What are Acts 19 locations?

Acts 19 locations are places where the Gospel penetrates a city or region deeply, broadly and rapidly.  In the city of Ephesus in Acts 19 the Apostle Paul looked for those who were open and then boldly proclaimed the Gospel, which was accompanied by some amazing work of God in the lives of people in the city.  This resulted in widespread repentance throughout the region and people’s lives being genuinely changed.  Because of the breadth and depth of the impact in peoples’ lives there was significant pushback from the Evil One and resulting persecution.  

The following are some essential things to consider as we seek to see Acts 19 type results in “hub centers” in Africa:

·         We cannot control the outcome, but we can significantly influence the ministry environment which we create.   Results are up to the Lord!

·         We have to look for a coalition of the willing, those who share our values and want to partner together to see genuine Gospel transformation take place in the city and beyond.  We cannot do this alone!

·         We have to look for holistic ministries opportunities, proclaim the Gospel boldly, pray with expectancy, and expect pushback.  This is not for the faint of heart!

The following are the key indicators of when we are seeing Acts 19 results in a location: 

·         Rapid spread of the Gospel

·         Regional influence 

·         Transformation of lives

·         Churches are planted

·         Persecution comes as the Gospel transforms people’s lives

That leads me to ask, “Are we intentionally creating ministry environments that could result in Acts 19 movements if God chose to bring a significant harvest?”

Someone commented on my last blog, “That is a BIG request. It is a good thing that our God can handle BIG requests and wants us to ask powerfully in his name.”  I couldn’t agree more.  On May 30, 1792 Baptist Minister William Carey preached a sermon entitled “The Deathless Sermon” in Nottingham, England in which he sought to spur his fellow pastors to intentional evangelistic action.  The two main ideas of his sermon have been quoted from that day to today:

·         Expect great things from God

·         Attempt great things for God

The sermon was the launching point for what became known as the Baptist Missionary Society in England who later commissioned William Carey as their first missionary to India.  His ministry there led to him being called the “father of modern missions.”

The Apostle Paul summed it up well in the end of his prayer in Ephesians 3 when he wrote:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.   Eph. 3:20-21

Praying for Regional Impact

The world is rapidly moving to the city and it is changing the face of Africa at breakneck speed.  There are currently nearly 20 cities in Africa with populations of over 2 million.  The population of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo has just surpassed New York City making it one of the most populous cities in Africa, approaching nearly 10 million people most of whom live in abject poverty.  If projections hold true it will likely exceed 12 million people within the next 5 years.

Currently approximately 40% of Africans are living in cities and 60% are living in villages.  It is projected that within the next decade those numbers will reverse with 60% living in cities and 40 living in villages.  The implications for ministry in Africa as a result of this change are immense. 

Historically cities have been the government, education, business and transport hubs of any country.  The result has been that often what starts in the cities moves out to the rural areas of a country like the ripples on a pond after dropping a large rock in the center.

This fact is what led the Apostle Paul to focus much of his impact on the cities of his time.  One of the most powerful accounts of the spread of the Gospel in the book of Acts is found in Acts 19.  In this chapter we find the Apostle Paul in the city of Ephesus, a bustling hub of influence in its day.  People flowed in and out of the city on a regular basis for a number of reasons.  In Acts 19:10 we read that following just over 2 years of Paul’s ministry in Ephesus “all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.”  From effective ministry in a key “hub city” an entire region was impacted by the Gospel.

We are praying that God will move in powerful ways in the “hub center cities” of Africa in the days to come so that we can see entire regions impacted by the Gospel.  The third of our ReachGlobal Africa Division LeadTeam 10 Year Goals reflects our desire to see “25 Acts 19 locations where the Gospel impacts an entire region from a ‘hub city’.”  We are currently working to establish the beginnings for these types of ministries in six major cities in Africa.  In addition, we have several of our staff and partners in smaller “hub center” locations where the Gospel is taking root among the unreached people of the surrounding regions. 

What does it take to initiate something like that and how do you know if you are seeing “Acts 19” type results?  I’ll leave that for the next blog entry, but for now I would ask you to join me in praying that God will raise up dynamic Gospel centered ministries in the cities and hub centers of Africa where entire regions will be impacted and genuine transformation will take place.

We really can do more together….

