The Times They Are a Changin'

I have been traveling to Africa for over 15 years and during that time I have seen many changes on the continent.  Some of the changes have been for the better and unfortunately some have not.

One of the surprising changes that is evident everywhere in Africa is the prevalence of cell phones.  Whether you are walking the streets in a large bustling city or winding down the paths leading to a quiet rural village you will see people talking and texting on their cell phones.  One of the fastest growing economic sectors in Africa is telecommunications.

As mobile phone use expands the availability of Internet access is growing as well.  Almost all of my African friends have free Gmail or YahooMail accounts and more and more are "friending" me on Facebook.  Internet cafes are bustling with activity in most neighborhoods and in the past year Internet access is growing as more and more Africans have smart phones.  Every African home has at least one radio and even in most rural village you can hear the chatter of the news from the battery powered radios in the huts.  In addition, satellite television dishes are sprouting like flowers on hones in more and more African cities.

Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds everywhere in Africa and we are committed to find ways to leverage it for the Gospel.  We are seeking to develop partnerships with ministries who are using the Internet and mobile phones to share the Gospel in creative and engaging ways.  We are also looking at creative ways to use low power FM radio to both share the Gospel and to do discipleship and leadership development training in areas where roads are so bad that it is difficult for leaders to gather in one place for training.

As we move into the next decade our goal is to maximize technology and media for greater Kingdom impact. The opportunities to do that in Africa may be way more exciting than most of us could have ever imagined just a couple of years ago.

A New Adventure in African Missions

In two weeks ReachGlobal staff from 6 African countries and the USA along with African National Partner Leaders from over 10 nations will gather at Brackenhurst Conference Center in Kenya for our ReachGlobal Africa Division Conference.  It will be a week of worship, prayer, teaching, learning, interaction and fellowship all focused on how we can more effectively see the Gospel transform Africa.  I am looking forward to reconnecting with friends and ministry colleagues as well as to see some essential ministry partnerships develop for ministry in the days ahead.

In 2007 we held a similar gathering at Brackenhurst that set the course for one of the most significant changes in  our ministry in Africa in the past several decades.  It was the first year that we invited African National Partner Leaders to be a part of our Africa Conference and God used that to launch a new missions initiative in Africa.  During one of the evening sessions our Executive Director, TJ Addington, shared a vision to see 100 million people impacted by the Gospel in 10 years through the ministries and partners of ReachGlobal around the world.  He went on to share that we as a mission are committed to missions being a worldwide partnership of Christ followers from all nations collaborating together to reach those unreached by the Gospel.  At the end of the meeting we called our African National Partners up front and prayed over them as our partners together in ministry on the continent.

When the meeting ended my wife and I went to our room to get some much needed rest.  Our African brothers gathered together in one of their rooms for a different reason.  They spent most of the evening in prayer, worship and discussion as they wrestled with the part God was calling them to in reaching the more than 260 million unreached Africans.  One of them said, "If these American missionaries are this committed to reaching Africa what is our part in seeing 100 million touched with the Gospel?  We're African and it is our responsibility to reach the unreached on our continent!"

The next morning they asked to meet with TJ, me and other ReachGlobal leaders.  During the meeting they shared about their discussions during the night and told us they had come to the conclusion that God was calling them as leaders of African Evangelical Free Churches to form an alliance to raise up, equip and send African church planting missionaries to the unreached in Africa.  Their request to us was simple, "We believe God is calling us to do this, but we've never done something like this before.  Will you come alongside us and help us figure out how to make it a reality?"  It took less than a second for us to say "YES!"  At that time they chose Pastor Nubako Selenga to be the Director of the movement and Pastor David Kiamu to be their Church Planting Director.  They settled on the name "ReachAfrica" and a new indigenous African missions movement had been born.

Since that time Pastor Selenga and Pastor Kiamu have come on staff with ReachGlobal as African missionary movement leaders.  They serve with me on the ReachGlobal Africa Division LeadTeam and continue to develop the ministries of ReachAfrica.  Pastor Kiamu wrote a Multiplication Church Planting training course that has been given to over 1,100 potential African church planting missionaries in 9 countries over the past 12 months.  Second and third generation church planter trainings are beginning to be launched in numerous locations.  Hundreds of churches have already been planted as a result of this training and more are being planted every month.  David has just recently completed a Church Planting Master Trainer and Coaching training manual and they will begin to train the first master trainers and coaches later this spring.  God is beginning to launch an incredible indigenous missions movement through ReachAfrica.

Over the next decade our desire is to find the healthiest ways to develop, empower, and release ReachAfrica as a sustainable African mission movement.  This may well be one of the most important legacies that we can leave the church in Africa.  I would appreciate your prayers both for our upcoming conference and for our efforts in the years to come as we seek the best ways to come alongside ReachAfrica.

The Gospel in Word and Deed

One of my favorite texts in the New Testament is found in Luke chapter 4.  The chapter begins, "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry."  Each time he was tempted by the devil he responded with scripture and boldly stood in obedience to his Father. Following the time of temptation in the wilderness we read that "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him."

He went to his hometown of Nazareth where on a Sabbath day he went into the synagogue and was asked to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  He read the following Messianic prophecy:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lords favor.

When he finished reading he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down to deliver the morning sermon. The text says, "The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, 'Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing'."  This is a clear claim that he was in fact the promised Messiah!  The response of the people in his hometown synagogue is surprising to me.  Initially they all spoke well of him until he made a clear point in his sermon that God's loving redemptive reach extended beyond the Jewish people to intentionally touch the Gentile people around them.  At that point they became enraged and had intentions to kill him.


The remainder of Luke 4 and on into Luke 5 give us keen insight into Jesus' heart for how the message of the Gospel is to be shared with the people who need most to hear it.  He went from place to place powerfully teaching the people and lovingly ministering to their needs.  This sense of declaring and demonstrating the Gospel was central to the ministry of Jesus and should be central to our ministry as well.

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist/liberal controversy several generations ago left us with a divide that has hampered the message of the Gospel around the world.  The fundamentalist/evangelical camp focused on the proclamation of the "true Gospel" while the liberal camp focused on what was called the "social Gospel" of caring for the poor and needy.  The result was that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not communicated in its fullness by either camp.

The reality is that the good news of the Gospel must be both declared and demonstrated to most effectively touch the lives of lost people.  We can't preach the redeeming message of the work of Christ and not show his loving compassion to the hurting and broken without missing a key part of the heart of the Lord.  In the same way if we simply care for the needs of the hurting and broken without talking to them about the redeeming work of the Savior we rob them of the eternal hope that is the foundation of why we care for them in first place.

This is why we in ReachGlobal Africa are committed to sharing the good news of the Gospel in its fullness as we both proclaim and demonstrate it to a hurting and broken world.  One of our 10 Year Goals for ministry in Africa is to see a complete integration of the proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel message through the teaching and ministry of our staff and partners.  I believe with all my heart when we see this taking place all across the continent we will see the genuine Gospel transformation that we are longing to see and Jesus will receive maximum glory as individuals and communities are forever changed.