AfriGO en français est de retour 🇫🇷
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”
- Matthew 28:18-20
What's new this week
Nous sommes heureux de vous présenter la nouvelle édition du magazine AfriGO, Allons-y ! 7.1—la traduction française de notre édition anglaise, afin de partager ces récits missionnaires avec un public francophone plus large.
AfriGO is publishing again in French!! Please share with your French-speaking friends, and subscribe to receive future editions straight to your inbox.
new for you
Missionary profile – Laurent Charles Mgaya
When my dad was a child, missionaries arrived at their village in Namwangu, Mbozi district, Tanzania. They built schools and took my dad through education. Years later, his son became a missionary as well. I’m that son, now serving as a missionary with my church, Rivers of Life Ministries, in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Growing up in a Christian home on the border of Zambia and Tanzania, I learned the way of the Lord very early in life. My mother was a Sunday School teacher, and I tagged along in her teaching expeditions. When I was nine, my dad died, and in the same year, I started teaching alongside my mother in church. She trained us in all the Christian disciplines, including how to fast and pray.
When I was about 16 years old, I went to Zambia for a short-term mission.
Missionary profile – E from Malawi
Once, we shared with two Muslims how God created Adam and Eve, how they sinned, and sin entered the world. One was so broken and eager to hear if there was a remedy for this sin. We then shared about Jesus and his death on the cross. He said he’d do anything for this Jesus who remedied this sin.
We’re missionaries in the Sahel region and happy to see God draw people to Himself. I got saved after hearing a sermon from John 3:16. This simple scripture came to me anew; it’s like I was hearing it for the first time. I responded to the altar call and got saved. Later, I joined the World Mission Center (now Blantyre School of Mission). I felt a firm conviction to become a missionary. I learned that this was God’s vision and the burden for the world, and I wanted to be part of it.
Entrusted to the Dirt: Be a better ministry dad
There are many ways I could grow as a ministry dad. But alas, the Lord has not made us able to focus on very many things at the same time. So, here are two ways I’d like to focus on growing this year, based on wisdom that I’ve gleaned from other dads.
The first comes from some wise counsel I once received from a lay elder at our sending church. This brother works a full-time job at a car plant, but also regularly meets with members of the church for counseling and pastoral care. He and his wife also seem to have another new baby every time we go back to visit the US. Needless to say, they have their hands full. I once asked him how he balances these family and ministry commitments that often compete with one another. I found his answer extremely helpful.
Missionary profile – Milonde Michael
I was a very religious boy, always attending the local community church. Teenage hit me like a punch in the throat, and my life took a sharp turn onto Crime Avenue. I became widely known as the community thief and the chief disturber of public peace. But just like the dying thief on the cross, Jesus saved me in the nick of time. I now serve as a missionary in Malawi. I served with Operation Mobilization (OM) for a few years and am now with Youth with a Mission (YWAM).
My criminal activities were funded and supported by a friend. He taught me how to get money and how to take whatever I wanted to sell, starting with eggs from my mother’s chicken coop. I surpassed his training, became better than the teacher, and made my name as a thug.
One time, my cousin went to a certain fellowship and started sharing stories with me about the things happening in that fellowship. He invited me to attend the fellowship, but I was busy being a criminal.
From GMC: Member Care for Non-Westerners
The need for a Global Think Tank
Member care, understood as the holistic support of Christian mission workers, is increasingly
recognised as requiring contextual adaptation across diverse cultural settings.
The globalisation of Christian mission has intensified the need for effective systems of care for cross cultural workers. Traditionally, member care frameworks have emerged largely from Western contexts, often resulting in tensions when applied in non-Western settings. Increasingly, practitioners recognise that such models require contextualisation to continue being meaningful and effective.
In order to better understand how to contextualise member care training, a Global Think Tank on Contextualising Member Care Training was initiated by Rev. Dr. Alexandru Vlasin.
From OSCAR: Dear Younger Me
I learned about missions at an Assembly of God Church in Nairobi. The Church was led by missionaries sent from the USA, who served in Kenya for many years. While attending that church, I became a born-again believer. They also sent out local missionaries to other parts of the country, and I got to interact with some of them. I remember thinking that their lives were complex, and on top of that, nothing about their appearance made mission work appealing.
