Mission stations were created to radiate the light of Christianity to the surrounding communities. However, as time passed, what was meant to be the light became an eyesore to the noble intentions of the initial founders. Epworth Mission Station brings together the manifestation of a failed mission vision, as exemplified by the challenges and the squalid conditions of what was once a promising mission. This study explores the origins and challenges faced at a mission station and in particular Epworth of the Methodist Church in Harare. It looks at the challenges of the 19th-century mission approach in a post-colonial era. With the changes in political and religious terrain in Africa, mission work has suffered.Contribution: Using qualitative methods, which included desk research, archival and ethnographic approaches, the researcher sought to uncover the latent sources and nature of the mission problems and ended by suggesting what new approaches can be used to salvage respectability of mission in a post-colonial era. These include missional orientation and decolonisation of the African mind.

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T Church unity between the former Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA) took place in 1994 under particularly difficult circumstances. South Africa was on the brink of civil war, as the oppressed majority of the country was pressurising the apartheid regime to surrender to their legitimate demands for a democratic dispensation. The regime was relentless and violently resisted any change that would franchise black people. The struggle involved political, social, economic and religious dimensions and many people lost their lives as a result. It was under these circumstances that the DRMC and the DRCA forged ahead with church unity. The most enabling means for survival in the struggle for unity of the two churches was their faith in God as expressed in the Belhar Confession. This article explores the circumstances under which church unification was forged between the two Reformed churches and their eventual unity in 1994, as well as the concrete steps they took in their ritual of unification.