Serving with our Brothers and Sisters in Singapore

Last March the keynote speaker at our Mission's Leadership Conference in Berlin was Dr. Edmund Chan, pastor emeritus of Covenant Evangelical Free Church and author of an excellent book on discipleship, "A certain kind- Intentional disciplemaking that redefines success in ministry." The church leaders invited us to join Drs. Craig and Alice Ott to equip their missionaries and staff in church planting principles and best practices. We said "yes," and we went the last week of June.

 We had a great week of ministry in Singapore. They kept us very busy from morning until night, but we loved it. There were 110 people attending the church-planting conference. They were from many parts of Asia: Singapore, China, Vietnam, Nepal, India, Thailand, etc.

  Gene and Craig taught 4 sessions a day all week and the meetings went until 9:30 p.m.

Covenant church sponsored the training and invited its missionaries home for it. It is a mega-church of 5,000 that has 90 people on staff. Yet they are sending people to work in difficult places were house churches are the norm, like China and Vietnam. The common emphasis is on starting disciple-making gospel communities, whatever the size! We felt quite honored to be asked to come and they treated us so graciously

 

Linda and Alice had a great ministry! They taught several sessions with the wives, and met several times with small groups and one-on-one. The last day, they had a two-hour Q and A for all 4 of us about all the material that was presented.

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 New friendships were formed. God's Spirit was at work!

 The kids had their own teaching times and fun times. 

Senior pastor Tony Yeo brought several inspiring devotionals. He was preparing for the 50th anniversary celebration of the country. Christians rented the largest stadium in Singapore for a prayer rally.  Most people are Buddhist or Muslim, but biblical Christians are growing in number and influence.

 We thank God for a fruitful ministry, safe travel, new friends and church planters working in a dozen Asian contexts better equipped to plant healthy churches that bring transformation.What a privilege to partner with our Asian brothers and sisters who are responding boldly to the missionary call.

Rapid Multiplication of Church Planter Training in Ethiopia

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is a beautiful city settled on rich plateaus. The city, with its concrete homes and street vendors, resembles other African cities. But we were struck by the vegetation and colors. The climate was gorgeous. The lion symbolizes Ethiopian royalty, and although a democracy with socialist-leanings has come into power, the heritage of King Haile Selassie is never far from memory.

 The Orthodox Church has retained many traditions, like a day to celebrate the ark of the covenant (some say the roots of the Orthodox Church goes back to King Solomon's day). Forty percent of the population is Orthodox, some 35% M-slim, and between 15 and 20% are Protestant Evangelicals. However most of those are in the South. The North is M-slim and has many unreached people groups.

In April two colleagues from our Mission taught the basic (Level 1) Training of church planters. Dr. Craig Ott and I went to train Master Trainers who would take it to other regions. Before we started Alex, our host and the event organizer, did a quick survey to see what the 25 men had done with the April training. He found out that it had already been reproduced to the fourth generation!!!! As a result 458 people had been trained in basic church planting and 55 new churches had been planted since April. 

Alex himself (at center in picture above) gave the training twice since April to different groups of church planters because the April event was mostly attended by church leaders who were not actively planting churches. This made it possible for us to equip Master Trainers with church planting passion and experience.

We had an excellent translator.

The event was hosted by SIM mission which has been working in Ethiopia for decades. The movement that has come from their work has 8 million members and at least 8,000 churches. Below you have the SIM guest house and administrative center where we stayed.

Twenty-five Ethiopian evangelists and church planting missionaries participated. 4 of 9 states in Ethiopia were represented.  Some participants came from 200 km by bus.  Most are church planters working among unreached ethnic groups. There are many evangelicals in Ethiopia, but they are unevenly distributed. The North and East have strong M-slim majorities. 

It was a real inspiration to work with these men. Some of them had suffered greatly for their faith. Church building are set on fire and believers have had their hands cut off or even been killed for their faith in unreached parts of Ethiopia. 

At one point we stopped to pray for a missionary colleague who has brain cancer. They prayed with such passion, faith, and tears, although some had only met him briefly and others did not know him at all.



Those who received the initial church planter training in April did not wait to teach others. Below we have recorded some of the immediate, spontaneous fruit. Our Training for Master Trainers will help them take it even further.

Lelisa (names do not correspond to pictures for security reasons) trained 12 persons from 5 churches.  They in turn each trained others, totaling 60 persons. As a result, the 12 new believers have formed a church. This all within 2 months. The work is among the Oroma unreached people 

Tesfaye works among students (on a church staff). He is training university students weekly with the material.  The students come from various regions of the country. His vision is that they will return to their homes and plant churches. Twenty-five are being trained now.

Daba, a M-slim background believer from the Ormo people, came to faith at age 14. He was disillusioned with Islam. Imams said to stay away from Christians who are of the devil. But he had a dream where he saw the inside of a church. He happened to walk past a church, stepped inside and it was the same church as his dream. He took this as a sign, and he began to attend the church and learn about Jesus. He faced persecution and was forced to live in another town.  He is now training 12 M-slim background-believers (MBB) using the material and hopes to see them reach other towns.

Demis has planted 11 churches among the unreached over the past 12 years. He himself is an MBB and was driven out of his own people and had to become a missionary to another UPG. He has trained two other church planters, one of them is already planting a church. He condensed the basic training into on A-4 sheet of paper hand written on both sides. He uses the very simplified version! (see photo). The teaching on what the church really is as a kingdom community was very helpful. He finds the three dimensions of kingdom communities especially important.

We found out that one of the older evangelists speaks 12 languages and has worked in 6 districts. He said that the main difference between our training and other trainings is that with ours you reproduce yourself. He is up in years and realizes he needs a method to train others, because the work is far beyond his capacity alone. This gave him great hope.

God is building His church! These national evangelists and missionaries are his ambassadors. Our training is not what motivates them. The gospel and love for those who haven't heard does. What a joy to give them some tracks to run on and to enable them to conceptualize the things they are already doing so they can pass it on. We return much richer for having walked with them. Thank you to all who prayed for us.