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Environment

Paying Respects in Malawi

By Environment, Farming, Malawi

In November, Geoff and Dave travelled to Malawi to pay respects to Bishop Lloyd Chizenga, the late leader of APF’s key partner, New Life Christian Church. Besides spending time with Lloyd’s family, they also met the church leadership team and discussed the church’s ongoing sustainable agriculture project.

Meeting with NLCC leaders in Blantyre

New Life Christian Church is an indigenous African church network with approximately 150 congregations spread across central and southern Malawi and northern Mozambique. Meeting with regional overseers in Blantyre was crucial to reaffirm APF’s commitment to the partnership and explore the network’s priorities with the new church leadership.

Pastor Souza travelled from Mozambique for the meeting

Most NLCC pastors have had no formal training, making in-service training a crucial priority. Pastor Souza from Mozambique highlighted the need for Chichewa language Bibles, bicycles, and income-generating projects to support his ministry.

Bishop Lloyd’s grave

Visiting Bishop Lloyd’s grave required a long journey down a very rough washed-out road deep into rural Chikwawa District. Before visiting the grave, we had to obtain permission from the village headman. In this region of Africa, village cemeteries are traditionally situated within or near sacred groves of trees.

Meeting family members in the village

We met some of Lloyd’s extended family in the village, which was bustling with activity as people returned from their fields in the Shire River flood plain. They had been working since before dawn, digging the land in anticipation of the rains which they expected to arrive very soon.

Lloyd’s widow, Jacqui (centre) with the project team of Hunta Faita, Alex Muwawa, Lonjezo Daniel, Bridget Chizenga and Johanna Chizenga.

A crucial part of the trip was meeting the new team who will lead the Growing Greener agriculture project (pictured right, with Bishop Lloyd’s widow). APF and Operation Agri have supported this wonderful initiative since Lloyd established it following the 2016 drought. With overwhelming demand for training in composting and many other essential sustainable agriculture techniques, plans were made to resume the programme in participating villages next year.

December 18, 2024
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Deepening Bonds Down South

By Environment, eVitabu, Farming, Malawi, Zambia

While the UK roasted at 40°C, our Projects Coordinator escaped Britain’s summer heatwave by traveling to cool southern Africa. Geoff Holder reports on a busy but productive three weeks catching up with APF partners in Malawi and Zambia.

Extreme weather driven by climate change is causing shocks all over the world. As new temperature records were smashed back home, I visited communities supported by Pastor Lloyd Chizenga (pictured above) and Hunta Faeti from New Life Christian Church (NLCC) in Malawi’s Shire River valley.

Earlier in the year, the area was devastated by two huge tropical storms. Flooding washed away crops, homes and livestock. Your gifts helped APF provide replacement seed and training delivered by Lloyd and Hunta which was now ripening into a lifesaving harvest.

Outside of the flood-affected area, we heard how the training given by the church was having a huge impact. Global energy prices have made fertiliser unaffordable. I was told, “Pastor Lloyd is a prophet! He saved us with the message of composting now we can’t buy fertiliser anymore”.

In Liwonde, I met with Pastor Patrick Stephen Mateketa. He runs village discipleship training workshops in rural churches using our library resource app eVitabu as a reference tool. He found APF online and downloaded eVitabu on his phone. “It is good having a library there in my hand when I am teaching untrained pastors in the village” he explained.

Back in Blantyre, I ran workshops for NLCC pastors and leaders helping them also get onto eVitabu. Pastor Sousa travelled all the way from Mozambique to attend.

In Zambia, I joined Pastor Lawson Limao (pictured below) in Shibuyij, a village several hours’ drive outside Lusaka, to see him teach in a tiny mud and straw church using resources on eVitabu. The training was fantastic! He’d gathered leaders from local churches and the community to learn about agroforestry and faith, meeting the community’s physical and spiritual needs. It was inspiring to see the power of eVitabu in the dedicated hands of a brilliant young leader. In Lusaka, Lawson and I were interviewed about eVitabu on a Zambian Christian radio station with an audience from across the country.

Finally, in Luanshya, a town in Copperbelt Region, Revd Charles Mwape and I ran a workshop helping Baptist pastors use eVitabu. It was especially useful seeing how the pastors used their phones in different and sometimes unexpected ways, lessons that will help us improve the app and make it easier for African users in the future.

September 27, 2022
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African Christianity and the Environment

By Environment, Malawi, Uganda

APF’s Project Coordinator, Geoff Holder, describes some of the finding of his research project which formed part of an MSc in Sustainable Development at SOAS, London. The university has suggested publishing the finding.

Most charities, mission agencies and international development organisations now recognise that it is essential to account for environmental factors when designing projects and initiatives in Africa. At APF, we’re led by our African partners, aiming to strengthen and support the good things they are already doing. But what do grassroots African Christians believe about the world around them? What value do they place on ecosystems? Could charities and mission organisations like ours achieve more by working in partnership with the African church when it comes to environmental resources?

African Christian theologians describe a unique and distinctive approach to creation. By combining Christian biblical theology and traditional African cultural understandings, African theologians like Lauenti Magesa see a spiritual connectedness within creation. Obaji Agbiji views the African community as a “bondedness with each other and with nature”. For B. Bujo, the foundation of African ecological ethics is the “cosmic community” which includes all beings.

Diane Stinton describes how many African Christians view life as functioning through “participation with God within a hierarchy of belonging”. Because God is the source of life, water and soils, everything is viewed as intrinsically sacred. Kalemba Mwambazambi goes further to see God manifest in trees, rivers, mountains and animals. He equates separation from nature with separation from God. “The forest is as important as the skin of a human which, if removed, results in death,” he writes.

While these writers provide a fascinating and perceptive insight into how African theologians conceptualise the world around them, I was interested in exploring how widespread this sort of environmental theology was outside of academia. What do ‘normal’ African Christians believe, and what might this mean for mission and development organisations like APF?

To find out, I sent African church leaders from across the continent a questionnaire and held group interviews with Christians from rural communities in Uganda and Malawi. Their responses were revealing.

Firstly, it was clear that environmental concerns feature highly in the lives of African Christians. But issues like deforestation, drought and extinction are understood primarily through the lens of their faith. The Bible, for example, guides opinions around burning environmental issues like population pressure.

Droughts and floods are seen as signs of God’s displeasure in human behaviour. Healthy soils and reliable rainfall on the other hand are blessings direct from God. Secondly, by undermining traditional cultural practices that used to help protect the environment, the growth of Christianity has been a cause of environmental degradation in Africa.

Mountains, forests, rivers and trees were once believed to be sacred, the home of spirits and ancestors. As the wild places were no longer feared, they were no longer protected. One pastor explained: “Our ancestors believed that because there was a spirit there, they would keep the trees. Because we Christians do not believe there is a spirit there, we cut down the trees.”

Despite this, Christian faith is the most powerful motivator of environmental action in Africa. African Christians frequently view themselves as stewards of God’s creation, tasked to care for what God has made. “God gave us a mandate,” one pastor told me. “He took us and put us in a garden. Now, we have left our responsibility to take care of the garden.”

This helps to explain why so many African Christians are interested in environmental action like tree planting. It also explains why you might read so much about environmental issues in Impetus. Creation care is simply very important to the African church and environmental concern a direct consequence of Christian faith in action.

So, from camels helping pastoralists adapt to climate change in Kenya, to solar power in Tanzania and Rwanda; from sustainable agriculture in Malawi to tree planting in Uganda, exciting opportunities exist for those, like APF, who work alongside the African church.

April 5, 2020
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