A “new” way of evangelism takes root in West Africa

Indeed, wholistic ministry really is the oldest tool for evangelism–Jesus invented it. But in West Africa, where “open-air crusades” have been a preferred method for so many generations, today’s Christian leaders are discovering the power of extending Jesus’ love to the whole person, operating from a biblical worldview.

“The reception to our message was just overwhelming, and participants called for more time since it has been just a day’s vision casting,” says Chris Ampadu, a DNA partner working in Ghana.

In the past couple of months, Chris has helped conduct in Ghana:

• a mentorship program for Christian professionals from six countries.
• a training for 169 church leaders on “Love Action as a Tool for Evangelism.”
• an annual Wholistic Club meeting with 10 leaders, each of whom has 30-60 members demonstrating God’s love in profound ways at the grassroots level.
• presentations on wholistic ministry to more than 800 evangelistic leaders, followed by new plans for a four-day Vision Conference.

“A church elder from Katanga said [the church’s] demonstration of love to the needy and poor has shocked many people in the village such that two Moslems and three animist women have joined the club, saying they have never seen poor people coming out of their poverty to show such compassion and love,” Chris says.

Vision Conference Cleans Up in Hyderabad

We are happy to share the following excerpt from the personal newsletter of DNA co-founder, Dr. Bob Moffitt. Bob wrote after a combined Vision Conference and Training of Trainers held in May in Hyderabad, India. This Vision Conference was national in scope, with participants from 12 states. Some live in places of significant persecution of Christians.

The VC was organized by Gadde Rattaiah of Global Peacemakers Fellowship. Other national leaders included Raaj Mondol (SALT) and Rev. Sudhaker Mondithoka (Centenary Baptist Church).

Rattaiah is a younger leader in India with whom I have been “walking” for several years. He has a passion to spread the Harvest/DNA message throughout India. Rattaiah used his new organization, Global Peacemakers, to gather 35 pastors and leaders from across the country for the six-day event. I was one of four speakers. These folks showed an unusual level of interest and capacity to serve as advocates in their own denominations and/or institutions. Their eagerness to learn did not flag through the long, hot days; the temperature reached 113°F.

After the VC we had a four-day TOT. This training is designed to teach participants how to use and teach three Harvest tools: Disciplines of Love, Seed Projects, and BASICS – an early discipleship program with eleven lessons. Each day, student-participants are accountable for serving others in some new way. They learn a basic pedagogical approach to leading others in discipleship and then practice what they learn on each other, and finally, they design and carry out a project which demonstrates the love of Christ to people not likely to be exposed to the Gospel in either word or action.

For their Seed Project they distributed food packets, and gave haircuts and shaves to destitute men and women on the train station platform. The cooking started at 4 a.m. Our group arrived at the station platform about 7 a.m. By 10 a.m they had cut the hair of (and shaved) a dozen men and given food packets to about 50 people.

Most of the participants are pastors. They told me they had never done anything like this. It is easy to understand why. The destitute people they ministered to were very dirty. One man had long hair, a beard, and filthy clothes. At his invitation they cut his hair and shaved him. But he smelled so bad that when they took him to the public shower the attendant wouldn’t let him enter without paying double the fee. One of the participants went in with him and when the man took off his clothes the smell was so bad that our participant vomited. The team bought him pants and a shirt from a nearby stall for $2. The transformation was amazing. While ministering Christ’s love the team was able to talk to him, witness to him, and pray for him. The team all told me that they now have courage to return and minister in a similar way in their home areas.

Bob reports that participants formed a new all-India association. To decide on a name, they all wrote their suggestions and one of the children of the participants randomly chose the final selection–Vision India Network.

Francophone Africa Vision Conference to Impact Widows, Orphans, Gangs

Samaritan Strategy Africa, in collaboration with local churches, held a Vision Conference in Ngaba location/Kinshasa last May. The conference was facilitated by Harvest and Samaritan Strategy trainers Jeff Sikabwe, Jean N’soseme, and Byamungu Kisangani.

Sixteen churches were represented, including Ministère International pour le salut des âmes, la Croix de Golgotha, Bethesda Miracle centre, Assemblée Chrétienne Ecole des vainqueurs, Centre des gagnants, Ministère Evangélique la colonne de feu, Eglise de la résurrection, Eglise Pentecôtiste pleine Evangile  Assurance de salut, Temple d’Elohim, and Ministère Evangélique la puissance  de la délivrance.

Jeff Sikabwe noted that the conference “was a good opportunity for church leaders to discover new ways through which they could serve their communities to see positive change in the lives of their people.”

The 33 participants included pastors, choir leaders, deacons, ushers, Sunday school teachers, youth leaders, church elders, evangelists, and community development staff.

