Dear Reverend Becker,
Greetings to you in the Lord’s precious name.
As you take time to meet family and friends in the United States of America, I wish to encourage you for the great contribution that you have made to the church in Zambia since your coming to this country several years ago.
As a result of the many trainings[sic] that were organized by the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (a Christian evangelical umbrella body), it was a great blessing to have your invaluable participation and input into the lives of our hundreds of our local pastors in urban as well as rural Zambia.
Thank you for spending so much of your time to share on various topics on the mission of the church to the pastors. Many of the pastors have not had formal training from a Bible School or Theological Seminary and your time with a team of facilitators all across our country imparted essential biblical knowledge, leadership and administrative skills to our people. This has greatly impacted on our churches with corresponding quality of ministry and improved leadership and character development.
You have a strong understanding of the Zambia’s scenario and spiritual landscape that has enabled you to contextualise a lot of your exposure and professional ministerial qualifications into the local scenario of our country. As a result, it is such a blessing that many of our local pastors can always call on you to for guidance knowing that you provide a great contribution into their lives and the work of ministry. Your stay and ministry has been such a great blessing to the spiritual leadership of our churches because they are facing regular changes in their communities because of a fragile socio-economic environment with a rising inflation, huge unemployment, high poverty levels, and increasing number of false prophets. Developing church leaders in such a situation could have been a tremendous task. But thank God for adding a dimension that has helped to re-align the thinking of most of our pastors that you have interacted with to make change the mind-set and make the Bible teaching a relevant part of people’s lives thereby modelling Christ in the market place in being salt of the earth and light of the world.
I am particularly grateful also that you have also been able to challenge the local pastors against dependency and instead to prepare them to look inwardly and become self –reliant. This has greatly helped the churches and their pastors to work out mechanisms that make their ministries self-sustaining. As we have moved all across the country, it is increasingly becoming common to see local churches gathering in decent structures as believers worship the Lord with great joy and awesome celebrations.
As a leader of the Evangelical movement in our country, I am aware that we still have a lot of work to do because as the work grows, the challenge for quality leadership development is ever increasing. Therefore I wish to encourage you that while we are thankful for so much that has been achieved in the church today, there is so much to be done as we look into the future of the church in Zambia. I am trusting that you will always be available to contribute to the ever growing work among the evangelicals and continue to participate in various ways in the equipping of the body of Christ and transformation of our nation.
Thank you so much for being such a great blessing in my personal life as well as in the lives of many Zambian pastors, church leaders and laity. The contribution that you make in the Bible School such as Rhema Bible Training Centre–Zambia and informal trainings[sic] in workshops and seminars throughout our country and personal interactions with pastors is a great service in the body of Christ. Your continued availability for equipping church leaders and pastors will be a great blessing to the growth of the church in Zambia.
May God richly blessing you in all that you do for the Lord’s glorious Kingdom.
Much love to you.
Pukuta N. Mwanza (Rev.)
Executive Director
Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia
Lusaka, Zambia