One of the keys to seeing the rapid impact of the Gospel spread across Africa is expressed in our second 10 Year Goal, which is to grow 100 missionally aligned and strategic partnerships.  The premise of this goal is that we really can do more things together than we could individually.  For far too many years church ministry in the States and missions ministry around the world have been characterized by a provincial mindset that was more concerned about guarding what we were trying to do than to seek genuine Kingdom of God results where it really doesn’t matter who gets the credit and whose name is put by the success stories. 

For over two decades I worked to connect pastors together in the communities where I served in the States so that we could genuinely demonstrate the unity of the Spirit and our commom mission to reach our city for Christ.  One of the things that led me to leave pastoral ministry to take this leadership role with ReachGlobal six years ago was the heart of genuine collaboration that I saw in ReachGlobal leadership.  As a mission we are committed to the fact that we don’t own, control, or count anything as ours in the places around the world where we minister.  We partner with indigenous church and mission movements as well as other international missions who share our Biblical and missional values.  (Check out the ReachGlobal Sandbox  http://www.efca.org/reachglobal/resources/reachglobal-sandbox and the EFCA Statement of Faith http://www.efca.org/about-efca/statement-faith to learn more about the missional and Biblical values that are at the core of our partnerships.)  Names and titles don’t matter to us, but rather alignment on these key values is what opens the door for genuine collaborative ministry that I believe blesses the heart of God and advances the cause of the Gospel.  We don’t partner with everyone who comes asking to develop a partnership with us.  Healthy partnerships take time to develop.  I believe that all ministry is based in relationship and all relationships are based on trust and trust grows as we collaboratively minister together with those who share like values.

That is why we are working to develop missionally aligned and strategic partnerships in close to 20 countries in Africa right now and our goal is to have over 100 partnerships in the next 10 years.  In many of these countries we have multiple partnerships in various geographical areas and in a variety of different types of ministries.  In addition, God has been using our staff and national partners to initiate connections between church movements in several countries to help them see how they can work together to be more effective in seeing ministry grow in areas where their missional values align.  In Liberia today 6 different church movements are working together to equip and send church planting missionaries to the unreached people in Liberia and surrounding countries.  They are doing training together, strategizing together about where each group will focus their church planting efforts and even raising money for each other to help expand ministry!

Missionally aligned and strategic partnerships are one of the keys to the rapid advance of the Gospel.  We are on the lookout for the 100 key partnerships that we believe God has for us in Africa so that we can see the Gospel rapidly and deeply impact the continent.

Immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine...

As our Africa Division LeadTeam has been praying over our vision to “see the Gospel transform lives, communities, and institutions across Africa by the power of God’s Spirit” we have become increasingly aware that the only way this will be realized is by a major move of God across the continent.  The seemly endless brokenness that we face everywhere we minister is something that either presses us into greater faith or into increasing cynicism about whether things in Africa will ever change.  I can understand why people I know who have invested their lives in Africa for decades and deeply love the people there are hesitant to embrace a vision of not only individual lives being changed by the Gospel, but seeing whole communities impacted.  After all, missionaries came to Africa decades ago and the growth of the church there today is in many ways unprecedented, yet little seems to change related to the corruption, violence and brokenness that we see everywhere on the continent.  However, my study of the scriptures and my personal journey of faith have led me to deeply long for God do some extraordinary things by the power of His Spirit through the lives of His people in Africa. 

A few years ago TJ Addington, Executive Director of ReachGlobal, shared from his heart with our leadership that he was asking the Lord for 100 million people to be impacted by the Gospel in the next decade through the ministry of our staff and partners around the world.  It was amazing to see how this “faith goal” resonated with the ReachGlobal leaders that day.  Several months later he shared the same vision with our staff and national partner leaders in Africa.  The challenge so deeply touched the hearts of our African brothers that they spent time late into the night praying, worshipping and talking about what their responsibility was as African church leaders to see a significant number of these 100 million people be from Africa.  It led them to launch an indigenous African missionary equipping movement they have called ReachAfrica.  God is using them in powerful ways to see this becoming a reality in Africa today!

Our ReachGlobal Africa Division LeadTeam prayed about what our “faith goal” should be and the Lord clearly led us to the first of our 10 Year Goals, which is to see 25 million people impacted by the Gospel in Africa.  As I began to share this with our staff and partners I saw a couple of immediate responses.  Some were gripped by the challenge and immediately embraced the call to both pray hard and work hard to see this rapid expansion of the Gospel take place.  Others looked at it as a “pipe dream” so far out of reach that is was actually a “demotivator” to them.  To some it sounded like more organizational “hot air” designed to get people excited and others asked how we would ever measure it to know if we had reached it.