Participants committed themselves to demonstrate God’s concern to their surrounding communities by carrying out four Seed Actions:

• Distribution of soap, clothes, sugar, and food to poor widows and orphans living on Kisangani Avenue in Ngaba location.

• Organizing recreational activities (boxing, karate, soccer) as a public awareness campaign with the goal of helping youth in various gangs in the Lobo area learn to lead productive lives.

• Evacuation and collecting of the rubbish on Lobo/Ngaba avenue.

• Enhancing the street lighting on Kongo Avenue in order to increase security in an area which has cost many human lives.  

Small group Bible study

In addition to these seed actions planned during the training, participants committed themselves to more acts of service in the future in order to experience positive substantial change.

Several participants expressed their appreciation for the training.

Thank you for the work done with love and sacrifice. May these teachings go farther. I have just discovered that the whole Bible is filled of God’s love and therefore, we must show it to others. Christians are really Christians if they are for God’s kingdom.

My prayer is that these teachings become a curriculum for Bible studies in our churches for strengthening believers for a good understanding of the expression of God’s love.

All these lessons converge towards only one goal: love. As God is love, and Jesus being God’s fullness, he is also love. The church being Jesus’ fullness must therefore be rooted in this love to play effectively her role in the community.

These teachings of the Strategy Samaritan are a light that helped me to criticize my worldview.

This training helped me to change my way of doing Bible studies, of understanding things and of seeing the world as God created it. Now, I understand that one of my major tasks is to invest in lives of others – that means to help the poor, the orphans, the widows; in other words, to support the weak ones

This conference has just given me a new vision on how to live according to the Gospel. That means it’s about putting in practice the Word God for the development of the church and the world around me in all aspects of life.

Pastors Jimmy Ekakola and  François Matumona served as the organizing team. At the close, pastor Ekakola summed up the week:

The teachings reminded us of things we already knew, and gave us new discoveries as well. These teachings were a big blessing for us. We are convinced that they also will help us direct the church of Jesus Christ towards a new horizon. We know that the task is not easy to change our ways of doing things but as we had learned it, the development is a process that starts today with me and as the Holy Spirit guides us we will reach that point.

DNA at the Top of the World … Vision Conference in the Land of Everest

Vision Network Nepal (the DNA affiliate in Nepal) and Kanchanpur Christian Community (a group of churches in Kanchanpur district of western Nepal) jointly sponsored a Vision Conference in September in Mehendranager, Western Nepal. Some 45 pastors and leaders from various churches participated.

Madan Shah, Paul Rana, and Tek Rijal facilitated the sessions, which included The Transforming Story, The Church’s Role in Society, The Irreducible Minimum, Luke 2:52, The Three Relationships of Man, The ABCs of Culture, Kingdom Math, The Kingdom of God, and Seed Projects.

Vision Conference Seed Projects

Most of the participants said they never had such training. One pastor shared, in tears, that God had changed his heart through the conference and he wants to apply these principles in his ministry.

At the end of the conference, most of the participants returned home planning to implement the seed projects they had planned.

Meanwhile, a Vision Conference held in 2007 has been bearing fruit. Several conference alums in Tansen, Western Nepal began serving and counseling needy women and children in the community. In 2009, they launched the New Hope Counseling Center. Since then, they have been actively involved in the church and community, and in the local prison. They are demonstrating God’s love by providing counseling services and vocational training, visiting prisoners, and assisting those in need of health treatment.

These efforts recently bore fruit in the form of a three-day womens’ conference in Tansen, offering training in how to be a good wife and mother, and how to walk faithfully as a believer in Christ. Around sixty women participated in the training.

During these three days they shared the Love of Christ with a number of women, and several responded by praying to receive Christ and following Him in baptism.

Dental camp participants

Tansen Church, a local congregation seeking to practice biblical wholism, has implemented other seed projects, including a dental camp in Damkada, Palpa, Nepal, for blind and disabled people in the community. After a short time of songs and Bible sharing, 27 patients were treated by Dr. Kharel and Dr. Theo. Family Health Ministry, an extension of Tansen Church, provided the dental equipment and medicine. For their part, the patients prepared and served a meal to the medical team! As a result, six of the dental patients came to know the Lord and were baptized few months ago.

Ram Khilawan in his new home

Piparkoti Church is another congregation to see recent fruit from a seed project, this one involving a neeedy individual. Ram Khilawan, a Hindu from Lucknow, India, came to Nepal 40 years ago to do business. Later he decided to live in Nepal. He adopted a Tharu orphan girl and raised her as his daughter. When she married, he was once more alone. He tried to begin again in the color-selling business he had done before, but this time it did not go well. Eventually he was evicted from his small house. Too old to work, and with no one to care for him, Ram was was reduced to sleeping in the streets, often with nothing to eat.

