Church Planting Conference

This past week, we were in Johannesburg, South Africa to attend a church planter's conference at our OMS South African headquarters.  It was a last minute thing that we were invited to by our OMS Regional Director, who is also the head of the OMS South Africa Office.   We attended a similar conference in our first term and it was good to reconnect with church planters from all over Africa.

We each presented the work for our various countries and it was exciting to see how God is moving across Africa.  This program partners with established church denominations in target countries, sharing the vision and strategy for church multiplication as supervised by Africans.  I see great wisdom in the strategy, which functions with minimal missionary support - it's a departure from the standard missionary model, which challenges thinking of lots of people.  However, when I consider the statistics of what has been accomplished with a minimal staff, it is with certainty that this church planting movement, which was birthed out of South Africa, will be remembered as one of the major movings of God's Spirit in our time.  It is exciting to have a small part in such a program.

We heard stories of great and wondrous things in countries that I am not free to mention because of the opposition that might result.  Suffice it to say that Into-Africa is working in approximately 1/2 of the countries in Africa and over 10,000 churches have been planted since the program began around 2003.

In addition, Into-Africa is beginning a pilot program to reach into these churches with training and assistance for the communities covering eight target subject areas, things like healthy living, conflict and crisis, family, HIV training, community mobilization, to mention a few.  A dynamic young couple who were born in Africa but have lived all over the world, bring a energetic and dynamic enthusiasm to this new part of the Into-Africa project as they focus on orphans and the disadvantaged within our churches.  It is the next step in a process of building the church.

I have something like 37 pages of notes from this conference that I need to boil down into things we can carry forth to our Trainers who are training and raising up new leaders throughout Mozambique.  We can include this in our next conference.

This particular conference was in English with translation into French as we had a large number of attendees from French-speaking countries.  Maybe my brain is changing, but I was following some of the French as my high school and college French tried to seep out of my hardened brain!

We stayed in a lovely guest house (bed & breakfast) for the first few days and then moved to the house of some friends of our Director, who also serve on the board of OMS South Africa.  We were blessed to make new friends in South Africa.

We are back in Maputo - our shipment is here, but still not out of the Port.  We hope this will conclude in the next couple of days.

Next to our house today, after a wind storm, a young owl fell to the ground. Interesting fellow and we are hoping the mother owl will keep him fed and protected in the coming days.  He moved around the base of the tree with the shade - it was really hot today; a true scorcher.

We started our day by taking missionary friends to the airport and afterwards unloaded some books we'd make copies of for our trainers and attended church at the church that meets in our Seminary.  It was the first time back at this lovely church since we've returned.  Great sermon by a young man who attends our Saturday certificate-level classes at the seminary.

I'm writing from borrowed Internet - we were so spoiled in South Africa with wonderful access to Internet - still don't have our poor internet situation resolved.  Would appreciate your prayers for this - it just seems so unnecessary (to have this poor service) and we need a reasonable solution.

Blessings to you this Sunday.  Thank you for standing with us.

Dave and Ann

Four Questions to Ponder:
"Where are you?"  Genesis 3:9 - God asks Adam after the fall for He wants relationship and we need relationship with our Creator.
"Where is your brother?" Genesis 4:9 - As God asks what happened to Abel for he cares about each of us and our relationships one with another.
"Who am I?"  Exodus 3:11 as God asks us to recognize who He is.
"What is that in your hand?" Exodus 4:9 - as God shows us that he can use the simple things of life to accomplish great things, for if we understand who He truly is, if we are in relationship with him, and if we are open to what he would have us do, He can accomplish great things through frail people like us, so that only He can receive the glory.  It is not about us, it is all about Him.
(From a devotion given at the church planter conference)