Huge church mobilization progress

We have also made massive progress on other areas here in church mobilization.  Our church network has continued to rapidly expand and this has enabled us to really expand our follow-up programs.

Our first year here in South Africa, Mike and Mawande wrote and taught the Faith Discovery program and the follow-up process to that program.  On the average every 6 weeks out of 30 students about 10-15 make first time commitments to follow Christ!!!  Since that time my heart has been passionate about building a “church placement” program, where after our follow-up program we can place these students into healthy local churches where they will continue to be this process for that person.

So we are very excited to announce that we have successfully implemented this new program with our current students who recently graduated.

Using software, we geocode the locations of the students’ home.  So yeah, that's where it gets a weebit technical but thankfully I have a techy savy husband who drove to all the church locations to get the correct GPS location.  Cuz that's how he rolls.

So we looked at our students in the current class and based upon where the new born-again student lived, we invited local pastors to come and meet these students during our 9 weeks program that we teach at Hope Africa.  We gave them a chance to get to know each other in a non-threatening environment.

Part of the teaching the students get is about what the scriptures teach about “church” and then we work with them to choose a good local church where they can grow.  We then follow up for 18 weeks with the student and at the same time with the churches to ensure these new relationships with the pastors and students are flourishing.  I am so excited to see these new believers placed into healthy churches!

Leadership Gatherings

I am constantly, blown away by how God continues to use us to reach, encourage and equip the church.  Tuesday we had another pastors training and prayer morning; we call them “Leadership gatherings.”  Our topic this time was “Timothy – lessons learned from a disciple.”  I could not be more excited and encouraged by how well these monthly training sessions are going.

Our seminars do not follow the typical format of these types of events here, but despite that, I really sense the pastors have come to understand and appreciate in a new way the things we are trying to accomplish as we gather.

For example, culturally in schools where our Xhosa pastors all grew up, the environment if very different than in North America.  You come, you sit, and you shut-up and listen.  Most seminars here follow a similar formula where an “expert” teacher comes to impart to the gathered church leaders.

We have very intentionally from the beginning said we will not do it that way and instead we encourage the pastors we believe that God has spoken and taught each one of you, and as we gather, we seek to bring that wisdom out for the benefit of all the others.  The pastors no longer hesitate during the discussions, instead they are eager to share and ask questions about our topics.

From my last teaching, my 3 large group questions were:

1.            What is a disciple, and who is a disciple trying to become like?
2.            Is every born again Christian a disciple?
3.            When you picture a mature disciple of Jesus, what characteristics do you picture?

We had such amazing conversation on these questions as we wrestle with these issues and we seek the Lord together in prayer for one another.  In my small group a few of the pastors were from a large denomination.  They asked, “How do we begin to do discipleship in our churches when our denominations are against it?”  We prayed that God would soften the hearts of the denominational leaders in this regards.

Most of the pastors are from independent churches, and they were challenging one another on how to not just preach, but to start doing 1 on 1 ministry and bible studies with their members so that the people of the churches can ask questions about the Bible and together they can search the scriptures for answers.  One of our major emphasis this week was on sound doctrine, as sadly there are constantly problems here with churches and pastors that have gone astray.  We talked about opening up churches to encourage the people to go directly to the Word instead of just trusting the pastor to tell them what it means.  It is very difficult to capture in black in white text the joy and passion in these pastors eyes as we go through these topics.

Young Pastor training program

We have just recently started a new training program aimed at young pastors.  Please pray for us in this new and exciting ministry that I believe is very needed.

There is a strong culture here of young leaders rebelling against their older pastors/mentors and splitting churches to create new “movements” and churches.  We believe that it is close to the heart of God to see reconciliation between these parties and we are uniquely positioned in that we as Hope Africa have programs that reach the young leaders, but my personal work is training the senior pastors.

When crime becomes normal

Turns out the things that happen here in an average week have become our "new normal,” and so since these things don’t surprise us as much anymore, we have been lacking the ambition to write about them!  Eeek, we are the "sorryest".

A significant part of “normal” life here is crime.  In the last 5 days my sister Char and her new husband Mawande had their place broken into and their copper piping was stolen so they had no water when they woke up Sunday morning.

On Tuesday morning when we arrived early for our pastors training morning, we found one of our windows at Beautiful Gate (the ministry we rent space from) had been smashed and the office broken into during the night.

On Wednesday morning we found out one of our 4 hair salons that we have built for our new small business students was broken into and her hot water tank, chairs and various items were stolen.

Yesterday night a local business in our small suburb we live in was broken into and robbed.

And as you might have read on our Hope Africa: Mike & Marie-Eve Facebook page, the Pastor I work with, Bishop Nyanga was robbed at gun point last month, as he pulled into his driveway in broad day light.  This has been a hard time for him and his family who was also with him during this incident.  Please continue to pray for them.