As his title suggests, Kapambwe coordinates all the missions efforts of Kabwata Baptist Church with their many mission stations. He is the primary center of communication between KBC’s elders and deacons, members, supporting partners, and the church-planting pastors. His duties include monitoring the needs of the mission stations, overseeing missionary reports, keeping the church and partners informed on mission efforts, handling logistics for visits to the mission stations, and applying to partners for support of new missionaries. He is HeartCry’s representative in Zambia.
Kapambwe was formerly supported by HeartCry as a church-planting pastor. His extensive experience as a pastor and missionary will be extremely beneficial as he serves and supervises Kabwata’s missionary pastors.
Testimony of Conversion
My name is Kapambwe Nsenduluka. I put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in April 1978, during my final years in High School. This was after a long period of deep conviction of sin, that had led me to respond to one altar call after another over a period of over three months; each time saying to the Lord, “…if the last time it was not real, Lord accept this repentance…”
Assurance came finally came with more counselling. On the day I experienced this surpassing feeling of sin forgiven and a sense of belonging to Christ, I sang over and over again the hymn “Where could I go but to the Lord”.
I had been brought up generally as a good Roman Catholic boy in Northern Zambia. I had a sensitive conscience, especially after my baptism following my fulfilment of the catechumen formalities somewhere in the early 1970s. I prayed often to Virgin Mary, whom I had come to love so much. I had no lasting assurance. Somewhere between 1971-72, my new guardian had brought me into Jehovah’s Witnesses circles where I read and studied the Bible more, but still lacked peace.
By the end of 1974, I had been reading the terrifying accounts of the Book of Revelation and had neither peace nor good dreams. I later went into High School and came into contact with Seventh Day Adventists but still found no peace for my soul. It was later in High School through the influences of a Scripture Union Club, that I began to hear the gospel, and that is what triggered the conviction that later led me to repentance as testified above.
Call to Ministry
I first felt the burden to serve the Lord fulltime during my university days, long before I even ventured into the world of Metallurgy for which I was training. I even discussed it with my fiancée two long years before we wedded. However, in those days, I was thinking more in terms of working for a parachurch organization.
While working in Mufulira Mine, I strongly felt I should plant a Baptist church in Botswana. The burden to do so was born out of some disappointment from Zambian Christians in our circles who had gone to work in Botswana, and opted to join Pentecostal churches because they could not find a suitable sound evangelical church better than those Charismatic churches.
In 1999, I visited a dear couple that had been members of our church in Mufulira, on the Copperbelt. I suggested to them the idea of planting a Baptist church in their town, but they did not see it as a viable prospect at that time. I came back to Zambia, but tried hard to find a secular job in the Botswana mines, but the Lord did not open the door for me. I shelved the idea for the time being. I had extensively shared my burden for a Baptist church in Botswana with my friends already in ministry. Two of these pastors were Conrad Mbewe and Ronald Kalifungwa, whose churches were already very active in church planting.
In 2003, Pastor Mbewe called me and told me of his church’s burden to plant churches in a number of towns within Zambia and two or more in neighboring countries, including Botswana. I did not even pause to pray about that possibility because for me it was a case of prayer answered.
I received overwhelming support from my family and friends to go into Botswana. That same year I applied for Kabwata Baptist Church sponsorship and I was called for interviews which went very well. On 18th January 2004, I was set aside for the Botswana work. Support would come from KBC and Lynnwood Baptist Church in Pretoria, South Africa, where Ronald Kalifungwa was pastor. On 1st April the following month, having quit my job, I was seconded to pastor a newly planted work in Mazabuka while waiting for work to begin in Botswana.
The following month permission to start meeting was verbally granted by the Botswana government. We started on 16th May 2004 in Gaborone with 5 families. One of those families was that of brother Monametsi Bahudi, who ,by the grace of God, is now serving as the Missionary Pastor of that church. I served there until 2007, when I handed over to Pastor Bonang Lekoba.
In 2008, I received a call to pastor Grace Reformed Baptist church in Windhoek, Namibia. For that purpose, in October 2009 I became an elder at Eastside Baptist Church which then, in turn, seconded me to Grace Reformed Baptist Church as missionary pastor. I served there until October 2011, when my work permit could not be renewed. In April 2012, my wife was appointed to serve as First Secretary Political at the Zambia High Commission in Delhi, India. During our time in India, I was once again privileged to serve as an elder at Grace Assembly, a Christian Brethren congregation.
THE BURDEN TO SERVE AS A MISSIONS COORDINATOR
I served as a missionary from April 2004 to October 2011. In fact, I was Kabwata Baptist Church’s first international missionary in Botswana and Namibia. However, prior to and during that same period, I had been seconded to Mazabuka for few months to man a newly planted work there, and to Fairview Reformed for a couple of years as interim pastor following the resignation of the serving minister. Before and after my missionary stint, I have also served as an elder at three churches in Zambia, Namibia, and India.
When I was sounded out by one of the KBC elders to apply for this job, I felt the opportunity was too good to resist, having worked as a missionary and church elder, along with acquired multicultural experience. Though I feel a sense of unworthiness to take up this challenge in my sixties, my passion for missions is stronger now than before. I feel I love my Lord more as I have grown older and wish now to humbly expend the last energies in this demanding calling.