Thursday, September 23, 2010

Third Generation Church

Since my last entry, we have issued two church planting reports in conjunction with our friends in Mozambique. We continue to be amazed at what God is doing in Mozambique with our fledgling OMS-founded denomination. We now have 125 churches as compared to the 10 when we arrived four years ago – not anything we did – we were the planting and watering department, it was God who did the increase. I am convinced that God works through very ordinary people so there can be no doubt that only He deserves the credit.

One of the reports we issue is what is called a “church register”. It lists by name each church planter/pastor and the church or churches that he has planted with some basic information about those churches. This last report contained two very significant things that thrilled us:

1. We have a new training center outside the city of Quelimane (the meaning of which is "kill a man" because of the low-land and high incidence of Malaria!). We had visited the pastor of a church in that area who wanted to partner with us and had already begun to teach our program. He has fully engaged with us and is now fully participating. That is wonderful. He is older, experienced, and trained, which is God’s provision, that is clear. I will try to include a photograph if our Internet speed will let us upload. His name is Arcanjo. He and his church planter/pastors are responsible for starting five churches. This photo is at Arcanjo's church, he is the man on the right and his wife and youngest child is to his right.

2. In addition, we have our first ‘third-generation’ church. What is that? Well, our Trainers that teach at our training centers have as many as 20 people who they are training. When one of those 20 starts a church that would be the first generation church. That Pastor (of the first generation church) is expected to be mentoring and training his own group of people, some of which would start a church, and that would be a second generation church. And if we are all doing our jobs right, then the leader of the second generation church will in-turn work with another group of people, some of which would start a church – that would be a third generation church. The idea is that we have a self-sustaining program that continues on and on, with people teaching what they know, but everything stemming from the formal training program at the Training Center. In some countries in Africa where OMS uses this program, we have 7th generation churches, perhaps higher now. Sound familiar, mmmmm, let’s see, there was Jesus, and 12 disciples, then there were the 70, a three-year program, and then there is Paul and his journeys, mmmmmmm.

Our first 3rd generation church is in a place called Tatala, stemming off from our Training Center near Elope, where Dinis Ramos is our trainer. God is blessing Dinis as he teaches at two different centers. You might remember that a few months ago, he took some of his church planter/pastors and they did an extensive evangelism campaign using the Jesus film, where over 1000 people made decisions for Christ. I suspect this church is more fruit from that campaign. Pray for Dinis, for where there is great success, there is great opposition and resistance as well. It is not easy for him. Dinis is in the back row of this photograph of some of his planter/pastors (stripe shirt). The other photo is the outside of the same training center.

We begin our first ‘road tour’ tomorrow where we will be traveling and sharing, speaking, preaching, and teaching about the marvelous things that God is doing in Mozambique. Pray with us for traveling mercies and that we can represent the Field and our Lord well. This kind of life-style does not come easy for us as we continue to grow in understanding of what ‘Trusting God’ really means. But, we have a great story to tell – but those of you who read our blog – you already know the stories!

Dave & Ann

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, Amazing Love, now flowing down

From hands and feet, that were nailed to the tree, As grace flows down and covers me.

It covers me…..”

Song by David Bell, Luie Giglio and Rod Padgett

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