Last week was the last of the monthly, global, online conferences Stefan’s church- planting team hosted. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, some 2,000 Global Church Movements staff members worldwide were suddenly confined to their homes. It seemed that church-planting efforts would screech to a halt. But God had a different plan.
As the world pivoted to online meetings and churches began streaming their services, God began giving creative ideas.
Since July, God has helped Stefan’s team to host a monthly Zoom meeting in eight languages. They called the conference series “Bold Moves,” and every month, we based the theme on a bold move they could take to become better church planters.
When Stefan volunteered to become the conference director for these conferences, he could not have foreseen the challenges he would experience. However, he is looking back now and is in awe of how the Lord has helped them to connect with many church planters. Usually, when they would have a face-to-face conference, they would have, at most, 350 people attend it. Through these online meetings, they could have between 1,300 and 1,800 people attend.
Last week’s conference focused on celebrating what the Lord has done the past ten years through our church-planting efforts. We thought you would enjoy watching this video as you have been part of making it possible. Thank you for your partnership. Click on the image to watch the video.
Praise the Lord for the effective Bold Move conferences and pray that the impact of it will continue to help our church planters.
Marie tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday, Stefan has also started to feel sick (Monday). Pray for her healing and the rest of the family not to get the virus.
It is hard not to drown in the daily negativity and political divisiveness around us. We are so grateful for having hope in Jesus and for your support. We are also thankful that the work of the Lord continues. We celebrate this good news:
Ten Years and 1 million downloads:
Our evangelistic app – GodTools that helps you learn how to confidently share and explain to someone how they can begin a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, celebrated ten years of existence and 1 million downloads!
Whatch a short video about GodTools
Church-planting Potential:
The number of registrations to the annual Global Alliance for Church Multiplication conference for those involved with church-planting was ten times the face-to-face registrations due to it being virtual this year. So just under 4,000 people were able to be equipped to expand the church-planting work around the world.
New President For Our Ministry:
Steve Sellers was appointed by our Board of Directors as our new global president. Steve is a humble, godly man, and we are excited about his leadership.
However, since Marie has worked closely with Steve Douglass, the current president for the last several years, it is bittersweet. He has taught her much about leadership and being a spokesperson.
Steve and Christy Sellers
Please pray for:
Steve Sellers, as he becomes the third president in the nearly 70-year history of our ministry.
Our missionaries around the world to experience the Lord’s guidance despite the continued adjustments due to COVID-19.
Kenneth, our son, as he applies to universities and scholarships.
Good news! The women’s audio Bible Marie’s team is working on – now has an app. You can have the new her.BIBLE app for your phone in just three easy steps!
Step 1 Go to the app store on your mobile phone: Apple Store or Google Play. Step 2 Type in her.BIBLE women’s audio Bible in the search feature. Step 3 Add the her.BIBLE app to your phone and enjoy listening to the Word of God in women’s voices.
Here’s what some others are saying about her.BIBLE “My kids beg me not to turn it off at night. I think it’s such a gift and there’s something that’s different than the other ways we have read the Bible to them.” Evangeline
“I decided to listen before sharing with my wife, which left me listening to the whole Book of Matthew in the middle of the night. I listen to hundreds of hours of audio Bible every year (male readers), and I noticed right away that the female narrator brought a different facet of God’s heart, which I had never before experienced. Hearing a daughter read her Father’s love letter really gives a new perspective.” Colin
“I just want to say thank you, a thousand times to the people who put together her.BIBLE. It is such a powerful way to soak up scripture.” Sarah, a human trafficking survivor
Prayer Requests:
Praise the Lord for the app and pray that the her.Bible team can complete the recording of the remaining Old Testament books.
Pray for Stefan’s team as they plan the third global Zoom meeting for church planters for 1 September 2020. Both the previous meetings were well attended and inspiring.
Pray for Kenneth, who started Grade 12 and Monica Grade 10.
The dress-rehearsal was a disaster! And we were three days from the actual event! Emotions were running high in Stefan’s team as they were trying to find solutions for all the technical difficulties.
The dream was to have a Zoom conference for all our church planters and partners around the world. The content would be short 10 minutes slots delivered by different speakers, break-out groups of 6 people to discuss the content, and apply it to their context. For this, we had to ensure that people end up in discussion groups with people who spoke their language. We had to stream the conference in 8 languages.
