Kingdom Advance and Church Planting

Nampula, Mozambique

About three years ago, Scott Marques went on a trip to Nampula to see Andrew Cunningham and many others who were working with a Kingdom-extending heart on business in the area. Scott reports on the adventure which has unfolded since.

I was completely surprised by the Lord to find myself believing that I should be based in Nampula for a couple of years, with my family, to help in catalysing church planting and strengthening initiatives there. As my family came on board with this vision, so also did two other special families, the Mutangaras and then the Tansers.

A New Business

As northern Mozambique is one of the poorest areas in the world, we believed that a business aspect to our work would be necessary and would be a platform for discipleship and transformation. This has always been part of the driving force behind Novos Horizontes, a business run by Andrew Cunningham, which has been doing broiler chickens, day-old chicks and chicken feed for years. We began Eggs for Africa as a layer business two years ago in synergy with the already established poultry dynamics developed by Andrew and his team.

The combined efforts over the last couple of years have yielded some very encouraging fruit, and there are indications of some very promising developments and forward advance imminently.

Eggs

Novos Horizontes is growing around 60,000 chickens in the community in an ‘out-grower’ scheme, as well as employing over 250 staff directly. Eggs for Africa is trading over half a million eggs per month, with local re-sellers and end-users. Both of these businesses have the potential to be genuine ‘tent-making’ endeavours that provide local financial capacity to the work and ministry on an on-going basis.

A New School

This year we are delighted to receive Mike and Dyliss Green who are going to steer an initiative to establish a private school on the business property in Nampula. They are aiming to be the best private school in northern Mozambique, offering tuition in English, which is highly sort after. The school is aiming to engage with the local community and government schools in order to assist with teacher training and pupil interaction for mutual benefit.

A New Agricultural College

We hope to launch an agricultural college in 2012, modelled on our Ebenezer College in Zimbabwe, and are looking forward to receiving Riemer and Jen te Velde (with their soon-to-be-born baby) to be the ‘Pioneer Parents’ for that. The college aims to take school leavers into a two-year programme in which individuals farm on one Hectare of land each and learn the principles of income generation within a full-blown discipleship context. We believe that this will produce extraordinary potential for leadership and church-planting endeavours in the years to come.

A New Church Plant

Running alongside all this, we have a discipleship group which is the nucleus of a church plant team. We are meeting every Sunday morning and are using Chronlogical Bible Storying as the basis of teaching God’s Word. It is exciting to see individuals from nominal Christian and nominal Muslim background getting to grips with God’s Word and coming to know Christ in a personal way.

We believe that there is tremendous potential in this group to be the basis of a church plant leadership team later this year. For this reason, we are focusing on strength of understanding of God’s Word, personal relationship with Christ and strength in family and home relationships so that these leaders can be a blessing to others in the months and years ahead.

We believe that Nampula is a significant city as the scramble for Africa’s resources intensifies and as the thrust of Islam continues south. We long for, pray for and believe for the glory of God to be shone through the church in a way that brings powerful effect into the situations of poverty faced by so many, and eternal change that will bring blessing for generations to come... and for ever and ever.