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Monthly Archives

June 2022

For Prayer…

By Prayer

Please pray with us for our partners in Africa.

“Pray that God will give us the resources so the community of Kibalya can have a maternity health facility, that we would be able to buy bibles for rural churches, and have the resources to train pastors for ministry.”

Bishop Nason BalukuSouth Rwenzori Diocese, Uganda

“With AMISOM peacekeeping force came Christians in uniform and other humanitarian peacekeepers including myself. Pray for all working for the salvation and restoration of this beautiful nation and its people.”

Daniel MasigaChristian Leaders Fellowship Mogadishu, Somalia

“Pray for the economic stability of Uganda as the inflation rate keeps rising. Lack of essential items always triggers a wave of crime so please pray for those who find themselves in desperate times and cannot afford basics.”

Brenda AbejaEagleLite Associates, Uganda

“Our prayer for our ministry at Juba in South Sudan is for funds to buy additional land for new churches. Secondly, we need a financial break through to open a school to provide education for local children.”

Alex SokiriNew Nation Church, South Sudan

“Please pray for me as I try and publish two books , for Judie’s PhD studies, for our three sons at university and for my elderly parents. Pray for Kenya and the continued spread of God’s transformative Word across the nation.”

Chris Khatela and Judie MmosiNgong Restoration Assembly, Kenya

“We’re constructing one of our local church’s buildings, please pray so we can complete the building soon. Our church community school want to construct a school building so please keep us in your prayers..”

Clinton GbawohCentral Christian Assembly, Liberia

“Give thanks that our training in marginalised areas of East Pokot is going on well. Please pray for the Pokot Bible Project and for the Pastors Camel Project. Also please pray the nation of Kenya as we prepare for elections.”

Shadrack Maiyo KomaNorth Rift Pastors’ Fellowship, Kenya

“Thank you for your prayers for my sister-in-law, Sally. Her operation was successful but doctors found cancer. She begins chemotherapy soon and has lots of pain. Please keep her, her husband and children in your prayers.”

Abraham KoechAfrica Inland Church, Kapsabet, Kenya

“Pray with me for donors to help fund ABS student tuition and administrative costs, and that ABS will be chartered to offer Certificate of Theology courses by National Council for Higher Education in Uganda.”

Francis EsomuAtirir Bible School, Soroti, Uganda

“TCN members elected a new board last year. Lets pray that they will catch up and take TCN to greater heights. Pray with us to get enough funding for income generation projects and for leaders graduating from TCN courses.”

Walter RuttoTransformational Compassion Network, Kenya

“Please pray with me for the funds to pay for my Master’s Degree in Theology and for our plans to start a Bible School in Lumbumbashi. Pray also for clean water provision in the local communities as this will raise the standard of living.”

Bertin MwanyaCongo Pastors’ Fellowship, Lumbumbashi, DRC

“Pray for my ministry as I am planning to do church planting in another area within Lusaka. I believe it will be a great opportunity to share the gospel and train new leaders using the eVitabu resources in this new area.”

Lawson LimaoWord of God Ministries, Zambia

“According to Rwandan law governing churches, an uneducated pastor cannot lead a church. If APF did not support my theological studies our church would now be disqualified. Give thanks to God for this support.”

Victor ImanaturikumweEglise Evangélique de la Bonne Volonté au Rwanda

“I feel a heavy burden for the pastors in this generation who need help. Pray that I will remain focused and for our coaching, counselling and training activities and programmes in Mukono and ministry target areas.”

Peter MugabiCephas Leadership Foundation, Uganda

“Pray for pastors who are suffering due to inflation to reach their churches in remote areas, and for 25 Baptist churches closed by the government as their buildings only have grass roofs or are too close to other churches.”

Jean Jacques MasaboBaptist Union of Burundi

“Please pray for revival in our churches in the Central Rift Region, pray for peace for our country during this election period, and pray for God’s provision as I attend a conference in the US in October and November.”

Simon LabosoCentral Rift Baptist Regional Convention, Kenya

“Following tropical storms and Cyclone Gombe that devastated our crops and infrastructure, praise God that we have replanted the maize we lost with assistance from APF. Pray now for a good winter crop harvest.”

Lloyd ChizengaNew Life Christian Church, Malawi

“Please pray for me as I pursue my Doctoral program in church ministry and leadership. Pray for the provision of ministry partners who will walk with the PDN women’s ministry team to bring training to women leaders.”

Rose MugabiPastors’ Discipleship Network, Uganda

“We pray for the ministry of evangelisation in Gakenke and Rulindo Districts in Rwanda and for students at Wisdom Bible School. Heavenly Farther, let the Word of God become light in these days affected by war in Ukraine and DRC.”

