My bout of malaria put a halt to the whirl of activity that had come to characterize our life. I needed to rest and recover my strength. It was no picnic for Pegi either! Like most males, I am a grumpy bear when I am ill. Besides caring for me as I tossed and turned in bed, as I recovered I drew on her even more than usual to generate the activity and momentum that we lost. This was before the development of the first laptop computers. We had made it our habit to write personal letters to all contributors. We did this on a portable battery-powered typewriter that we had purchased during our visit to the States. Since Pegi was the better typist, and I was too weak anyway, she spent several days a week cranking out letters. We also had a monthly newsletter to produce and that would require a trip to Harare to use Mike Marsden’s NCR microcomputer, line-printer and mimeograph machine.
For about a week, our only activity was writing. This led to a great deal of time for thought. It became clear that we could not continue to chase back and forth between rural Wedza and Harare. It was great to have a place we could call our own on the Stockhill farm, but it was just too far from all our lines of communication in Harare. The most pressing problem was developing leaders for the rural congregations. This couldn’t be done in the rural areas. We had to draw on the larger, more established ministries in Harare for leaders. It was easy to gather a crowd in the rural areas. We had proven that all you had to do was show up with the intent to minister and plenty of people would come. Once you have gathered a crowd, what would you do with and for that crowd? Our answer was teaching, but for that you needed competent teacher-leaders. Such are not created overnight, but are the result of long-term commitment and growth.
We had attracted a few young men who were willing to move to the rural areas and had tried to put them under Norman’s tutelage, but Norman was not a teacher of teachers. What I had to teach them was really too advanced. My skills were in biblical exposition not in the basics of rural congregational life. It was hard to find teachers for the rural areas. Realistically, you have to wonder “why” someone would want to leave the comfort of urban living and relocate to the most basic of living conditions. Felix had made many overtures about ministering in the rural areas, but was unreliable to even stick around overnight as his life was in Harare. [87 — “But, I repeat-- you were Invited!”]
From time to time, I had held week-long “schools of ministry” for young men who had already been identified by their pastors as leadership material. I knew from previous conversations with Tom Deuschle that he was somewhat interested in the growth of the rural church, especially if it were under the purview of Rhema. He was not personally interested in rural ministry, nor ministry to black Africans in general. However, he did want to be perceived as a mover and shaker in Zimbabwean ministry. His ministry focused on the prosperous white community. But, it was hard to explain to his financial backers in America how ministry in Africa would be only to white faces! It occurred to me that Tom would be eager to validate himself to his supporters by participating in an effort to organize an ongoing school of ministry for African leaders. This school would train pastors and pastoral candidates and equip them to serve Zimbabwe and the surrounding nations of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana. This would differentiate him from prosperous mostly-white Rhema-Johannesburg which considered Rhema-Harare a subsidiary.
Once I had my strength back, we drove to Harare with the express purpose of proposing to Tom that we somehow align our efforts. Now, this was long before we had experienced Tom’s duplicitous nature. Yes, we had some uncomfortable encounters with him that I recounted previously [96 — “Those Polymorph Thingies”]. But, we were still naive when it came to working with others. We gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, assuming that other Christians really did sincerely care about “reaching the unreached” more than enhancing their own resumes and bank accounts.
We spoke with Tom and shared our “vision” of training leadership for rural areas. It was our hope that we could bring several ministries together in a common effort. Surprisingly, Tom was not only open to our proposal, but already had some plans in place. He had recently obtained the lease to the Salisbury Evangelical Bible Institute from the Africa Evangelical Fellowship (A.E.F) for $1/year.
SEBI, as it was known, was a campus in the Highfield township of Harare. Highfield was a high-density township that bordered the industrial area and had housed the Africans who had labored in the medium and heavy industries of the former Rhodesia. It was close to Harare’s city-centre and had a fully-developed road and utility network. Before independence in 1980, it had been the only place in the city where Africans could own property. The campus consisted of cement buildings with tin roofing which circled a large open area: a two-story dormitory that could house up to forty, a block of five classrooms and office, five one-room apartments for faculty, a kitchen/cafeteria and a toilet/shower facility.
Pegi and I had visited SEBI several times before. We had borrowed their projector and films before we obtained our own. We also had rented their tent for our Wedza campaign. In addition, several of the staff had assisted us in Wedza. The A.E.F. which owned and ran SEBI was an African-led pentecostal denomination. Started by American missionaries, the church leadership and properties were turned over to its membership with the retirement of the missionaries. The American missionaries and their money disappeared with the end of white-minority rule and the beginning of independent Zimbabwe. A half-dozen Africans led a tiny black denomination that composed a handful of churches. The once thriving bible school had only four or five students. The campus was not in good repair. AEF did not have the funding to keep it going. The buildings had leaky roofs, needed some repairs to the plumbing and a coat of paint. Most of all, they needed students!
