A letter from Debbie Chase in Malawi
June 2011
Malawi News Update
Dear Friends,
Warm greetings in the power and hope of the Spirit of Pentecost!
Students receive books from Langham Trust.
That gift of the Holy Spirit makes us one — one community of faith — one family of God—throughout the world in all the glory of our diversity. The Spirit enables us to be more together than we can be apart from one another. But sometimes all that diversity can be quite challenging as we strive to serve together as the one body of Christ, as partners in Christ’s service. A colleague spoke of this sharing of our lives amidst cultural diversity as a dance, “the dance of partnership.”
We are grateful for partners who have danced with the University of Livingstonia, College of Theology, over these past seven years and who continue to be our partners in Christ’s service. Thanks to your faithfulness in partnership the college has greatly progressed over these seven years. We began in borrowed facilities training candidates for the ministry to be licensed pastors. Today we have our own campus and facilities and our candidates for the ministry earn a diploma or a bachelor's degree in theology. We have grown from two to six full-time members of the faculty and from one to four classes of students. Our library holdings reflect a broad spectrum of theological perspectives with many recent scholarly publications. Many of the goals of our initial five-year strategic plan have been achieved, and now it is time to dance to the new music of a new 10-year strategic plan formulated earlier this year.
The College of Theology's goals for the next 10 years:
- Open our programs to laity and ministerial candidates of other denominations
- Diversify course offerings through establishing dual-degree programs
- Add a Master of Theology degree program
- Have annual continuing education events for ministers in the field
- Provide for faculty and support staff professional development
- Increase full-time faculty to 14 and the student body to 120 students
- Build new facilities: kitchen, dining hall, faculty houses, administration block, four additional classrooms, three additional dormitories, a chapel, and a recreation center
This strategic plan will entail learning a new dance to achieve and sustain this new vision for the University of Livingstonia, College of Theology. We have already embarked upon building a new kitchen, which we hope will be completed and ready for use by the end of this month. Our cooks still cook over a wood fire in both buildings because having an electric stove is costly and electricity is not dependable.
Our dance at the College of Theology became one of mourning the end of this past semester with the death of the 12–year-old daughter of the president of the Students’ Union, Mr. Wisdom Mwale. His daughter Vestina was a happy, healthy girl, a good student and one who loved the Lord. She died suddenly of cerebral malaria. Since we are like a family at the college, we all gathered round the family to comfort and uphold them in their time of great sorrow—the family of God dancing the dance of love. Since we were in the midst of study days in preparation for final exams, the college in solidarity with the bereaved extended the time of study and delayed the closing of the semester.
International Partnership Conference.
Students are performing well for the most part. However, we notice that while each new class enters with higher secondary school marks, the level of performance nonetheless seems lower with each new class. This is a challenge for the students and for us as faculty, and we are often stepping on each other's toes as we dance the academic dance of preparation for ministry. This decline in academic performance seems to be worldwide and is often spoken of as dumbing down or no child left behind. The causes here in Malawi are economic as well. As a result of extreme poverty teachers are often minimally trained and poorly paid, often working two full-time jobs, doing neither well. In addition, the government is unable to monitor and regulate the performance of academic institutions, which strive to survive in any way they can. The answers are not easy. But I’m sure the answers are to be found as we learn to dance together as partners, sharing our lives as the one family of God.
At the College of Theology we have one new full-time faculty member, Rev. Dr. Joel Manda, and we hope to have an additional two members as we begin the 2010–2011 academic year June 27, 2011. This past semester we were pleased to receive from Langham Trust in the U.K. a variety of books for ministry for our students, but we are still greatly in need of textbooks, which are costly and are not available in Africa. The cost doubles for each textbook when transport to Africa is included. Another challenging dance for us!
The Synod of Livingstonia of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian danced the dance of partnership with overseas and national partners who gathered together at Ekwendeni, Malawi, May 9–10 for an International Partnership Conference. The theme of the conference was “Forging Partnership for Sustainable Growth.” The dance of partnership was not easy at this conference, each partner with its own agenda, each with its own cultural-faith perspective, trying to find a way to sustainable growth for the people of Malawi.
Prayer concerns for Malawi
- Freedom of speech is threatened.
- Academic freedom is squelched and the University of Malawi’s doors have been closed by the government.
- Local elections have once again failed to take place.
- Foreign economic aid has been greatly cut off because of the deportation of the British ambassador.
- Unending fuel shortages are leading to skyrocketing prices.
- The government has just instituted a new 16.5 % tax on basic commodities (meat, salt, bread, water, milk).
- Unity is lacking within the Church.
Dancing together with justice and love in a world with a great variety of cultures and faiths as well as great inequities, indeed, is not easy. As Sufi Muslim mystics like to say, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power there will be peace.” Let us dance the dance of love together, for as Jesus said, “by this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Grace and Peace,
Debbie
The 2011 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 67