Charles MunyamahoroWisdom Bible School, Rwanda

“Please pray for me, for more grace in my God given gift to help pastors and church leaders. Pray for Tanzania, we’re facing inflation and life seems to be so tough as the Russia-Ukraine war shakes out our country’s economy.”

Heavenlight LuogaDeeper Life Ministries, Tanzania
June 23, 2022
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Download our July 2022 newsletter

By Impetus

July 2022 Impetus.

I have always prided myself on being able to recall names, faces and details of the people I meet. As a pastor, it’s a very useful skill. In many African contexts where local dialects and languages make pronunciation and recall more difficult however, this can be more challenging. But I think the same is true in reverse. Only this morning, I received an email from someone I recently met digitally addressed: ‘Dear Steve’!

Names are important.

This is especially true in Biblical thought: Adam means ‘man’, Eve means ‘life-giver’, Ruth means ‘friend’ and David (I have always liked this one) means ‘beloved’.

Above all, Jesus means ‘God who Saves’.

Ever since my early involvement in APF there have been conversations about the name ‘African Pastors Fellowship’. How does it communicate to a largely white British supporter base? Does it adequately describe organisational priorities around training and equipping Christian leaders? To what extent does it suggest a forward thinking and pioneering 21st century mission?

The most common response I get when I tell people I work for African Pastors Fellowship is, “but you’re not African!”. We need to be serious about the possibility our name could actually be a barrier to some opportunities.

The conversation is on-going and I would warmly welcome comments from supporters and friends of APF, both positive and negative concerning our name.

In the meantime, I hope you will be encouraged by this edition of Impetus which contains a significant section of prayer requests submitted by African friends and partners and has been prepared in response to your requests for more of a focus on prayer.

Every Blessing,
Dave (not Steve!)


Revd Dave Stedman
CEO

Download 'Impetus' here
June 23, 2022
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Celebrating 60 years of St Paul’s College

By Kenya

On a recent visit to the Anglican Diocese of Kapsabet in Kenya, APF’s Chair of Trustees, Rev Canon Richard Suffern was able to attend the 60th anniversary service and celebrations of St Paul’s Theological and Bible College. Richard writes:

At a colourful and vibrant service members of staff and students, present and past, celebrated the diamond anniversary of the establishment of St Paul’s College. Five hours of worship, testimony, prayer and presentations followed by an excellent lunch made for a day of praise and thanksgiving to God for all that He has done through the College. St Paul’s serves four Dioceses in particular, but students come from all over Kenya. Over 600 students have trained here, the largest Anglican theological college in Western Kenya.

St Paul’s has always aspired to be at the cutting edge of theological training, both academic and applied. This makes APF’s involvement in the life and teaching of the College very relevant. St Paul’s has devised a five-year development plan which includes APF’s flagship eVitabu. As College Principal Rev Elizabeth Cheruiyot says: “Our priority areas include utilising modern technology by going digital and exploring the opportunities therein.”

Many of the graduates have gone on to senior leadership positions in the Church, and the preacher for this occasion was the inspiring former student Rev Dr Sammy Wainaina, Provost of Nairobi Cathedral. The training is also very relevant to ministry in remote and less developed areas of Kenya which include West Pokot district where I worked for five years with Tearfund. I was also able to go to West Pokot to visit the newest Diocese of Kenya, Kapenguria, in May. This Diocese was a parish when I lived in Kenya! There are now hundreds of local churches with their leaders who need resourcing in the way that eVitabu makes possible.

I returned from Kenya even more convinced of the great value of eVitabu training and resourcing work of APF. I give thanks to God for calling APF into existence for such a time as this as well as for times and conditions of the past. Well done to all our team who work in such a dedicated and inspired way to see vision become reality!

June 23, 2022
Love2

Village discipleship in Malawi

By eVitabu, Malawi

The church in Africa is growing faster than anywhere else but training leaders for the new churches isn’t keeping up. The vast majority of rural church leaders have never had even a single day of formal training. In Malawi, Patrick  Steven Mateketa is finding eVitabu to be an invaluable tool to support his vital training work with village church leadership teams.

My name is Patrick Steven Mateketa. I am a Malawian from the Central Region, District of Kasungu but I was born and have lived most of my life in the southern region. For ten years now, I am living in Balaka District.

I joined African Pastors Fellowship in the year 2020 and was introduced to the eVitabu app. I am a pastor and teacher by calling. Teachers need to be very resourceful so that they can better communicate hidden meanings of the Word of God, so I wanted to see how eVitabu could help me.

