Going the Distance
By Rich Kopp, Missionary to Africa
The first Church Planters Academy was established in Ghana in 2016. Groups of indigenous pastors have been trained through the Academy in evangelism, leadership, and church planting techniques, and pastoral leadership. These dynamics give the pastors the tools needed to successfully plant new churches. The training is an intense, one-month course where two to three pastors are paired up to become a church planting team. More than 12 churches have been successfully planted in Ghana from these teams.
The success of the Academy in Ghana spurred me on to take it to other locations. I am overjoyed to share with you that the first Church Planters Academy in Liberia was held in August of 2021. As with anything new, you expect there to be some differences or challenges between how the Academy functioned in Ghana verses how it will work in a different location.
During the first week of classes, it became apparent to me that the amount of material that is normally covered in the Academy had to be drastically reduced. The educational level of most of the recruits was much lower than anticipated. In hindsight it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Let me explain: due to the 14-year civil war, the educational system came to a complete halt - not just for a year or two, but for the entire duration of the war. There is almost an entire generation who do not know how to read or write as there was no formal education during this time and even to this day the educational system has not fully recovered from the war.
Missionaries to Liberia, Drew and Jessica Welch established the Liberia Legacy Learning Center to address this need and will help people of all ages learn to read and write. This is a much-needed facility. Thank you to Drew and Jessica for allowing us to use the Center to house and train the Academy recruits.
The recruits went through several weeks of full-day classes. Each day started at 5:00 a.m. with personal devotions and then consisted of four classes that were each two hours long. I taught Pastoral and Evangelism Dynamics; Nick Mahabir from Trinidad, professor of the Academy, taught Leadership Dynamics; and Kofi Gyansah, Director of the Ghana Church Planters Academy, taught Church Planting Dynamics. Before graduating, each recruit had to pass a final in each class, preach a sermon, and present a church planting strategy.
The graduation ceremony was no doubt the highlight of the Academy. There was a good attendance and all 11 recruits graduated. The graduates were awarded Certificates of Completion and received our signature “Warrior pin.” There is a pinning-on ceremony where we anoint the graduates with oil, lay hands on them, and pray. The Warrior pin is then pinned on each of them. It is a great way to end the graduation ceremony. We all shared in a meal together afterwards.
I believe the Liberian Church Planters Academy, even with the different challenges, was a great success. We now have five church planting teams in Liberia that will start new churches in the coming months. I am excited to follow their progress and listen to the testimonies of changed lives and souls won for Christ.
Kofi Gyansah also wrote about his perspective on the first Church Planters Academy in Liberia. That article is in the November issue of the Message of the Open Bible.
In 2016 we launched the Church Planters Academy in Ghana to train mature, dedicated, Ghanian believers to plant new churches. Since then two more Academies have been launched in Ghana and twelve new churches have been planted. In 2021 we launched the Church Planters Academy in Liberia and each year we will work in different African countries to launch more Academies.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused more than 3,426,517 deaths in over 219 countries around the world. It has brought a major halt to business and has caused severe economic hardship in many countries. In addition, thousands of our Open Bible churches around the world have had to stop in-person services, which has been very difficult.
Even now, many churches are not able to meet in person because of the COVID restrictions in their country. Our Open Bible pastors and other church leaders are suffering hardship. Many are struggling to feed their families and provide them with basic necessities. A lot of our churches overseas do not have the technology to be able to hold online services and it is difficult for them to keep in contact with their church members.
Would you join the Pandemic Aid team? The funds received will help hundreds of pastors and their families and communities. Our priority will be to provide food and necessities for their survival during this time of crisis.
Together we can make a lasting impact through Pandemic Aid and help our brothers and sisters around the world cope and succeed during this time of crisis.
By Mike Lumbard, Missionary to Trinidad and Tobago
“We do ministry at the city dump. Do you want to go and see?” With those words my world changed.
