Operation Berea

We Leaders of the Church from different denominations and Para-Church organizations herein appended, having met at the Scripture Usage Consultation held at Malawi Institute of Management (MIM) in Lilongwe on 20th February’ 2006, deliberated on the theme OPERATION BEREA under the auspices of The Bible Society of Malawi. 
The objectives of the meeting were:

1. To sound a wake up call to the slumber in not optimizing the  Word which is readily available.
2. To re-energize ourselves to come back to the Bible.
3. To share and learn from workable best practices in Scripture engagement
4. To mobilize an army of passionate Bible Advocates from the Church to the Church for the good of the Church and have the Pauls and Timothys work together to cater for good transition in     times of leadership changes
5. To encourage the development of daily reading guides by the Church for the Church.

Two presentations were given at the meeting.  ‘The Shaken Church Foundation in Malawi (Let’s build on the Rock)” and ‘What do we miss by not having the Word of God' by Bishop G Matoga and Rev. Dr.  F Chingota respectively. After the presentations we went into group discussions. Thereafter went into plenary.  On the basis of both presentations and the plenary thereof, we observed the following:

1. The Bible reading, Interaction with Scriptures as well as the Reading culture are not seriously encouraged.
2. The Word of God is not exemplified in people’s lifestyles.
3. Most Malawians still belong to the oral tradition and therefore interacting with written Scriptures poses difficulties.
4. The reading culture is further being challenged by the emergency of electronic media thus undermining the discipline of Scripture reading.
5. As a nation, we have got leadership crisis in areas of integrity        and mentoring.
6. Our wholesale acceptance of Secularization from the west is negatively impacting on our Christian faith.

These challenges notwithstanding, we noted with gratitude to God, the efforts of the Churches to encourage the Christians to own and engage with the Scriptures.
Given the challenges noted and the efforts of the churches we hereby commit ourselves to:

1. Encouraging our members to own and engage with the Scriptures through activities such as:
1. Personal and Group Bible study with particular reference to scripture recital.
2. Provision of a Bible as a first wedding gift.
3. Encouraging those going through discipleship to own and engage themselves in Scriptures.
4. Encouraging composition of Scripture based songs.
2. Networking with other organizations that promote Scriptures e.g. Gideon's, Scripture Union, Navigators, BSM  etc.
3. Challenging church leaders to build a consensus on basic theological teaching and right interpretation and application of Scriptures.
4. Bringing back the centrality of the Scriptures in the family altars, communities, socio-political arena e.g. learning institutions, courts, parliament etc.  
5. Teaching children the Word of God from a tender age in schools, youth clubs, children’s church or Sabbath/Sunday schools etc.
6. Taking advantage of the main Christian calendar events for promotion of Scripture engagement e.g. Christmas, Easter etc.
7. Advocating against all factors that impede on the maximum scripture usage through proper channels e.g. Bible knowledge being an examinable subject; use of the Bible when taking oaths.

We make these commitments, God being our help.  AMEN.

Monday, 20th February , 2006