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Refresh and Renew :: U.S. Staff Conference

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Dr. Tariku Fufa is the Global Church Movements leader for the Africa region. Kay and I work with Tariku and Buze, his wife, as they lead in Africa. We give strategic support.

We recently completed the first face-to-face conference for the entire African region. We called it Addis22 meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

During this conference, we strategized and planned a massive church-planting focus for the month of May this year. The results of this 30-day focus were staggering and humbling. Through diverse strategies like personal evangelism, mass media and digital outreach, Jesus Film shows, compassionate outreaches distributing clothing and food, Bible distributions and follow-up of new believers, we saw God do amazing things.

  • 256 trainings equipped 22,357 trainees for church planting.
  • 1,672 new churches and groups planted.
  • 863,145 people heard the gospel of Jesus through personal and mass evangelism.
  • 101,566 people prayed to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord.

This fruit came through 30 days of prayer and fasting, training, evangelism, discipleship and intentional group and church formation. The Addis22 conference was a significant time to pray and plan, to refresh and reconnect with God’s mission, and to prepare for this 30-day church planting focus.

Conferences can be very helpful in reconnecting us with God and his heart for the lost. They are times of peer learning and iron-on-iron sharpening.

Next week, Kay and I will join 5,000 staff at Cru’s U.S. staff training in July. This time together refreshes our vision, renews our call, and prepares us for our next year of ministry.

Stories from around the world

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“The nation of Equatorial Guinea in West Africa is certainly experiencing new waves in the planting of churches since the country’s independence in 1968. The 72 church planters we trained in September 2018 in the Multiplying Churches and Communities strategy have planted 147 churches in the last 12 months.” – Apollos Jabbo, Global Church Movements leader, West Africa

“In an undisclosed country in Southeast Asia, currently there are an estimated 45,000 local churches, up from 25,000 in 2007.” – John Becker, VP for Global Collaboration, GACX

“By the grace of God, all the churches in Chad are working together in the harvest and are now fasting and praying together for the nation and the growth of God’s kingdom.” – Tamadji Moyalbaye, Global Church Movements leader, Chad

“Last week, more than 60 Cru USA staff and partners attended our first US Global Church Movements staff conference, and we are ready to partner with churches and mission organizations and launch a national church multiplication movement.” – Dave Robinson, national director, US Global Church Movements

“Arobogast Henga, a former fisherman from an island in Lake Victoria, Tanzania has experienced an amazing multiplication of churches with 25 generations in two years.” – Dismas Shekalaghe, Global Church Movements leader, Southern & Eastern Africa

The Cattleman Catches a Vision

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Arba Minch, a town in southern Ethiopia known for its many springs, its tropical fruit and a crocodile market, has grown dramatically in recent years — from 40,000 in 1994 to nearly 200,000 today.

A couple of years ago, the growth led to the relocation of 400 families (about 1,000 people) to a new community on the edge of town. As far as anyone knew, no believers dwelt among the 400 families in this village, known as Noc Site.

About that same time, the Kelhiout Church in Arba Minch sent a farmer named Gideon to the Global Church Movements church-planting training.

When Gideon was about 35 years old, he had come to faith in Christ through the witness of a 10-year-old boy. Gideon had been raising cattle but had sunk into a life of drinking and stealing. After turning to Christ, he fully surrendered everything in order to serve the Lord, and was actively sharing his faith.

During the training, he learned about a witnessing method known as “Prayer, Care, Share.” This approach encourages believers to find a “Person of Peace,” that is, somebody who is open enough to meet the believer and can open doors to a community. One prays for the Person of Peace, then finds ways to care for that person and meet their needs, and finally shares the gospel with him or her.

Gideon and his local church agreed that he would reach out to Noc Site, this fledgling village of 1,000 people with no Christian witness. He asked God to lead him to a Person of Peace, then began caring for people and witnessing. One day in town he met Yashir, who lived in Noc Site. As he began to pray for, care for and share with Yashir and his wife, they gave their hearts to the Lord. Yashir quickly shared the gospel with his relatives, and two of them accepted Christ as well.

This small group began regularly meeting to study the Bible. As the new believers learned how to follow Jesus and share their faith with others, the group grew. With the help of Gideon, what started at Yashir’s house two years ago has grown to a church of more than 50 people today. And several of the new believers are learning how to lead their own Bible studies, so the church in Noc Site will soon begin to multiply — fulfilling the dream of a church reaching this 1,000-person community!

