Did you know that missionaries in some of the poorest countries of the world are reaching out to neighboring countries?
Not too long ago we received a prayer letter from an Ethiopian couple who serves with Campus Crusade. Even though it’s difficult for them to minister to students in their own country, they felt called to trust God for an international missions trip.
Taking several Christian student leaders with them, they organized an outreach trip to nearby Rwanda. It provided a real step of faith for them and was an excellent opportunity to put evangelism training into practice.
As you may remember, Rwanda was the scene of one the world’s greatest genocides in 1994. A long standing conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis boiled over into a 100 day killing spree. Almost one in five Rwandans (20%) died – at least 800,000 total. Ethiopia was not involved in this conflict but at various times has experienced massive famine and internal strife – resulting in a 1,000,000 death toll in the 1980’s and huge waves of refugees.
That anyone in either of these two countries would look beyond themselves and open their hearts to others is a testimony to the goodness of God. He alone brings healing. Only an amazing Redeemer could take such devastation and expand a message of love, hope and full delight in His Name through it.
From what I picked up from reading Gima and Bethel’s letter (the Ethiopian couple), in some ways it is easier for Rwandans to trust outsiders than it is fellow countrymen. You’ll see what I mean in the following excerpt from their letter. Praise the Lord with us for this amazing report from 26 Ethiopian staff, students and businessmen volunteers who trusted the Lord to reach out to Rwanda:
“After the genocide the evangelical Churches are playing a significant role in supporting the efforts of the government to bring reconciliation among the people. The country is also showing progress economically. But there are one million orphans who lost their families during the genocide and there are 100,000 women living with HIV/AIDS. There is a very big opportunity for evangelism and discipleship. Rwanda is wide open for the massage of the gospel. Students listen to the gospel and a lot of them responded. I personally led 13 people to Christ in the campus. But one guy I met made me cry. His name is Fabian. I first met him at the get as we were processing permission to enter the campus. But we couldn’t finish our conversation because they harried us. But after three days as I was witnessing to another guy I met him again. He told me he was looking for me after we first met. Then he shared me his story. He lost all his families during the genocide. Now he is a second year literature student in the campus. He told me he couldn’t sleep in the night because the spirits of his dead families are bothering him every night. He also told me that he doesn’t have any one to share his problems. Because of this his grade is declining. I felt bad. I shared Christ with him. He prayed and received the lord then I took him to one of the class rooms and prayed for him for deliverance. Then I connected him to our Rwandese staff. But He said “I Wish You could stay longer so that I can share my heart more”. I saw he wasn’t happy when I connected him with another Rwandese person. But I had to leave Rwanda. I was wandering how many are like Fabian. The Need Is Huge, both the gospel and aid.”
If you would like to connect with our staff missionaries in either Rwanda or Ethiopia, we can help. Both have a huge need for financial and prayer support. As you can see from the letter above, they are being used by the Lord and they hearts tender to Him.
David’s team has been working very hard on creating an online Help Center to support many of the web tools and apps created by the GTO. Work began in earnest last November and as usual it turned out to be a much larger project than anticipated. Enormous or ‘mongo’ as the kids would say. Finally by God’s grace the Help Center came online in full capacity in early April.
Crucial Role of Volunteers and Partners in CCCi’s Mission
Hang on, don’t judge this post entirely by first glance at the title. I don’t want to give the impression that the mission field is saturated and we do not need more full time missionaries on the field. That is not the case. In fact, here where I serve, if the Lord instantly doubled the number of staff on my team we could immediately put them all to work and still have mission critical tasks that we would be stretched to accomplish. The harvest is indeed plentiful and we indeed need more workers.
However, Campus Crusade for Christ as well as many other missions groups have started to put a new philosophy into practice. This philosophy hinges off of a key idea: “For I am with you . . . I have many people in this city.” Acts 18:10 Essentially, the Lord knows all of His workers yet they may never join our group as a full time missionary.
Can we accomplish our mission without workers who report directly to us in a chain of command? Is it possible to build His Kingdom without planting ministries all over the world which have our “brand name” on them?