Tom proposed creating a “school of ministry” that would draw upon the populations of Zimbabwe and neighboring countries except for South Africa. 1985 apartheid South Africa was a whole different story and was outside Zimbabwe’s sphere of influence. For Tom and other missionaries, South Africa was a major source of funding. Eventually, Tom would solicit Rhema-Johannesburg for R1000 (US$500 in 1985) to finance the rehab of the school.
AEF would still participate in the school, but Tom would select the teachers from ministries allied with him as well as some of the current instructors from AEF. The AEF instructors were really taking a step down. They were once again under white supervision. I was to be dean, lecturer, and project lead. Tom would be the school president, but uninvolved in the day-to-day affairs.
As dean, I would be an unpaid member of the Rhema staff. It became my responsibility to recruit students, supervise curriculum, manage budget and rehab the campus. Although I was responsible for implementation of the curriculum, there were certain classes that Tom insisted be taught to reflect his connection with the Faith Movement. SEBI was already a Pentecostal Christian institution, so miracle ministry was already an emphasis. For Tom, the most important additions would be classes on prosperity (giving with an expectation of bountiful rewards) and confession (speaking realities into existence)—the two main emphases of Kenneth Hagin of Rhema-Tulsa.
I was troubled with how both of these doctrines were applied. Tom picked his close friend, Peter McKenzie (Church Team Ministries International, https://ctmi.org/team/peter-mckenzie/), to teach “faith and confession.” I volunteered to teach the class on prosperity to try to give it some biblical context. I was already feeling pressure over the prosperity teaching. My home church in Louisville, John Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston (both of which sent us $500/mo) and all ministries with the Kenneth Hagin’s “Rhema Church-Word of Faith” movement, insisted that those associated with them adhere to this teaching.
Tom Deuschle, as a graduate of Rhema Bible School in Tulsa, strongly adhered to the “faith and confession” distortion of biblical teaching on giving. This asserts 10% tithing as a minimum expectation. Once this minimum was met, the Christian could expect God to pour out blessings and prosperity ‘as the rain falls from the sky.’ Indeed, the more one gave, the more blessing and prosperity one should “expect.” Since such a believer has this faith expectation of God, he or she should “confess” that prosperity with their lips and thus manifest the prosperity into reality. This “confession” message was the primary emphasis of Kenneth Hagin, the founder of Rhema. He had made his career ripping Mark 11:22-24 out of its context and reconstituting it as the elementary principle of Christian living. I quote from the King James Version here as it is Hagin’s preferred translation:
Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe those things he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. [Mark 11:22-24 KJV-emphasis mine]
This idea of “having what you say” is the core of Hagin’s “Faith Teaching.” It puts humankind in God’s class of being a creator. The thinking is that when God created the heavens and earth in Genesis chapter 1, the means was speech—the Word of God. Jesus is the “Word Incarnate” (John 1:1-3). As such, it was Jesus as the Word who spoke creation into existence. Since we are created in God’s image and likeness, believers in Jesus have the “Incarnate Word” indwelling them by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when Christians speak by faith, they are godlike creators. Each faith-spoken utterance creates reality. Faith speaks healing, success, well-being, blessing and prosperity. When combined with the appropriate giving at or above the minimum tithe level, the person of faith creates reality by speaking just as Jesus, the Incarnate Word, did at creation. According to this teaching, if you are not prospering, indeed if you have any needs at all, it is because you have not met the minimum tithe and/or are not “believing and confessing.”
If you are theologically and biblically untrained this all sounds plausible—it even sounds exciting! What could be better than being “like God” as a creator? Of course, the downside would be that you can also bring negative things to fruition by having the wrong confession—speaking the wrong things, things that are not of faith. Then you are at the mercy of Satan and his fallen angels who seek to defeat the purposes of God. If the believer is working at cross-purposes with God by engaging in defeatist speech, the result can be disastrous. No wonder so many who adhere to this doctrine find themselves obsessed with what Satan (the devil) is doing. They try to remedy the situation by rebuking devilish powers. They spend most of their effort speaking defensively against Satan rather than trusting God.
The Faith Movement is not limited to the Haginist Rhema associates. Hagin’s teaching, further distilled by his son, Kenneth Hagin, Jr., is only the most clearly defined of a long line of pentecostal/charismatic preachers of the 20th century. Most find their patriarch in Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947), a British plumber turned faith healing evangelist who is credited with numerous miraculous healings. Other influential faith healers include John G. Lake, Aimee Simple McPherson, William Branham, Oral Roberts, T.L. Osborn, Kathryn Kuhlman, Jack Coe, and A.A. Allen. More recent faith practitioners include Americans Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Marilyn Hickey, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn as well as Derek Prince (UK), Reinhard Bonnke (Germany), and David Yonggi Cho (S. Korea).
