Text of Pastor Conrad Mbewe talk at the relaunch of the Philip Project held at All Soul's Langham Place in London on Monday 19th March 2007.

Let me begin by thanking the leadership of the Philip Project and of Friends International for having invited me to speak on this very important occasion. I do not know why they chose me out of a continent of millions of preachers of literally every shape and size to come and play such a role in this event, but I felt very privileged and honoured that they asked me to. If what I have to say tonight will encourage anyone here to put his shoulders to the wheel of Bible teaching in Africa, I will be satisfied that I have discharged my duty.

As you have already been told, my name is Conrad Mbewe. I am pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia. I am married and have three children (two teenage sons and a daughter) and am presently fostering three others (two young ladies and a young man). I trained as a mining engineer and worked in the copper mines in Zambia from 1984 to 1987, when Kabwata Baptist Church called me to be their pastor. I have been there ever since, clocking exacting twenty years this coming September. When I hear of the work of Friends International, and more particularly that of the Philip Project, I am most encouraged because it reminds me of my own background. I became a Christian in 1979 just before I entered the university. All the Bible College training I ever got prior to my entering the pastorate was the training I got in the Christian Union group and in my local church, and in the example of my pastor, Joe Simfukwe, in the five undergraduate years I sat under his ministry.

The Christian Union was the place where I learnt to provide leadership to fellow believers in evangelism and discipleship. In my own local church, one of the elders, who was also the General Secretary of the Zambian equivalent of UCCF, discipled me in the area of preparing and conducting Bible lessons. The example of my pastor in both his parochial and preaching ministry was the icing on the cake. It has been my anchor for the last twenty years as I have applied myself to the work of evangelism and discipleship in the local church. One of the greatest benefits I got from those five years of sitting under the ministry of my pastor was to see both the challenges and the benefits of an expository teaching ministry in Africa. In many ways it always reminds me of the words of the apostle Paul to the Ephesian elders: “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32).

THE COMMITMENT

Paul spoke these words at a time when he was very sure he would never see the people who made up the church in Ephesus again. To Paul, it was the end of an era. God had used him to plant this church a few years earlier. He had left the church for further church-planting ministry in other parts of Asia and Europe. In due season, he had helped with the appointment of elders in the church. It was with these elders that he was presently meeting. Later he was to send one of his apostolic assistants, Timothy, to labour there for a season. At this point, he stood before these elders and summarised both his evangelistic and pastoral ministry among them. As far as he was concerned, his ministry among them was successful. He measured his success not on the numbers that made up the church (the only numbers he refers to are those of wolves in sheepskins that he feared would arise among them). He measured his success among them in the way he worked himself out of the job of church-planting missionary by the comprehensive teaching and preaching ministry that he had when he taught them the word of God. Now, surely, that should tell us something about how we to should work.

The work of a pastor is basically that of working himself out of a job. It is to so teach the people of God the word of God that at a particular point you can say to them, “I am now leaving you in the faithful care and keeping of God and of his word.” That is what Paul was doing here. We see in this the intimate connection between the living God and his Word. Brethren, the grace of God is communicated to us through the Word of his grace. God’s Spirit does not work independent of the Word. He blesses the Word to our hearts. Paul knew this and so he faithfully discharged his duty as a teacher among the people of God in Ephesus. Thus in the end he could say, “I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God” (Acts 20:26-27).

Herein lies the major advantage of an expository preaching ministry. You may never finish preaching through the whole Bible. But by preaching through sections of it, and allowing its context to dictate what you say, you will find that you will cover all the doctrines of the Bible in their biblical connections with each other. Your people will learn to see these truths for themselves, like precious diamonds on velvet cushions, as you faithfully expound the Bible. Also, your people will build a biblical and systematized understanding of truth without even being conscious of it. Their lives will be fashioned by this developing biblical world view, causing them to live for God despite being surrounded by a morally depraved generation. That way, when you leave the scene of your labours, you will leave a stronger church in both quantity and quality – a church that will not be syncretistic in its beliefs and practices, as is presently the case across most of Africa.

