Stephen Makandanje
The idea of a voluntary ministry had been with me from Swaziland days. On my first visit on a Vespa scooter to Hlatikhulu I was astonished to find a large church, serving an African congregation near the hospital. This was led by Stephen Makandanje, a Yao-speaker from the far south of Malawi. He had become a Christian during his medical apprenticeship and had then walked the 1000 miles south to Hlatikhulu, where he found work as a Medical Assistant. In 1915 no Swazis in that area had heard of the Anglican Church, though there was a small whites-only chaplaincy. So Stephen asked to be put on night-duty and in two years, working single-handed, built a church for a hundred people, moulding and burning bricks and begging money for cement, doors and windows. He then set out to fill it.
When I arrived, some eighty people were assembled for the Eucharist. On a later visit I asked Stephen if he had thought of being ordained as a priest. “No, that would spoil it all” he said, “Work you do for God is done for love. I tried again a month later: “Why did you say it would spoil it all?” “Work you do for God is done for love. To be paid for it would spoil everything.” “If I asked the Bishop to ordain you, but never pay you a penny?” “Oh father, that’s what I’ve always longed for!” Bishop Tom Savage accepted him for ordination but thought normal training was not appropriate, so Stephen lived with us for a year as part of our Usuthu team.
When I first heard of Roland Allen, who coined the name ‘voluntary ministry’ his ideas, enfleshed in Stephen’s ministry, seemed to provide a solution to one of our greatest problems: how Malawian clergy could minister with confidence to the growing numbers of professional and businesspeople in our urban congregations. Until the 1970s these were still being served by expatriate clergy. The idea of Voluntary Ministry was fine – but how could candidates be selected and trained?
Gerry Hotblack
In 1966, quite unexpectedly, a letter came from Gerry Hotblack. Gerry had had three careers. As a professional soldier had served in the front-line in World War One and in officer-selection and training in WW2; as a teacher he became deputy-head of Blundell’s, a well-known public school in Devon, now he was an apple-grower. He had stayed with us in Swaziland. His letter said that he was now a voluntary priest and that he and his daughter, Joan, who had retired from being an accountant in Kenya, would like to come and see what the possibilities were of being voluntary missionaries in Malawi.
They came, and a day or two later said, “This is where we should like to work if you would have us. Voluntarily of course. Could you think of building us a house, naturally at our expense? It will belong to the Diocese when we retire or die. But first we must talk to our family.
A little later, a letter came to say they had made up their minds and we would find a tree up the hill from the diocesan office, with string round it to mark the site where they would like to live. It took time to find the tree, but like all Gerry’s plans, this one worked. They arrived in 1967 and stayed for the next seven years.
The house was designed by Jane and built by one of her teams at the Building Department. As well as being the parish priest at a distance of Mulanje and Thyolo, Gerry set up a scheme, modelled on officer selection in the British army, for the selection and training of clergy. On his 80th birthday in February 1971, Ecclesia noted that he was ‘as busy as ever as priest, gardener and adviser; he and his daughter Joan continue to keep Malosa alive! Gerry retired in 1972 when he and Joan went to live with relatives in Harare.
Requirements for a Voluntary Priest
In May 1971, the requirements for Voluntary Priests were published. Sometimes this was referred to as the ‘Tent-Making Ministry’, from the way that St Paul maintained himself. A Voluntary Priest must have a secure job, a solid record of voluntary work as a layman, willingness to undertake a fairly tough 3-year course of private reading and strong recommendations from the congregations where he lived and where he worked, from the interviewing panel and from the Diocesan Standing Committee. There was some understandable unease among the stipendiary clergy, most of whom had made great sacrifices of money and time in order to be ordained, but generally the plan was accepted.
Frank Mkomawanthu
Frank Mkomawanthu had been Headmaster of Malosa Secondary School, Principal of an Education College in Blantyre, held senior posts in the Ministry of Education and was always an active member of every parish where he lived. I had the privilege of ordaining him priest in St Paul’s Blantyre in 1978.
Maxwell Maputwa
After being headmaster of large primary school in Nkhotakota, Maxwell was appointed Headmaster of Malosa Secondary School. He then started working alongside Marjorie Francis in developing work with Sunday Schools and spent a year at the College of the Ascension in Birmingham, returning 1968 with a Diploma in Education to take over from Marjorie.
Maxwell was appointed Education Secretary-General of the Christian Council of Malawi in 1978 and I had the privilege of ordaining him deacon that year. Bishop Peter Nyanja ordained him priest the following year.
Maxwell Zingani
Maxwell served the Diocese with creativity and dedication for fourteen years looking after stewardship, literature and publicity. In 1969 he represented the Diocese at a conference of the All Africa Conferences of Churches in the Ivory coast which convinced him of the importance of working together with other Christians, which he did with his usual energy. Stephen Makandanje visited Malawi in 1975 and Maxwell was obviously moved by meeting him. Just before he retired in 1979 I ordained Maxwell as a voluntary priest.
More about the lives of these two impressive Maxwells is in the section on Laity.
In 1976 I wrote in a small booklet for USPG entitled, Out of Africa Something New:
“The tent-making ministry appeals to the African sense of history: this is how the Church began. It reflects the African sense of the unity of life and evades the false split between sacred and secular. It helps a congregation to grow and to throw up its own leaders. It encourages true ministry, which is serving and not ruling.”
It was good that the idea of voluntary priests was also being widely taken up in Britain, often under the clumsy title of ‘The Non-stipendiary Ministry’, now being replaced by more positive names such as ‘Self-supporting’. Perhaps the best title of all is its original one, ‘The Tent-making Ministry’.