Thursday, July 9, 2009

Church Register - Statistics


One of our administrative tasks is assembling the Mozambique church register for the "Into Africa Project" (see link on the side). Eventually this form will find its way on to the Into-Africa web-site.

The form keeps changing a little but we love the accountability that it brings and how it puts so much information at our fingertips. However, it is also a great encouragement as often we seem to get all bogged down in the problems that come our way and we miss the bigger picture of God's hand moving across this beautiful country - fortunately we serve a Creator who doesn't get bogged down on such things! The form has proven to be a tremendous challege for us getting the information. We linear Western-thinking folks understand forms like this but they are foreign (truly!) here and a real challenge to get filled out and ensure reliable data. And, it compounds with the literacy issues we have in more remote areas, although most people seem to understand numbers! Photo is of a rural church in Zambezia - that's our car in the background.

From our most recent report we have 97 churches that have resulted from the Village Church Planting (VCP) program here in Mozambique. This doesn't include the eight or so other churches we work with around Maptuo that are not included on this report. Most of these 97 churches are small village churches but they represent over 3600 members country wide. That is Good News!

"...Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day!" Ps 96:2

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