“To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures, and that, as the reigning Lord, he now offers the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gifts of the Spirit to all who repent and believe. Our Christian presence in the world is indispensable to evangelism, and so is that kind of dialogue whose purpose is to listen sensitively in order to understand. But evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God. In issuing the gospel invitation we have no liberty to conceal the cost of discipleship. Jesus still calls all who would follow him to deny themselves, take up their cross, and identify themselves with his new community. The results of evangelism include obedience to Christ, incorporation into his Church and responsible service in the world. (1 Corinthians 15:3,4; Acts 2:32-39; John 20:21; 1 Corinthians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 4:5; 5:11,20; Luke 14:25-33; Mark 8:34; Acts 2:40,47; Mark 10:43-45) – The Lausanne Covenant; nr.4 The nature of evangelism
What makes African Enterprise unique is the fact that our evangelists are locals. They speak the same language as those around them and they come from the same backgrounds, but, what sets them apart from the other locals are their love for Christ, their commitment to Christ, their passion to spread the Gospel and their education and training.
Our evangelists are all trained using AE’s School of Evangelism, a formal course equipping local church leaders and pastors with solid Biblical knowledge to assist them in evangelising to locals. This training forms part of our Stratified Evangelism Process.
Mission preparation and planning starts 2 years before the mission. Mapping the mission field, dividing it into zones, building relationships with church leaders, equipping local evangelists by training them in the school of evangelism, selecting and training facilitators and mobilising the church. All of this leads up to 1 week of city-wide mission. After the mission week, new believers are followed up, nurtured and ensured that they belong to a church.
When COVID-19 hit Africa, our teams decided to rise above this challenge and used a new tool called Home Based Evangelism (HBE) to continue evangelising the cities of Africa. City-wide missions don’t look the way they used to, but HBE has proven to be a mighty and effective tool to bring people to Jesus. Still following our Stratified Evangelism Process, evangelists are now trained online instead of face to face, the message is no longer spread through a massive event but rather through TV and radio broadcasts and through evangelists walking in the streets, going from home to home to tell people the Good News, to give them hope in these uncertain times. Our teams are on the ground, local and ready to evangelise.
In the last year we’ve reached more than 6 million people with the Gospel and 63,516 were nurtured into churches.
Our Mombasa-West mission in Kenya just concluded a few weeks ago and we have 8 more missions planned for 2021. Please keep our teams in your prayers as they spread the Gospel across Africa, sometimes in very dangerous circumstances. Keep praying for those that made decisions to follow Christ. Pray for their faith to continue to grow and strengthen.