Michael Cassidy is the Founder of African Enterprise (AE), and has been involved in evangelism, teaching and leadership ministries since 1962, the year he launched AE with a mission to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Since then, he has led numerous missions to cities throughout Africa, as well as in other parts of the world, including Australia, Belgium, Costa Rica, Israel, Nicaragua and Panama. To further the accomplishment of AE’s mission – Evangelizing the Cities of Africa through Word and Deed in Partnership with the Church – he has established evangelistic teams in Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe and support offices in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland/Northern Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States.
Michael has been instrumental in calling several major gatherings of church leaders, including the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism in Durban in 1973, the Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly (PACLA) in Nairobi in 1976 and 1994 and the South African Christian Leadership Assembly (SACLA) in Pretoria in 1979 and 2003. In 1985, in the deepening polarisation of South African society, he launched the National Initiative for Reconciliation. This attracted church leaders of widely disparate denominations and races for the purpose of reconciling with one another and implementing this practice in their respective churches and communities. He was one of the leaders of the historic National Conference of Church Leaders at Rustenburg in 1990, and in 1993 chaired a Consultation on Human Rights and Religious Freedom in Pietermaritzburg. In 2009, he spearheaded the National Initiative for the Reformation of South Africa.
He has also been involved in South Africa in behind-the-scenes facilitation of initiatives which have brought together a wide spectrum of political leadership in dialogue. These efforts have been widely acknowledged as important contributions to the miraculously peaceful South African election in April 1994. In 1996, at the request of President Nelson Mandela, he and other church leaders were deeply involved in spearheading Project Ukuthula, an extensive and successful peace initiative in KwaZulu-Natal in the run-up to the province’s local government elections. Most recently, he has been involved with the Marriage Alliance of South Africa, an interdenominational Christian concern seeking to keep marriage in South Africa heterosexual and monogamous.
Michael has written numerous books, including A Witness For Ever – The Dawning of Democracy in South Africa, which recounts much of the work of some of the backstage players in the run-up to South Africa’s 1994 election, as well as a two-month devotional called Michael Cassidy’s Window on the Word. Some of his other books are: The Politics of Love, The Passing Summer, Chasing the Wind, Bursting the Wineskins, The Relationship Tangle and Where Are You Taking the World Anyway? African Harvest by Anne Coomes tells the story of both Michael Cassidy and of the African Enterprise ministry. He has most recently written Getting to the Heart of Things – Reflections on Christian Basics and What On Earth Are You Thinking for Heaven's Sake?
Michael was born in Johannesburg and grew up in Maseru, Basutholand (now Lesotho). He was educated in South Africa at the Parktown School in Johannesburg and at Michaelhouse School in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands. He holds a Master of Arts in Modern and Medieval Languages from Cambridge University (1958) in England. He earned a Bachelor of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary (1963) and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Azusa Pacific University (1993), both near Los Angeles. In 1983 he was admitted to the Order of Simon of Cyrene, the highest honor accorded a layman by the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International made him a Paul Harris Fellow and he received the St. Michael’s Award from Michaelhouse School in 1997. He and his wife, Carol, live in Pietermaritzburg and have three children and eight grandchildren.
Team Leader: Leonard Kiswangi
Location: Kinshasa
Primary Activities: Evangelism, Good Governance Workshops
Contact Information:
BP 4049
Kinshasha 2
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Email:
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Eighteen-year-old Mamy came to AE’s evangelistic mission to Kikwit, Congo, unable to speak. She could only make a furious dog-like cry. With tears in her eyes, she came forward with her mother, after hearing the hope of the Gospel message. As a social outcast, she was desperate to find release from her seemingly inexplicable condition. Since her father died four years ago, she had lived in a prison of fear and anguish. She could not bear to be around other people and didn’t even want to come to AE’s evangelistic gathering. Thankfully, prayer intercessors which AE had organized, encouraged her mother to come with her.Moved profoundly by her story, the evangelists prayed fervently for Mamy’s salvation and healing. Finally, she was mercifully delivered! Mamy immediately began to rejoice and enjoy the company of other people. She was no longer an outcast. And she was no longer capable of making the fearsome dog-like noise which kept her imprisoned for four long years. Jesus Christ freed Mamy to be a glorious light of hope to others in her city. She will now be welcomed into a local church and discipled by a pastor. And the news of her miraculous transformation will draw more Congolese to faith in the Savior.
3,400 New Congolese Believers!
The crowds multiplied as AE’s Gospel outreach to Kikwit progressed. Seven thousand came to the opening rally of the mission in June. Then 8,500 gathered the next day, with the third day attracting 15,000 to hear how Jesus could give them the hope they were so hungry for. So many eager new believers came forward to receive Christ that counsellors were hard-pressed to keep accurate count. But at least 3,400 people made decisions to follow Jesus during the mission week.Some of these new believers were inmates in the Kikwit central prison. Because of the pitiful condition of the facility, AE was eager to shine a Gospel light in an unforgiving place. With a total of 136 men and one woman in the prison, 50 inmates were shoe-horned into a narrow cell with no beds and infrequently provided food. Evangelists brought not only Christ’s Good News, but bread and soap to the discouraged prisoners.
