Brink Ministries Southern Africa - Interview

Hi everyone, we thought you should get to know some of our team members that work alongside the The Passionate Believer blog and one of them is Sam Machacka who is a regular author here at the blog. The following is an interview between The Passionate Believer and Sam(Co-Founder) of Brink Ministries. We thought you should get to know Sam alittle better and pray for the work that God has entrusted to them.

TPB - The Passionate Believer (That's me Shane)

S M - Sam Machaka

TPB: So, Sam tell us about yourself?

SM: I am a husband of one wife and my best friend Mildred. We have been blessed with three wonderful gifts Samantha, Munashe and Joshua who love the Lord, pray and serve with us. We are a tightly knit family that has gone through a lot but have seen the hand of God leading us every step of the way. God has been good and faithful to us and He has done more for us than what we deserve.

TPB: What are your hobbies?

SM: I love reading, playing chess [though I'm not that good at it], fishing and being with friends, talking about life experiences and the word of God. 

TPB: Where did you study?

SM: I studied at the Evangelical Seminary of Southern Africa [ESSA] in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa together with my wife. We both obtained a bachelor of theology degree and because I was a year ahead of Mildred’s class, I then proceeded to study at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where I obtained an honors degree in theology majoring in Evangelical Theology and Christian Leadership.

TPB: Tell us about Brink Ministries and how did it start?

SM: I cannot talk about Brink Ministries without mentioning Pastor Dale Meador of Bear Creek Church Oregon. I was connected to him in 2005 thereabouts through ESSA via my former principal Dr. Charles and Delores Mahlangu. Our friendship grew and as Pastor Dale continued to visit Africa, little did I know that the Lord had placed in his heart, and his church to search for and invest in some African students in whom they had seen some qualities. We grew in our friendship and I remember offering my whole week to be with him in 2009 while he taught in and around KwaZulu-Natal. It is then that he saw that I was connected to many pastors and church leaders and some of my gifts. We gathered many pastors, elders, deacons and other church leaders and held seminars with them and I learned a lot while he taught. I was later on involved in teaching at the seminars and have continued to do that until this day. 

We have had the privilege of teaching in South Africa in places like Pietermaritzburg, Durban; Queensborough, Cool Air, Emphangeni, Port Shepstone, Bochum, Soshanguve, Pretoria; Zimbabwe, Harare: Kambuzuma and other places together. Since 2013, the Lord for multiple times opened doors for Brink Ministries to reach out to Mozambique; Maputo, Maragra, Tanzania; Mbeya and Malawi where we are serving right now.  Here in Malawi we have been to several outreaches to Karonga, Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzuzu, Ulongwe, Monkey Bay, Mangochi, Mulanje, Nchalo, Thyolo, Jali, Zomba, Nkhotakota, Dwangwa, Salima, Mwanza, Balaka, Ntaja, Chiradzulu, Ngabu, and others.

TPB: What's your focus when equipping leaders today?

SM: Ministry work is a great challenge and we have served in the pastoral capacity since 1995. We share the same burdens with these church leaders who, [some of them] are undoubtedly discouraged many times and feel like quitting. Pastoral ministry is generally a lonely place where one does not have anyone to talk to about the challenges they face and many church members think their pastors and their wives are men and women of steel but they are not. They have the same challenges to contend with if not more than their general membership.  Only a very small number of pastors have stable financial resources and as a result of these challenges they may be tempted to change the gospel and start preaching the prosperity gospel which is not the gospel of God. We have heard of pastors who have divorced their wives and others living immoral lives. Many have remained faithful but are really discouraged; so, our theme when equipping the leaders has always been to encourage them to endure to the last. All our conferences are called “Endure Conferences”. We teach them about marriage, raising Godly children, how to work as teams, accountability, Biblical leadership in the church and home, and more. 

TPB: What are some of the challenges you face within the African context and how do you overcome them?

SM: The prosperity gospel has spread so much in the major towns and cities in Africa so much that the proponents of that so-called gospel are the ones many people listen to and invite. Many leaders do not know the theological distinctives and because they love the Lord, they just accept anyone who comes to them as long as they mention the name of Jesus or “look the part” if you know what I mean. But we are thankful to the Lord that these peddlers do not reach to the rural areas because the people there do not have any money to give them or as they say to “seed on the man of God” who is considered fertile ground in order for them to receive blessings. So, these are the places we reach out to and it has been good to hear the saints there say they do not even know the major prosperity gospel peddlers. We therefore praise the Lord Jesus that we are breaking new ground and laying a good Biblical foundation in those rural areas. 

