Notice Board

New elder

In March of 2008, the church was blessed with a new elder, in the person of Sylvester Hibajene. This brought the total number of elders to six-still a small number for the size of our congregation. The other elders are Steven Tembo, Paul Mumba, Dennis Chiwele, Chikondi Phiri and Ronald Kalifungwa. Please join us in praying that our eldership will not only be efficient but effective as we endeavour to meet the many and varying needs of our church.

New building

Over the years, our church has drawn many a congregant. The last two years or so have seen our numbers swell to a point where we have serious sitting space problems. Consequently, the church has decided to embark on a building project starting next month. The project is mammoth, and obviously expensive. We expect to spend about K2 , 000, 000,000 ($ 500,000) . Our aim and desire is to complete the project within about 18 months (by 2010), so that we can, God willing, be able to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the founding of Lusaka Baptist Church in the new building. Please remember to pray for our building committee, as well as our deacons as they lead the church in this important work.

Financial contributions toward this project will be most welcome. If you are interested in seeing the concept drawing of our new building, you can fill in and send a message using our pledge form and we will get back to you.

Tent of meeting

During the course of the construction, we are intending to pitch up a tent at another site. Most of our ministries will be affected in some way or other, and there is even a chance that we may lose some visitors. Please pray for us, that we may experience minimum disruption and that our “sojourn” will have a sanctifying effect upon the church.

Young people’s conferences

In the recent past we have organised two conferences for young people. In March, we had a conference for our senior young people (upper high school/college and university), and only last week, another one for our intermediate young people’s group (teens). Pray for us as we labour to raise young people who are given to the Lord in a day when there is much that is dazzling to them in the world.

More conferences

 The next few months will be also be a hive of activity in terms of conferences:

a) The mission’s conference

 From May 1-3, we will be organising a mission’s conference. All our six missionaries, who are scattered right across the country, along with Bonang Lekoba from Botswana , will be present and will present reports on their work. Pastor Irving Steggels of Birchleigh Baptist Church will preach on the subject of church planting, and I will present a biographical paper on William Carrey. We are all looking forward to a great time of fellowship and are praying that the Lord will renew our vision and passion for missions.

b) The marriage conference

 From 4-8 July, we plan to organise a marriage conference. This will provide an opportunity to our married couples to get away and be enriched from the ministry of God’s word. Roger and Carol Cyran from the USA will be teaching on the subject of “love in marriage”. Please Join us in praying that this would be a real means of strengthening our marriages.

There are four other matters for which we covet your prayers and the first is the:

The Internship programme .

We have four interns working under the supervision of our pastor. These men include Kalolo Mulenga,, Mumba Chikamba, Sydney Mwape, and Simon Mwango. The programme is intended to help train leaders and will go on for one year. It is our hope that the programme will not only serve to confirm the candidate’s sense of calling to the ministry, but also help to open opportunities for service in Lusaka Baptist Church and elsewhere in the Kingdom of God .

Elbicites

 Elbicites, is our ministry to students in higher institutions of learning. At the moment we have a ministry to four tertiary institutions. It is our intention to develop a vibrant evangelistic and didactic ministry to colleges and universities through out the city and beyond-places where we believe God will raise a new generation of leaders for the church and state of tomorrow. In our bid to carry this vision forward, we have recently appointed Mr Emmanuel Mutale and mandated him to commit a great portion of his time to this work. Please pray for him as he under God labours to develop this ministry.

Opening the book

Another ministry we would like you to pray about is our television broadcast called “Opening the book”. The title suggests that we are endeavouring to preach the word. This is contrary to the average “Christian” programme on our TV, whose ministry has little resemblance to the dictates of God’s word. We have a wonderful opportunity to preach the gospel and to teach the saints scattered right across our nation. From time to time, our programme is also beamed on DS TV. We also have a bible correspondence course running alongside the programme. Please pray that the programme would continue to be a powerful tool in the hand of God to bring blessing to lives of many.

Pulpit ministry

 Finally please pray for our pulpit ministry. At present, I am preaching through the book of Romans in our Morning services, and also a topical series based on Proverbs in the evening services. Some of the topics we have covered include: foundations for personal life; foundations for marriage and foundations for family life. I hope to start preaching on foundations for a healthy nation soon. Our desire is to see every aspect of our people’s lives reform to the pattern of scripture, and to the image of Christ so they may live to the glory of God and spread the glory of God. Please pray for us to this end.

Ronald Kalifungwa

For the elders of Lusaka Baptist Church