MWC Global Church Sharing Fund helps build mission church in southern Tanzania

A church building is a space to encounter God. This encounter is one of the most basic acts of drawing the kingdom of God into the heart of a community.

When we build a church building, we set a place for God. People go there to seek God together, to pray, mourn, celebrate, ask and seek God’s blessing. God responds.

Kanisa La Mennonite Tanzania (KMT) Eastern Diocese is driven by its vision and mission of seeing our community changed and reconciled through Jesus Christ – spiritually, physically and mentally for the glory of God. We do this through preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ that brings salvation, love, forgiveness, righteousness and peace to all people and making them disciples of Jesus Christ. We encourage them to be at peace with God, people and with creation as whole.

In the efforts of KMT Eastern Diocese in 2010 to do church planting and reach out to the unreached, we were able to establish three congregations in an area predominantly resided by Muslims, located in the southern part of Tanzania. In Msikisi, the largest of the three mission congregations, KMT Eastern Diocese is constructing a church building.

We construct our church building according to the foundations set by heroes of faith who built a house for the Lord: the Shunamite woman (2 Kings 4:10), Moses (Exodus 33:7–11), David (2 Samuel 6:17) and Solomon (1 Kings 5:4–5). Elijah built a sacrifice altar on which God’s fire fell (1 Kings 18:32–38).

A building project requires a church to mobilize resources from internal and external sources. Many church buildings fail to reach to the completion stage because of budget constraints to fund the entire project. In the case of KMT’s Msikisi church construction, Mennonite World Conference (MWC) contributed project funds amounting to $10,000 and KMT Eastern Diocese contributed $15,000. The contribution from MWC’s Global Church Sharing Fund gives us assurance of completing the project to final stage. It is a great joy to partner with MWC to meet the needs of our people.

Through this church building in Msikisi, the church will achieve four goals: reaching unreached, providing the community with a space for worshipping God and fellowshipping together, supporting the local church holistically by establishing participatory social services and strengthening the newly converted Christians by equipping them with fundamental biblical principles.

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