This is what I saw in the life of my former pastor. Although I only lived under this man’s ministry for five years, and although he only ministered as a pastor in that church for another five years, the fruit of his expository preaching ministry has been unmistakable right across Zambia. This is especially obvious today when you compare the lives of the Christians who sat under this ministry with the lives of those who were attending churches where pastors were jumping from one passage in the Bible to another the way a monkey jumps from branch to branch, often simply as starting points for what they already wanted to say (of course, under the guise that it was the Holy Spirit inspiring them to do so). I do not want to sound judgmental or hypercritical, but the latter are not the ones providing strong leadership to the nation and to the evangelical church in Zambia – it is the former. The reason is quite simple. Topical preaching can never be comprehensive in content or biblical in balance. I am not saying that we must never preach topical sermons. I do that myself from time to time. What I am saying is that a pastor who majors in topical sermons will inevitably find himself only handling the topics that are closest to his heart. His experience will dictate what the church’s pulpit diet will be. Some truths of the Bible will never be handled simply because they do not even cross his mind. Yet the fact that God put them in the Bible means that he wants his people to know them and live by them in order for them to be balanced Christians.

Brethren, isn’t it right here that the church in Africa is so weak? As church leaders we are not committing God’s people to God and to the rich menu of his word. Rather we are committing them to topical sermons that are based on popular psychology. And sadly, this is what brings in the crowds. Our people will engage their minds actively in understanding very difficult things in their careers, but they view church as a mere source of an emotional lift. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, economists, with degrees after their names as long as the length of this room, will content themselves with a scanty spiritual library filled with a few popular “how to” books which they last read in first year at university. Despite their great learning, they fail to provide biblical answers to the many perplexing questions that are destroying their lives, their families, and the various institutions of their national life. All they care about is feeling good after listening to a message filled with religious platitudes. These nice sounding phrases are tickling our fancies but they as powerful at arresting sin in the human heart as a pea-gun is at stopping a charging lion. Sadly, this perennial diet of sweets has also caused many of God’s children to lose the edge on their spiritual appetites and so they are no longer seeking the whole wheat cereal meal of the Word. This is one definite challenge that any expository ministry in Africa will face today.

THE BIBLE’S ABILITY

Yet today I want to urge all of us to still press on, despite these challenges, to encourage and help pastors on the African continent to be faithful expositors of God’s word. In the midst of all these challenges, our pastors need to have the conviction that the apostle Paul had – that the teaching of the Bible is “able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” The word translated “able” is really the word for “power” (Greek: dunamis). God’s word is invested with divine power. It is no ordinary word. God likens his own word to a fire, a sword and a hammer. All these images speak of potency. I am not the most successful pastor, but I would not be telling the truth if I said that my experience in the last twenty years has not proved the reality of these words of Paul. Rightly dividing the Word of God will build up the people of God in their most holy faith.

As God’s people develop a biblical world view because of being exposed to the Word of God in its own context, they do not realize how much they have grown spiritually until they find themselves in the company of fellow Christians whose perennial diet is popular topical preaching. They are amazed at how man-centred their friends are in their religious commitment, how vulnerable they are to the deception of spiritual mavericks, how spiritually childish they are in their inter-personal relationships even in their marriages, how ready they are to justify unethical behaviour even among their church leaders, and how self-centred they are in their decisions. This makes them see where they once were. What has made the difference? It is their perennial exposure to the faithful exposition of God’s word.

What this is also teaching us is that spiritual growth must first be seen in terms of growth in holiness. Thus the apostle Paul speaks about the Ephesians taking up their place “among those who are sanctified,” i.e. those who are holy. Is this not what we want to see in the church in Africa? At the moment, we are the continent that has the fastest growing church on the planet and at the same time we are the continent with the highest levels of HIV/AIDS and corruption. The very churches we are boasting about, which are bursting at the seams with numbers, are rocked literally every day with leadership squabbles, theft of church funds, village gossip, adulterous affairs, witchcraft, pregnancies among choir members, etc. In the meantime, our church leaders seem to pride themselves in mere statistics, being given positions of honour and being called by high-flying titles. Surely, such facts must humble us and tell us that something is wrong. Where the word of God is faithfully preached we must not only have great quantities of believers; we must also have great quality of spiritual life. The word of God will true believers into a holy people – a people who are ethically and morally separated unto God. Jesus himself once prayed saying, “Sanctify them [or make them holy] by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

