Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

You are witnesses of these things. (Luke 24:48)

This year’s theme was chosen in Scotland, in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the 1910 Edinburgh World Mission Conference. It is in answer to that conference’s theme "Witnessing to Christ today” that the above verse was chosen. Edinburgh 1910 really marked the start of the modern ecumenical movement.

The United Church of Zambia, like many of the other United and Uniting Churches worldwide, stems directly from this watershed conference. The London Missionary Society, the Church of Scotland Mission, the Union Church of the Copperbelt and the Copperbelt Free Churches came together in 1965 as the UCZ making their unity in Christ more visible.

In the Copperbelt, Christians from many different places went to work in the mining towns, and interdenominational worship began in both the African and European housing areas. The Church of Scotland, the Methodist Missionary Society, and the London Missionary Society were working together already in education and welfare, so they came together in African areas to form the Union Church of the Copperbelt. Shortly after this, the congregations of the European areas came together in the Copperbelt Free Church Council..

The London Missionary Society and the Church of Scotland Mission along with the Union Church of the Copperbelt, joined to form the Church of Central Africa in Rhodesia in 1958.

In 1965, this church united with the Methodist Church and the Church of Barotseland to form the United Church of Zambia. It is the largest Protestant church in Zambia today and continues to grow rapidly.

The UCZ, therefore has special links with the Methodist Church in Great Britain, the Church of Scotland, the United Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ (USA), and CEVAA which is the successor to the Paris Evangelical Mission Society.

PEMS underwent a tremendous structural change in the 70s which led to the creation of a community of churches in mission, called Cevaa. This new body involved partner churches having shared power in decision-making, regardless of the resources put by each into the kitty.

In Cevaa, and later in other similar mission communities such as the Council for World Mission, similar structural changes emphasised transformative justice, and changed the balance of power and decision-making on the sharing of financial and human resources between churches of North and South.

This is an attempt to realise in some small way the dream from Edinburgh that we may become one body, brothers and sisters in Christ, responding to each other in love and building a community so that God’s will is done here on earth as it is in heaven.