By the time I was joining APF, I was running village discipleship training workshops with rural pastors and leaders not far from where I live. I had prepared three lessons from the books given to me by an American pastor from California which I translated into Chichewa. That was the beginning of my village discipleship ministry programme.

In our villages, most of church pastors and leaders are handpicked. They don’t have any training or even basic knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. You find a pastor leading a big congregation but lacking both theological understanding and the resources to guide them.

After six months of village discipleship training, the American funding ended. I was also concerned about a training focus that seemed to me to be about personal gain. Nevertheless, other pastors and leaders in villages also called me, asking for training. This made me realise exactly what office God set for me in my calling.

I now started searching for resources to use to train and coach village pastors in depth. Among them, I found the eVitabu app from APF which I use regularly. In eVitabu, there are resources touching almost every area of ministry. For example, when I am teaching on discipleship, I look for discipleship books. When I am teaching on pastoral formation, I look for resources focused on theology, the art of preaching, eschatology, and the like.

eVitabu is simple to use and very handy. Once, a pastor from the UK bought me a laptop but it was not safe to carry it on the bicycle I use to cycle very long distances. I ended up breaking it, soaked in the rain. With eVitabu, I have many powerful resources just there on my phone, but it is easy to carry and protect.

Sometimes, a learner asks me a question from a topic that I don’t have much knowledge about. When this happens, I ask them to let me finish the current teaching point and say I will come back to that question later. I can then get my phone, open eVitabu, search for that topic and I have this great support. This is only a problem when I am in areas where the network is weak.

Many of the resources on eVitabu are in English but I teach in our own languages. One of the things I do is to choose a portion of a relevant resource and translate it either while I am preparing or even while I am teaching. I would love to see more resources on eVitabu in Chichewa, Tumbuka and other languages spoken in Malawi.

Another thing that would be a great help is for supporters of APF to support my training by donating data bundles for my phone. Data bundles are a problem to most of us here.

In our monthly APF discussions on Zoom, I heard APF staff Dave and Geoff talk about a future development of doing formal Bible school training by extension learning through the eVitabu app. This idea must be promoted, encouraged and marketed with a catchy advertisement.

I like the eVitabu app because it does not only teach about the spiritual things but also covers agriculture, economics, the environment, our society and other people. Christian leaders are agents for change and positive change should be seen across all aspects of our lives.

In the village where I borrow a piece of land to grow my crops, people do not believe they can harvest good crops without first securing the farm with magic. But of all the village farms this year, my small field has better crops than any other fields. Villagers are now beginning to trust God in their farming.

God bless you!
Patrick Steven Mateketa

June 23, 2022
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Fostering fellowship across Africa

By Rwanda, Zambia

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a very challenging time for many of our partners right across Africa. But tough situations inspire creativity and new ways of working. For example, instead of travelling to meet with the pastors and church leaders we work alongside, we set up monthly gatherings on Zoom. Now travel is possible again, our online meetings are continuing especially because they are creating a greater sense of fellowship between our African partners, something that was lacking before.  It’s great to listen to church leaders from Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Mali and DRC discussing and learning from each other’s experience. Recently, one of our partners from Rwanda spent several months in Zambia to study English. While he was there, he sought out a familiar face from the APF online meetings. Emmanuel explains…

My name is Revd Emmanuel Gatera from Kamembe in Rwanda, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. I lead a network of churches called Word of Life Church.

I would like to share with you something about the connection I made while I was in Lusaka, Zambia.

Since March and up to June 2022, I was in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia at English language school. During the time I spent there, I had the privilege of creating friendships with pastors and organisations.

Through the connection with the APF Zoom meetings, I had already met Pastor Charles Mwampe from Zambia Youth Ministries online so we met in-person while I was in Lusaka.

Pastor Charles then invited me to attend the Zambia Youth Ministries conference. It was wonderful to speak at this conference on the theme “Why is it wise to trust in God not in men?” using Psalm 146:1-10 and Psalm 125:1-2. Many of the youth responded to the message and decided to put their trust in God.

There are many benefits of networking with pastors and organisations pan-Africa. It is so important for African pastors to grow in friendship and work together in growing the Kingdom of God by sharing the opportunities they have.

During the three months I spent in Lusaka, I was hosted in the home of a ‘bishop’ of a young Pentecostal church group. He is the Chairman of 100 different churches in this network and these churches showed me love as I ministered with them.

It was good to learn about their unity as churches. They meet each Monday between 4pm and 6pm for praying, sharing God’s word and helping each other so that each one can have a business of doing.

My prayer is that this fellowship can grow up.

Thank you!
Emmanuel Gatera

June 23, 2022
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