The emergence of the St Elijah Church with its strong emphasis on spiritual healing in the name of Christ established a new kind of religious experience in the Mahindi area. In this church much attention is paid to the cause of illness and healing. The source of illness and disease is identified through several techniques of diagnosis employed by a specialist healer as pre-requisites for healing.

The founder of the church is Steven Tafa Shava. He was born in 1926 at Mahindi in the Muvuya family in a traditional Karanga cultural milieu. In his youth he experienced dreams and visions calling him to the healing profession. This influenced him later to abandon his family's traditional life-style and practice and to submit himself to Christ. When the white missionaries from the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCZ) operating in the area recruited him to service in the church, Shava joined them. He trained as an evangelist at the then Swedish church headquarters at Mnene Mission.

In his long career as an evangelist in the Lutheran church Shava experienced further dreams and visions, which appeared intermittently. He was also visited at home by strangers who turned out to be prophets from various Spirit-type churches. This made him feel the need for a more spiritual Christian life, which the ELCZ could not fulfil. He established prayer sessions at home which developed into night vigils (pungwe) at which he invited visiting prophets and locals to come together in prayer. At times he hosted missions for evangelism organised by the male wing of the Lutheran church called Zvapupu (Witnesses). Prayer sessions were temporarily disrupted between 1976 and 1979, towards the end of the war of Liberation. But after the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980 he revived prayer sessions. With growing popularity in the area Shava decided to break away from the ELCZ to form his own denomination, St Elijah, known affectionately as Chikoro Chomweya (School of the Holy Spirit).

Joe Ellaine Madzimambo, originally from Rusape, is currently the chief prophet in the church but he works with a team of other junior prophets and assistants. From its original base in Mberengwa, the church has successfully recruited new members in several areas in Zimbabwe such as Beit Bridge, Harare, Masvingo, Mt Darwin, Rusape and Zvishavane. It claims to have 1 500 members.