PMC church congregation

The Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church

The Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church in Tanzania started in 1998 in a classroom in a primary school at Mkoani-Kibaha. Pastor Gervase Martin Masanja was instrumental in starting that small church with only twelve members.

Now, 12-13 years later, the church is meeting in its own premises. This comes after much struggle with the government because of a law forbidding churches to meet in schools. (Muslims had complained that Christian churches should not get such an unfair advantage).

The church has become a denomination with 21 branch or daughter churches in the rural areas, and has 150 members at the Kibaha, which is the mother church and headquarters of the denomination. Pastor Masanja is still the pastor here. (Kibaha was a part of Dar es Salaam until it was marked off in 1973 as a separate city, and now has almost 400,000 people).

This group of small, poor churches, is a separate denomination from other pentecostal churches in North America or other parts of the world. Pastor Gervase Masanja is the bishop and visionary leader over this band of poverty-stricken congregations that exists in about twenty communities and preaching posts.

a small PMC congregation in Tanzania

The poverty of the people hinders the church leaders from being able to provide a regular place of worship - a church building. Sometimes they have been able to rent or erect a crude temporary structure. One like this, perhaps, with a thatched roof.

They have, at best, thirteen pastors, who would be thrilled to have a regular salary so that they could really concentrate on their work as pastors, instead of having to scrounge for a living.

Pastor Gervase Masanja and the leadership of the churches

The Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church's vision is to plant churches in every region, district, and ward of Tanzania, but they also want to make sure they plant churches in every capital city of the African countries, reaching their community and nation for Jesus Christ.

Pastor Gervase Masanja's vision into the future includes ideas for a strong school of ministry at Dar es Salaam, and a Christian Bookstore that would become a well-used Christian resource and lending library type of place.

To that end, the church leadership is open to visits from people of God from oversears, who have a compassion and desire to serve God by helping with finances, and the building materials and the labour to build new churches for the various church plants. A small church, seating 100-200 could cost about $10,000 to build.

You will find additional News Releases and Reports of our church conferences here: News & Reports

Please consider helping! Pray and ask God what He would have you do. If you want to support this church, you will find instructions on the Support Page. However, we want to add that we are learning to be discerning and will screen applicants and the projected "Help Missions" to our Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Churches.

The Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church of Tanzania is open to affiliation with a larger denomination that might help us. Read More Here