Overview and Leadership
Welcome to the Africa French Equatorial Field. You are very special to us; just to think of us among the endless list of tasks that keep you extremely busy. We value your care and interest in us.
Our field covers the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Rwanda, Burundi, Madagascar, and the Island of Reunion. Other target countries include Mauritius, Gabon, and the Central African Republic. The field is relatively young. It originally started in 1996. There are 231 organized churches, 286 preaching points and 28,365 members. We have six phase one districts and three official pioneer areas, and we are in the process of creating a forth pioneer area. Currently we have four missionary units. We praise God for the men and women, both indigenous and missionaries who have sacrificially given their lives in obedience to the great commission. We rejoice that the Lord Jesus Christ has sent us to minister in these areas of the globe to make disciples for Him.
The growth of the Church of the Nazarene has been made possible through the different ministries the Church has established. We thank God for the training programmes on and outside the field, the JESUS Film Ministry, Child Sponsorship (now moving into child development), Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, Literature, Radio Ministry, and many others. We thank God for these supporting arms and all those people who have been behind them. We are dedicated to incorporate any new methods that can make us grow and strengthen us.
We are dedicated to teach and make use of our auxiliaries engineering of SDMI, NMI, and NYI so that we continue in the tradition, wisdom and experience of those that have gone before us. We understand the complexity of administering the auxiliaries, but we envision professionalism in this area and reflect the global Church within our own contexts, cultures, and time.
Strategy
As a denomination, we exist to advance God’s kingdom by the preservation and propagation of Christian holiness as set forth in the Scriptures (Manual 2005-2009,7). The Africa French Equatorial Field graciously strives to make disciples who will live by this standard.
Our training programmes, practice and policies, are aimed at producing members of the clergy in particular and the laity in general who will articulate this doctrine as set forth in the scriptures, and not only making it an academic exercise, but also live it in all areas of human activity. We envision the field to be a home of holiness preaching, teaching and living. We will always strive to find historical ways kept by our forefathers and live this truth here on earth in obedience to the gospel demands.
Standing and depending on the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ in the great commission, we want to make use of any effective methods to bring as many as can hear the gospel of salvation into a personal knowledge with Him as the only hope for the lost world. This requires an extreme sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit into ripe fields; seizing opportunities to take the gospel to areas where the people have never heard about our Lord Jesus Christ. The mission fields are not only nations, cultures, and people groups, but also fields such as political, economic, and intellectual systems and ideologies.
How we revive and keep the intellectual content of Wesleyan holiness theology remains a big subject on the field. In other words, how we make Christlike disciples in the Wesleyan tradition remains the biggest task ahead of us. The work of the Church does not just end with bringing the lost in, but teaching them to BECOME like the Master.
Our field has gone and continues to go through dark moments in the political and economic history of the continent, among many other dark chapters, and yet the gospel of Jesus Christ has outlined principles regarding human behavior. The BIG question is “how do we explicitly incarnate holiness in religious, cultural, social, economic, and political life”?
The 2003 Africa Region and the 2007 Global theology conferences in Johannesburg and Amsterdam brought up the issue of social injustice as one area where the Church has been silent. This is affecting us and our members on the field. This argument on social injustice proposes that holiness is not just limited to the proper ordering of personal moral life in the light of the love for God, but that holiness has got a social dimension because social life presents man with dilemmas to which he must respond in ways that meet the demands of the Gospel. Society and its life on the French Equatorial Field present challenges that undermine the truth that Christian perfection exist.
The genocide in Rwanda for instance, the political unrest and corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the civil war in Burundi that has left many people homeless, these and many others are not just dark chapters in the history of these countries, but raise theological questions on how we outline relevant holiness norms which all Christians in general and Nazarenes in particular should use to judge the social situations that confront them.
When it comes to showing our members what is demanded of them when they encounter challenges in life, it is sad to note that some of our leaders turn to short term political agendas, others turn to some international figures, and still others turn to some secular opinions instead of turning to the truth revealed in the Word of God.
We are striving to be a field where secularism will give way to the truth of the Word of God. We are moving to a point where the Church on the field will articulate fresh critiques of certain ideas, actions, and arrangements, which according to the Gospel contribute to disorder in the life of the Church and the private life of our members; in other words, a field that is the home of holiness. We want to be a church that will discern the signs of the time, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, as an indication of God’s presence and desire in contemporary Nazarenes.
We are on the search for discipleship programmes that will help us develop the spiritual powers of our members to be conformed to the imago Dei. This includes Sunday School programmes, pastoral training; primary, secondary and tertiary education that transform not only the mind, but also the heart. Training remains on top of our business, be it formal or informal.
Regardless of the local mentality, political and economic policies that have deprived many of our members the opportunity for self-support, we would like to see ourselves as soon as the Lord enables us to be a self-supported field.
Please join in this battle if you can and we appreciate your prayers.
Chanshi Chanda
Field Strategy Coordinator
chanshi@coppernet.zm