Skip to main content

2010 SOLA 5 Conference

The 2010 Sola 5 Conference was held in Harare, Zimbabwe. Each year the conference aims to take place in a different country and province. Last year the Conference was held in Johannesburg in South Africa. This year the Conference met in Harare under the auspices of the Harare Reformed Baptist Church and its pastor Joseph Soko, greatly assisted by Jeff Gage and the Free Grace Baptist Church in Boksburg, South Africa. Many of the people are unemployed and struggle to make ends meet, yet despite these challenges, this church had invited us all to meet with them. Zimbabwe, which means house of stones (the remants which are found in Masvingo in Southern Zimbabwe), is a landlocked nation in Southern Africa with a population of about 13 million.

Zimbabwe which got independence in 1980, had from about 2003 been experiencing a downward trend in the economy to a point where it had one of the world's highest inflation rates. The price of simple items such as bread was about 1 billion Zimbabwean dollars! However, from the time a power sharing Governemnt between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvingirai was formed in 2008, things have greatly improved at least economically and one would say politically, though things are still fragile. One of the measures implemented was the replacement of the use of the local currency by South African Rands and United States Dollars. Harare, refered to as the Sunshine city, is the capital city of Zimbabwe. It is a beautiful city with modern well designed buildings in the Central business district. A brother from South Africa observed about the architectural design "It's as if the architects were told not to limit their creativity when designing buildings" while a sister from Zambia commented on Harare "I love this city!"

The Sola 5 Conference was held at Louis Mountbatten School in the western direction of Harare. Sola 5 is an association of God centered churches in Southern Africa. The association exists for the mutual encouragement of likeminded churches (Baptist and Reformed), for the promotion of missions (through church planting) and theological education. The hosts of the Conference were Harare Reformed Baptist Church which meets at a primary school in Rugare. A total of about 180 delegates attended the Conference came from Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. During the 4 days of the Conference, from 2nd to 5th September 2010, the Bible was preached, mission reports were heard, ‘business’ matters were attended to and a time in close fellowship was spent.

The theme of the Conference was “God’s Grace Today” – an exposition of the doctrines of Grace. On Thursday evening, Conrad Mbewe of Zambia preached on the Sovereign Nature of God. He preached under candlelight due to power failure. On Friday morning Theo Soko of Harare Reformed Baptist Church preached on the sinful nature of man. In the afternoon Kobus van der Walt of South Africa preached on the specific nature of salvation. On Saturday morning Laban Mwashekele of Namibia preached on the successful nature of Christ’s work. Jeff Gage of South Africa preached on the supernatural nature of God’s Grace in the afternoon. On Sunday, the last day of the Conference, Victor Kanyense of Zambia preached on the steadfast nature of the Christian’s enablement.

The next SOLA 5 conference in 2011 will be held in Livingstone in Zambia. Livingstone is home to Victoria Falls, one of the wonders of the world! Make plans to be there! The 2012 Conference is planned for Swaziland.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Joyous Celebration

One of the "to do things" I have always wanted to do since I started going to South Africa in 2004 was to watch Joyous Celebration perform live. Who is Joyous Celebration? Joyous Celebration is a gospel music outfit of local South African and international artists that have produced gospel CDs and DVDs since 1994. Joyous Celebration is a dream that was born when Jabu Hlongwane, Lindelani Mkhize and Mthunzi Namba who had met in concerts and conventions in and around Durban toyed around the idea of collaborating. In 1994 a show dubbed Joyous Celebration was held to  celebrate the peaceful transition of South Africa when it became independent.  Each year since 1994 Joyous Celebration has been releasing an album as a CD and DVD around March/April. The release is followed by tours in various South African cities. Since 2004 I have made sure I have collected all the CDs that have been released to-date, the last being Joyous 17 (a triple CD offering) and double DVD offering. T...

Book Review: Letter to my Children

Letter to my Children Kenneth Kaunda Veritas Trust 1977 139 pages One of the things that I and my fellow boarders at Kafue Secondary School looked forward to during our meals in the dining hall was receiving letters especially those from our parents and guardians. These letters were important in maintaining connection with our families as we got news of what was happening in our families as well as get advice on how to conduct ourselves at school.  The book 'Letter to my children' by Kenneth Kaunda, the first Republican President of Zambia was written to his children as a kind of public apology for neglecting his children so badly by putting his political career before his family. This book is dedicated to his children and the youth of Zambia. Some key highlights of this book are: Faith and values. Here Dr. Kaunda discusses issues of power. He states that the earliest form of power that he encountered and had a lasting effect on him was the power of the gospel. He further says...

Micahel Eaton: Biographical Sketch

Michael Eaton was the fourth pastor of Lusaka Baptist Church from 1976 to 1977. He was a good expository preacher/teacher and prolific writer of many Christian books including commentaries on a number of books of the Bible. Michael Eaton was born in 1941. He came from a very ordinary family in London. He became a Christian (late 1950s) when he was a teenager through a youth group in an Evangelical Anglican Church. The Billy Graham campaigns in London may also have played some part in his salvation. He did his Bachelor of Divinity at Tyndale House Cambridge. He then entered the ministry as a curate (assistant minister) at an Anglican church in Surrey, England. In 1967, he resigned from the Anglican ministry on theological grounds and joined an Evangelical Free Church in south-west London. In March 1969 he moved to Zambia where he and his wife Jenny joined Lusaka Baptist Church and later became a deacon and an elder. From early days in the church he taught an adu...