Because God has a sense of humour, I ended up in missions. One very convincing missionary came to Nairobi, preaching reverse mission. It concerns the movement of missionaries from non-Western countries (the global south), particularly in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, to developed countries (the global north). It is a reversal of the historical trend in which missionaries left Europe and the Americas to evangelise the colonial and Third World. He urges the African church to get out of its comfort zone and go to the end of the earth to share
From GMT: Involve the whole church in missions
While only a few people might actually go overseas or into a specific ministry, the mission work isn’t only for them; it’s God’s work and He invites all those who follow Him to partake in fulfilling the Great Commission. There are countless ways to incorporate missions into every aspect of the local church, and we’ve listed a few here for you to help you get your creativity flowing! We want to help you discover ways to involve your whole church in God’s Kingdom work.
The various ministries in your church all play an important role. There are ways to bring a missional focus to every ministry in your church by including a missional aspect. By incorporated a missional heart in your ministries, such as worship or children’s Sunday school,
The Core of CAPRO's Call
The call of CAPRO is to plant churches in the context of the people’s unique culture. The churches planted are not denominational churches or CAPRO-owned churches – they are churches owned by the people! These churches are Indigenous, ‘Self-Governing’, ‘Self-Propagating’ and ‘Self-Supporting.’ As there is the church in Antioch or the church in Ephesus in the New Testament, so we have the church among the Mumuye in Taraba State and the church among the Gbagyi in Kaduna State or the church among the Mwani in Mozambiqueor the church among the Ilchamus in Kenya. It is the New Testament type of Church Planting. Each church planted is expected to multiply other churches in their lands.
This model of church planting is drawn from the concept of ‘People Group Thinking,’ which came as a result of Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization held in 1974.It is a legitimate method for advancing evangelistic strategy. People group refers to a group concept over individuals. This same concept applies to our diaspora church planting, though the churches are composed of mixed cultures of different peoples.
From ALO - 5 digital rules for missionaries
In a world of increasing busyness and distraction, even in the missional sense, the digital world pulls us into its steady stream of consciousness, asking for as much as we can give, and then some. We are sorely mistaken if we think that as ministry workers we will avoid this. In fact, I find it more common that as we lose control of much of our surroundings and personal choices, we tend to try to take some control back by allowing ourselves freedoms in our personal time.
I personally struggle with my tendency to finish all my jobs, tidy my house to a reasonable standard (sometimes), and then flop onto my couch, phone in hand, for some “well-deserved me-time.” Far be it from me to discredit the comfort that provides. Rather I would like to challenge the lack of conscious thought around this and how we can implement healthy boundaries to perhaps better enjoy both the distraction itself and the life we lead outside of the screen.
I’ve been reading a lot on this in a general sense, and I liked some of the boundaries given by people who are thinking and working in this space constantly on behalf of the church.
Short-Term Missions Can’t Sustain the African Church
I grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, in what was then the small town of Kumbo. Like most locals, I used the term “missionary” as a synonym for “white person”. After all, every white person we knew was a missionary serving with Helimission. Most of them were pilots or doctors, respectively flying and treating critically-ill or injured patients, often in conjunction with Banso Baptist Hospital.
Looking at those missionaries, we all assumed they were wealthy. For they lived in the fanciest parts of Kumbo, often in compounds, near the hospital where they served. They enjoyed reliable access to the internet and other services like clean drinking water, electricity, and security. By Western standards, these missionaries were not necessarily rich. Only, they were relatively better off than the majority of Cameroonians where they ministered. These facilities were unimaginable to most of us.
Global Trellis: Sexual abuse on the mission field
I moved to China at age 27 with the plan return to “real” life after two years. Enter the angelic laugh track. Eighteen wonderful years later—okay definitely sixteen wonderful years and a few that were iffy—I transitioned back to the U.S. Since then, I helped create Velvet Ashes and write books for cross-cultural workers.
When I went to the field, it was with the best of intentions and far too much information front-end loaded for me to absorb. At that time, the only option was to spend weeks together in California learning about life in China. And you know what, it worked. It really did.
Front-end loading my experience, and thousands of others, worked because that was what was available. But today, in response to The Great Commission, we are accessing a fraction of what technology makes available.
God has called us to His Great Commission, which truly is the call of a life time.
