Biography
Conrad Mbewe was born in 1959 in Zambia, in the copper-mining region of the country. He grew up in a land that was newly independent and full of hope and difficulty. His family was not especially religious. In his teenage years he heard the gospel at school and came to faith in Christ. He has often said that his conversion was clear and lasting, and that from that time he had a hunger to know the Scriptures.
He studied mining engineering at the University of Zambia and began a career in the industry. At the same time he became involved in the church, in Bible teaching and evangelism. He met other believers who were reading the old writers, the Puritans and the Reformers, and he began to see that Scripture teaches the sovereignty of God in salvation. Those discoveries changed his preaching and his view of ministry. In time he felt called to leave engineering and serve the church full time.
In 1987 he became pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. The church was small. Over the following decades it grew under his steady preaching of the Bible, verse by verse. He committed himself to the careful teaching of the whole counsel of God. He was not a showman. He kept to the text, prayed with his elders and cared for the members as a shepherd. The church became a model of faithful local ministry in Africa, and other churches were planted from it.
His work reached far beyond his own congregation. He began to train pastors, holding conferences for men who had little access to books or teachers. He helped to found a school for pastors in Lusaka and later served as a leader at the African Christian University, a school that trains leaders in a Christian worldview. He also traveled widely, preaching in Europe, North America, Asia and other parts of Africa. His clear and warm speaking drew many hearers, and his writing, including books such as Pastoral Ministry and Church Growth and Church Planting, carried his convictions into many hands. He also wrote for magazines and kept a widely read blog.
He has spoken boldly about problems in the African church. He has criticized the prosperity gospel, which promises health and wealth to those who give money and have enough faith. He has said that this teaching misrepresents God and leaves the poor with deeper burdens. He called for churches to hold to Scripture and to care for the suffering without exploiting them. He also pressed the church to deal with the problems of corruption and immorality in public life and in the church itself, and he has done so with courage in a setting where it can be costly.
He has served as a trustee and a leader in many international and African ministries, and he has been a voice for the church in the global south. He does not claim to have a perfect record. He has acknowledged how easy it is for a pastor to drift into pride, and he has warned younger men about the danger of seeking a platform. He speaks of the discipline of private prayer and of the need to love one's own wife and children well. His wife Felicia has stood by him through the long years of ministry, and they have raised a family together.
He has become one of the most respected pastors in the world. His influence in Africa has been large, and he is a bridge between older Christian traditions and a young and growing church. His ministry reminds us that God raises up faithful teachers in every nation and that sound preaching is as needed in Lusaka as anywhere on earth.