I had never been comfortable with pretty much any teaching about giving from Christian leaders. My earliest exposure to the concept of Christian giving had been at Berachah Church, Houston in 1970. Col. Thieme, the pastor, had insisted on a literal interpretation of the New Testament on the subject which asserted “free-will” giving over any rule or standard. Actually, this made sense to me and still makes sense today. The argument is as follows:
- Tithing, as taught in the Hebrew scriptures, was part of the constitutional makeup of the nation of Israel contained in the Mosaic Law.
- As such, the 10% (“tithe”) was to be set aside for the support of the Levitical priesthood and their families.
- The tribe of Levi had not received ownership rights to any of the land in the land of Canaan upon conquest.
- In addition, Levites were not to have any other trade or means of support.
- They were functionaries in the religious ritual surrounding the Tabernacle in the desert and later the Temple in Jerusalem.
- The infamous, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that their may be food in My house . . . ” (Mal 3:10 NASB) refers not to the New Testament church budget, but to the storehouse of the Levitical priesthood.
- Therefore this has no relation to Christianity or church budgets.
- New Testament giving has no formula, neither was it to be directed to a special class of religious functionaries.
- New Testament Christianity rejects the entire Mosaic sacrificial apparatus administered by the Levitical priesthood since Jesus is understood to be the fulfillment of the sacrifices with his death by crucifixion.
- The New Testament considers every believer in Jesus to actually be a priest, thus obsoleting the need for Levitical specialization.
- Jesus himself gives no commands with regard to giving other than to “sell all you possess and give to the poor . . .” (Mark 10:21 NASB)
- Paul explains that the New Testament idea of giving is to be determined by the individual “as he may prosper” (1 Cor 16:2), based on what “he purposed in his heart” (2 Cor 9:7) or an individual’s “own accord” (2 Cor 8:3).
- Even as an “apostle to the gentiles” Paul was uncomfortable with receiving gifts for his own support in ministry. Instead, he availed himself of his trade as a tent-maker to support himself and those associated with him in ministry. Such a limitation did not seem to inhibit his productivity. (2 Thess. 3:6-12)
- This is what Thieme and numerous other modern Christian scholars refer to as “grace giving.” As such, it meets the Pauline assertion that “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7).
Growing up Jewish, I had never considered any of this. If I understood anything at age twenty, the beginning of my wandering, it would have been a vague understanding of giving to support the ancient Levitical priesthood. After all, I was descended from the tribe of Levi by my mother and father! But, I knew that Levitical ritual was no longer a functioning reality. Any remnant had been lost with the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 C.E., followed by 2000 years of diaspora and attempted annihilation in the Holocaust.
My only reminders of Levite heritage were carried in my mother’s maiden name (Levy) and the musical gifts passed on to her, my father and his brother, my Uncle Herman. But, if we relied on our Levitical musical heritage for income, it was only as musical professionals! My uncle sang with a “big band” in the 1940s. My mother used her ear-training on piano to direct and produce musicals from her high school years until her late 50s when emphysema and cancer from her pack-a-day habit first weakened and then killed her as it had done her mother before her. My father had a fantastic voice and was often invited to sing in nightclubs. Sadly, he struggled with remembering lyrics. This prevented him from exploiting his gift. [It seems I inherited my parents’ musical gifting. I got my mother’s ear for music and my father’s voice. My voice has deteriorated over the last dozen years through disuse. I never was a rock singer. My voice works better with popular music that does not require screams, grunts and groans! In my rock group, Rage Against Age, I sing background, but these days I can’t sing beyond a baritone’s range. Most rock songs, even background vocals, require a pretty high voice. This was no problem in high school. I can’t even think that high today! My father couldn’t remember lyrics—I never even hear them. I seem to get so swept up in the melody and arrangements of songs, that I pay no attention to lyrics. There are songs we do in the band that I have been listening to and playing for over 50 years. Yet, I have no idea what the lyrics are.]
So, how was I to teach a class on prosperity? I wasn’t sure. If we were going to associate with Rhema, Lakewood Church, our home church in Louisville and others who believed so strongly in this teaching, I felt pressured to try to understand it better. I figured that if I made the systematic and thorough study of giving and prosperity that teaching a class would require, I was certain to come to an understanding that I could teach. I would be able to temper the extremes with accurate biblical exposition and I would expose myself to a deeper understanding of something that might be the essential weakness of our ministry.
