The Sunday Mail
Desire Ncube —
ZIMBABWE hosted the inaugural World Economic Congress last week at the Celebration Centre in Harare, bringing together prominent church leaders, businessmen and entreprenuers to craft ways of supporting economic growth in a “righteous way”.
The indaba drew church leaders from across Africa, Europe, North and South America. lt ran under the theme “Let us arise and build a righteous economy for our nation”.
Some of the prominent people who attended the congress are ZAOGA leader Archbishop Ezekiel Guti, businessman Nigel Chanakira, businesswoman Ms Mara Hativagoni, Word of Life senior pastor Dr Goodwill Shana, Econet chief executive Mr Douglas Mboweni, businessman Mr Basil Nyabadza, Nyaradzo Funeral Services chief executive officer Mr Philip Mataranyika, New Life Covenant Church Bishop Tudor Bismark and Celebration Church’s Pastor Tom Deutshele.
Others are Apostle Kimberly Murphy from the U.S.A, Apostle Eddie Chansa (Zambia), Bishop John Mutula (South Africa), Dr Abu Bako (Ghana) and Dr John Kelly (U.S.A).
The three-day meeting focused on key issues such as developing a strategic economic program for implementation by the church from local to global levels and forging strategic business collaboration structures across the church.
The church and business leaders also considered wealth creation strategies for the church and its communities. They designated November as the Biblical Joseph Month – aimed at spiritually realising the economic and marketplace capacities and talents in the church.
Apostle Alexander Chisango said the congress looked at ways of contributing towards creating economic systems that can sustain the church. “The nearest example of why we are gathered is consultation on what the Biblical Joseph did in Egypt, he used the inspiration of a vision which came from God.
“He had two dreams, he was receiving a calling and a mandate from God to feed his brothers and other nations.
“When the time of implementation came, he was able to put an economic policy and wealth creation initiatives in partnership with the civil authorities of his time, that was Pharaoh.
“From there an economy rose to the point that when famine came after seven years of plenty, that economy was able to sustain the people of Israel who were also in Egypt.
“The people of his faith were sustained and so was the whole nation, it supported the whole world. So that is a micro model of what we are gathered here for.
He went on, “We can’t just have empty faith, we can’t just have Sunday services shouting and only praying and concluding that God will help us. We must translate what God is saying into tangible things.”
“If I am to borrow from other faiths for example the Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist; they have clearly defined economic templates and functional economies.
“They have virtual economies. They then use those economic models to run their country’s economies. The congress also focused on issues such as “exodus from unsustainable economic practices”, “divine perspectives of the economy and businesses”, “church/body of Christ reform for the kingdom economy” and “the great commission task and the biblical economy.”
Swedish business executive Mr Bengt Arnesson said Christians can play a key role in developing economies.
“The Christian perspective in business is that one should do business the right way, the biblical way. We are not only talking about building economies here, we are being practical. Recently we launched a complete banking platform based on pure gold for Christian churches.
“All things will be done internally with the church managing everything. We have launched this system here (Zimbabwe) and it is now functional, we are planning to go to other countries such as Ghana, Botswana and South Africa.
