Zambia has so often been mentioned on radio the world over in the past few

years. This newly independent African country, under its

president Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, has so often been in the news bulletins. Today,

Zambia is once more on radio but for a different reason. It's a church service.

There are several things about these service, which are

rather unusual. And I'll tell you about them as we go along. But

first let us hear the students of one of the big training

colleges singing. What they sing is an invitation called "Come

Along." "If you want to go to

heaven come  along. Come Along, Come Along. If you want to go to heaven Come Along, Come Along. If you want to go to Heaven Come along, Come long. Hear my Jesus when he calls You.

Did you hear my Jesus  when he called you. Did you hear my Jesus  when he called you? Did you hear my Jesus when he called you?

Did you hear my Jesus when he called you? I said there were several

unusual things about the service.

Here is the first one. This land of Zambia is huge

though it only has about 4 million inhabitants. But these

four million consist of over 70 different tribes and they are

nearly as many different languages. Of course many of these

different languages are similar to each other, but even so, there are quite

big differences between the main language groups. This is well

illustrated by the students, who now sing that same song "Come Along," this time in three of our main languages: Bemba, Lozi, and

Tonga.

GO. GO

"Students singing "Come Along" in Bemba, Lozi, and Tonga"

Students singing in Bemba, Lozi and Tonga.

with each other. For example, what we know as the United Church of

Zambia is a union of the Church of Scotland, The

Congregationalists, The Methodists and The Paris Evangelical Mission.

This group which represents what they call Free Churches elsewhere

has as its Synod clerk the Reverend Dois Mezsusa.

4: 40.30 Like most countries, Zambia has many different churches, representing all the main traditions of the Christian faith. Nowadays in Zambia, as in many other parts of the world, Christians of different denominations are more and more learning to understand each other. And, there is a very great degree of cooperation between them. Some churches have already united with each other. For example, what we know as the United Church of Zambia is a union of the Church of Scotland, The Congregationalists, the Methodists, and the Paris Evangelical Mission. This group, which represents what they call Free Churches elsewhere, has as its Synod clerk the Reverend Dois Mezsusa. He and a priest of the Roman Catholic Church and a priest of the Anglican Church

have combined together to bring you the service this morning. I'll

introduce the other two later on but here first. Reverend Dois Mezsusa talking of one side of the church work in Zambia today.

People often asking, "What is the church for." The answers given are various. The church exists to save souls. and to worship  God. These answers are right, but not touched by the modern men.  They say, "What is the church doing about shanty towns?" The suffering families in Viet Nam? I want to say what I think.  The church should agree, for men's bodies. the physical part of them that makes them human beings, because I believe that it is Christ who is asking the churches these questions through the problems in the world. What have you done to look after my needy brothers?" he says. It is, of course true that the church hospitals and medical

staff agricultural colleges and organizations to

give food clothing and housing to refugees. And

in every community there are church groups that exist in order to

help people in times of hardship. But I

wonder if the challenge to the church is not higher than this.

And I choose two examples among many to show what I mean.

First I believe that the church must learn to be more adaptable than it is. We are living in this trend of Zambian history where now our whole national way of life is being changed. In the future most of our children will be properly educated. We shall hear less of strange diseases killing our children. There will be more and better food. We are producing a nation that will be physically stronger and more educated. But this is restraint has to be used. We are on the edge of flood of energy that is growing in our young people and the details and the channels must be dug to control this flood and make it productive. We have now societies to look after the

alcoholic. We keep on saying that beer drinking is a waste to

our nation, but we seem to do very little about

providing interesting and helpful things for many to do in

their spare time. We have premises that are not used.

We have potential leaders who are not leading any body. The leisure

time of so many Zambians is being wasted. So I

believe that churches need to do more in planning the provision of

interesting helpful things for the many to do in their spare time.

The churches have not the resources to do it on their own, but church

and state together must solve this problem, for they are equally

concerned. But, many things must be done now.

Not after we have thousands more drunkards now. Not

after all we have more thousands more of what other countries call

juvenile delinquents now. Not after all we have thousands more

broken families and unwanted children.

Secondly I'm talking about the church in a new independent country.

We have quite a highly receiving rewards in our nation over the wealth

that God has put into our soil. But there is a feeling about

what every individual should try and get as rich as possible

and few people are, but it is the well-being of all the people of

Zambia that we must be speaking. I believe that

the church must speak out against the people who garner a big basket of

food instead of looking after these hungry neighbor.