We were doing much better financially than two years earlier when we had arrived with $1000 and no ongoing prospects for support. Although we didn’t think that tithing applied, we budgeted 10% as a reasonable giving level. We gave 10% of our income to our Louisville church based off of income received in the USA. Because of foreign currency laws, we couldn’t transfer monies received from South African and Zimbabwe sources back to the States. So, we gave 10% of that to Rhema in Harare. In addition, we supported Norman Kalilombe in Wedza with a gift of Z$100/mo which amounted to more than 10% of our African income. We spent the majority of US$2000/mo total from all sources on ministry expenses. The lion’s share of those expenses were related to transportation. Fuel was five times the cost in Zimbabwe than the USA in the early 1980s. We had been given the use of a car while at Chisipite. Later, the Hess family loaned us their pickup to use, often including complementary fuel from the farm supply. We drove a decade-old Datsun followed by a Peugeot 404, both of which needed constant repair and expensive parts that were often not available in Zimbabwe. Until this time, we had few expenses for housing as we lived as guests a month at a time since 1983. This usually included most of our meals as well. We adopted the suggested patterns of praying and confessing our prosperity. We really tried to make this stuff work. We even prayed a special blessing on our post office box each time we drove past it! But, we really didn’t need this for ourselves. We wanted more to be able to help others.
So, we were doing our part—why weren’t we prospering at the level that the faith and prosperity teachers suggested as the norm? I felt that the level of prosperity offered as an inducement to giving was disingenuous. It seemed to cater to the “love of money” which Jesus himself had called “the root of all kinds of evil.” After all, how much material bounty did someone need anyway, especially someone involved in service (ministry) to others? If you could provide for your family at a society-normal level, I would think we would all be grateful. But, prosperity teachers, Tom included, seemed to understand an opulent lifestyle as a badge of honor. And, those who did not have “in abundance” were somehow deficient in faith. It is similar to the way economic conservatives see themselves as heroes while viewing those in need as deviant.
From our perspective, the economic differential between ourselves as Westerners and the average Zimbabwean black was difficult enough to deal with. We had a monthly income of US$2000 when the average urban Zimbabwean might earn less than Z$100/mo (US$30 in 1985). Rural Zimbabweans earned even less. How do you bridge that gap without your material wealth becoming a stumbling block?
So, if it was hard enough to for me to relate to the average African on a financial level, how could I teach this subject to an African student? And how would that student teach his/her congregation? We had already struggled with this at Chisipite. We had seen how Pastor Morgan had become embittered and indebted trying to lead the African congregation. [79 — “Overturning the Rhodesian Paradigm in the Church”]
As I previously mentioned, experience had led me to be skeptical of the faith and prosperity teaching, especially as it seemed to be taken to such an extreme. Pegi and I really tried to get this to work for us. We jumped into it feet first. But, after dog-paddling to keep our heads above water, our minds continued to work. As we had with Thieme, Akeroyd, and every other teacher who asserted their truth, we tested their teachings by trying them. If something didn’t work, then we took it apart and examined it for flaws, errors, misconceptions and deception. Teaching the subject would force me to examine it in detail. My hope was that I would find the flaws and correct them for myself and my students.
We convinced ourselves that we could trust Tom and Bonnie. At that time, they seemed to reach out to us, not only to include us in their lives and ministry, but as friends and confidents. Tom listened to me and seemed to value my input. He gave me carte blanche to rebuild and operate the school. We would finally come up with the odd name, “Church Growth Support Centre.” Tom wanted to avoid the titles such as bible school, seminary, ministry training or anything that would discourage participation and attendance from various ministries and denominations. The idea was that it was to be a support centre (British spelling) for all who participated. Tom had a mailing list of 500 churches in the surrounding countries. I composed a letter and sent out a mailing under his name inviting them to send us pastoral candidates. Within a month, we had refurbished the campus and begun classes for our first 12 students, half of whom were from outside Zimbabwe.
At the same time, Pegi and Bonnie became close. Bonnie had always seemed to be what most people would call “artistic”—gifted, but troubled and plagued by depression. Pegi’s gift for empathetic listening seemed to endear her to Bonnie. We both joined Rhema’s music ministry, Pegi supplied background harmonies and a wicked tambourine while I played my 12-string guitar and occasional vocals. Tom and Bonnie were popular choices for weddings, Tom as the preacher, but especially Bonnie with vocals and piano. Pegi and I soon found ourselves invited to do special numbers at these weddings. There was one song in particular, “From Glory to Glory,” that was constantly requested of us. We began to find our Saturdays as busy as Sundays as we integrated into the Rhema Bible Church community. As this music ministry and the school continued to develop, so seemingly did our relationship with Tom and Bonnie.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that there were more serious issues at Rhema-Harare than distorted prosperity teaching or charismatic excesses. There were serious character issues that surrounded Tom and Bonnie—issues that would crush lives. We would be part of a long history of “close friends” who would find themselves as somehow displeasing or disappointing the Deuschles. This wouldn’t be fully manifested until after another trip back to the States. Upon our return, we wouldn’t even be able to get 10 minutes’ time with Tom, much less continue to minister together with him. We would not be crushed, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t deeply hurt. But that would be a year distant. For now, everything seemed to be going in a positive direction.
Next: When All Seemed Promising