In keeping with AE’s aim of sharing the Gospel in every possible venue, evangelists preached at a nursing college, where 400 students decided to put their lives in Christ’s hands. Yet so many more people in Congo have yet to hear about Jesus.
Stephen Lungu has served as International Team Leader of African Enterprise since 2006. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe (then Salisbury, Rhodesia), Stephen was the oldest of three children born to a young Zambian mother and a much older Malawian father. The hopelessness and despair his mother felt as a result of an abusive marriage resulted in her abandoning her three children in a Harare market when Stephen was 7.
Stephen ended up as a street kid, scavenging food from garbage cans and sleeping under a bridge. As he got older he earned a small amount of money collecting golf balls at a whites-only country club in the racially segregated Rhodesia of that day. Simmering anger at the racial injustices of the country pushed Stephen into violent behavior and an openness to involvement in a Marxist revolution in Rhodesia. Illiterate and unschooled, he became a leader in a gang of teenage thugs in Harare called the Black Shadows. His gang perpetrated acts of small-time rebellion and sought to foment chaos in the hopes of toppling the white government.
Because Christianity was seen by many young blacks as the religion of the white oppressors, Stephen had also become hostile to the church and to God. One evening, on their way to blow up a bank in Harare, Stephen and his cronies came upon an evangelistic tent meeting. Opting instead to blow up the tent meeting, they went inside for a few minutes to listen to the preacher. That was all the time God needed to touch Stephen’s heart. The preacher’s words seemed to pierce down into the depths of his being, both convicting him of his sins and drawing him to Christ. He staggered forward to the stage, grabbed hold of the preacher’s feet and began to sob. That evening, he committed his life to Christ.
In the following years, Stephen was discipled by a number of Christian leaders, including Patrick Johnstone, a British missionary best known as the author of the prayer guide Operation World. He learned to read and speak English. And he became a bold and irrepressible evangelist, working first with the Dorothea Mission, preaching all over southern Africa. In 1982, he joined African Enterprise, becoming Malawi Team Leader in 1986.In his work with AE, Stephen has preached the Gospel all over the continent and around the world. He shares the Good News with virtually everyone he meets, whether passport agents at customs checkpoints or fellow passengers on the London Underground. He lives in Lilongwe, Malawi, with his wife Rachel, with whom he has five children.
Stephen says, “Because I look at myself as a miracle of God’s grace,“ so I believe that the power of Jesus Christ to save sinners still exists. If he can change me, he can change anyone... Winning souls for Christ. It’s my calling. It’s my passion. It’s me.”
"I believe Africa will become the fulcrum of world mission in the twenty-first century," says AE Founder Michael Cassidy.
As such, AE is a global partnership that believes in a bright future for Africa under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our aim is to proclaim the Gospel to the residents of the major cities of Africa, making a special effort to reach the leadership of the continent, since godly governance can result in major transformations of whole countries.
Our mission – To Evangelize the Cities of Africa Through Word and Deed in Partnership With the Church – is carried out by Africans themselves, who already understand their local cultures and speak their fellow citizens' languages. We reach out to Africa in four ways:
- Evangelism – preaching the Good News of the Gospel via citywide missions
- Reconciliation – ministering healing to those who have experienced the trauma of war and violence and teaching people who have experienced conflict to reconcile and work together for their common good
- Community Development – teaching the poor practical skills through which they can earn a living and equipping them to run their own business and teach others how to develop economic self-sufficiency
- Leadership Training – equipping pastors and laypeople to think biblically and live out their faith in their place of work and influence.
AE has Teams of African nationals living and working in ten countries: Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. In addition, we minister each year to many other African countries via our evangelistic missions, reconciliation work and leadership training courses.
AE's Statement of Faith is the Lausanne Covenant.
Leprosy maims and kills thousands of unfortunate people each year. Funding the alleviation and cure of this horrible ailment was the aim of my previous work with the American Leprosy Missions, based in South Carolina.But as awful as leprosy is, an even worse disease afflicts far too many of our brothers and sisters, especially in Africa. I’m speaking of the alienation from Christ that causes too many to consult witch doctors, to engage in behavior that destroys their lives, or to treat their fellow human beings with murderous cruelty or neglect. Sadly, the most tragic victims of this are often women and children.
Thus I feel blessed and privileged to have joined the AE partnership as of March 22 this year. While I have been to Africa before, it is still heartrending to learn of thousands of women in Ghana who feel they have no choice but to seek an income via prostitution. Or of women in Malawi whose husbands have left them to care for children with no assistanc
e. And there are so many more shattering stories out of Africa, illustrating the tragedy that can envelop precious human beings when they don't have a Savior to turn to.Yet the Gospel of Christ which AE presents so powerfully and innovatively is astonishingly effective in bringing hope to those who are hurting. We see this happening every day, across the continent. And it’ll be my joy to bring these stories to you, so that together we can enable women, men and children to be healed of the worst disease of all – suffering a life and an eternity without Christ.