Reaching Far Out

The church along the southern edge of the desert region.

We’ve always been very impressed with our partner church because of their vision for reaching the new and growing cities in their country that don’t have a church presence.  These sub-regional capitals are getting built up by the government with infrastructure to be influential in the country’s future, and so it makes sense to try to provide a witness in these key places for the future.  Out of the 52 original target cities from six years ago, there are still 32 left for the church to reach.  They hope to send pastors to about six new places a year now.  

The most noticeable area of growth has been the region in the far north where it is mostly desert.  The regional capital there is a major city where they've long tried to plant a church and start a radio studio ministry.  Finally, last year the church got a strong leader to take his family there and do some serious outreach.  They started with seven people in worship last fall and now have 20, with several new believers.  There’s another city far out in the desert near a famous oasis, which takes several days to get to by camel.  No church outreaches have ever survived there among the largely nomadic herding people.  But our partner church now has two pastors working together there, where they’re currently worshiping with 11 people with five new believers.  The church's longest running outreach in the region, which is on the southern edge of the region, has been going for about three years now.  They’ve been working among a different group of herders and teaching literacy.  Our partner church has built a church building there with a pastor’s house, and now they’re worshipping 25 people with 18 of those being new believers.  They’re not all from same city, but they come from the surrounding area to worship and share fellowship.

Reflecting on this outreach, I can see how it is such a difficult thing for many of these pastors to uproot and go to a completely new place, especially when they don’t even have money set aside for the transportation costs of getting there in the first place.  Then there are all the other issues of being outsiders without a local network of support if anything goes wrong for their families.  But we are very glad to see the outward focus picking up momentum in the church.  It seems like a big step in following the lead of our sending God who's always on the move crossing boundaries to bring good news to those in need.

-- El Padre