Meanwhile, the members of Piparkoti Church had received training on biblical wholism. Someone in the church knew about Ram, and they decided God wanted them to reach out to him in love. They helped him build a small thatched-roof hut near the church. Now he is living there and cooking for himself. The local church is taking care of his needs. Touched by the love he saw, he gave his life to Christ and now attends church every week. This fruit has encouraged other members in the church to do more seed projects in their communities.

(This story was written from reports filed by Madan Shah, Paul Rana, Pastor Durga Pahari, Bishnu Regmi, and Pastor Durga Pahari.)

Fifty Learners and Five Seeds: One Week in the DRC

Changed lives and cleaner streets were the fruit of DNA training in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Some local neighborhoods in Kinshasa, western DRC benefitted from an April 2011 Vision Conference held in a collaboration between Harvest Foundation, Samaritan Strategy Africa, Reach Africa, and 17ème Communauté Evangélique du Christ en Ubangi (CECU). During the week, 50 participants from five parishes were trained in worldview and development and wholistic ministry. Also, five Seed Actions were planned, one per parish.

Trainees gathered from several churches, including 17^ème CECU, Communauté Pentecôtiste Christ Roi, Communauté Evangélique au Kwango, and Arche de l’alliance. Among the participants (10 women and 40 men) were pastors, choir leaders, deacons, ushers, Sunday school teachers, army chaplains, missionaries, youth leaders, church elders, evangelists and community development staff.

From these, 30 were selected for a training of trainers session to be held in the near future.

Rev. Buingo Mateene and Pastor Jeff Sikabwe, joined by Romain Diakou and Martin Mambula, facilitated the sessions. The facilitators reported that the week was “a good opportunity for church leaders to look for new ways through which they could serve their communities to see positive change in lives of their people.”

Small group plans seed action

Participants committed themselves to six seed actions:

1. Garbage collection at the Mabanza market in Mokali
2. Mobilizing population to clean Limeté Avenue in Luka
3. Cleaning gutters on the Djabir roundabout in Matonge division
4. Filling potholes on Maluku street
5. Collection and distribution of foodstuffs for poor families in the neighborhoods
6. Visiting and distributing fruits and soft drinks to patients at King Baudouin Hospital

In addition to these Seed Actions planned during the training, participants committed themselves to do more acts of service in the future. Some of them testified to the impact of the training.

We thank Reach Africa for its concern of seeing the local churches of Congo standing on its feet in each area of their life. We thank God for Harvest and Samaritan Strategy for their efforts in behavior changing of Congolese society through teachings on the holistic ministry. We also thank 17^ème CECU/Kinshasa which provided all necessary logistics for success of this conference. This teaching enabled us to have a new vision of the Gospel, one of considering human being in his entirety according to the model of growth and service provided by Jesus in Luke 2:52. We have discovered that we do not need to have a lot of resources to help someone else (street children or beggars) to grow in the image of Christ. … We have the conviction to be well equipped and able to put into practice the lessons learnt for change in our society. Nadine Deco: On behalf of women  

This training helped us to identify many bad practices in use in our cultures which are the root causes of many problems which lead to selfishness, hatred, poverty … We have discovered that we suffer for lack of practical application of the assets and by bad stewardship of what God has given to us. Through this training we have discovered that the human being is the master of his destiny, able to change situations and to help other people to grow holistically by accomplishing small acts of sacrificial service. Reverend Alenge Nabwe Cyrille: 17^ème CECU Church

Rev. Selenga receives his participant certificate

We thank Harvest/SSA because they are a source of blessings for us – you have an appropriate message for Africa at this particular time of history. We are convinced that through such messages our church can come out of poverty … now we are informed that we are also able to do something for the change of our current situation. Let’s try putting this message into practice and wait seeing what will happen in our families and communities. Pastor Silas Selenga: Reach Africa

Reverend Buingo Mateene,  Central Africa Cordinator for Samaritan Strategy Africa, summarized the conference:

We thank the congregations and organizations which came to joinHarvest and SSA for the planning of this conference. Truly speaking, we believe that through this partnership the call of standing on our own feet and fight against poverty of mind can reach many African church leaders. … our aim is to equip trainers for spreading this message through many congregations in Congo. 

“We Are Not Cursed!”

Some long-believed lies in southern Africa were exposed during a recent Biblical Worldview and Transformational Development Conference.

Over 40 people attended the three-day event, conducted at Mawilini in September. They came from the communities of Mawilini and Kandeni and represented four denominations: the IRM, Kalibo Church, Methodist, and Catholic.

Hein van Wyk (center) facilitating with Pastor Jose Ganhale (L) translating into Takwane and Rev. Danie Murray (R) translating into Portuguese.

