We’ve been here for the last couple of days settling in with the team in mangochi. Oliver and Rhoda have moved into their house and are excitedly collecting furniture for it and making preparations for their children to join them from the north.

Blessings was met by his wife and son who he had not seen for 2 years! We also arrived to see Jonah who is delighted to finally be amongst his team.

The last few days we have been spending time doing DBS with the team, praying, worshipping and encouraging them and sharing on the areas we feel are important for them as a missional team. The last couple of days we have shared with one another about perserverance in the face of dissappointment, being full of the holy spirit and asking for spiritual gifts.

Our travel up to mangochi was good overall. We managed it in 3 days straight, with a slight holdups with crazy border issues… we then spent a hot and tedious wait on the Zimbabwe side. As we drove the 7hrs through Zim we were stopped 5 times by police looking to extract fines from us through intimidation, but everytime we had favour as we explained what we were doing. Every policeman asked for a bible and we asked if we could pray for some of them.

With the holdups we just missed the closing time for the Mozambican border but managed to find a cheap place to stay just next to the border.

The next day was another 4hr border crossing process trying to navigate the autheorities and then those who are there to make money from unsuspecting malungus!

We made good time through mozambique even though the road turned into constant deep potholes and made it to the Malawian border.

We were ready for the Malawian border guards to unpack the quantum of all the stuff when mike came across a friendly believer customs agent. He allowed us to pass when he heard about the team and we were able to give him a bible.

In mangochi jonah has already started a DBS with men from his yard and everyone has been cheering and welcoming Oliver and Rhoda remembering them from their time here in CPx. Blessing went to get his bike fixed and is excited by the friendship he is making in his first day here.

Overall everyone is excited, God has an amazing destiny for mangochi and we believe these malawian church planters from all nations are those God has annointed to see a move of God in this place.

Pray for Oliver, Rhoda, Blessing&wife, and Jonah.

Liam&the team

Sent from phone

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On tuesday I’ll beginning a 7500km round trip to Mangochi in Malawi, along with 5 others, we are taking some malawian friends who have been living in the township Masiphumelele. Over the last year they have been preparing and training to go and live amongst an unreached people group in Malawi. We are very excited about this, as our heart is for exactly this, to see African believed in and equipped to live out following Jesus and reaching the lost of their own continent.

I’m hoping to be able to send some updates from the road onto this blog, so stay tuned…

in the meantime, would you pray with us into:

- For safety on the road
- Easy border crossing
- Right now we are having an insurance issue meaning we might not be able to take the larger more able vehicle we had planned on, and may have to take something too small for the job. The insurance company is coming back to us on monday about that so please pray for that.
- Finally, this will be by far the longest Rach and I have ever been apart, so for her feeling of safety as she stays in our house with some friends and a sense of God’s nearness to her whilst she stays in SA.

The highlight of our month was a trip to the most rural and impoverished state in South Africa, Limpopo. Limpopo is in the very North East of South Africa bordering Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, it is the home of Eric, Petrus, and Lucas, 3 African church planters that Liam has been working alongside and sharing discipleship with. We travelled there for the wedding of Eric and his fiance Thandi (pronounced Tandy), Liam was the only white guy of the groomsmen and it was a VERY African affair! Liam has 4 costume changes, the wedding lasted 2 days, the wedding rehearsal was meant to start at 7pm and didnt begin til 1AM, lasting until 4AM!!!

During the wedding, we had an encounter with a local demonized man who 3 times tried to put a ‘muti’ (witchdraft) curse on Rachel by rubbing a spit and mud paste on her arm. In the end Liam had to forcibly remove the guy, Of course this was frightening for Rachel but we have reflected on it and prayed about it a lot and felt we have learnt a deep lesson about the authority of God’s kingdom over these things.

Another highlight of being there, was to help Petrus another african guy, Liam has been working with, move home. We were so sad to say goodbye as the main reason Petrus has had to return home was lack of finances, but as we went to his home with him, we realised that God has also orchestrated our timing. We arrived with Petrus, who at first was reserved when he saw his family, which we are learning is quite normal for African families, later when we went inside, Petrus broke down in tears which is unheard of for most african males, explaining in English that his mother doesn’t normally look how she did and she was very ill, he asked if we could pray for her. So we invited through Petrus speaking in Northern Sotho, for her to sit and explain that we would lay hands on her. We don’t know if she was healed, or still will be, but Petrus shared with Rachel who hadn’t been there, how amazing our time was, this was the first time the kingdom of God has been invited into his house to impact his family who are animist (worshipping ancestors). We feel like it was very significant that we were able to ‘take Petrus home’.

We were exhausted by the time we returned to Cape Town, but our eyes have been opened like never before to the good, bad and ugly of rural african culture that so many of those we are seeking to disciple come from.

Videos:

Singing at Eric and Thandi’s Wedding

Spot the white guy dancing in the groomsmen dance!