Present account of the philosophy of humanism is very close to the heart of

Christianity. It is no shame to the church to count often the

words of the Master "Love your neighbor as yourself." In

other words want for your fellow the necessary good things of

life that you want for yourself and your family. And don't

be content with just thinking about it, but do something about feeding

him. There are so many more ways in which the church should work. For

example, through the things of economics, but the church must

always be concerned about the bodies of men for they are the

temple of the Holy Spirit of God.

Zambia is divided into eight provinces. One of these is the northern province, which borders on Lake Tanganyika. The northern province is the home of the Bemba-speaking people. And, it is in their language that our next hymn comes.

It is a hymn of penitence, asking the Lord to have mercy upon us.

This hymn in Bemba was sung by the students of Miramba secondary school, one of the many secondary schools in Zambia. It is appropriate that they should be providiing our music today because we are very preoccupied in Zambia at the present time with problems of education. To talk about that

here is the Reverend Father Adrian Smith of the Roman Catholic Church. The small boy who hacks the shins of his schoolmates on the football field of Lulaba mission in northern Zambia some thirty years ago, could never have known at the time that the victim of his jealousy was to become the first president of the republic of Zambia. The attacker himself might have dreamt of becoming a village headsman, but could never imagine himself in his present position as a government minister.

President Kenneth Kaunda, like so many of his government ministers today owed his early schooling to the church missions. In early colonial days quite the majority of schools in the then Northern Rhodesia were run by the missions. In fact, the usual procedure followed was that, when a new mission was established, immediately would be built the school. Then would follows weeks of visits to the headsman's to persuade them of the benefits of sending the children to

school as the mission developed chapels were they built in

centralized villages some 15 or 20 miles from the mission. A

local African would be put in charge of the Christian community, the catechist. And,

besides teaching all the basic principles of the Christian faith, he

found himself in the role of the first village teacher. He would teach reading and

writing and some simple sums. In this way through the local

Christian mission, thousands and thousands of Africans took their first steps

towards an education. Now there's nothing really extraordinary in this.

This isn't a peculiar peculiarity of Africa through the whole 2000 years

of Christianity. The church has had a role to play in the task of education and

a purely secular education. Today in many countries

it's a strongly argued now that the state has to become more conscious of its duty to educated

young citizens, this is no longer a task part of the church. It's a

purely secular concern. Here in Zambia, however, as in

most other developing countries, the argument tends to be academic,

although the state has made enormous advances in the field of education since independence, the

role of the church is still appreciated and indeed counted upon to

give just one example. Today in Zambia 16 percent of secondary

school boys in the country and as many as 30 percent of secondary school girls

are being educated in secondary schools run by the Catholic Church alone.

And this work is not looked upon by the church simply as a means of evangelization.

An easy way of enticing more members into the church but as a positive

contribution to the perfection the completion of man.

It's by God's gift to man of an intellect a reasoning mind

that man is lifted after the realm of the animal kingdom to be a true image or

reflection of God. The church has never been able to ignore this gift of

God and has always striven to develop man's intellect. So that by its right

use, man might draw nearer to God, which is after all the very purpose for

which is on us. Now I've spoken up to the moment of

education, as is concerned with schooling. But there is a far wider field of

education in which the church also has its part to play.

People living in a secluded village life in remote rural areas of this country

tend to be left out of the mainstream of thought which is developing in the urban areas and in the

capital especially. I remember one occasion when I was working in

the vegetable garden of one of our missions in a remote rural area. I was

working with a local man who had never even visited the nearest government center only 30 miles

away. As we worked together I told him about England was the sort

of tools people use there for gardening. We were talking of course in the local

language but all of a sudden he asked me how

many people in England speak to him what I thought of some of the Zambian

students English universities and replied, about 10 I

suppose the answer hit him hard for the first time. His

little world opened up. Not everyone in the world spoke his language

in the field of education. Education in its widest sense. The church doesn't

aim at cramming people's minds with knowledge but rather of opening up their minds

of opening people's minds to wider horizons to different concepts of life to

different values. Every country which has recently acquired independence

has its national aspirations. That may be a form of socialism

or it may as in Zambia be a form of humanism. The church in this

field has to exercise what is called its prophetic role, which of course has nothing

to do with foretelling the future. It means that it's that's the task of the church

to show men how that aspiration be they individual all on the

national level relate to God, who is the be all and the end

all of every man's life. Our language changes again for the next hymn,

which this time is sung in Tonga, the language of solving problems.

Most of our hymns are simply translations of well-known English hymns, but we also have many hymns which are typically Zambian in words, music and rhythm. Here is one of them is Holy Spirit. We come now to a third speaker.

