Candidate 24 Profile

Section A. Background Information

10. Year of Ordination

2014

11. Denomination of Ordination

Reformed Church in Zambia

12. If not RCA, what classes or supervising body from the ordaining denomination recognizes your ordination?

13. Present denomination

Reformed Church in Zambia

14. Present classis or judicatory

Ndola Presbytery

15. If you are not now a member of the Reformed Church in America, can you, in good conscience, agree with the doctrine, discipline and government of the RCA?

Yes

16. Do you support the mission and division of the Reformed Church in America?

Yes

17. Citizen of what country? If not USA, do you have permit to live and work in the USA?

Zambia. Yes. I have not stayed no applied for work permit

18. Previous Experience

19. Formal Education

20. Continuing Education

21. Languages (list any languages, other than English, in which you can preach or converse fluently)

Nill (Zambian Languages only)

Section B. Reflection

1. Describe your strengths, the best of who you are, and what you bring in service to the church.

I am a dynamic and result oriented who enjoys working with people with diverse cultural background with good interpersonal skills. Very hard working and work with minimal supervision. Love to preach the Gospel of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ through teaching and counseling. My passion is in doing house visitation listening to the people of God, walking with them in their journey of faith and administering Leadership development and helping those who do not know their gifts in the church.

My strengths are that I am a good listener, love sharing responsibilities, open to learning new things, flexibility to handle change, delegating tasks, helping people to discover their gifts and helping them to practice them. Help those who are marginalized in the community.

2. Name two or three mentors who have significantly contributed to your ministry, and explain why these people are important to you.

Mentors

1. Rev. Moses Lucas Mwale

2. Rev. Matsauso Moyo

The reason why first of all the Rev. Moses Lucas Mwale is important to me is because he taught me through deeds and words how a minister needs to be. That is to accept people as they are in ministry and not to choose who to associate with in the Lords vineyard. I also learnt that for ministry to growth the pastor must not use power to lead the church but the pastor must be humble and always work with the leaders and the congregation at large because everyone is gifted differently.

On the other hand, the Rev. Moyo is important to me as he taught me as a youth leaders to be always committed to the work of God to the best of one’s ability. A pastor according to him must work as if everything was left into his hand by God and at the same time needs to work knowing that without God nothing can be achieved. The other things which is important by Rev. Moyo which he taught me was that a pastor must always remain a student as learning and change are constant to the development of a minister and for life in general.

3. What caused you to enter ministry, and what are the core values that define your vision for ministry?

My ministry journey was influenced by my youth pastor as well as friends while serving in the youth movement. It was time of camp meeting and prayers that I decided to serve the Lord. When I look back, I realize that it was the grace of God that was shown to me because I was going to be living life without purpose.

The core values which define my vision for ministry is that of welcoming everyone to the church of God just like Christ welcomed me. God shows me mercy and for that I take it that I have to mirror that to the in the church and those who haven’t come yet.

The other core value is to be a pastor who helps others discover there God given gifts. This is because I have come to believe that each and everyone who is born of Christ has been given an ability to work in order to advance the kingdom of God.

4. Explain the strategies or ideas that most excite you for helping a church to become and remain missional.

One of the strategies that excites me is the understanding the life of the trinity which is love, sharing and working together. The life of the triune God is to show love and share with the members of the immediate community while sharing the love with those outside the community. The life of the trinity is all about love and sharing.

The church can become and remain missional when the church appreciate the love of God and shares it to the community. This will entail sharing responsibilities about everything else that requires to do mission but also be a light where you are.

The result of this strategy is that it brings an understanding that mission is not an adventure of the church but the church is a participant in this venture of the triune God. Sharing of the gospel is the nature of the triune God and once we are in union with him then we will testify to others about how loving and welcoming but also our Lord loves to share his life and attributes with others.

5. Name three of your most passionate hopes for the Church at large, and why they are significant to you.

1. To have a health church

2. To have a missional church

3. To have a church that is welcoming

These three are important to me because worshipping of God becomes enriching and benefit not those who are doing it but glorifies God the creator. When the church is health that means it will be able to fulfill the greatest commission and those who are excluded in the church will find space to the glory of our God. The church is an embodiment of Christ to an extent that it does what Christ did, to preach, welcome the lost and also create health relationships.

