Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Acts in Africa

Thanks to our friend Kinley, one of Element's elders (Ben) and I got to attend a luncheon today hosted by key leaders in a rapidly exploding church planting movement in Africa.

What is happening there is amazing.

We listened to a young African man from Sierra Leone who talked about the transformation God was working through the power of the gospel lived and taught. This particular movement set a goal of a specific number of church plants by 2010, and they've already exceeded the goal. The gospel is spreading like wildfire.

He shared with us an example of "storytelling" (preaching) used by the planters in the villages, and it was incredible. In his heavily accented English, he basically told the creation story. And it was probably the best sermon I've heard in a long time. Just the creation story! Told with passion and fraught with redemption.

He told of leading witch doctors and hardened murderers and Muslim clerics(!) to Jesus, men who not only convert from witchcraft and hard-heartedness and false religions but who become church planters themselves.
These guys are training hundreds of planters each year and the movement is growing exponentially.

We were blown away.

God is so good and his promise that the Church would roll over the kingdom of darkness is true.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would love to be able to hear how he presented that story. There are times when I am listening to a sermon and I think to myself how much better this would be if the text were presented in story form.