Bishop Jakazi kicked out of what?

Morris Mtisi

WHEN the Bishop Jakazi recently invited me to speak to youths during a two-day Youth Conference at his Toronto homestead on the topic Youths and Ubunthu, I left the conference with a lot of interesting questions about Bishop Jakazi’s fate in his ministry in general.

The media you will recall did not spare him as it often does not, in a bid to balance both fact and fabrication. The former Anglican Diocese of Mutare Bishop is no newcomer to media brouhaha. He is quite newsy whenever something goes wrong or right in his ministry. He was there all over the papers a couple of years ago during the infamous Kunonga-Gandiya debacle which led him to founding another church International Evangelical Anglican Church. Now it is in that same church where some of his once staunch supporters it is alleged have drawn daggers against him and ‘kicked’ him out of the church he founded.

My business at his Church’s Youth Conference recently was not about church wrangles or in-fights, what I can safely describe as Church Struggle-Within-Struggles. It was about youths and ubunthu or hunhu. The good bishop invited me because he is an avid reader of my columns in The Manica Post to youths, especially students, nothing else, nothing sinister, nothing clandestine.

So I agreed to grace the conference and spoke to the youths. It was a fantastic session or presentation of teaching, discussion and prayer. I loved and enjoyed speaking to these youths emphasizing the truth that an education without God is dead…and there is nothing high or higher about it (education) if it omits Godliness in its purpose, God who is the source of the finest of Hunhu/ Ubunthu. An education that omits the business of character building in schools is simply not serious enough and as children acquire bookish knowledge they must always remember God is Giver of all intellectual talent or gift, I told the youths.

I emphasized to them that there is no wisdom, let alone life, in celebrating you can almost call it worshipping, moral decay and social networks. Some youths make money out of network business.

Others use it for research and study. But what do the rest of our children do? They waste time posting rubbish to friends and distributing foolish jokes on social media.

Bishop Jakazi’s youths listened. They remarked and asked questions. We discussed.

We prayed and sang. It was beautiful. There is nothing I enjoy more than addressing youngsters who are eager to learn about life and purposeful in their undertakings and resolutions.

When everything was said and done, questions started to flood my mind.

Why is there so much division in churches today? Have churches suddenly become politics as we know it? Is it members who are power hungry or is it church leaders who scare members with their dictatorship and religious wickedness? Is it money setting ambitious members against their leaders? Is it signs of the end times? Where is the old spirit of worship and family? Even learned men and women who should know better what it means to work as a team in support of each other, they too act like Shakespearean Mark Antonys and Brutuses. When old ‘friends’ conspired to assassinate Julius Caesar, even his best friend, noble and honorable Brutus was there and he (Caesar) exclaimed in his last breath, “Et-tu-Brute!,” And you too Brutus! In the latest wrangle or was it the last push of conspiracy, you can almost hear Bishop Jakazi asking, “And you too Brutus!” You remember Napoleon and Snowball in Animal Farm? Where do these dissidents come from in churches? One would have thought such people were found in politics alone.

We know churches are now full of rapists, including the young nymphomaniac pastors who trend the prophet brand, daylight liars, gossipers, adulterers and the lot, but where do conspirators come from? Why do they simply not begin their own churches? It is not a crime to start a church in Zimbabwe. Why conspire the downfall of old seasoned leaders and frustrate the spiritual empires build by old horses through sacrifice and prayerful warfare against odds? Why do young boys and girls armed with cleverness and intellectual advantage wait in the corridors to usurp power from ageing church leaders? If these power hungry fundis or youngsters were Jesus’s disciplines surely they would stage similar coups and like God’s best angel Lucifer plot a heavenly regime change and scheme the overthrow of Jesus. Shame! Shame on such behavior in Churches.

But I saw Bishop Jakazi. I was with him at the Youth Conference. He was bubbling with spirit and principle. He was bubbling with aim and purpose. He was going about his teaching and preaching and leading. It was business as usual for him and though there are ‘Selous Scouts’ spying on his business every day and laboring to scatter his flock, Jakazi remains prayerfully solemn and focused.

Why do people not just leave Jakazi and his church to worship freely? And leave everything to God who will judge him for he knows him better than every newspaper, every media house and every woman or man alive!

If people want to exercise power and wit, worldly wisdom, join politics and prove you can bring answers to their problems. Christians who have a political instinct are dangerous in the church. Here God and Jesus Christ are the Father and Son forever and ever Amen. There are no constitutional issues to contest, but submission through prayer and faithfulness to God. It is simple and straight forward: No elections, no regime change plans, no conspiracy!

Those who have ears to hear, hear.