This meant lots of things could go wrong. And with the dress-rehearsal, it did!
One team joining from Mongolia
However, God heard our cries for help. On Tuesday, 14 July 2020, the Bold Moves 3 conference kicked off with a bang!
People from 116 countries joined the conference using 1,309 devices. Many of the devices had more than one person watching. We are so grateful for the good participation. The technical issues were minimal, and some things worked that we have no explanation of why it worked. We can only say that God did it!
One of many Zoom screens – this one has Spanish speakers
Thank you so much for your prayers!
Since this worked so well, we will do it again on the first Tuesday of every month till the end of the year. The topic for August is to explore partnerships in urban church planting efforts.
Kenneth managing the Spanish stream and Monica the 3rd English stream
Watch one of the short stories from Moldova told at the conference to inspire others to think creatively in reaching people with the gospel.
Amid lockdowns, restrictions on travel, and uncertainties, Stefan’s team had a great idea. Why not have an online conference for our nearly 3,000 church planters and partners?
We have never attempted to do something like this. Usually, we will have smaller, localized conferences because of the cost involved. But COVID-19 is allowing us the opportunity to experiment and try something new.
On 14 and 15 July, for three hours each day, they will virtually bring together our church planters from over 150 countries and will offer translations into 7 languages. Each language will have a specific link to follow the short presentations and then go into virtual groups to discuss what they have learned and how they can implement it in their own ministry.
Stefan, the conference director, shares, “We desire for every church planter to have the mindset of multiplication in everything that they do. We will be looking to whet their appetite by sharing examples from around the world of others living that out.”
Please pray for the following:
For the conference:
That the church planters will be encouraged and motivated towards the task of fulfilling the Great Commission.
All the technical stuff – Internet connectivity, conference platform, speaker and system transitions
The translation of the conference – for people to understand.
Follow through by teams, cities, and nations after the meeting. That partnership opportunities may be discovered and explored.
We are taking some required theological training until 24 July. These courses are our last ones to fulfill all the requirements of our organization. We are excited to be completing this but need stamina and diligence for it amid all our other responsibilities.
For Kenneth and Monica to enjoy the last few weeks of their summer vacation. They are due to go back to school on 10 August.
Be assured of our prayers as we all make adjustments to living with the reality of COVID-19. May the Lord flood you with peace and a strong sense of His presence.
I (Marie) grew up seeing my father on his knees, praying for God to reveal Himself to those behind the Iron Curtain. When Communism fell, we celebrated it and shed tears of joy, and he recalled how he had joined believers around the world to pray for that to happen for many years.
Then his focus, and that of many believers, shifted to the Muslim world, praying for God to reveal Himself to millions of seekers.
We just completed 30 days of prayer and fasting for Muslims during their Ramadan month of fasting. My father passed away, but I wish I could have shared with him some of the stories I heard this month. Here are a few:
Surge in Subscribers to Arabic Church Online
More than 10,000 Arab-speaking Muslims in a closed Middle Eastern nation subscribed to our Arabic Church Online YouTube channel.
A Million Face Masks
In one country, our staff members and partnering churches have started distributing one million face masks to reach people for Christ.
The face mask comes with an evangelistic booklet and a note that says, “If you would like to have true peace, please visit these websites.” The websites have videos and articles to help point them to Christ as well as the “JESUS” film in their local language.
To date, 850,000 facemasks and booklets have been distributed through 805 churches in 63 provinces or cities in this secure country. This has helped ease restrictions for the church planters because authorities see that they are helping the communities.
No Restrictions Can Stop God
In a highly restricted country, eighty people have accepted Christ online during this month.
One young man, who we will call Matt, accepted Jesus on 12 May. He completed all of the basic follow-up lessons, and the week after he believed, he saw three others accept Christ as he shared the Truth that he had just found! Matt is now discipling these new believers, going through the basic follow-up lessons with them.
When our team met Matt online, he had Covid-19 and was searching for Truth. It’s fantastic to see through his story that NOTHING can stop the move of God’s Spirit. Not a global pandemic. Not an illness. Not strict lockdowns. Not even some of the highest security situations in the world.
Thank you
We know you are reading these stories in your hard circumstances due to the pandemic. Again, we want to thank you for your continued partnership with us as we bring the Good news to a hopeless world. We trust that your hope in Jesus will be real and encouraging for others around you. Be assured that we are praying for you!