The purpose of this “faith goal” is not to have something to carefully measure and track in order to gage how close we are coming to reaching it.  Rather it is something that I believe is essential to keep us on our knees asking the Father to pour out His Spirit and to use the efforts of our staff and partners to radically impact Africa.  I know that if God doesn’t move powerfully we won’t get anywhere close to this goal.  Yet, I believe with all my heart that 25 million people impacted by the Gospel in a decade may well be too small a number if God moves in dynamic ways through His church in Africa.  The good news is that we are already seeing God do some things in this first year of our 10 year goals that have astounded me!  God is more than able and we are committed to being both faithful and faith-filled to see significant Gospel impact take place in Africa.

I am asking you to join me in praying that God would be gracious and allow 25 million people to be impacted by the Gospel in the next decade through ReachGlobal staff and partners in Africa.  I want to see this happen not so that our goals can be met, but rather so that His name will be praised and so that worship will ring out from Africa to bless the heart of God.   I am praying the Apostle Paul’s prayer from Ephesians 3 for Africa:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Th

A vision or a dream......you decide......

There is a natural follow-up to the two questions that I raised in my last post on the importance of having a ministry vision that is worth committing your life to see accomplished.  It is a simple question, "What steps do we need to take to make sure that this vision becomes a reality?"  You see, a vision without a plan is simply a dream. However, a God given ministry vision along with goals and a ministry plan born out of prayer and worked out in dependence on the Spirit of God can make a huge impact for the Kingdom of God.


Over the years I have seen a number of ministry visions die because they were in reality nothing more than dreams.  These ideas and opportunities were passionately held by ministry leaders, yet they weren't realized because there weren't "tracks to run on" in order to see the ministry vision move forward.  


The ReachGlobal Africa Division LeadTeam and I have been working over the past year to develop what we call a "Ministry Compass" that includes 10 Year Goals pointing toward our Vision Statement; 3 Year Goals that move us toward the 10 Year Goals; and 6 Month Tactical Plans that move us toward the 3 Year Goals.  In addition, each one of our 6 Month Tactical Plans have a name(s) beside them indicating who on our team is responsible to move it forward.  Everything has "line of sight" to the Vision Statement and our efforts are moving things toward the accomplishment of our overall 10 Year Goals.  Our team meets every 6 months to review our progress, evaluate our overall goals and set out the next 6 Month Tactical Plans.  This process is making a HUGE impact to help our vision not get stalled out and become simply a dream, but to truly make an eternal difference in the lives of people.


In the next several posts I will be sharing our 10 year goals and giving you some of the background behind our thinking in developing them.  Let me be very clear that these goals are born out of prayer and are being worked out in dependence on the Spirit of God.  We are convinced that unless the Lord of the church is guiding us and empowering us we won't see much of eternal value happen.  However, we believe that transformational things will start to happen when we are humbly listening to the Lord, making adjustments along the way as He leads, and depending on the empowering of His Spirit as we go.


Our Vision is to see the Gospel transform lives, communities and institutions across Africa by the power of God's Spirit! 

Compelling Vision

In my more than 30 years of full-time ministry I found myself at various times asking two extremely important questions. The first one is, "What is the vision that is driving the ministry forward?"  The second is a follow-up, "Is this vision compelling enough for me to go all out for?"  Unless we can articulate the answer to these two questions I am afraid that those of us leading ministries can easily slip into something that settles for less than God's best for what He has called us to do.  This is essential to me right now as I am at a point in my life where the clock is ticking and the years I have left to invest my life in ministry are far less than they were when I started.  I want to make my life count the most for the Kingdom of God as I serve Him and His church.

Over the course of the past year our ReachGlobal Africa Division LeadTeam has been prayerfully crafting a vision statement that captures what we believe the Lord is asking us to commit our lives to in ministry in Africa. After a good bit of prayer and discussion God led us to commit ourselves to this vision:

• To see the Gospel transform lives, communities, and institutions across Africa by the power of God’s Spirit

This vision was born from the conviction that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for the continent of Africa!  Unless we move to disciple people toward obedience and not simply knowledge as well as toward genuine transformation and not simply the accumulation of more information we will not see the impact of the Gospel in changing individuals, families, communities, and even entire nations.  I believe with all my heart that God's deepest desire is to see Gospel transformation radically impact Africa!  

