Ethiopian Christians planning international outreach

Ethiopia (MNN) — The church on the African continent is gearing up for outreach across national borders. It’s all happening as part of Global Missions Fellowship’s ‘Africa Quest’ initiative.

‘Africa Quest’ is a plan for leadership and evangelism training with a goal of church planting in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Sudan. Global Mission Fellowship’s Mike Jorganson says the plan is working. “God’s giving a big vision for the church in Africa. We recently were in Ethiopia working with a denomination there. They have 6,000 churches and they have challenged each of those churches to plant at least one new church in the next two years.”

GMF has been invited to equip 300 of the regional leaders, who will then train five people in each church in evangelism, discipleship and church planting. That means 30,000 people will be equipped to do the work in the next few months.

Jorganson says the EvangeCube, a puzzle-like evangelism tool, should help many turn to Christ. “God’s provided 25,000 EvangeCubes to give them. So, that hopefully will translate into tens of thousands of new believers as well as thousands of new churches.”

Global Missions Fellowship is still recruiting people to join 30 teams that will help train these believers over the next year. The first team of people will be leaving next month.

Christians have faced incredible amounts of persecution in Eritrea, but according to Jorganson it’s not having an affect on Ethiopian believers. “The church in Ethiopia has plans to go across the border to take the Gospel across the border. The same is true for the Sudan. They’ve had a 21-year civil war there. They’ve recently signed a peace accord. The church in Ethiopia is planning to send missionaries.”

Funding is needed to help provide resources. Volunteers are also needed to help with training.