Kenneth and Monica successfully survived their eighth week at home due to COVID-19. We asked them to give you an update about their lives.
Monica:
“Wow, none of us suspected that 12 March would be our last day at school for our 2019/2020 academic year. All our schoolwork is now online and even though we are not seeing our teachers, we are required to check in with each subject weekly. We will hopefully return to school when our new academic year starts in August.
I love experimenting in the kitchen and I now finally have the time to use all the exotic ingredients I make my Dad bring for me from his international travels. I especially love the spices from India.
Another new skill I’m developing is helping my Mom’s team with one of their projects called her.Bible. They are creating the first free audio Bible read by women. My job is to create pronunciations for difficult names. For example the word, Eglath-shelishiyah(E GLATH shel eesh ee uh) from Jeremiah 48:34. I had to learn a lot about the correct pronunciation of all kinds of names. Just for fun – the book of Isaiah has 178 proper names that appear 666 times! You can go and listen to the New Testament on her.Bible It will also soon be available to download as an app.”
Kenneth:
“I had the opportunity to be part of a dual-enrollment program this year. It allows select high schoolers to also attend university courses at our local university. I attended a full school day, and then from Monday to Thursday, I also attended evening classes at the university from 6-10 pm. I also continued to be part of the school swimming and tennis team.
Needless to say, when we received the stay-at-home order, I was relieved. All my classes shifted online, and it was tough, but I had a bit more free time. Two weeks ago I finished my university courses and I’m happy to say I passed all seven of my courses with good marks.
Now I’m putting all my efforts into passing my Grade 11 classes well. Although I’m missing my sport and friends – I enjoy catching up on some video games.”
Prayer Request:
Thank the Lord that Kenneth and Monica can continue with their schooling and are set to finish the academic year well.
Pray for stamina – we continue to see an increased openness to spiritual things and we are working long hours to see the gospel go out.
Pray for many who have met Jesus in the last two months due to the COVID-19 situation, that they will grow in their faith and will find Christian communities to care for them.
Nothing could have prepared us for the circumstances of Easter 2020. We feel a bit like the disciples must have felt that first Easter – shocked, grieved and then amazed and hopeful. In the midst of this all, we have been so aware of the truth of Ps 46: 1-2 “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear …”
Have you had some similar experiences? Are you also grieving some things during the COVID-19 pandemic while you are blessed by the evidence of God’s hand in the situation?
5 AM Zoom call with some of our missionaries from Central and Eastern Europe
Like so many around the world, we have been house-bound since the middle of March. Two things have kept us very busy:
Marie is on our global crisis management response team, responsible for communications. Our ministry had to cancel countless mission outreaches and conferences. A personal blow for Marie was that the Global Communication’s Summit that she put together for communicators in our ministry, was also cancelled.
Helping all our missionaries around the world become on-line missionaries as they are not allowed to operate as before. We are creating training materials and meetings are now taking place over Zoom.
Seeing how quickly our missionaries adapted to their new realities is one of the highlights. It is also evident that there is a greater openness to spiritual matters as people’s worlds are shaken.
Observing this openness, especially for prayer, gave us a new idea. With the help of our Ethiopian co-worker, Miheret, we advertised a zoom prayer call on Facebook for 30 minutes to pray for COVID-19. We called our prayer experience “There Is Hope”. We decided to test it in Johannesburg first. People signed up so that we could give them more details.
To our surprise – 116 people signed up and on Friday night, we hosted our first event of this kind. We read scriptures and then prayed for different COVID-19 needs: the sick, the vulnerable, the healthcare professionals, our leaders and then also those who are affected economically by the situation.
There is Hope – Johannesburg zoom prayer call
We then also gave the 12 people who joined the call an opportunity to have a personal relationship with Jesus who is our ever-present help in trouble. A number of the people on the call were already Christians, but one person committed his life to the Lord. He has been going through a follow-up videos series with us.
Praise the Lord with us for this man’s salvation, and pray that he will continue to grow in his faith.
Pray also as we try this prayer experience in more cities for people who are curious about spiritual things. Sunday we tried something similar in Ethiopia and had similar results.
Pray for all our missionaries as they are trying different things to connect with people to bring the gospel to them.
We are spending more time in prayer at the moment – what can we pray for you in this time?
