Ministry News: Comhunão dos Crentes em Cristo (Nampula, Mozambique) (May 2026)

Our congregation is small but active. We have been meeting for 23 years now and have 46 members, with seven of those participating from a distance via live Facebook feeds. We typically have twenty more regular adult visitors and another ten visitors from among the thirty folks who come only periodically. Children number from 10–25 on any Sunday.

The two Mozambican leaders who helped found the church have both stepped down from leadership in recent years, though they remain active in the church and often occupy the pulpit along with the missionary, the three other church leaders, and six additional male members.

We have four provisional leaders at present. Though they are all faithful men who in their own lives fulfil the spiritual requirements expected of elders, two have remained unmarried due to factors beyond their control and so they cannot be tested through leadership of their own families. The third Mozambican leader meets all the requirements not only regarding himself but also regarding his family (if indeed elders must be husbands and also fathers of children who faithfully follow their parents’ faith). So we hope church leadership may soon pass from a provisional board of four men to a board of two fully qualified elders, with the other two men serving as elders-in-preparation.

In years past, we had reached the point of having two fully qualified elders, but as soon as this happened, the second man has been sent out to plant a new congregation, compelling our congregation to carry on with provisional leaders only. But today there are five sister Reformed Evangelical churches in Nampula, three of them arising from members and leaders of our own congregation and the other two from ministries carried out by members of our church.

In the past year the church has benefitted from the service of two faithful deacons. They and other men organise the monthly fellowship luncheons and are guiding the congregation’s project to erect its own church building. Land adjacent to the Mission has been acquired, the roof structure has been purchased and imported from South Africa, and contributions are coming in faithfully for the foundations. The deacons hope construction can begin in the next six months. The edifice will be built in stages and will likely take several years to complete because of the poverty that characterises the country, but with a roof and foundation the structure can be used for open air church meetings even before completion. In the meantime, as needed, the Mission buildings are still available to the church.

Many of our members are heavily engaged in ministries to the larger church in Mozambique. Six have served as administrators for Grace Missions executing its literature, conference, and Internet outreaches. Joining with former members of our congregation who are also involved in planting sister churches, they were key partners in a two-day conference for church leaders on worship last month that was attended by 120–130 church leaders, and helped execute another two-day youth conference this month on prayer for over 300 participants. Both conferences were held on the Mission property under the direction of a fully indigenous Reformed faith mission comprised of leaders from several Nampula churches who executed the events from the first planning stages to the final event.

In July, members of our own church, together with the staff of Grace Missions, will be conducting the 25th annual four-day conference for church leaders from all parts of Mozambique. Last year’s conference had an attendance of 545 persons, with 260 out of town guests coming from 8 of Mozambique’s 10 provinces. The theme this year will be “Christ Building His Church” with 17 sessions devoted to this topic, all taken from Paul’s two letters to Timothy.

A couple of Sundays ago the church rejoiced in the baptism of a young woman who has come to salvation in a most unorthodox manner.

Three years ago, she was an unchurched non-believer living in a neighbouring province. One of our young male members married her traditionally after a whirlwind courtship while he was spending his annual leave with relatives in her part of the country. He knew this was unacceptable conduct and kept the girl, the marriage, and the resulting child a secret for a year, with the couple living apart almost all the time. When the news became known to the church 18 months ago, the leaders insisted that he bring his family together in Nampula and then start over the proper way, allowing that, though she was an unbeliever, he must marry her correctly, making biblical vows, which he was eager to do. However, he habitually deviated from the church’s directions throughout the process and ended up having to be removed from membership, though we did not ban him from coming to church services, viewing him as an unbeliever still needing to be evangelised.

Several in the church began intensive efforts to evangelise the young woman as well, in part for the sake of our former brother who we hoped could yet be restored. Despite the fact that her husband was not accepted as a member because of his conduct with her, which could have been stigmatising in her sight, the Lord and the love of several of our members kept drawing this young woman to the church and finally to Christ even as her husband’s participation with us waned. He continues to show signs of increasing spiritual decline and cluelessness, growing further than ever from being received by the church as a Christian. But as he declines, she has grown and even flourished in the midst of a difficult marital situation according to the meeting she had with the other leaders when she requested baptism, which was duly carried out the following Sunday. She is now embarking on the mandatory formal discipleship series in anticipation of her soon becoming a member in the church.

We need prayer for the following matters:

1. Development of strong, spiritual leadership carried out by biblically qualified elders.
2. A smooth transition from provisional leadership by four men to elder leadership by two.
3. The church’s building project.
4. The fraternity of Reformed Evangelical churches in Mozambique which we hope will become fully established in the next twelve months. This has been spear-headed by leaders of other congregations, but those leaders came to the true gospel through ministries of our own church, and we support their effort enthusiastically.
5. The 25th annual Fiel (Faithful) Conference to be held in July.
6. The young woman who was baptised two weeks ago, that she might continue to grow strong in the Lord.
7. Her husband, an ex-member of our congregation, who needs to be restored but does not show signs of genuine conversion or of knowing Christ.