(written by Nick Addo, IFES Chief Financial Officer)

“Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.” (Joshua 14: 10-11)

In the 70s, one big challenge for the Ghanaian student movement (UCF as it was then) was how to respond to a disturbing trend: Christian graduates losing their faith soon after leaving university.  One way in which they addressed this was to promote the example of Caleb – who at 85 was just as fervent about his faith as he was 40 years earlier when he took a clear stand against the majority view (Numbers 14). At that time, as a first-year student, I embraced what became known as the “Caleb spirit” – the desire to be as passionate and fervent about my faith 40 years later.

Looking back, I can see the awesomeness of God’s grace extended towards me; I can identify countless times when at critical moments in my life, I unknowingly made the right choice. Note the word, “unknowingly” – these choices did not reflect my preferences at that time. On joining UCF, for example, I became a part of the Prayer Warriors Group in spite of the group leader’s repeated comments that this group was not for me since I was not a prayer giant. At that time, prayer was one area in which I really struggled. As if that was not enough, in my second year, I was paired to the new group leader as roommate. Now I had no choice. I had to pray not just at group meetings and retreats but regularly with my new roommate. How does one explain this if not grace?

As I went on to experience God’s guiding hand in my professional life, the Caleb spirit in me was strengthened. For over 15 years I have been working in a finance role in Christian organisations. I remember one director calling me into his office to show me an expense claim and to ask why he should not be making similar claims himself. Using the example of Caleb in Numbers 14, I explained that the majority are not necessarily right.  Why did he ask me? I was not even the head of finance, but he had observed a little of the Caleb spirit in me. This director has now retired and recently accepted the invitation to pastor a major evangelical church. As he told me this, he reminded me of our conversation many years earlier over that expense claim and the challenge to live the Caleb spirit.

Oh how I pray that I will be just as fervent about my faith in my 70s and 80s! Praying that will be your prayer too.

Nick Addo
nick.addo (at) ifesworld.org

(written by Mukululi Ncube, staff member of FOCUS Zimbabwe)

“Your father has a thousand cattle on the hill; you can’t be poor! You are not cursed but blessed. The blessings of Abraham are yours. Poverty is a curse; so is sickness and all forms of disease. Come to Jesus and today receive your blessings.”

Such statements dominate church preaching in Zimbabwe. This “prosperity gospel” has affected us strongly. Churches have lost significant membership to those churches that preach the prosperity gospel. In FOCUS, we also have seen a large number of students drawn to these churches.

Why are our students so attracted to this preaching? One of the main reasons is that Zimbabwe has gone through unprecedented economic meltdown in the past two decades, leaving a lot of people with desperate financial problems. Job prospects are bleak. And so this brand of gospel which promises employment and instant success draws our students into a false sense of security. A lack of good teaching makes our students gullible to these attractively packaged, yet false teachings.

What has been our response to this reality? Our initial response was to engage in outright confrontation. But this tended to chase away those who would have benefited from such expositions.

Having noticed the limitations of our first response, we decided to engage the students in Bible study. A study encourages them to discover the answers in God’s Word as opposed to those truths being forced down their throats! It invites them to ask their questions about poverty, about blessings and curses, about hunger and starvation, disease and joblessness, etc. In order to engage the students, we needed to affirm that the Bible teaches about prosperity. And so we decided to develop a Bible study guide on the topic.

We started by asking each student group to note the passages which speakers used to teach on prosperity. As expected, most of them were Old Testament passages into which the speakers read their own thoughts. As a staff team, we went through the list and selected one passage from each of the following sections of Scripture: Law, Old Testament narrative, Wisdom literature, Prophets, Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation.

Each staff member committed to studying one of the passages together with others. We then met for a weekend with selected Bible study leaders and trained them on how to write a Bible study guide. Another month was devoted to more study before we set aside a week to sharpen our Bible studies. The result was our Bible study guide: Thinking Biblically About Prosperity.

This study guide has made space for the Bible to speak for itself on the subject of prosperity. We hope that once the Bible is given center stage, then God will reveal his message on how we are to view material wealth and physical well-being.

Mukululi Ncube
mukululi (at) yahoo.co.uk