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Church conflicts arise due to poor ethics, hermeneutics or doctrine. Unending conflicts may be historical and conflict resolution may not have been done. This article identifies fissures in the history of conflict in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ). It proposes to use 'Robert's Rules of Order' (RONR) to redirect deliberants' energies towards comprehensive solutions (Robert 2020). This can eradicate collegial competition, litigious animosity, divided loyalties, mutual hatred, and violent tendencies in negative energy to increase growth tendencies in the organisation. Trust was lost due to highly adversarial contact where legal battles and acrimonious criticisms have not been addressed. The COCZ has tactical, technical and strategic management principles inherited from the restoration history, which can apply in conflict resolution. Using scientific methods of handling conflicts like RONR, and the COCZ principles can hopefully lead to better results in that church. Contribution: The paper contributes to alternatives to conflict resolutions which have been tested within the Church of Christ. The Robert's Rules can be used in different religious organisations to resolve conflict through peaceful resolutions of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic of power troubles are the doing and thinking and that knowledge is always contingent, standing above the abyss, as stated by Prof. J. Jansen in 2009. The issue of entitlement affected the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) at the onset of the third millennium. Leadership vacuum at the departure of missionaries led individuals to assume identities and hierarchies believed to have been interwoven into the polity and governing ideology of the COCZ. This connoted towards power, privilege and position for someone to benefit on church investments. The article suggests use of the critical Entitlement Theory (CET) to assess how contemporary situations at mission stations affect local churches and communities. Black elites who took over have created tensions and contradictions in churches by hiring persons who do not question their actions and words and persons who do not have an appreciation of the production and implementation of the church's governing laws. Critical Entitlement Theory assumes that 'the privileged ownership and administration theses' that date back to white privilege in the colonial church created this problem. This ethnographic study discloses how a new interdisciplinary thinking on equity and justice to local Christians can rise to own and manage mission stations in their local congregations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) is a Christian denomination with its own internal substance and purpose in life. However, postmodernist changes have affected the Church's operation with religious, ethical and spiritual implications. The COCZ engaged in conference centre construction (at Somabhula, Gweru South, Zimbabwe), constitution making (adopted 2014) and further ministerial formation through university education. The study was conducted among the Lukuluba people of Somabhula using qualitative research methods. Activities among the Lukuluba people need to be done in critical review of the church's ideological duty, discovery of the Lukuluba people's religious consciousness and development of a contextual pedagogy that appeals to the people's religious spirituality. The study found the need to review the modes of Lukuluba cultic practices of the Shona Mwari religion for purposes of attaining mission continuity within the community and being mindful of the need to continue in the founding identity of the COCZ. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Identity and mission continuity of the Church of Christ in contemporary Zimbabwean society relates to human creation, baptismal dignity and vocation as systematic theology has ecclesiological, soteriological, incarnational, existential, ecological, biblical, inculturational and missiological implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]