Thinking about 2019

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Aurea with 2nd generation church planters
Aurea with 2nd generation church planters she is training

Aurea, a 47-year-old woman and mother of 5, learned to plant a church. Kay and I taught Aurea and others in September 2018 in Bata, Equatorial Guinea. Aurea says,

“The training has given me power to start church planting. I started with three persons in my house, but it has rapidly grown to 25 members. There have been difficulties and challenges but God has raised three leaders who will soon start second generation churches. My vision is to see churches planted everywhere in my area.”

Anita, a mother of eight, travelled 80 miles to attend the training. She returned to her home in Cogo and planted a growing church in this former center of the slave trade. Cogo is at the confluence of 3 major rivers that ships could easily reach from the Atlantic ocean.

After returning home, Anita began to share her faith using the Four Spiritual Laws and organized a showing of the Jesus Film with 45 watching and 13 making decisions to follow Christ.

Church building in Cogo, Equatorial Guinea
Church building in Cogo, Equatorial Guinea on land donated by a new, 75-year old believer

Anita says,

“Cogo is a difficult area. Many people feel civilized because of the colonial influence, but their lives are empty. The people are into drunkenness and loose living. I came back from the training a changed person and was excited about teaching the word of God. One man who received Christ was 75 years old and controlled by smoking and drinking alcohol. He is growing in his faith and has stopped smoking and drinking. This transformed man gave us the land where we have started constructing a church structure.”

Map of Cogo, Equatorial Guinea
Map of Equatorial Guinea showing Cogo town.

Anita continues,

“Cogo is surrounded by rivers. A woman of 65 years received Christ with me but doesn’t live in Cogo. This woman paddles her canoe 10 miles to come to Cogo for fellowship with believers. She stays three days for church service and discipling then returns to her area to minister.”

This is why Kay and I train church planters to connect with the lost and to plant churches that multiply. This is why we develop training curriculum. This is why we develop digital technology tools to expand the scope and engage more people in the Great Commission.

Thank you for our partnership reaching an increasingly desperate world like the people of Equatorial Guinea with the life-saving message of Jesus.

Kay and I look forward to 2020. We will be training and coaching. We will be following Jesus into new adventures. We praise God for the privilege we had in 2019 to minister in 12 countries flying about 195,000 miles and sleeping in 29 different beds. The adventure continues…

A predictable process on an unpredictable pathway

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I teach evangelism, discipleship and spiritual formation, and how to help new believers form local churches that multiply. Occasionally, friends and colleagues from my own mission organization will challenge this work saying that following Jesus is a non-linear process and what I teach reduces following Jesus to a simple, linear, step-by-step process.

Most of this well-intentional criticism is primarily from those in post-Christian cultures. I appreciate their engagement and do not fear this pushback because I know that, while life is not linear, that education and training and transferable discipleship requires approaching it as if it is linear.

I’m reading Steve Smith’s Spirit Walk book and found this excellent understanding of this complexity:

The Spirit Walk is unpredictable. But the process of learning the steps of walking in the Spirit of God is predictable. The Bible and its application throughout history point to common patterns that we must follow. They are the spiritual disciplines of learning to let the Spirit guide us every day. [Spirit Walk, Steve Smith, page 40.]

The word “process” is defined as “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” Steve is saying that, while truly walking in the Spirit day by day is an unpredictable experience because of who the Spirit is, we can LEARN to be obedient through a series of actions or steps taken in order. Ministry to others, whether evangelistic or spiritual formation, is rarely a linear, predictable process, but we can teach others to be effective by teaching the steps in a process of engaging others.

I appreciate Steve Smith’s 3 Ps of movement-building: a common pathway for discipleship, a common process that is teachable, repeatable and transferable and a common power available to all that comes through walking with the Spirit of God.

This fits well with my engineering education. Most of the physical laws in our universe are complex and not linear. But in order to train engineers, we make some assumptions that simplify the basic physical laws of the universe. My first courses were spent solving engineering problems in this simple, linear space. Then we admit later on that it is more complex and instead of linear equations that predict behavior, we actually have to learn what is called partial differential equations. These are equations that are too complex to actually solve except by making assumptions which simplify them and give acceptable accuracy (99.9%). Maybe they train engineers differently in this era of very powerful computers than can model and offer solutions very quickly. But the guys who put a man on the moon with less computing power than my cellphone did it by solving very complex problems by simplifying them into a step-by-step process.

We do the same with teaching a process of evangelism, spiritual formation and discipleship, and local church formation with a DNA of multiplication.