Chilima Challenges Religious Leaders to Champion Mindset Change

By Fostina Mkandawire

Lilongwe, Mana: Religious leaders in the country have been challenged to champion mindset change as one way of fostering development of the country.

Vice President Dr. Saulos Klaus Chilima made the call to the clergy on Wednesday in Lilongwe when he made a keynote address at the World Vision Micah Challenge Malawi Church partnership.

The Vice President said religious leaders have a critical role to play in changing people’s mindset on different societal issues that are affecting the country’s development.

Chilima who is also Minister of Economic Planning and Development and Public Sector Reforms, delivered a public lecture on Mindset Change in October 2020, in Lilongwe, where he challenged Malawians among other things to abort opportunistic tendencies and to stop their obsessions with negativity.

In the same vein the Vice President was making the same points as delivered during his lecture to the religious leaders because of the authority they hold in society. 

“We are told that there is God at churches but we have never seen God but we still believe in His existence this only shows how religious leaders can make people believe in the mindset change agenda,” he said.

Chilima highlighted four areas that faith based organizations needed to reflect on and further inculcate in their congregants minds as follows; unity and trust, wise stewardship, looking outward, and timely truth telling with love.

One of the participants at the conference Reverend Vasco Kachipapa said as faith based leaders they have a mandate to help the citizens of Malawi to have a prosperous life through mindset change.

He said they will take the message to their churches because that is what churches have been doing all along to change perceptions and people’s negative behaviours into good citizens.

“We will incorporate the mindset change message with the gospel so that we should be in line with the word of God while at the same time preaching about mindset change,” he said.

Board Chair for World Vision, Lucy Kachapira, said change is a transformative process that cannot take a day to manifest.

She therefore said her organization will gradually continue to spread messages of change until people’s views and perceptions are changed.

“This Micah challenge initiative was established to ensure that people’s welfare and way of lives change for the better, to eradicate poverty, to end infant and maternal deaths, in short it is encompassing all the Sustainable Development Goals as it’s objectives,” she said.

The Micah challenge Malawi is a national movement of aid and development agencies, churches, schools, groups and individual Christians who support Sustainable Development Goals.