Community Development Ministries
Taking the Word to those who can benefit from God’s love and compassion
Sister Churches
Since the year 2000 the United Methodist Church of Zambia has grown from five congregations to over a hundred congregations. The New Life Center is deeply involved in building Sister Church structures to help with this growth. Most often these congregations start by meeting in homes, school buildings, thatch roofed structures or even under a tree.
The Sister Church program is inviting other Churches or groups from outside Zambia to partner with one of the congregations. As part of the partnership, the Zambian congregation is responsible for working with the UMC Zambia Conference for attaining the land and all title, survey and legal fees, as well as bricks, sand and stone. The partnering church helps with purchasing the structural steel, roofing sheets, fasteners, and cement for the foundation, floor, breeze-block windows, and the walls.
Quite often work teams from the partnering churches or groups come and help construct the church, for the dedication Sunday, or for evangelism/ministry events.
If you are interested in becoming a Sister Church partner please contact: Rev. Delbert Groves Groves@NewLifeZambia.com.
Community Health Evangelism (C.H.E.)
The goal of Community Health Evangelism (C.H.E.) is to facilitate a ministry of development whose purpose is to equip believers to respond to the Great Commission. This is accomplished through training men and women to be Community Health Evangelists/Educators. CHE Training covers various topics such as water purification, sanitation, agriculture, nutrition, home care and treatment of diseases. The program also includes training in evangelism, discipleship, and Bible studies.
CHEs model and share physical and spiritual teachings with their neighbors in the home setting. They treat basic health problems and facilitate health-related projects in the community such as feeding programs. Emphasis is placed on transformation through Christ, disease prevention and health promotion.
Several years ago the local CHEs identified malnutrition of children as a problem in their community and began a feeding program. The CHEs identify the children in need and feed them one hot meal each week. In addition, a high energy protein dry porridge is sent to their homes two days a week. NLC helps with transport and making the dry porridge.
For questions and more information on CHE, please contact Sandy Groves Sandy@newlifezambia.com
Building Preschools
The idea for building preschools was a vision of Thea Greer, a long-time supporter and volunteer of the New Life Center. With the help of her family, she raised the money to build the first preschool in 2015 at one of our local sister churches. We hope to work with Thea in building more preschools as this is important in the education and development of local communities.
Conference Center
The New Life Center is a wonderful place to hold a retreat or conference. The center can accommodate small and large groups. The main hall can comfortably seat 300. The kitchen and staff are available to cook for your groups. The Bunkhouse & Guest houses can sleep up to 120 people.
For More Information on the Conference Center, Dorms, and Guesthouses, including booking information, please contact Josephine Mbilishi Josephine@newlifezambia.com
