A Church on Fire for Evangelism

Great Commission Movement’s vision of seeing spiritual movements everywhere so that everyone knows someone who truly follows Jesus is far too big for any one organization to accomplish. So we welcome partnership of various kinds with churches and organizations which have similar aims. One way we do this is to provide training in evangelism and discipleship to churches which have a vision of mobilizing their people for this work.

One week in February, three GCMN staff trained 382 people in a church in Ajaokuta, Kogi State. People from different walks of life – teachers, principals, civil servants, church workers, artisans, students and others – learned or reviewed the basics such as how to experience God’s love and forgiveness, and how to be filled with and walk in the Holy Spirit. They also learned and practised an effective way of communicating the gospel with individuals, leading them to a decision for Christ, and helping them begin the process of spiritual growth.

Testimonies abound from the participants:

“This training has helped me personally to do evangelism. Before I was afraid when they mention evangelism, but now I have a burden not just for my school but also for my neighbourhood.” M.G. – student

“The training has opened my spiritual eyes of understanding, scripturally speaking, no more doubts about evangelism. It is now evangelism made easy. Focus in my Lord and God is now total.” – O.F.E.

“A revival fire has been ignited.” – Leader of Missions and Evangelism.

The church has evolved a plan for the next several months to deliberately raise leaders and to follow up on what happened during the week of training. The very next week, over 300 showed up for an evangelism outing and contacted over 130 people. We trust that God will continue to use this church to raise spiritual leaders and to reap a bountiful harvest of souls.

Deliberate Partnership in Church-planting: (The End-to-End Project)

Great Commission Movement in Central Nigeria Region has been involved for about four years now in an intentional church-planting partnership project (tagged End-to-End) with denominations in the region. Taraba was chosen as the state in which to start, and heads of denominations active there were called to a meeting to help them embrace the vision of saturating their land with the gospel by planting churches in every unreached village. By God’s grace, 45 churches had been planted at the end of the first year of work in Taraba, in partnership with several denominations.

Since then, the project has expanded to other states in the region, and the process of getting top church leaders excited about the work, surveying their target areas, making plans and agreeing to the terms of partnership is continuing. At least seven church bodies (dioceses or regional church councils etc.) are at various stages of this process at present. One of the major things that GCMN offers to the church leaders and to the people the churches choose to be their missionaries to the unreached villages is training. At the end of February a team consisting of several GCMN staff and a number of volunteers from churches who had already been trained went to conduct such a training in an area with many unreached villages. (In fact those attending this particular training were from a number of different denominations, having been mobilized through the Christian Association of Nigeria – CAN – in the area).

The trainers emphasize how essential it is for a Christian to have a vibrant personal daily fellowship with God, and then to reach out to others and enable them to have the same type of relationship. They try to instill the desire and commitment to multiplying disciples in the same way that Paul urged Timothy to do: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” (2 Tim. 2:2) Testimonies from the participants will convince you just how vital this training is, even for those who are already in leadership positions in churches.

A woman Church leader said, “I grew up in Church and all these years I had been thinking I was a Christian because my father was an evangelist and I grew up participating in all Church activities. I never knew I had to make a personal commitment of accepting Christ in my life as my Saviour. If I had died before these few days, it means I would have gone to hell.”

A pastor put it this way, “All these years I thought that being a Christian is getting involved in Church and going to Bible school, coming back and becoming a pastor. I was still going to the shrine to get some powers to protect myself. I am grateful to the Lord that now I have fully accepted Christ and I’m sure of going to heaven.”

One of the pastors shared the impact of this discipleship training, “There are two women who offended me for a very long time and I had made up my mind never to forgive them. But through what I have been exposed to, I have forgiven them”. In fact, forgiveness became one of the most thrilling aspects of the training for most of the pastors. There is such a lot of unforgiveness all over the Church within those areas, that they could kill each other just to get a position in Church.

Two weeks after the training one of the GCMN staff reported: “We are still receiving calls from our disciples asking one question or the other to help them answer their own questions with their disciples. Just yesterday one of them called and expressed his joy when I gave him answers to his questions.”

A Church with a Plan to Reach their Own Area

In other parts of the country, various other partnerships are also making an impact. In Ilesha, Osun State, a church that works in partnership with GCMN held three weekend outreaches to villages nearby in January and February, the first of a total of 24 such outreaches  that they have planned for the year. In these three communities the Jesus film was shown to a total of about 520 people, with about 225 of them indicating decisions for Christ.

These Christians saw God at work through their obedience to Him, even though Satan tried to cause havoc. Armed robbers came to one of the communities on the last day of the follow-up meetings, robbing nearly every household, but they were still able to minister to the people in spite of this set-back. In the next community a curfew had been imposed by the village elders to try to prevent a similar armed robbery attack, and it looked like they might not be able to show the film, but God intervened. The film was shown in the multipurpose town hall, with an attendance of over 200 and nearly half of them indicating decisions for Christ.