My wife, Pamela, and I are the Directors of Open Bible’s School of Global Missions (SGL) based in Trinidad, but with Trinidad’s borders closed due to Covid, the door had opened for us to go to Tijuana, Mexico, with a team of future missionaries and minister with the Puente de Amistad mission base. We had traveled to a small village named El Hongo (the mushroom) near Tecate, a city in Baja Mexico, to meet with Open Bible ministers Juan and Elaine Mora. Juan and Elaine are involved with many outreach ministries including feeding the homeless, holding services in the park, and ministering in prisons. However, it was the ministry at the dump that caught my attention. Although I have heard of ministries at city dumps, I had many questions. Who actually lives there? Why do they live there? How do you minister to them? And then, Is this kind of ministry effective?
Pamela and I teach about the challenging verses in Matthew 25:31-46, about ministering to the least of the least. Spending thirteen weeks in Mexico over three trips pushed us further toward seeing people the way Jesus does. Wherever Jesus went, He really saw people that society overlooks: a Samaritan woman divorced five times, people with incurable diseases, and other outcasts of society. He saw an adulteress woman, people who were labeled “sinners,” and a man being put to death for his crimes. He continually met unexpected people in unexpected places, and He stopped and talked with them, entering their worlds.
In Mexico we have seen people forgotten by society, addicts shooting heroin even while we are speaking to them, and children abused, neglected, and abandoned. We have watched people stand in line for up to an hour for a bag of groceries and people on their deathbed with no family to talk to. We have looked into their eyes and called them by their real names instead of their street names. We have taken time to hear their stories. This is where real hope springs out of desperation. This is where Jesus walks into their world.
This is what happened with Mauricio. We pulled our van along the canal to feed the homeless and drug addicts. One of the men on our team met Mauricio and learned that he was living on the streets and had not seen his children in several years. He desperately wanted his life to turn around. With tears pouring down his face, Mauricio surrendered his life to Jesus and discovered a hope he had not known before. Jesus had walked the streets with us.
This is what happened with Oscar who was near death. We found him living in a hospice facility because he had no family to take care of him. This grown man was crying because of his fear of dying. After we shared with him about the peace of God and the assurance of eternal life, he eagerly prayed to follow Jesus. As he prayed, the tears stopped, replaced by a true peace. Two days later Oscar met Jesus in heaven. But before that Jesus went with us to the hospice facility and met with Oscar.
It was the same story one day at the city dump in El Hongo. As we drove down a dirt road to where the trash is burned, the only thing we saw were smoldering fires and charred ground in every direction. There were piles of burned trash but no people. Even if there had been people, I saw nothing for them to salvage. Nonetheless, as we turned a corner, we finally spotted someone. At first I thought he was a worker, but in fact he lived there. As he approached the van window, I expected him to ask for a handout. He did not. He just wanted to talk. His name in Spanish was Jesús.
When Jesús discovered we were missionaries, he let us know that he wanted prayer. As Pam began to pray for him with the help of a translator, Jesus Christ began to touch him. In this burned-out city dump that you might not be able to find on a map, Jesus Christ walked in with us and touched a Mexican man named Jesús.
People have value to God regardless of where they live, what their race or their socio economic status is, or what they have done or not done. They have value to God even when society around them cannot see any value. I continue to be amazed at the way Jesus Christ really sees people. He shows them that they have value, and then He touches them in the middle of their desperate situations.
Lord, give us eyes to see people the way you see them. Help us to be willing to let You touch them through us with our hands and hearts.
We minister as directors of the School of Global Leadership - Trinidad, a missions training school that provides a cross-cultural, hands-on, learning and living environment that helps propel students into leadership roles around the world. Trinidad is a great missions training environment, with great diversity among the religious, economic, and ethnic facets of life. This makes it a solid stepping stone for those interested in taking Jesus to the world!
This article has been reprinted with permission from the Message of Open Bible Churches. To read the article on the Message website, please click here.
2020 Bell Ave, Des Moines, IA 50315 | 515-288-6761| Email | Website