The other challenge we face is that people love their cultures so much and they think that is what the Bible advocates and they themselves are therefore an extension of and custodians of their cultures. The only way around it is to teach the word of God with clarity; understand where they are coming from and show them what the word says about religious syncretism. Though our cultures may vary here and there, we can already identify with and understand most of them because we were born in those same cultures.  

TPB: Do you have a specific curriculum that you work from or do you have a different layout for different leaders depending on their context?

SM: We have a mobile Bible school running at Ulongwe where we recently graduated 20 students after one and half years of training. The South African Theological Seminary’s [SATS] allowed us to teach their excellent Crossroads Courses and though our certificates are not accredited, we think it is good because all we want to see are people who are called, equipped to do the work and not people who will be demanding payment because they studied theology. We are currently recruiting for the next class which starts next year February Lord willing. 

So, we have the SATS courses as well as our own curriculum which we have designed. I should mention also that we also work with other pastors in the different countries who also teach on the theme of Endurance like Pastors Lovemore Ncube, Gibson Nsiyankhuni, Moses Nkhata, Billy Kamphata-Banda and a few others.  

TPB: To date, how many leaders have you trained and empowered through Brink Ministries?

SM: Oh, that is a very difficult question. I could go to my reports and count them all but I will give you a conservative figure of 568 people we have trained since the beginning of 2020 with all the Coronavirus disturbances. So, if we take 500 people as our yearly average it means the Lord has used Brink to train 5000 leaders so far. 

In our ministry we are seeing pastors, deacons and other church leaders receiving Christ and turning to Him for the first time. Most of the places we reach out to have leaders who have little or no theological training and the foundation upon which they grew is actually very weak. The churches in Southern Africa do not lack membership and it is not uncommon to see half or three quarters of the church indicating that they are not born again. We are so thankful to the Lord for this exciting life-giving work. It is the power of the gospel giving salvation to many.

TPB: You have a passion for writing, tell us about some of the books you've been working on?

SM: I love reading and it is through reading that I have developed the passion to write and it was Pastor Dale who inspired me to write and encourage the saints by writing devotionals and so I have been sending out devotionals to many people in Southern Africa and beyond. I started by sending them via emails but most of our people in Africa do not normally read their emails let alone have access to the internet. So, I switched and started using the social media as a platform to send these devotionals. There were some who thought I had too much time on my hands and somehow tried to discourage me but I was encouraged by the feedback I received from many people. 

I have written a book on marriage which is yet to be published. I am currently editing it for the third time on my own before others can edit and advise on the way forward. It should be interesting because in it I have tried to explain the meaning of and Biblical foundation of marriage as well as to address the challenges that African people together with their different cultures often encounter in their families and marriages.  I have written about some of the things we have been teaching in the past ten or so years as well as the different ways people do marriage in different cultures. It is quite interesting.

On the other hand, I am hoping to compile the teachings we have done from the books of Malachi, Nehemiah and on Christian leadership. But these will probably take time for me to publish them. I want to self-publish and that will mean a lot of work doing the marketing. I have also started writing blog articles with Pastor Shane Lutchna and we are seeing an increase in our readership reaching places such as Romania. Who would have thought the Lord would use us to do that Shane?

TPB: What are your plans for the future?

SM: We are thankful to the Lord that we have been able to train leaders in many places in beautiful Malawi and our prayer is that we can be able to reach out to, and influence the few strategic places that remain mainly in the eastern and northern side of the country. That being done in the next two years Lord willing, we would have loved to stay longer but we are however not sure how long we will remain here due to the immigration policy which requires us to renew our permit every two years.  So, one other thing the Lord placed on our heart is to build a training centre and an orphanage in Zimbabwe. We have been offered to buy land in a strategic rural area forty kilometers [25 miles] outside of Harare and we are praying that we get the finances to buy that piece of land and use it as a platform to give hope to and build young people and the training of leaders in sound doctrine. Our plan is to focus on the training of leaders, the orphanage, marriage enrichment seminars as well as skills training at that place.

If you would like to connect with Brink Ministries Southern Africa, just to encourage and support them, you can do so with the following details below.

Email: BrinkSouthernAfrica@gmail.com

The Passionate Believer blog is proud to partner with Brink Ministries Southern Africa in the advancement of Kingdom Work.

Glory Be To God Always.