By Onward Gangata
EVER imagined what church would be like with games,dance, BMX bikes, illusions and many other fun and captivating activities?
Well,the 2025 Love Zimbabwe festival will just be that.
The four day gospel extravaganza kicks off this coming Thursday 21 August and will run up to Sunday the 24th at the Mkoba 5 open space
This event is being organized in partnership with the Palau Global Network of Evangelists (GNE), Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ), the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), African Enterprise (AEE), the Union for the Development of Apostolic Churches in Zimbabwe Africa (UDACIZA), The Message Trust,and Kubamba.
The festival will proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and reach the lost using different expressions of evangelism – One Message, Many Expressions.
This is a different kind of evangelism that deviates from the conventional crusades that many are used to.
“Wherever we go, we try to highlight that God created us to be creative like he is,” explains Dr Desmond Henry, the director of GNE.
“The world is not inherently evil as we see, there are many things that we can redeem, that is the culture around us.
“The reason why we use that is because the body has many parts, each person is gifted in diverse ways.
“We want the church to embrace the different giftings so that it can be effective in reaching newer generations.”
He added that while different methods will be used to preach and spread the gospel, the message will remain undiluted.
“The world is changing around us, that’s one thing we can be sure of, as God’s people, we have to understand that although our message must not change, our methods must always be changing,”Dr Henry added.
Who will perform?
Some of the participants who will perform at the festival include illusionists Chagy and Audria Adorno from the USA.
Bikers, Douglas Oliveira (Brazil), Nathi Steeze(South Africa), local artists to perform include Shyleen Maningi, Snowy and Benjy.
While Cypres (USA), Jimo (South Africa), and Kubamba (Kenya) will complete the international contingent.
To drum up support for the festival, Kubamba has reached 14 primary schools and 31 high schools in Gweru and Bulawayo through outreach programs.
A total of 12 462 students have been reached to date with 5567 giving their lives to Christ.
“What we have picked from these outreaches is that we can be able to reach out to people who do not speak our language but with different expressions, we are able to,” Sylvia Wanjiru from Kubamba added.
Senior Reverend Elton Tirivokunze of the EFZ highlighted that special emphasis will be placed on the fight against drug and substance abuse.
“We have to be relevant to the young people and a way to do so we have been empowering pastors within our circles through workshop on mental health and drug and substance abuse,” he said.
“With the Kubamba group we had some engagements with the youth on interventions tackling drug and substance abuse.”
