Go100 Progress Reports
New GO100 East Africa Partnerships
?More so than ever before [missions] is a global, cooperative movement.?
- Bruce A. Koch (Mission Frontiers Magazine)
Historical Shift in East Africa
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| Kenya?s Finish The Task is an interdenominational missions movement mobilized around the commitment to reach each of Kenya?s unreached people groups. |
In 1997 a delegation of 80 Kenyan church leaders attended the Global Congress on World Evangelization (GCOWE) in South Africa. The GCOWE challenge to reach the least-reached peoples struck a deep chord within the Kenyan delegates who represented many denominations across the nation. Returning home they began to pray together about what role God would have them fill in reaching the unreached in their own backyard. This season of prayer led to the formation of Finish The Task (FTT), an inter-denominational movement of Kenyan churches committed to mobilizing, training and sending missionaries to engage each unreached people group in Kenya.
This was seen as a strategic shift in the direction of the church in East Africa. Now some countries which have long been missionary receiving nations are mobilizing members and resources to ?finish the task? of world evangelization. They are becoming true missions-sending forces.
Bethany?s eight year partnership with FTT has been a strategic and fruitful one. The growing emphasis on Africans reaching Africans has led to further opportunities for Bethany?s GO100 team to come alongside partners and encourage them in their vision to reach the least-reached peoples.
GO100 Partners in Tanzania and Burundi
In 2006, GO100 began working with the Evangelistic Fellowship of African Churches in Burundi (FECABU) and the Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa (PEFA) in Tanzania. The goal is to mobilize the Church and establish two new inter-denominational missionary training schools. These competency-oriented schools of missions will aim to equip field missionaries with the knowledge, character and skill sets necessary to cross cultural barriers with the gospel.
FECABU is a fraternity of evangelical churches in Burundi that has seen exponential growth over the past decade. Since the war in Burundi started 13 years ago, FECABU has grown from 40 churches to approximately 440 churches nationwide.
PEFA is an indigenous African network of churches established in 1963. Today, PEFA is comprised of approximately 450 churches across Tanzania and Kenya, with the greatest concentration of churches located in the area around Lake Victoria. The network ministries include church-planting, outreach to refugees and orphans, and film-making ministry, among others.
FECABU leadership team and missionary to Tanzania, Nathan Rasmussen (front row, 2nd from right) with GO100 consultants Bill Kieselhorst (back row, 3rd from left) and Paul Strand (front row, middle).
Vision Casting
A year-long campaign is underway to mobilize and train the Tanzanian and Burundian churches to take ownership of Christ?s Great Commission mandate. Network leaders have a strong vision for a missions movement within Tanzania and Burundi and have begun to strategically impart that vision to the broader Body of Christ.
In the process the aim is threefold: to identify and commission qualified candidates for missionary training, to create structures for sending graduates to engage the least-reached peoples with the gospel, and to make provisions for member care and on-going support to fielded cross-cultural workers, with the goal of long-term fruitfulness and sustainability.
Global Cooperation
GO100 consultant, Paul Strand, has been working closely with brothers Nathan and Steve Rasmussen to train leaders and work through the process of developing the new schools. The two missionaries, originally from Cloquet, MN, have more than 30 years combined service in Tanzania.
In October 2006, the partners collaborated for a 4-day consultation in Bujumbura, Burundi to train 200 pastoral overseers. The leaders received training in the biblical, cultural, historical and strategic perspectives on reaching the least-reached peoples. Each of these pastors oversees 4 to 12 local churches. Similar consultations were held in Tanzania.
The momentum continued in January 2007 when eighty-six church leaders from 25 denominations were trained in the western region of Tanzania. Bethany?s Africa Area Coordinator, Dan Germo, traveled from Kenya to join the teaching team, presenting 8 hours of the 24 teaching hours. Another 60 leaders were trained in Mwanza in February.
Nathan Rasmussen (front, left) and BIM Africa Area Coordinator, Dan Germo (far right, middle row), collaborated to train 86 leaders from 25 denominations in January.
Mobilizing a Grass-roots Movement
This year?s focus on mobilizing the churches includes 5 District-level missions conferences in Burundi to train 2700 church leaders. PEFA leaders plan 78 grass-roots seminars involving 206 churches in Tanzania. The seminars are designed to train thousands of church leaders over the next twelve months to provide leadership for the emerging missions movement.
Nathan Rasmussen training Tanzanian leaders to mobilize their churches for a nation-wide missions movement.
Stoking the Fire
The long-term impact of these seminars will depend upon a determined and on-going mobilization strategy. The mobilization campaign is designed to build a critical mass of missions-committed congregations and to raise up a prayer movement for the least-reached peoples and the national cross-cultural workers who are trained and sent by the churches to reach them. But the task of mobilization requires perseverance. After visiting one East African nation last year, GO100 consultant, Bill Kieselhorst wrote, ?Church mobilization for missions requires constant face-to-face contact?endless networking and faithful communicating?the fire [of missions] needs constant stoking by those of us who are called to tend the fire.?
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