From a front room to a movement
Northmead Assembly of God began in 1971 as a home cell group. It now numbers more than two thousand members.
It started in somebody’s living room.
Northmead Assembly of God was established in 1971, not as a church building but as a home cell group — a handful of people, several of them expatriates, meeting to pray and study Scripture. Among the founding families was the Davis family.
That small gathering settled on Plot 2131, Paseli Road, beside what is now Northmead Shopping Centre, and it has never moved. More than half a century later the church counts over two thousand members, with roughly fifteen hundred worshippers at each of the two Sunday services.
Northmead belongs to the Pentecostal Assemblies of God Zambia, a movement of more than eighteen hundred congregations nationwide. PAOG-Z traces its own beginnings to Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada missionaries who arrived in 1955, working first near Chipata and later on the Copperbelt.
That heritage explains the language of Northmead’s vision. “Self-propagating, self-supporting and self-governing” is the indigenous-church principle those missionaries carried with them — the conviction that an African church should plant, fund and lead itself rather than depend on support from outside.
When HIV/AIDS came, this church did not look away.
Northmead’s most consequential decades were shaped by a crisis it chose to meet head on, and much of that work began with the women of the congregation.
A home cell group
The Lazarus Project
Circle of Hope
Operation Paseli
Presiding Bishop of PAOG-Z
The Lazarus Project was founded by the women of Northmead under Pastor Gladys Banda and has rescued, rehabilitated and trained over a thousand street children. Circle of Hope followed in 2005. Operation Paseli, named after the road outside the church, reaches women in commercial sex work. In 2003 the church opened the Circle of Hope clinic, which came to test more people for HIV than most government clinics in the city.
Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.Zechariah 4:10
There are decades of this story that only the congregation remembers.
The record above is what can be documented. Between 1971 and today there are pastors, building projects, revivals and departures that appear in no archive.
If you were part of Northmead’s early years — or if you hold photographs, service programmes, minutes or memories from any decade — the church would like to hear from you. This page will grow as that material comes in.
The living room is still the model.
Northmead began as a home cell group, and home cells still meet across Lusaka every week. The church grew; the method did not change.