Why we do what we do

The month of September has been a busy one for Mobilise Global. I began with 5 days in Mozambique, followed by 8 days in Tanzania. These situations represent the places we have been working the longest, and so it’s encouraging to see the progress taking place here.

Mozambique

I’ve written previously about the problems facing the churches in Mozambique through leaders that have not had any training. It seems that the government there are starting to be concerned about this problem too. Currently 70% of churches in Mozambique are led by pastors who have never had any formal training, and the church in general is under pressure from the government to address this problem.

Calmito and I met with some of the leaders who are responsible for the churches, and I got to share my story of how this training has been devised, and for what purpose. It’s always a joy to share this and see the leaders nodding vigorously as they realise it was created to address the issues that they are facing.

Calmito will start his first training course next week. His goal is to train about 40 pastors by the end of this year, and use some of these pastors to train others in this region, until around 1000 pastors have been trained by our material over the next two years.

Meanwhile Horacio and Domingos are busy training pastors from other parts of Maputo as well as across many other parts of Mozambique. Together they have built training teams, so that we currently have about 15 pastors who have been recognised as able to teach others. The exciting thing for me is that they have understood the principle of multiplication! Not only are they training others, but they are training other trainers!

Tanzania

Fabian has a vision to plant a reproducing church and a training centre in each of Tanzania’s 27 provinces. This trip was a chance to travel with him and meet some of the people that he has built relationships with in two of the provinces, Dodoma and Tanga.

I have realised that the main goal of these initial trips is to gain credibility among the local church leaders for the training. Bringing new training into an area is frowned upon if it hasn’t been checked out by the local leaders. So this means taking the time to invite the local leaders, providing a good lunch, and trying to give them a meaningful idea of what the training entails, without keeping them for more than a couple of hours.

Thankfully, the leaders I engaged with were genuine, humble followers of Jesus, and were extremely open hearted towards me, welcoming me to come and teach in their cities, and plant churches there. 

The highlight of my trip was undoubtedly visiting the church in Tanga which was planted in a completely Muslim dominated village. All the congregation were converted from Islam, including one older gentleman, who gave me a very warm greeting. I later found out that he had threatened the pastor with a knife when his wife had been converted, but later also came to faith. 

Here we can see the potential for multiplying leaders who will carry the good news into places that have never heard it. If you want to understand the heart behind Mobilise Global, the reason we do what we do, the last sentence says it all.

Pastor Mabisi in Tanga, with Cookoo the chicken, the offering for my preaching in the village church.



This is Agnes. She had recently become a Christian and was explaining how she had just told her parents that she would not renounce her faith and return to Islam. Her family have now cut her off and will not have anything to do with her. The church has become her new family.



Cookoo joining us for the long bus ride from Tanga to Dar es Salaam.