He's archdeacon John Horton of the Anglican Church. Only a little

over three years ago.

Two hundred thousand of us stood at midnight in the independence stadium in

Lusaka capital of Zambia and watched our nation come to birth.

We saw our flag raised high for the first time, but before it was

raised we had had a Zambian Bishop ask God's blessing upon it.

So amid all the cheering and the excitement and the fireworks there was that

brief dramatic moment of silence and of prayer. We

can truly say that our nation at the very moment of its birth

found its head in prayer to Almighty God and sought his blessing.

That was only a little more than a thousand days ago. Yet in that short

time. How much has happened for which today we must thank God

Two hundred thousand of us stood at midnight in the independence stadium in

education and health in commerce and industry in social

services and in the raising of living standards for so many of our people.

These are visible and tangible signs of the tremendous vigor of a new

nation on the march and in all this growth and effort.

The Christian Church here in Zambia has been conscious of its responsibility

to contribute to this progress and to share in this advance.

My two colleagues in this program have already spoken of this as they touched

on the church's role in the social services and in the field of education.

But both they and I are conscious of the fact that there is another

the level at which the church has an even greater responsibility in this

new young nation and this is much more difficult to define

and much less easy to talk about. One way to put it I suppose

would be to say that while in the material context and in the social

services, we are dealing with men's bodies and while in the

field of education we are dealing with men's minds. There still

remains that element in the threefold nature of mankind

namely men's souls or spirits. What is the role of the

church in this regard in a newly independent state?

But both they and I are conscious of the fact that there is another

analysis be as good as its members. And in these early days of our

life as a new nation, we are creating and forming the

character and tradition our nation is to have. Here then

is a tremendous challenge and opportunity for the church, to be

the nation's conscience, to remind the nation that, in spite of its

understandable preoccupation with material plans and physical

development, the things of the Spirit are important too

and indeed far more important even though less dramatic and less

obviously exciting than the new schools and colleges, the new

hospitals and factories and highways and the like. In all

this we start with one tremendous advantage, and that is

that we have as president of Zambia, one who shares with the churches

this deep realisation of the need to give a spiritual basis

and content to Zambia's character.  Twice in the past

12 months President Kaunda has accepted invitations to

address church Synod meetings. On the last of these occasions, he

said, "As I see it the church has to become her true

self over and over again through the compassionate all-embracing

and totally self-forgetful service to the world. The world, in other words, is not the church's playground for selected

charitable field exercises, rather the world in its totality

is God's continuing challenge to the church, to lose herself,

just as Jesus accepted death, and in accepting death to

demonstrate to a world without hope her faith in the resurrection." And,

in the same address, he said, "Both the church and the state must

serve man and only by doing so faithfully and in

accordance with the law of God can both of them claim or either

of them claim rightly to be serving God." And, he ended his

speech, which had been full of deep theological insight, with these

words, "I am persuaded that the liberating love of God

will meet the world through us if we cease being preoccupied with

our own self. May God grant us the courage to accept his

freedom so that we become and remain the messengers of

true freedom. It would be the greatest blessing should Zambia

ever find that it had such a prophetic church in our midst."

That was President Kaunda speaking. There is of course one limiting factor

to the church's ability to meet such challenges and that is the sad

separations which exist between churches in Zambia as in most

other parts of the world. We are very conscious of this. And, much

thought and prayer and work is being directed at this problem in

Zambia. To a quite encouraging extent the

separation between churches is being recognized as the sad

and sinful thing it is. And, there is a deepening and

growing volume of understanding and cooperation. In this

very program brought to you jointly by priests and ministers of

the Free Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Church here in Zambia you

have a sample of this.

Certainly the closer the churches come to each other the more effectively

will they be able to give to this young state of Zambia the spiritual

gifts and the Christian character it needs.

Certainly the closer the churches come to each other, the more effectively will they be able to give to this young state of Zambia the spiritual gifts and the Christian character it needs. [singing] Our service is nearly done. I said earlier that we Christians in Zambia, though we still belong to different and separated churches, are learning more and more about each other. And there is a very great deal of cooperation between our churches, even though we are not yet able to unite formally. We like to think that this service in which priests and ministers of the Free Church, the Anglican and Catholic churches participated is a symbol of our hope that one day the unity of the Christian people will be achieved which our Lord wishes.

And so we come to our last hymn. And, it is fitting that it should

be one of praise to God. It's called Alembic ages.

This service has been a production of the religious department of Radio Zambia.