05371
July 13, 2005   

Growing pains

Malawi Presbyterian church struggles with severe shortage of ministers

by Toya Richards Hill

LILONGWE, Malawi  — As apathetic and unfulfilled Presbyterians in the United States continue a steady exodus from the pews, worsening a 40-year membership decline, their counterparts in Malawi are doing the opposite — coming to the Communion table in droves to invite Christ into their lives.

     There are so many active Presbyterians in Malawi — where congregations often number more than 1,000 members — that the national church is scrambling to keep up.

     There just aren’t enough pastors to go around, and the problem gets a little worse every time a pastor dies or retires.

     “What has happened recently is that the church has been growing,” said the Rev. Felix Chingota, moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP). “There have been evangelical campaigns going on in all the synods. … Another factor is that we have been experiencing a number of deaths. We have lost a number of ministers recently, and that has exacerbated the problem.”

     Chingota said there is one more aspect of the personnel problem: “The elderly ministers that we have are retiring.”

     “So we have these three factors that are contributing to the shortage of ministers,” he said.

     And it’s quite a shortage. The numbers tell the story.

Not enough preachers

     In June, CCAP’s Blantyre Synod had 129 pastors in all, serving 422 congregations and more than 600 “prayer houses” created to serve overflow parishioners. Because pastors cannot possibly minister to every member, elders and other lay members help with everything from mid-week Bible study to Sunday worship.

     “We have more churches than the ministers can minister,” said the Rev. Greyson Mputeni, the synod’s deputy general secretary.

     Blantyre’s historic St. Michael and All Angels Church, which dates nearly to the arrival of the Scottish missionaries who helped found the Presbyterian Church in Malawi in the 19th century, has a burgeoning membership of about 9,000.         

     At the other end of Malawi — in the far north, in the CCAP’s Livingstonia Synod — the situation is the same. There, too, the church is trying to serve large numbers of worshippers with a small number of ministers.

     “There are so many congregations, and very few ministers,” said the Rev. Dolb Mwakanandi, principal of the Livingstonia Theological College.

     Although the church-to-minister ratio in Livingstonia is less extreme than in Blantyre — it has 128 congregations and 85 ministers — the problem is the same. The synod has nearly 600,000 members — that’s about 7,000 members for every minister.

Training more ministers

     One way the CCAP has tackled the problem is training more ministers. New theology schools and fast-track theology programs are intended to boost the number of capable pastors as quickly as possible.

     Besides the Blantyre and Livingstonia synods, the CCAP also includes the Nkhoma Synod in central Malawi and one synod each in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

     Historically, Zomba Theological College in Zomba has been the main provider of training for CCAP ministers in the country — yet it can only handle fewer than 10 students per synod per year. The college is owned by the CCAP, but welcomes students from other denominations.

     Other ministerial candidates are trained at Livingstonia Theological College, created on a shoestring by the Livingstonia Synod in 2003. The school, at Ekwendeni Mission Station, has 25 students enrolled in a three-year course that includes classroom study and practical work in the parishes.

     There are a few other training programs in Malawi for would-be ministers.

     “We follow the same academic program as Zomba Theological College,” said the Rev. Debbie Chase, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) missionary assigned to Malawi who serves as dean of academic affairs for the Livingstonia school. Since the college opened, she said, “We’ve seen the (students’) academic progress just blossom.”

     The Livingstonia students who complete the program will receive a licentiate in theology; 16 of them also are enrolled in the University of Malawi and will receive diplomas in theology after an additional year of study, said Chase, also a lecturer at Livingstonia.

     “It really was an act of faith to start the institution,” she said.

     But the synod and Principal Mwakanandi agreed that it was necessary.

     “There is need for more theological institutions for training ministers … for training lay leaders and for continuing education for ministers,” Chase said.

Developing lay leadership

     Another significant part of the solution to the minister shortage in Malawi is providing training for lay leaders and empowering them, church officials say.

     “This is a lay-driven church,” said the Rev. Dan Merry, an associate executive of Pittsburgh Presbytery who has spent the past year on loan to Blantyre Synod, speaking of the entire CCAP.

     Pastors “administer the sacrament,” Chase said, but “it’s the lay people who are burying people; it’s the lay people doing the preaching; and it’s the lay people doing the teaching.”

     Moderator Chingota said the lay education program includes the training of “evangelists” to assist in churches. These lay men and women train for about six months at facilities such as the Ekwendeni Lay Training Centre, and are then posted to various congregations to preach and carry out other duties, he said.

     Training also is available for the laity in life and vocational skills — everything from accounting and bookkeeping to carpentry and joinery.