prepared to carry his full salary. In fact, they now support two full-time pastors. Beyond that, they support evangelism in their target area where they have planted 10 new churches, sending two evangelists to each new church once every two weeks.

They plan for one of their pastors to spend several days a week training new preachers and leaders at the new churches. They are praying that the example of increased giving that they have set will catch on with other congregations of their association.

A New Sense of Purpose

On the day that I attended Makokoba Church of Christ, I witnessed a tithe of 4 million Zimbabwean dollars (about $200 U.S.), but it was not the month end, and church leaders said they should receive four times that much the following Sunday, as their average tithe had reached $20 million Zimbabwean. This amazing transition from a posture of feeling they could do little on their own to generating funds they can use for church planting has left the church with a new sense of purpose at a time when Zimbabwe is facing near total economic collapse.

In vivid terms, Bafundi Mpofu admitted that his own assumptions about what Zimbabwean Christians could do were mistaken. Furthermore, the realization that he and others could tithe even in harsh economic conditions came as a spiritual awakening.

This awakening has spread to his whole church and beyond. The result has been that his church has experienced the joy of giving to promote the gospel in their own region with their own evangelists. The fact that they no longer have to ask outsiders to fund their work gives them a new sense of purpose, which in turn makes them better evangelists in a situation where few have hope. The church has become a beacon of light in dark times, as faith has produced fruit in giving and outreach.

The common assumption that churches in developing countries must continue to receive outside help must increasingly be challenged. That approach ends up being destructive even though it sounds logical and good. Nobody would have thought that Zimbabwean churches could become self-supporting now, but it is happening simply because a former missionary had the courage to question assumptions based on dependency being the normal state of affairs.

If Zimbabwean Christians can support their own pastors and evangelists, expanding their outreach during a terrible economic crisis, then God gets the glory and the truth of God”s word is revealed afresh: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

 

 

Robert Reese ([email protected]) is a missions consultant working with World Mission Associates in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.