Would you join me in praying that God would do this to His glory in Africa!  I believe as He does it in Africa it will ripple out to the rest of the world.

What is God doing in Africa through ReachGlobal?

God is opening up amazing opportunities in multiple places in Africa

·         Evangelism and church planting among the least reached people

·         Transformational holistic ministries touching people’s lives with the love of Jesus

·         Raising up a generation of Godly leaders

·         Partnering with African national church movements to see a generation of indigenous African missionaries and church planters equipped and deployed all across the continent

ReachGlobal has missionary staff living and ministering in six countries.  The two primary areas of focus for our staff is evangelism & church planting among unreached peoples and training & equipping a generation of African leaders, church planters and missionaries. 

ReachGlobal also partners with African national church movements and like-minded African ministries in 16 countries, which gives significant opportunities to multiply ministry by coming alongside the indigenous churches in each country.

We are extremely thankful for all that we have seen the Lord do in the past year. Over 1,000 African pastors, leaders, and church planters from 10 African nations have gone through an intensive Multiplication Church Planting Workshop to prepare them to plant churches among some of Africa’s least reached peoples. Church leaders from multiple African denominations have committed themselves to strategically work together to identify the least reached people around them and send church planting missionaries to reach them with the good news of the Gospel. 

God has raised up a new Equipping Team of ReachGlobal Staff in Tanzania in East Africa.  They are seeing amazing doors open for them to come alongside the church to equip a generation of leaders and equippers in multiple East African nations. Ministries among refugees in West Africa have led to many coming to Christ and the planting of churches among some of the least reached peoples in the region. A number of new missionaries are coming to multiple countries in Africa to serve in a wide variety of ministries. 

These are just a few of the things we have seen God do in the past year. Our vision to see the Gospel transform lives, communities, and institutions across Africa by the power of God’s Spirit is beginning to be a reality!

New Initiatives for a New Year

God is at work stirring in the hearts of a generation of leaders in the African church to see African missionaries and church planters identified, equipped and sent to the more than 260 million unreached Africans. We want to be a part of seeing that happen. One of our key goals over the next several years is to see four multi-cultural missionary equipping centers established in Africa. They will be strategically  launched in the east, west, central and south regions of the continent in partnership with ReachAfrica. 

Last month I was in Monrovia, Liberia in West Africa to speak at the graduation of the first group of 20 leaders to complete an intensive four month Missionary Equipping Course at the West Africa Missionary Equipping Center that ReachAfrica and ReachGlobal are launching there. What a joy it was to be able to see the passion for missions in the hearts of these African leaders and to be able to challenge them to take the baton and run the race well in reaching the unreached in Africa with the transforming message of the Gospel.  I wish that you could have been with me to experience this new dynamic of God's work in West Africa as He is raising up a generation of deeply committed African church planting missionaries to see the Gospel spread and healthy churches planted among all the peoples of that region.

Please join me in praying for these leaders and for the hundreds of other African leaders who we are seeking to equip as this generation's African missionary movement!  

Why do you do what you do?

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven." Matthew 6:1
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As I read these words from the lips of Jesus I find it is far too easy to simply apply them to the Pharisees of Jesus' day and to shake my head at the "dead religiosity" of the religious leaders of that time. Doing things for "show" and not genuinely from the heart was certainly a problem of the religious leaders of Jesus' day, but what about my life?

In doing my study on this verse I came across a powerful description of hypocrisy, which defines it as simply "doing right things for wrong reasons." I spent some time this morning looking back at my life of more than three decades in ministry. It was an interesting walk down memory lane of twenty-four years of pastoral ministry in two incredible congregations and six years of leadership in one of the most dynamic mission agencies in the world.

What I saw was a track record of working hard to do the right things, which is a very high value for me. (After all "responsibility" is one of my top five strengths on the StrenghsFinder.) However, when the Spirit of God shined His "motive search light" deep into my heart I found too many times when I did the right thing, but for the wrong motive. These wrong motives were often more about me and how people looked at me than they were about genuinely serving and loving people with the selfless love of Jesus. That means according to our definition I can rightly be classified as a hypocrite. Ouch! It really hurts to admit admit that! Yet, unless I admit it, confess it and ask the Lord to fill my heart with the right motives I will find myself continuing to do the right things for the wrong reasons.

Why not take time today and ask the Spirit of God to shine His "motive search light" into your heart? You may find He wants to deal with some important things in your heart like He did in mine.