Draft:Kenneth Mtata

Kenneth Mtata is the Programs Director for Public Witness at the World Council of Churches since November 2022. From 2016 to 2022, Kenneth Mtata was the general secretary of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches where he is known for taking strong positions against the injustices of the Mugabe government. When Mngangagwa took over as Zimbabwe President after the coup in 2017, Kenneth Mtata rejected the invitation to be part of the Presidential Advisory Council. He was behind the many statements issues by the joint churches as he also served as the executive secretary of the Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD). The ZHOCD is an association made up of the mother church bodies in Zimbabwe, namely, Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, and African indigenous Apostolic and Zionist churches in Zimbabwe. One such important statement in 2019 was one which called for the suspension of elections in order to create appropriate conditions for free, fair and credible elections. The Sabbath Call, as the statement was named, has remained a reference point for elections credibility in Zimbabwe.

Kenneth Mtata trained as an automobile electrician and worked in the automotive industry until 1999 when he moved to South Africa for his theological studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he studied under the prominent teachers like Jonathan Draper and Gerald West. He was ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe in 2002 and served in Kwekwe parish in the midlands province of Zimbabwe before going back to South Africa for his post-graduate studies. After acquiring his doctorate based on the basis of work on the concept of space and place in the gospel of John, he moved to Germany at the Hermannsburg Mission Seminary (German: Missionsseminar Hermannsburg) where he was a post-doctoral fellow in 2009. It was from here he joined the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva as the study secretary for Lutheran theology and practice. In the next six year he would lead several study process related to Lutheran Hermeneutics, Religion and development and theology of work resulting in a number of publications.

Publications

https://lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Doc-56-Dignity of Work-EN-low.pdf

https://lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/LWF-Doc-57-Words of Eternal Life-EN 0.pdf

https://lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/LWF-DTPW-DOC 59 Psalms.pdf

https://lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/dtpw-studies-201502-to all nations-full.pdf

https://lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/online%20course%20module%203.pdf

https://lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Doc-58-Religion_and_Development_0.pdf

Social Media

https://twitter.com/kennethmtata?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

https://independent.academia.edu/KennethMtata