About Us

“Earthly education is good, education from on High is better, but to have both is best.” This element of both ‘forms’ of education is what we have sought to champion, encourage and build. Our reason for advocating holistic education is based on two foundational facts. Firstly, we agree with those who say that the world’s education system is deeply flawed.

In the early ministry days, Pastor Tom discipled many pastors and mentored business people hungry for Biblically inspired values-based leadership skills. The ministry had a generation of aspiring leaders who had acquired knowledge but failed to gain wisdom and understanding. Zimbabwe’s education system was not equipped to tackle the society’s theological and moral problems effectively.

As the church expanded, the need for greater depth of training for the leaders, pastors and congregants, was apparent. Pastor Tom could see a growing need to train up godly men and women who would be able to stand up for what was right in their spheres of influence and, in turn, plant seeds of kingdom reformation in everyday life. More instruction, mentoring and teaching than what he could give during Sunday services was required.

There seemed to be a deficit in understanding what Godly, value-based leadership looked like. To meet this need, we set up the, Celebration College, under which the Bible School and Business School were launched.

The Bible School started in 1984 under the name Rhema Ministry Bible Training Centre. The school was originally mandated to train Celebration Church  Pastors and Staff members. At the time, there were very few churches offering this kind of adult learning. The emphasis was unique to the other offerings as we taught Principles of Faith and the power of Renewing the Mind. The first Faith Seminar was held in 1983. By the 90s, the name change to Hear the Word Bible College and we were attracting students from Malawi and Zambia, and our Bible School community was multi-racial and multi-national, something unheard of in those early post-liberation struggle days. Our approach wasn’t just getting students to memorize facts and concepts but to offer a place where people could encounter personal revival and ground their lives in Christ. The program was practical, and students had to serve in church and participate in ministry projects and activities so as to put the principles they were learning into action.

However, the Bible School faced the same challenges that the church encountered during the years of economic turmoil and the number of students declined. We decided to regroup and extend our offering from a Bible School to a Bible College. We partnered with Logos University to offer master’s Level courses and later Team Impact University in the 2000s. We have since then developed the Leadership Development Program (LDP), initially a two-year diploma designed to develop church leaders in the wake of rapid church planting during the expansion of our ministry in the late post-2006. However, as the course was taxing, we created an abridged version of 8 core modules now known as the Christian Leadership Development Program (CLDP). Additionally, the two-year program has become the Biblical Studies Diploma, which attracts an average of 100 students per year.

Business School

By the late 90s, we saw that we needed to extend our business skills offering. The early 2000s brought some of the toughest economic challenges the country had ever faced and men and women in the marketplace were overwhelmed by the downward spiral taking place. We started by offering one module with a focus on ‘Doing Business God’s Way.’ The aim was to equip people to run businesses that reflected the nature and expression of a Kingdom culture with foundations rooted in a biblical worldview. This program was open to students, entrepreneurs, professionals and anyone seeking to operate using the principles of values-based leadership.

In providing this training and equipping, we were often resetting foundations. Psalm 11:3 says, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” We are seeing all around the world that manmade foundations are fracturing and devolving. What was once touted as an African only disease, bribery and corruption, has been seen to be endemic all over the world in both business and government.  Real transparency has become a non-existent commodity. In the words of James 3:16, ‘For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.’ This scripture is a picture of our world today.

Best business practice shows that no company can survive without transparency or without long-term vision. We believe that it is our mandate to train our leaders and the leaders of the next generation to operate by the precepts and principles laid down in God’s word. In doing so they will be better equipped to be ambassadors of God’s kingdom, thereby bringing reformation to the nation in their domains.

The college has experienced new growth more recently and, as of 2016, undertook registration with the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education and received official recognition. This process was lengthy, and there were many hurdles we had to overcome. The requirements of the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education included setting minimum course hours, inclusion of specific vocational and community modules to make them practical and setting up a library with books and computers for students to use for necessary research work.

When we first started the Business school, our focus was mainly our own congregants, but I knew that if we were to truly build people and their dreams, it was going to require further reach. In 2016, after taking some time out to regroup and frame how we would expand our reach, we re-launched and came back with a brand-new approach. A highlight in our approach was the Leadership Appreciation Program (LAP), authored by Dr Peter Chikumba, a leader in our church. LAP was highly successful, as the first-year graduates of 2016 numbered 90 students and is delivered in partnership with Dr Chikumba.

Also, we realized that given that more than 70% of the population are entrepreneurs, due to necessity, we wanted to be able to equip them with best practice. We, therefore, also added a series of targeted business seminars. The focus of these programs was to thoroughly prepare students for leadership in business as the Zimbabwean economy began to return to some normalcy. To date, across our courses, we have over a hundred students with a diverse composition of various industries, as well as students from outside of our ministry enrolling in our course programs annually. The college offers the following courses: Diploma in Biblical Studies, Diploma in Business Studies, Leadership Appreciation Program, Christian Leadership Development Program and Business Seminars.