To put it bluntly it had been a rag tag bunch, many who would even turn up half drunk, but would all read the bible and pray for one another when encouraged. When I left, even though I had coached one of them to gather the others, and how to lead the discovery bible study I honestly had no expectation they would keep meeting. So much so, that when I went to catch up with her, It was about 30mins into the conversation, I asked what she had been up to that weekend; to my amazement she said, “Oh, we had bible study on Sunday” – I was so shocked, I asked “You mean the one we did before I left”. She didn’t seem half as surprised as I was. To finish it all off, before we had left she had asked for prayer for getting a job or starting a small business. I had encouraged her, she should look for a way to start a little business, and helped her overcome a complete lack of self belief. When I got back I saw a little sign outside of her shack, and found out she had started selling pre-pay phone credit and electricity from her shack, and was makes a modest profit every week from it!

The stories and definitions here rely heavily on a book called: Church Planting Movements by David Garrison

Church

In the mid 1990’s a missions organisation was processing its usual paper work of annual reports from the field. These reports normally show a fairly modest growth in numbers relating to how many new believers there were, how many baptized, how many churches began etc. The organisation came across a report from a couple in northern india, known to many as the ‘missionary graveyard’ because of the difficulties it posed in bringing the gospel and the large fallout rate for missionaries who were sent there. David and Jan Watson in their report made an incredible claim, nearly a hundred cities, towns and villages, with new churches, thousands of new believers! Skepticism immediately rose, contacting the Watsons the organisation said “This can’t be, You’ve either mis-understood the question or you’re not telling us the truth” – The Watsons invited them to “come and see”  and an investigative team was sent, and visited the towns and cities to their amazement what he had reported was true! The supervisors admitted their skepticism was wrong as they saw the God really had done an incredible work in one of the hardest places. In the following years, a report from south-east asia gave similar evidence of an eruption of new churches, then missioaries in latin america the same, then two reports from china of the same. These phenomenon began to be known as ‘church planting movements’.

Church planting movements are rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment. It seems to be something that far exceeds mans ability to create, but something that God is asking us to partner with. As we began to understand church planting movements this was at the fore, everyone we spoke to had said, it is a move of the Holy Spirit, it comes from a place of prayer, it is not human strategy. Yet, there are distinctives in all the movements that have happened, that we can trace back and learn something of God’s heart for reaching the lost, seeing lives, communities and nations changed through discipleship. Although they are “God Movements” God is giving vital roles to us, His people, that have seen Church Planting Movements slow, killed or encouraged. Once we understand some of the values within church planting movements we soon discover why our reliance must be entirely with God as we ask to join him in these moves, and ask how we can join  .

Before we share about church planting movements, I know all of us approach the word ‘church’ and maybe even ‘church planting’ with many preconceptions, it’s helpful for now at least to put those aside, many people who may have had legitimate or illegitimate struggles in their past with ‘the church’ often find it easier to give new language to help them overcome barrier. Terms such as New testament communities, discipleship groups, community of Jesus followers. I can see lots of good reasons to stick with the historically defined term of church and will do throughout explaining it, but if you find it easier to replace the term so that you can understand or re-imagine the task of following Jesus with others, for others than I think you will find something helpful.

So Church planting movements are happening amongst the lost, they are not revivals or spiritual awakenings in the sense that, they don’t ‘revive’ luke warm christians, they reach and plant amonsgt those who are lost, completely apart from saving grace in Jesus. They can include mass evangelism but have a focus on seeing discipleship, spiritual growth and church planting take place after the decision event. Church Planting movements are not church growth movements, they are planting new churches, which plant new churches. Although they may gather in larger groups, and enjoy to do so, the life-blood of discipleship takes place primarily in smaller groups, where people are able to be ‘known’ and ‘know’ others, reading the word, praying for one another, holding each other to obey Jesus, and going to the lost together.

Church

CONTINUED FROM BEFORE: As I continued to think about what he had said, I realized, underneath his feelings of loss, was another sentiment; “I can’t live the same fullness of life that comes from following Jesus with you, without you”.

I’ve asked questions quietly in my mind ever since about how we can give people the tools for this life, without them being reliant on the tool giver. How do we show people to follow Jesus and not to rely on following us. It’s harder than it may seem, because for many of us, the discipleship, teaching, friendship we give as we reach people, is giving them truths and lessons, that we received from God. So if that creates this dependency that we cannot sustain how do we do it?

In the following months I read about the AIDS crisis, giving aid to those in poverty, and studied to try and find things that really worked to see the kingdom of God take place in communities in Africa. As I read these academic authors, one theme continued to stand out; Self-sustainability. As I read case studies on how projects succeeded or failed, the key was, could the people sustain the project without outside influence? If the could, the community was changed, for good, when they couldn’t money was wasted, machinery left to ruin, and bitterness amongst both those who sought to help and those who received grew. So I was convinced that whatever we did in South Africa, after a certain time of showing people how, we had to find a way to ‘give it away’ in order for it to be ‘fruit that remains’ (John 15).