COVID-19 is a word that none of us have ever heard about three months ago and now it has transformed our lives. How are you coping with its effect? Know that we have been praying for you and your family, for safety and for peace. Our family is well despite the impact of the virus.
As the COVID-19 situation worsened around the world, our teams scrambled to produce a ministry guide of best practices for how to minister at a distance that has been circulated all around the world. It includes some links to ready-made content to share on the topics of fear and anxiety, which are so relevant right now. We also added other resources that could help as you reach out to others. (You might find it helpful to pass along to your church leadership and pastors or share on social media).
This week our digital team is hosting 5 webinars on 5 continents. Already 1,200+ people have signed up from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Latin America. We need your prayers.
Please pray:
For energy as coordinating these webinars will require early mornings, late nights and middle of the night working across timezones, all while working from home.
For the technology to “just work” as people connect from around the world and join these equipping times.
Our webinars will help people figure out new ways of doing ministry during COVID-19 and answering these questions:
Arobogast Henga unfolded a big piece of paper on which he had drawn his church multiplication chart showing the 25 “generations” of churches God had raised up in the past two years.
In church planting, “generations” is the term used to describe successive church plantings: a church plants a church (two generations), which plants a church (three generations), which plants another church (four), and so on. Four generations is considered a “movement,” but 25 generations of churches planting churches is simply amazing!
Arobogast, like his father and grandfather before him, had been a fisherman in Tanzania. His family had always practiced witchcraft, believing it would help them catch more fish. In 2011, hoping to excel in his fishing business, Arobogast traveled to a nearby district known for its high concentration of witch doctors. Instead, he met Kanagana, a Baptist preacher proclaiming Jesus. And just like Peter, Andrew, James, and John in Matthew 4, Arobogast immediately left what he was doing, followed Jesus, and became a fisher of men and women.
In November 2017 Arobogast attended an MC2 (multiplying churches and faith communities) training offered by our staff in Tanzania. During the training, he learned about the vision to plant a church for every 1,000 people on earth.
He also learned about the concept “person of peace,” “pray-care-share,” and the multiplication of disciples and churches. The training taught him to enable newly planted churches to sustain themselves through intentional discipleship, empowering new believers for ministry and raising up leaders to engage new areas with evangelism and church planting.
Arobogast is a devout disciple of Jesus, a passionate evangelist, and a prudent strategist of church multiplication movements. He walks from one village to the next, coaching church planters, casting vision for multiplication, and sending new leaders to other districts so they can find people of peace and expand the work. His vision is to see a church planted in every village in Tanzania.
But Arobogast is not the only one with this vision in his country; he is a part of a much larger, national, and even international, vision.
A Common Vision In March 2015, several Tanzanian church leaders were among the 123 leaders from eight countries who attended the launching of the East Africa GACX (Global Alliance for Church Multiplication). At that event, the Tanzanian delegation was inspired by the vision to plant a church for every 1,000 people in their country. Upon returning home, they agreed to work together and set a national goal of 67,500 vital churches. As they collaborate across church denominations and mission agencies, they learn from and support one another, they avoid duplication and competition, and they make a greater impact for the kingdom through increased fruitfulness.
GACX is a worldwide network of churches and mission organizations committed to accelerating global evangelization through multiplication of churches and faith communities.
Since the birth of GACX in 2011, it has grown to a membership of 90 global ministries with several national and regional expressions (like the one in East Africa). Between 2010 and 2018, through mutual collaboration and generous sharing of resources and strategies, GACX members have collectively planted more than 1.75 million churches and groups.
God is working in powerful ways all over the world, despite increasing government restrictions, persecution, and anti-Christian sentiment. Churches and organizations are working together, and believers are giving generously. Furthermore, the gospel of the kingdom is being preached, churches are rapidly being planted and technology has accelerated the way we do evangelism and send missionaries.
It’s all part of God’s plan: a former fisherman now catching men and women for Jesus, the Tanzania national plan to see a church planted in every village and neighborhood, the growing work of our church planters and the intentional collaboration of the body of Christ through GACX. Jesus’ vision of the gospel being preached in the whole world is becoming reality.
Personal Update Thank you for praying for Stefan’s mom as she recovers from her fractured pelvis. Stefan was able to find her a place in an assisted living facility and we are waiting for the paperwork to be finalized for her to move in there. Please continue to pray for her healing and for Stefan’s sister and family who is currently taking care of her.
