Friday, July 13
Libreville, Gabon
Gary Benedict and I arrived here in Gabon on Tuesday of this past week. Since that time we (including Chris and Marcia Braun and Al Stombaugh, Gabon Field Director, and leaders of the Gabonese Alliance) met with various government officials, plus we've been on the local television news. The big story is after a US missions investment of more than seventy years (since 1933)involving more than two hundred personnel, there's a family of Alliance churches here who can continue on with strength with decreasing US mission investment. This church shows several exciting signs of health and maturity:
They are fully organized with official recognition from the Gabonese government.
They are able to support financially their own pastors and leaders.
As the largest family of evangelical churches in the country, they are taking initiative to plant new churches and reach into new areas with the gospel.
They have a training / equipping strategy in place with a beautiful Bible institute campus and a stong theological education by extension program.
They have a world missions center focusing on cross-cultural ministry and have sent out their first missionary couple to Cameroun.
On Saturday, there's a "transition celebration" where we acknowledge with the church this major change. Then over the next two years, our US mission personnel will be transitioning to other countries. As plans now stand, we will not lose one missionary in this transition process. While the church doesn't want to see missionaries leave, they understand this transition journey and have embraced it. We are talking about how to continue the relationship even after missionaries leave . . . without the church feeling abandoned. On Sunday, I'll be giving them the challenge of increasingly moving full circle from being a recipient of Christian missions to being partners with us in Christian missions. As they send out missionaries, it will increase the investment of Alliance World Fellowship member church resources on unreached peoples. The Gabonese church can make a major contribution to all of this.
On Monday we'll be at the Bongolo Evangelical Hospital with the team there. They will be staying until 2015 in that there are still some major transition issues to work through there requiring more time.
Tonight I'm giving great thanks to God for the faithfulness of His servants who have invested so much, so well, here in Gabon!
