Calvary Family Church

Apostle Dr. Madalitso Mbewe is the man behind the vision of Calvary Family Church. Dr. Madalitso Mbewe is a third generation preacher in his family line. His father was a Pastor, and his grandfather was a Pastor too fulfilling the third generation principle of passing on the vision.

Dr Madalitso Mbewe grew up in a Christian home and his father brought him up in a Christian environment. But that did not make him a Christian. It was in 1974 when he personally made a decision for Christ. He finished his secondary education in 1975 and came to Blantyre where he got a job with Commercial Bank of Malawi. Soon after getting saved in 1975, God gave him a burden for young people. He started sharing the gospel with them and then started a fellowship group called Young Believers Fellowship. This fellowship of young people from different churches grew. In Blantyre, they used to meet at Nyambadwe Primary school every Sunday afternoons. They had other centres in other places like Lilongwe. Later, this fellowship changed names and adopted the name of Pentecostal Revival Crusade Ministries. The focus of the ministry changed too as now, they were involved in reaching out to people through crusades in various places. However, this led to a big challenge. Those that were won to the Lord were not easily accepted in other churches because of doctrinal differences on the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. This led to the idea of forming a Pentecostal church in 1972 which in the same year materialized by the founding of Calvary Family Church. In 1973, Calvary Family Church got registered with the Government of Malawi. They started with five people in Blantyre.

Calvary Family Church believes in the transforming power of the gospel. Their ministries focus on preaching, open air meeting and church planting. Seventy percent of the memberships of Calvary Family church are young people and therefore, they consider themselves as a church for the young people. “Young people want answers to life, they want to be told the truth and they want to be involved. If you don’t use them, you loose them.” Dr. Madalitso asserted in talking with him.

Apostle Dr. Madalitso Mbewe continued to lead the church whilst working with Commercial Bank. He was doing very well and climbing the ladder of professional attainment. He was the Assistant Manager in the Bank and at a time when a house was found for him to move to Lilongwe for a transfer to manage his own branch; that was the time when God spoke to him to provide leadership for the church full time. He had to decline a lucrative job with all that goes with Managerial position to lead a church which by then had no structure.

The church now has branches in all the regions of Malawi. It has branches in other Countries of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa and they have five branches in UK. These churches (except for Mozambique where they sent a missionary from Malawi to Mozambique to start the church), were started by members who went to these Countries for job opportunities.

The church now has a radio station, a primary school, a bible school, a microfinance project where members are given loans to start their own businesses and they are a licensed church to have a television station. Apostle Dr. Madalitso Mbewe says God has given him a vision to take the church out of the four walls and therefore has the “Joseph anointing ministry” where he goes to stadiums to address people with the gospel messages and winning them to the Lord and enabling them to break away from the poverty trap.

He has as well succeeded in the past in bringing together political leaders from different parties during times of crisis and especially after general elections and mediated on very sensitive times in the life of the nation and bring them together for a prayer fellowship.

Living Waters Church in Malawi

The Humble churches that have become Mighty in Malawi – an evaluation of Living Waters Church.

I spent some time with Apostle Dr. Stanley Ndovi, the founder of Living Waters Church. Dr. Ndovi was born on 9^th December 1957. He was at one time a member of the Apostolic Mission Church in Zingwangwa, in Blantyre, Malawi where he served as a Pastor for seven years.

The Lord spoke to him to spearhead revival in Malawi and he sensed that he may not realize this vision in this church. He left the church and the position of a Pastor and started Living waters church from nothing – no bank account, no building or any resource except the original membership of four families. The church was started on 5^th January 1985.

The ministry started by holding open air evangelistic meetings in the townships of Blantyre. The Lord honored this in that many people were won to the Lord.

In the initial days, Dr. Ndovi faced two challenges. The first challenge was finances. Living in Blantyre, one needed money for rentals, local travels, food and the day to day needs for life. It took the faith of Dr. Stanley Ndovi to trust God for these and many more other needs for ministry. Apostle Stanley Ndovi says: “when God calls you, he gives you the means and grace to accomplish his purposes.” God did provide what he needed for food, for rentals and for the means of transport to enable him do ministry.

The second challenge was acceptance of the vision God had given him. Were Malawians going to accept him as one sent from God to the nation? This was a big challenge. Many organized churches were against him and some were reporting negatively about his ministry to Police. Dr. Ndovi remembers being called to the Police at one time where he was shown by the Police fourteen different letters from fourteen different churches ordering the Police to stop him from preaching because they were not in agreement with what he was preaching. God intervened in that the day before he went to the Police office, this top Policeman, responsible for registering churches was warned in a dream that if he stops him from preaching, he would not go to heaven. Instead of being arrested, he was helped by being told how to register the church by the same policeman who was ordered to arrest him. He even laid hands on him and prayed for him at the end of their meeting. You may think that he was preaching seditious messages but that was not it. God was increasing the number of people joining the church and these other churches were simply jealousy of the growth of the church. Gradually, as people saw the hand of God in this man of God, Malawians eventually accepted messages he was getting from the Lord. To prove this, when the president of Malawi Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika lost his wife, church leaders including the Catholic church met to discuss about a visit to condole the President and proposed Apostle Stanley Ndovi to be the spokesperson for the delegation.

By August 2007, Living Waters church had approximately eighty churches in the North, One hundred and eighty churches in the central region and three hundred churches in the Southern region. It has churches in other countries too responding to the missionary call. These Countries include Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Tanzania, U.K., U.S.A., and they have partner churches in Switzerland and Germany and a Bible school in Egypt. Malawian missionaries have been sent and are serving in most of these Countries.

When one considers that the church had four families in 1985 and these statistics in 2007, the church has all the reasons to thank the Lord.

However, the Apostle was quick to point out that these days; there is a high percentage of mobility of Christians. People change membership at a faster rate now and they move from one church to the other sometimes causing a strain on church relations as they accuse each other of sheep-stealing.

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