For a while Africa has had to navigate its growth and development dependent on the prerogative decisions of its politicians, political parties, and business persons that dominate it. This has made development to find itself trapped in the quicksand of a pursuit of 'personal interests' in the name of its people, otherwise also called corruption and State Capture. The result has been the growth of darkness as Africa's future, the more you came closer to Africa the less you could see where you are going, barring few illuminated best practices there and there that a overwhelmingly swallowed by the bigger darkness surrounding them.
As this was happening, God has been raising amongst His people men and women, His servants, through which His plans, that He has for humanity, would be realised. Through His servants He built Arks, or if you like Churches, into which He would instruct His people to "go into the ark ... because He has found them righteous in this generation". In these Arks, there are echos in their chambers that are delivering yet again the message of God that those that God has selected to lead inside the ark should "take up the ark of the covenant and cross over ahead of the people.”
Dark as Africa and the World might seem, it has Arks into which God has deposited limitless light resources with which the Arks that carry righteousness and the righteous could navigate the paths and dangers associated with darkness. Inside the Ark, there are pulpits, and most importantly tablets of stone which God has put as a written sign of the Covenant He made with humanity, when humanity came out of bondage with sin and sinfulness.
Floating on the waters that do not only carry the Arks above the drowning spaces underneath it, but also cleansing the world the ark would be landing, the Arks would require a lighthouse from which a beam of light directs the many Arks to proper bays as they land with God's people. Like any other endeavour that God had sought to embark upon, the prince of darkness has mastered the art of using the discretion that God has given to man, including leaders, to derail, though never stop, the will of God, landing the Ark might be at shores the righteous should not be.
The leadership that these Arks require to land the people of God is one that should define not only where to land the power of the Church as the Ark of humanity, but how to land it, and what to do with the Ark in the communities it has landed, as well as what should the people of God find in the Ark as they enter it. As God raises in society Men of God that will direct people into the Arks saying to them 'come with your household into the Ark', they should do so knowing that doing Church will resemble the joy that God promises is found in salvation will be in the Church.
At its best, the Church should provide over and above spiritual sanctuary to the children of God, other material sanctuaries the 'prerogative world' has or is failing to provide in Africa. At its best the Church should know true orphans, true persons living with disability, true children yearning for learning and education, true persons needing food and other needs because of poverty, truly sick people needing the physical attention of nurses and doctors, real persons society has condemned to the status of waiting to die and prepare them to wait for God, real children abandoned by their mothers to have a life the devil has lied to them that they can't provide their kids. These and many others will need to be in as many Arks as possible.
To create a concentrate of leadership from these Arks that God has instructed the many modern day Noahs to establish and build, is the new commission that goes beyond the great commissioning Jesus made to the disciples. As Jesus had said “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you", the new commission is 'do leaders inside these arks practically do it?.
The how to answers can only come from peer review and peer best practice sharing including agreement on those that should be overseers to the process of landing and sustaining the Arks. Establishing an Association of Ministers is thus the erection of a inter generational Lighthouse out of which beams of light will direct the many Arks where and how to land in peace and righteousness. As social trends, environmental crisis and technological developments are combining with political tensions and economic instability to create storms, Men of God are commissioned anew to individually and collectively, and through their Association of Ministers, their Lighthouse, to offer an outstanding service to the Arks that look to them for beams of light.
On the December 11, leaders of Arks are invited to constitute themselves into a Lighthouse, the Association of Ministers. There will also be the inauguration of Bishop Titus Sithole as a General Overseer. The combination of these events, or if you like, the cocktail of leadership that God has put together for the Church is of inter generational significance that the day will henceforth never be ordinary again. As South Africans go to this launch we should be reminded of Joshua when he said unto them, "pass over before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder", and "so they took up the ark of the covenant and went ahead of the people". Through the Association we should hear God saying to those that will lead "command the priests that bear the ark of the testimony, that they come up out of Jordan", and claim the promised land.
Amen.
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