Mission History

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Zimbabwe

The beginnings of the ELCZ date from 1905 when missionaries from Sweden, then serving in Natal, South Africa, followed the northward course of white settlement into what was then southern Rhodesia. This brought them into contact with Zulu-related people, the Ndebele. Later, the Church of Sweden Mission was assigned a territory in the country's southwest. The Swedish work unfolded in an area where the chief city is Bulawayo and the main language is Ndebele. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe organized in 1962.