Building a Church in Morogoro

Here’s a little story from Morogoro town about an unusual way to build a church. A bit of context first – about eighty years ago Mennonites from North American came to northern Tanzania and built schools, hospitals, churches, and seminaries. North Americans funded and managed these small institutions for awhile but soon turned them over to Tanzanian Mennonites. The Mennonite churches thrived and now are widely known in Tanzania for supporting education and health care.

As young Tanzanian Mennonites in northern Tanzania grew into adulthood, they fanned out and settled in areas far from their homes. Because their churches supported education, many of them got university degrees and went to work in urban areas like Dar es Salaam and Dodoma. In their new environments, some of them banded together to start church communities like the ones that nurtured them in their childhood.

Morogoro, where we live, is a small town with few economic opportunities and relatively few Mennonites came here. But some time ago these few began to meet together for worship in a university classroom on Sunday morning and plan ways to build a church. Several years ago they were given the opportunity to acquire a small plot of land several kilometers from Morogoro’s town center.

That small plot of land turned out to be in a relatively impoverished area and it gave them pause to find themselves surrounded by greater poverty than most of them had personally experienced. After some reflection they decided to put their dream of a church building on hold and instead improve the lives of people around them. Their first step was to map out a radius of three kilometers around their plot of land and identify poor families in that area with the goal of providing medical, educational, and spiritual support.

They needed to put up buildings and get materials to meet this new goal. So, instead of building a church, they built a pre-school with three classrooms that meets five days a week. They built a computer lab that is connected to the Internet and they offer computer classes to young people in the area every weekend. They built a tailoring classroom and filled it with treadle sewing machines to teach young people how to sew. (Most clothes for men and women are made in tailor shops here so this is a good skill for someone who dreams of having their own small business someday). Since the city water supply is unreliable, they put up a huge water storage tank so that women and children in the community don’t have to trek far for precious water when the neighborhood pipes run dry.

But, during this time, they still didn’t have a church building so every Sunday the Mennonites in Morogoro squeezed into a preschool classroom for worship. They didn’t have housing for Pastor Michael so he and his family made their home in a small office on the church grounds.

Last year, with their programs for children and youth in place, the young church leaders marshaled their remaining resources and bought a small house near the church for the pastor. He and his family moved in right away even though it stills needs a lot of renovation.

During this time, people from the community took notice of the changes going on around them. Now, two hundred children and adults from the community come to their services. “Preach the gospel every day. Use words if you must,” goes a saying. That’s the kind of church this is.

This year, finally, the leaders in this young church resolved to work on their dream of a sanctuary large enough to hold the current congregation with room for many more – because they are definitely going to grow. Their community work now takes up a lot of their funds so this church building will be a real step of faith. The first step was to draw up a detailed budget for the sanctuary and put in the foundation. Mennonite churches in Dar es Salaam collected money for the roof that went up in January. With a roof over their heads now, they meet in that open space on Sunday morning. (It’s so open that chickens wander through during the services!) Their budget for the remaining work comes to $60,000 and it’s a pay-as-you go building. The walls are going up slowly now. They need many more walls, windows, doors, electrical work, a good floor and toilets just for the building, not to mention all the other items that a finished church needs.

It’s an inspiring young congregation. If you’d like to know more or contribute in some way, send me an email at hershberger.1@gmail.com and we can figure it out.

Here’s a photo of the front of the church. The building on the right behind the church holds the pre-school classrooms. The other building you see on the left holds the tailoring and computer classrooms and an office.