Probably a better question is: What is Campus Crusade uniquely qualified to do that we can give away to the body of Christ – essentially leveraging our strengths to enable others to do Kingdom work on their turf?
Let me give you on real life example which illustrates this new philosophy and how it can truly work:
Milan is a friend of mine who is a missionary with Athlete’s in Action – Campus Crusade’s sports ministry. Milan and his family live in Slovakia where he was born and where he came to know the Lord. His heart is to give every Slovak an opportunity to know Jesus via a platform – a common avenue – of sports. Great vision. And I must say Milan is a very humble, hard worker. Now let’s deal with the numbers and do a little reality check:
Slovakia is a country of 5.4+ MILLION people and is less than 2% Evangelical Christian. Milan serves on a team of two. Milan makes one and Tomas’ makes two. Athletes in Action does not have enough missionaries to send more than a couple to any one country. AIA has missionaries in about 75 different countries yet a in large majority of these countries there are at most 2 full time AIA missionaries to cover the entire country. So how do they ever have any hope of reaching all 5 Million?
Milan and team have been very creative in finding ways to expose mass numbers to Christ through sports venues AND to help connect new converts to local churches and discipleship. In fact, for the last several years, they have conducted Sports Clinics and Sports Camps which have exposed many thousands of people to Christ and built many dozen disciples. Their secret? They don’t do it themselves! – They train volunteers and partner with others.
This summer Milan has helped organize at least 22 different Sports Camps and venues which will connect people with the gospel through sports. My estimate is that these 22 sports camps will result in a minimum of 5,000 people having an opportunity to follow Christ. That is good news but even better news is the fact that a very high percentage of these 5,000 people will have contact afterwards with believers near them who can help build into their lives.
These 22 venues will be sponsored and run by at least 15 different Christian groups and organizations. Campus Crusade for Christ is just one among 14 others on the list. The others include local churches, other missions groups such as YWAM, Youth for Christ, and even a Roman Catholic private school. Milan helps train the volunteers but he lets them run the Sports Camps. Before and afterwards Milan provides further training, discipleship resources and organizational support to connect believers in community.
Must Milan give up some aspect of control to allow these other groups to run Sports Camps and follow up using their own methods? You bet! Will there be things that Milan – in some ways an expert on running Sports Camps – would do differently if he were in charge of each venue? Yes. Will there be communication problems amongst the various groups and won’t it be “messy?” Probably so. But is this a good way that Milan and team can see the Lord accomplish their goals of reaching the entire country in their lifetime? Yes!
This is a model that can be replicated in many countries. It is difficult to give up control but volunteers and partners can bring such lift and leverage to a small team that seeking them out is a no brainer. I look forward to putting this philosophy into practice as I help provide training in technology solutions.
Back in April I attended a one week intensive course here in Orlando to better equip me as a trainer of technology trainers. I use the adjective “intensive” to describe the course not just because it was several weeks of material crammed into one, but also because it was simply . . . intense – in a very good sort of way. In fact this was the best “back to school experience” I have had in a long time. This focus was not theoretical but geared towards immediate use on the field. It was just excellent common sense that needs to be put into practice anywhere training takes place.
The course was led by Terrence Donahue – a training expert from the Performance Maker’s Group. Terrence spent four years on staff with Athlete’s in Action – Campus Crusade’s sports ministry – and then has worked as a trainer and trainer of trainers for many corporations including the U.S. Department of Labor, Johnson & Johnson and Chic-Fil-a.
Terrence made the class fun and highly applicable to what I do to help train and equip missionaries on the field. The Lord arranged for this class at a very strategic time for me and my entire department – the Global Technology Office. I can not say enough about how “shelf resistant” Terrence’s training material is because I’ve pulled out his notebooks and used them multiple times just in the few weeks since the course.
Let me give you a peek at just one reading assignment from the class: “Why Training Fails.”
Now I’m officially a Certified Trainer’s Trainer. The title sounds a little scary yet I’m excited to help missionaries learn and put technology solutions into practice more effectively.
