To South Africa and beyond

Who knew when we first came to South Africa that God would expand our ministry to the "beyond" part of Africa?  Well He did!!!

Mike had the chance to go to Zimbabwe at the end of February, to join an Annual Equipping Event hosted by Global Disciples.  He had been in discussions with Global Disciples for about 8 months (met with them first while we were in Canada) and this was an opportunity to hear about their work first hand from current program directors.

About 75 Global Disciples program directors (all pastors) came to the event from 10 different countries.  (Just in 2014 these 75 men and women planted about 40 churches in their respective countries, and well over 100 churches in the last 5 years!)  Around the world, Global Disciples planted 1400 churches last year, with 40,000 new believers in these churches! 

I think for most Canadians, when we hear the name Zimbabwe, we think in our heads “ends of the earth.”  Well after spending a week at the “end of the earth,” Mike has a lot to say about his incredible week.

"The country of Zimbabwe has been struggling for the past 20 years, with unemployment now at 90% in one of the poorest countries on earth.  But praise God, the church is stepping forward to share the gospel with this nation of desperate a needed people."

Could the church feed a nation?

"We were hosted in Zimbabwe at this amazing church that is reaching out in so many ways to the people of the nation including teaching them how to grow better crops.  The church is a part of the Zimbabwe Evangelical Fellowship and it is their vision to feed the nation, both spiritually and physically.  In order to accomplish this the church uses a combination of church planting and farm training."

"They run crop demonstrations at the church where their crops are 10 times the yield of the average Zimbabwe farmer.  They have now trained 10,000 farmers, and these farmers currently average 3 times the yield of the national average with just some basic training techniques.  Currently Zimbabwe only produces 25% of the food that is needed to feed their nation, but the church believes that they can feed the entire nation by training their farmers!"

"Each day during the event there was testimony after testimony of how God was working in these servants to make disciples, to plant churches, to heal the sick, and to provide for their communities.  We spent hours every day in worship and prayer, and also took 24 hours to fast and pray on Thursday.  That evening we spent many hours praying for the salvation of the nations, praying for God’s church to fulfill the great commission across the globe.  We prayed against the evil in our world, recognizing that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the rules, power, and principalities of this dark world.  We prayed throughout the night in shifts with me having the 2-3 a.m. shift with a few other pastors.  I was amazed how quickly the time of prayer went, and in the morning we started to pray again at 7:30 a.m.  The passion in this group to fulfill the great commission seeing churches planted in every people group of earth was both encouraging and contagious."

Our hope and prayer is that in 2015 I will be able to launch some of these programs with the churches of Cape Town.  We are hoping to start with the church leadership training and sometime after that, hopefully to launch a discipleship and church planting program.  We am very excited to see where God will take all these things.