Skip to main content

A Christ-centred ministry: Mbewe


I’m sure many of you already know well Conrad Mbewe of Kabwata Baptist Church, Lusaka, Zambia, the man a.k.a the African Spurgeon.  There’s an example of his preaching and a statement of his mission here (1 Cor. 2 – Christ Crucified) and his sermons to Kabwata are here.  There’s an interesting interview here where he speaks, among other things, about:
  • The priority of preaching
  • Saying one thing
  • The danger of prayerlessness
  • The temptation to use the Bible to say what you want to say
  • Being yourself in preaching
Just on that last point – perhaps it’s worth underlining Mbewe: ‘Avoid imitation like a plague... I do not want them to become little “Conrads”.’  It was said of a famous London church that all the curates who served under its eminent senior pastor became little versions of their mentor down to dress and accent.
In one church culture we might feel that our preaching must have a sonorous liturgical almost-sing-song quality.  In another the model of preaching is the intimate fireside chat or the TV chat show.  In yet another it is felt that preaching must have the authentic tone and blow-your-hair-back volume of the anointed-Man-of-God. 
Phillip Brooks argued that preaching is truth through personality.  By this he meant “Every preacher should utter the truth in his own way” – we mustn’t become little Conrads.  But even more importantly, what Brooks particularly meant by 'truth through personality' (as Austin Tucker has argued) is that preaching is (or should be) The Truth (Jesus Christ) preached through godly personality - i.e. the gospel preached by a man of “character, of personal uprightness and purity... in deep possession of the faith and hope and resolution which he is to offer to his fellow men for their new life”. 

One of the best ways to grow in our preaching is indeed to listen to good preaching but let’s make sure that what we are looking to follow is their faithfulness, their passion for Christ and their love for the flock.

Comments

  1. Unknown19 February 2016 at 03:13

    Wow...Andy, this is a man to listen to for sure. I love this article and especially on that point of "Avoiding imitation like a plaque"
    I have noted that this doesn't mean we fail to listen to others preaching, but it means we follow their faithfulness and passion for Christ!
    Great Insight here.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holding together restlessness and optimism

Piper has a great section in his Marks of a Spiritual Leader  where he holds together two vital biblical leadership virtues: 1. RESTLESS Spiritual leaders have a holy discontentment with the status quo. Non-leaders have inertia that causes them to settle in and makes them very hard to move off of dead center. Leaders have a hankering to change, to move, to reach out, to grow, and to take a group or an institution to new dimensions of ministry. They have the spirit of Paul, who said in Philippians 3:13, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Leaders are always very goal-oriented people. God’s history of redemption is not finished. The church is shot through with imperfections, lost sheep are still not in the fold, needs of every sort in the world are unmet, sin infects the saints. It is un...
Post a Comment
Read more

Everlasting gobstopper theology

The idea here is that there are layers to Christ's fullness and when the biblical authors present Christ to us they might only explicitly refer to one layer but as they do that the underlying layers are also implied. Or to put it another way, the glory of the underlying layers shines through the layer that is presented to us. That might sound strange, abstract and not particularly helpful but let me try to explain.  The incarnation implies the pre-existent Word When John identifies "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh" as the key test of orthodoxy, Augustine asks (Homily 6 on 1 John) how can this be when so many heretics happily affirm the humanity of Jesus but deny his deity? Augustine then asks us to dig a bit deeper and consider: From whence did he come? "Was he not God?" Simon Gathercole demonstrated (in his 2006 book, The Pre-existent Son ) that Jesus' phrase in the synoptic gospels, "I have come", implies divine pre-existence.  So whenever we ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A prayer for the summer

LORD God, our God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, our Father, as your children in the northern hemisphere enter this season of the academic year, please give us fresh grace to walk, stand and sit aright. May those of us who enjoy running and walking in your creation give thanks to you for that privilege but not be as concerned about the daily step count on our trackers as in taking practical steps this summer in kindness, in compassion, in forgiveness, in building others up, in pleasing the Lord - steps of progress in gracious, sacrificial, Christ-like loving (Ephesians 4-5).  May those of us who look forward to getting out of the city give thanks to you for the privilege of travel but not ultimately be as concerned about the physical location in which we stand (whether "beneath the boughs" or on a hot and sweaty tube train) as about our location "in Christ" - the address of every spiritual blessing, complete forgiveness, intimate sonship, total security (Ephesians ...
Post a Comment
Read more