African pastors today desperately need role models if they are going to see in three-dimensions what we are talking about here. An expository preaching ministry not only demands a growing library but also perseverance in ongoing study. In a sense, this is good for a pastor because it means that he is also growing in his understanding of God’s word while he is ministering to others. But, how many pastors are willing to be life-long students of the word? Many are urged to be just that in college, but as soon as they are in the trenches of pastoral ministry they cope out. They opt for the easier route of simply feeding their people from the same cake of ignorance year after year, and just changing the colour of the sugar coating on the outside. Hence, even the few tools of the trade that they have acquired through the charity of well-meaning benefactors are collecting dust on their shelves.

As I have listened to many Bible College lecturers across Africa, it is clear that they still teach their students to preach expository sermons. But when you follow up their graduates you find them fully engaged in popular topical sermons. Why is this so? I have no doubt that it is because these men lack good role models. It is one thing to teach a man new methods of fishing in the comfort zone of a classroom and it is quite another for him to sit and watch a master fisherman labouring at this trade using the old-but-new method and bringing in the spoils. As the adage goes, “A bad carpenter blames his tools.” In the same way, when a man has tried to maintain an expository ministry the first few months and even years after his graduation from Bible college and found that his congregation is only getting thinner and his enemies in the church are increasing, he concludes that it is expository preaching that is failing. The truth is that he just does not know how to wield the sword of the Spirit. That is why those of you who have been exposed to such good role models here in the UK need to return to Africa and be examples of that which is praise worthy, good, noble and lovely.

There is no reason why Christianity in Africa should continue to be a mile wide but only an inch deep, when your African minds are being stretched here in the UK just as any western mind is being stretched. We must get rid of our spiritual and mental slothfulness and learn to love the Lord our God not only with our hearts but also with our minds. We need to stop sowing the wonderful pearls of popular psychology and start planting the precious seed of the Word of God in its own rich context. Thankfully, as I travel around the sub-region of southern Africa, I am seeing here and there glimmers of hope. I am finding a growing number of churches whose pulpits are being characterised by a faithful ministry of expository preaching. I am hopeful that a brighter day will soon dawn on the continent of my birth. I am seeing the fruit of such ministries and am rejoicing in the fact that a better day is coming for Africa. We are still with a continent that is spiritually sensitive and open to the gospel. Indeed in Africa, we are living in days of great gospel opportunities. The absence of many of the comforts of the western world with its militant atheism and political correctness means that our people are still willing to hear about God and his self-disclosure in his word. They still have room for God! The publication of the Africa Bible Commentary by seventy evangelical scholars across the continent of Africa, most of whom are committed to Bible teaching on African soil, only confirms my hope. Let us do all we can to encourage this. Too many of our pastors are surviving on slender tools. Let us help to equip them with the tools of the trade. If Paul needed his scrolls and his parchments while in prison, these men need even more as they seek to feed the hundreds and thousands who hang on their words every week. And, with the right role models before them, I am hopeful that we shall soon see a better Africa.

CONCLUSION

As I come to the end of my brief message, I am standing in front of you with a stick in my hand. With this stick I am drawing an imaginary line in the sand and asking each one of you to seriously consider the future of the church in Africa. I am asking those of you who want to see the church in Africa prosper spiritually, and thus benefit the rest of the world, to cross this line tonight. In crossing the line, I want you to resolve with Paul that you will work yourself out of your job as a teacher of God’s word by committing God’s people in Africa to God and to the word of his grace until they are built up and given a place among those who are sanctified. With such a life-long commitment may you end your days on earth with joy, as the apostle Paul did. Indeed may you enter into glory with a conscience void of offence because you never hesitated to give God’s people on earth the whole counsel of God through a faithful expository ministry or through supporting such a ministry. Amen! 

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