The session was sponsored by four partners: Hope for Africa (Hein van Wyk), Hande Vat Project (Rev Danie Murray), TOPIA (Rev Johannes Aucamp) and The Tumbine Synod of the Reformed Church of Mozambique (IRM). The IRM Synod was represented by Pastors Souza Estaforde (IRM Liazi) and Jose Ganhale (IRM Namitimba) who are both being trained as conference facilitators.

The IRM congregation at Mawilini, pastored by Pastor Carlos Herbert, Moderator of the Tumbine Synod,  hosted the event.

This conference was the first in Mozambique to be arranged and funded by the local community. The desired outcomes were: 1) a growing vision for community development through cultural transformation, 2) a basic understanding of worldview and of the role of the Church in society, 3) all of this practically applied through the demonstration of God’s love in every area of community life.

The facilitator team debriefing

During the conference the delegates had the opportunity to deal with cultural lies like tribalism, male superiority, the lie that work is a curse, and fatalism. In small groups they discussed the roots and fruits of these lies, how they are transmitted in the culture, what the Bible says about them, and what practical steps can be taken to expose these deceptions.

The group made one practical application during the week. The married men left their benches to cross the aisle and sit with their wives on the floor on the other side. The next morning the wives in turn sat with their husbands on the benches. This simple action showed a changed mindset, one which acknowledged that Jesus Christ had demolished the wall of separation between male and female.

The following are some of the comments delegates made during the course of the conference:

A wide range of ages was represented

• We as Africans are not cursed; we do not use our opportunities and what we have. Because of this others take away what we have.
• Now we know that God sent us to work.
• I’m encouraged by Galatians 3:28 which say that there is now no separation between different tribes and between male and female. It liberated me.
• We discovered Africa has two sides – blessed and broken. We know the reason is our thinking; our glasses. We should change our glasses.
• We now have new ideas to start new things.
• We talked about fatalism that we cannot change anything, but now we know that we can change things.
• All things are possible in Christ.
• Wives can now sit with their husbands in Church.
•  Church is not the building but people who believe in Jesus Christ.
• Christ is the Head; we are the body who demonstrates His love.
• Christ came to reconcile us; all of us – with one another and with God.
• Jesus is who God is.

Pastors Souza Estaforde (R) and Jose Ganhale (L) being trained as facilitators

As a result of the training, three Seed Projects were done by the participants. The first was the repair of a damaged bridge at Maramotondo. A second project, done by people from different denominations to demonstrate unity, was repairing the house of Pastor Kalito Mario (the pastor from Kalibo Church) which had recently burnt down. The small group also raised 100 Malawi Kwacha and presented the gift to him at the closing of the conference.

A group of youth did the third project. They composed a new song and sang it to the conference attendees at the conclusion of the three-day gathering. One of the truths of the conference lessons was captured in the lyrics: “To work is not a curse; it is a blessing. Go and read Genesis 2:15.”

By Hein van Wyk

Two Islands … Two Years … Two Vision Conferences

Two years ago the first-ever Vision Conference in this two-island nation was held on Trinidad, the larger of the two islands. Recently, Tobago joined the list of host nations when Darrow Miller and Bob Moffitt accompanied Clifton Charles to facilitate a shortened Vision Conference.

Rev. Ramlakhan Ramdial, Senior Pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle, Tobago, and Chair of Tobago Pastors’ & Ministers’ Fellowship, chaired the planning committee which brought the three-day training event to the island. The Lambeau Church of God hosted the event January 20-22, 2011.

Rev. Dr. Clifton Charles, Senior Pastor of the Worldwide Church of God, planned and hosted the earlier five-day vision conference and joined Bob and Darrow as a presenter at this event.

Clifton and Pearl Charles

Seventy-five participants, representing 25 local churches, attended the sessions. Pastors and church leaders were joined by several leaders from various spheres of society, including officials from Health and Social Services, TV Channel 5, and the Tobago House of Assembly.

“What was taught in the Conference was a reinforcement for my ongoing projects that I am doing in my ministry,” one pastor said by way of appreciation. “It served as a booster.”

“God gave me a vision and mission for the ministry,” said another, “and I told God that it was too big for me to even begin to fulfill and that I did not know where to start. Then there was Vision Conference 2011 to show me the way forward. Very timely, appropriate and confirmation of [the need to change] mindsets that were not Biblical but cultural.”

The success of the event was attributed in part to the thorough planning, as indicated in the work of multiple committees, one each for finance, marketing, and site and maintenance issues. Volunteers also saw to the registration and other needs.

Organizers now look forward to the opportunity to advise, help, and strengthen pastors in the projects they are already undertaking. One Seed Project includes the participation of all pastors and church members toward the development and operation of a warehouse distribution center.

– Story developed from a report filed by Agnes L. Williams, conference registrar.