Praying for persecution in Tanzania!

Happy Sabbath!

I wanted to update you all with some of the challenges the church is facing here in Tanzania, and ask you to be praying for us and our brothers and sisters here in TZ.

I will try to make this short, but there is a lot of history that gives context.

I may also be a little vague, because of ongoing legal issues here and a desire to protect our friends and their interests.

On Sunday I arrived for worship service late to find nearly all our church members outside the church building sitting on the grass and under trees. There were also 6-8 police officers dressed in military fatigues, armed with assault rifles. I entered to church to find a group of men at the front who were there to remove the current church pastors and secretary and install their own leadership. This was enforced by the police presence. At the end of their announcement, they ushered everyone out of the building and padlocked the doors from the outside. We tried to complete our worship service outside but were told this was not permitted. Finally, we sat by the road and worshipped together(while one of our pastors went to the police station to complain). It was a sad but sweet time.

The specific details of how this happened to our church, Azimio Baptist, are not important. This is a process that has played out many times over the past few years in many churches in TZ.

How did all this come about? Briefly, in 2015-2016 a small group of churches within the Baptist Convention of Tanzania mounted an administrative coup and were able to submit a new constitution to the government, despite not having followed the procedures for changing it as outlined in the constitution they were replacing. The previous constitution was approx. 30 pages and followed Baptistic and biblical theology, especially as applied to the independence of the local church.

The new constitution is 160 pages and gives tremendous power to one man, the Head Overseer(Bishop), including ownership of properties(in TZ churches must register under a denomination, so all property is also under that registration), choosing local leaders, demanding payments, and many other things. They also changed the name of the denomination from the Baptist Convention of Tanzania to the Baptists’ Church of Tanzania.

Ever since the “coup”, a large number of Baptist churches(more than 1000) have dissented, and have taken up cases in the courts to try to reverse the constitutional change, prevent the sale of properties, etc. These cases have been stymied by the Bishop’s influence and interference.

Today we are ten years into the conflict, multiple cases continue, and the Bishop and his followers have been systematically attacking individual local churches, one by one, usually with police presence, and either removing leaders, selling their properties out from under them, or both.
At times these incidents have become violent, and on multiple occasions they have gotten pastors arrested for days at a time based on false accusations.

Sunday it came home for us as our own church was attacked in this way. The men representing the Bishop found a couple of men who were a part of our church to accept positions given to them by the Bishop, and came in to take over. The property where we meet is probably worth $50,000 or more(a kings ransom in TZ), and our elders have been staunch defenders of Baptist doctrine, so we knew we were a big target.

We don’t know what the future holds for our gathering, but we have been encouraged that believers continue to meet and are committed to one another. We will look for a house of a church member where we can meet until we can find a small piece of property.

I write these things so that we can ask you all to pray specifically. Persecution doesn’t always come from outside! Jesus warned his followers in Matthew 7 about wolves among the sheep- we are witnessing the destructive effect of these men in real time.

First though, the praises:

-These confrontations have not become violent. Despite aggressive physicality of the Bishops men and the escalations of bringing weapons to intimidate, believers have remained peaceful and gentle, choosing to turn the other cheek.
-The church is being cleaned! There is a winnowing happening of the churches here. It’s a painful process involving a lot of heartache, but we believe at the end of the process the chaff of division and betrayal will have blown away, leaving good fruit which the Lord will use to grown his church and increase his glory here in Western TZ.
-We have seen great unity. Believers are grieving, praying and growing together. Tertullian posited that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church, and suffering and persecution of this sort has a similar effect.

Pray for:
-The Great Commission to be our priority. It is easy to be distracted by these matters, but we cannot be consumed by them to the detriment of the commands of Christ in the Word.
-Justice! So much of this situation is so unjust! We pray that Baptist Convention churches would be allowed to part ways with the Bishop side without having to give up their properties.
-Our TZ brothers and sisters. So many are discouraged by these events, and it seems that the evil forces continue to prevail despite our prayers and efforts. We struggle to maintain an eternal perspective, but are reminded often through our time in the word.
-Our team. We are trying to gentle as doves but shrewd as snakes. We will continue to stand on the Word, and we have refused to partner with individuals or churches that are submitting to the leadership of an evil man. There are some who would like to see our team removed from the work/country, and they are likely working to that end even now. Pray that we would be unified as a team, prudent in our action, firm in our conviction, and confident in our King.

Thanks for being a part of this work with us! We believe that the Lord will be glorified through all of this, and we trust that He will hold us fast until the work is done.