Servant Leadership is a cornerstone of a Wesley College education. All diploma students complete a year-long Servant Leadership course as a requirement of graduation. In 2021, three grads are putting their faith into action as part of a cross-cultural Christian community in Tarime, Tanzania. Together with two young American adults, these Wesley College graduates have answered the call to share life together. All are committed to growing closer to God through intentional community, sharing the good news of Jesus with their neighbors, and joining in the work of bringing God's Kingdom on Earth.

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About Tarime, Tanzania

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Tarime is a rapidly growing town of about 40,000 in Northern Tanzania, close to both Lake Victoria and the Tanzania-Kenya border. It is at the crossroads of a large and important highway that traverses Tanzania, and a smaller road that takes one to the North Mara Gold Mine in Nyamongo, Tanzania. There is a developed city center with paved roads and modern buildings, but a short walk from the city center takes you into rural Tanzania, where the majority of folks are still subsistence farmers.

 

Although Tarime is an exceptionally peaceful area, it is also a place where you will quickly discover destitute poverty, shocking forms of gender-based oppression, and life-devouring injustice/abuse of power. The hope that these people have has not been cultivated easily.

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The Church in Tarime

 

Over the last fifty years, more and more of the people in Tarime have become followers of Jesus, a trend that continues today. Unfortunately, the weeds have been sown with the good seed and a vigorous form of the prosperity gospel now thrives in Tarime, of equal or greater influence than the real gospel. In Tarime, Quad W members will help neighbors to explore the gospels and see what it really means to be a disciple.

 

Through Wesley House, it is our hope that all of us will come to see Christ as he really is, live more like him, and share the same good news with our neighbors... and them with their neighbors, ad infinitum.

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Site Director, Davis Rhodes

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Davis worked as a long-term mission volunteer in Tanzania for two years, in partnership with Eric and Liz Soard, UMC Missionaries at the time. He  helped Tanzanian churches to start savings and loan groups and helped children who were living on the streets of Tarime to develop job skills. For one year, he lived with a Tanzanian family (father, mother, and seven children) and became fluent in Swahili through this experience. In 2018, as Davis was getting ready to hand over his economic empowerment work to a local leader, he and Eric discussed the vision of a missional community. It would provide a model of servant leadership in the town of Tarime.

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In preparation, Davis lived in an Intentional Christian community in Dallas for eight months.  Through Wesley House, he hopes to see the Tanzanian people freed from the many things that bind them and be able to live lives where they can more fully give and receive love. He has really enjoyed the first three months of leading the missional community of Wesley House, and is looking forward to more time living and working with young adults in missional community.

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Learn more about Servant Leadership at Wesley College.

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Read Davis Rhodes' blog about what service really means.

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