Continuity & Innovation
I recently returned from a trip to Chad and Cameroon where we visited the current work of our sister Lutheran Brethren Churches. It was encouraging to see the continuity of the mission work enhanced by innovations of an interdependent partnership between Lutheran Brethren International Mission (LBIM) and the Chad Lutheran Brethren Church (CLBC).
In the earlier era of LBIM in Chad and Cameroon, parochial schools were built for the purpose of providing an education for the children accompanied by the teaching of Christian principles and doctrines. Some of those children grew up to become leaders in their churches.
As a young person growing up in Chad and Cameroon, I witnessed the efforts of the missionaries who at that time included ‘development’ as part of their ministries. They encouraged and taught their neighbors how to grow fruit trees, shade trees, and plant vegetable gardens. They also taught elements of good hygiene. For those who practiced these “new” things, their families were often healthier and better off.
In the early 2000s, LBIM was led to reach new unreached people groups (UPG). New missionaries were called and sent out to join the work in Chad. Within a few years, several couples with their families had arrived in Chad and were learning languages and adapting to the local cultures. By this time, the Chad LBC and LBIM had come to agreement on how we could minister more effectively when we worked together interdependently. So today, missionary couples from the Chad LBC minister together with our LBIM missionary teams to partner interdependently in outreach ministries. This is now the nature of LBIM’s ministry in partnership with the Chad LBC. What a joy it was for me to see this happening and how this interdependent partnership was working so well! This is a testimony to the grace of God bringing his workers together, from different backgrounds and countries, but with a similar calling and vision, to more effectively reach the people to whom God has sent us!
Today, community development is used to help us develop relationships with communities who formerly had been resistant to the Good News of Jesus, or had never heard this Good News. God has provided this opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus with these unreached people by helping them meet their important community needs.
Some of these communities asked us to help them get a deep well drilled, along with a pump, because they have no clean water available to them locally. When we help them meet this need, and the cool clear water is flowing out of the spout, people listen as we tell them what Jesus said to a woman many years ago at another well. Jesus told the woman that although the water from that well refreshed the body, she would thirst again. The “water” that he would give her, however, would become within her a spring of life-giving water which would give her eternal life (John 4:7ff). Now in helping Chadian communities with abundant clean water, we are also offering the “living water,” which Jesus offered to the woman. In this way, when they hear, they too may believe in Jesus and have eternal life. This story is told many times as the Chadian evangelists return to the villages where these wells have been provided. There are now over 300 of these wells in Chad! That means that there are 300 communities where God’s Spirit is at work in the hearts of people who have heard this message! Please pray for the people God is calling in these communities today!
Some communities have also asked for schools. Once again, the Chadian Church, in partnership with LBIM, has built, and is building, schools that are staffed with teachers from the Chad LBC. The mission is to not only give a good education, but also to teach students about Jesus and God’s love for them. Today these schools are reaching hundreds of students who are daily hearing the Good News of Jesus. When the parents ask their children what they learned today, their children tell them what they have learned and heard about Jesus.
I was encouraged by the rapid growth of the gospel message reaching many communities in Chad. We know that faith comes by hearing the Word of Christ and by the work of the Holy Spirit. It should not come as a surprise that there are new believers in these places where the Word of God is being heard. The seed of the gospel is being planted and watered, and God is producing a harvest of souls for himself. God has been merciful to many people in very remote areas of Chad where they are now hearing for the first time the Good News of Jesus through his work on the cross. Let us continue to pray that many more will come to faith in Jesus through the witness of our LBIM and Chadian missionaries. May the hearers experience the reality of the water that gives them eternal life!
It is now over 100 years since our first LBIM missionaries began preaching the Good News of Jesus in the country of Chad. The LB church in Chad has picked up that mantle of going forth with the message of Christ. Today we carry that message together into new and remote areas, while the Chad LBC continues reaching out to the people in their own communities. The number of congregations growing in the cities are increasing exponentially!
Rev. Jim Erickson is retired from ministry. He is a former pastor, missionary to Cameroon, and Associate Director of Lutheran Brethren International Mission.