6. Give an example of how you would theologically address an issue facing your contemporary world. Please be thorough enough to help the reader to understand your thought processes and your life commitments.

One of the issues facing our contemporary world is that of racism. As a pastor and theologian I would encourage the congregation I pastor not to be judgmental and segregative because those who belong to other races are human being like anyone else and deserve the love of God and to be respected.

I would then remind the church that as a church we must be able to be welcoming like Jesus was. The example I would give is found on Luke 15, where Jesus was able to associate with sinners and tax collectors. This means that if our Lord and Savior Jesus was able to mix with sinners then we have to learn what it means to be a church today.

The mode of dealing with an issue is importantly done by engaging concerned parties and listen to them first of all then remind one another who we are as a church and seek the face of God and his will so that the congregation will be involved in finding a solution.

7. What theologians, pastors, authors or other leaders have had the greatest influence upon your life and thought? (List up to 4 and explain.)

1. Nelson Mandela

2. Rev. Dr. H Jurgens Hendricks

3. Rev. Prof Victor Chilenje

4. Rick Warren

The reason I pick on Nelson Mandela the first African President of the Republic of South Africa is because of not been vengeful after his release from prison for 27 years and becoming a president of that country. He showed that when you have power, it is not to use it to get on your enemies but to give it back to the power. He only decided to rule for one term even when people still needed him. In that he gave power to the people.

H. Jurgen Hendricks is an African theologian in practical theology who was one of the pioneers of a Network for African Congregational Theology NetACT. He also wrote a book called studying congregations in Africa. According to him doing theology must be dome not only by theologian but the community of faith needs to be involved. The churches in Africa need to deal with their challenges and problems in their own contexts by letting the church to discern its challenges by seeking the triune God who sent his son to the world is the source of our identity, his church is the body of Christ, communities of faith are found in the world where problems and challenges are found (with a history) and they have to strive from scripture to discern the will of God. This type of theology is not from the dogmas of the church but it is done from the community using various discipline of theology.

Rick Warren

This comes on the scene to talk about leadership development to help the church as one of the organization. In this the church just like any other organization must be eager to develop leadership because for the church to realize its vision then it must have correct leadership who can move it and achieve its goals.

Rev. Prof Victor Chilenje

He is a pastor in the Church of Central African Presbyterian and a professor of theology at Justo Mwale University specialized in Church History and Church polity. As my professor (since I am a student of Church History and Church Polity) he always told me that history is important for the church today as it helps the church to see were its coming from, were it is in order to venture into the future. The church and even a congregation needs to know its history so that it may learn from its past activities.

8. How do you hope someone influenced by your ministry would describe what s/he considers to be most important?

That in whatever we do as servants of God, is to let all the glory go to God.

9. Name at least one challenge for a pastor who accepts a Call to lead a church whose culture is other than his/her own.

To be able to make sure that you do things right and respect the culture of that community. In trying to make sure that is when you make more mistakes, the solution is to be receptive to the context learn.

10. Describe your vision and hopes for the Church over the next 5-10 years.

My vision would be to help the church to grow into a place for everyone to the glory of God. The other thing is to be able to empower the members of the church so that are able to practice their gifts and abilities.

11. If there is anything else you would like to add about yourself that you think would help a search team to better understand and consider you as their next pastor, please elaborate here.

One things which I may also contribute to the life of the congregation is my ability to understand and resolve conflict due to the studies I am doing in peace, leadership and conflict resolution. Conflict basically is when people’s goals differ and the means to achieve those goes. It can mainly be understood in different ways such as: intre-personal or inter-person, intre-group and inter- group. Individuals can experience conflict within them or it can be between two people or within a group or inter group conflict.

As a student of peace and conflict resolution, conflict is not wholly bad because sometimes it is health as it helps people understand one another. Conflict becomes bad especially when it turns violent (verbal or physical). That is why it is important to be able to handle conflict as soon as one notices the signs of it because conflict has stages. The good thing is that we have the ability to resolve conflict as it is said “since conflict begins in the mind of human beings with it is them who can also resolve it primarily”.

When there is conflict we need to approach it not with a negative mind but that we can learn something so that next time when we are faced with the same challenge we will not be in conflict again. Conflict can be resolved when root causes are addressed through different ways on mediation or just the parties involved.