DAWN Fridayfax 1997 #31

DAWN News from USA, Mexico, Tanzania, South Africa

USA: Mom, what should I preach tomorrow?

"Mom, I don't know what I should preach about tomorrow!". 14-year-old Rachel surprised her mother, journalist Renee DeLoria, with those words one morning. DeLoria, a single mother, had come in contact with the revival in the Brownsville AoG church (Pensacola, Florida). "At first, I was very careful and critical," she writes in her book "Portal to Pensacola". However, her newly-discovered relationship with and love for Jesus quickly spread to her children. Following a special blessing meeting for teenagers, enthusiastic children set up meetings in various schools, where they "preach and make an altar call. Special parties also take place, in which rock CDs are broken and old junk which kept the kids from God is burned." 14-year-old Rachel was worried about the sermon she should give in one of the meetings - "a nice problem, because how many mothers hear their teenage daughters say something like that?", asked DeLoria. The next day, Rachel came home excited and rejoicing: "Mom, imagine, 32 of the students made a decision for Jesus today!"
Source: Klaus-Dieter Passon, Charisma issue 101, fax (+49)-211-665491

Mexico: how to plant 2,000 churches in 5 years

Since 1994, Dr. Enrique Cepeda and his team of pastors have had the vision of planting 2,000 churches in Mexico and Central America by the year 2000. To help fulfil this vision, they founded a church planting institute in 1995, in which the students study 4 modules for a year. Each module consists of one week of intensive training followed by 3 months of practical work. Every student has to plant at least one church consisting of 50 or more baptised believers and their families before graduating. Enrique Cepeda recently sent us the following report: "Vision 2000 was founded in June 1994. In the first year, up to August 1995, we planted only 27 churches. From September 1995 to August 1996, we could plant 207 new churches, and we could plant 274 new churches in the year up to 30 June 1997. This number will certainly grow to over 300 by September 1997." With a growth rate of 150% per year, it is clear that the movement will shoot high of their aim - in September 2000, around 2,600 churches will have been planted, if the current growth continues. The new churches are planted in various ways: around 20% by Christians trained in the church planting institute; 70% by members of existing churches who attend short seminars; 5% through medical help, in which a team of doctors visits a region and subsequently starts regular church meetings, and another 5% by showings of the Jesus film in country areas.
Source: Doulos International Ministries, USA, FAX (+1)-513-425-6628; E-mail: prjctptr@wspin.com or Enrique Cepeda: cedoulos@infosel.net.mx

Tanzania: when villages petition for preachers

As Greg Neton and Bob Bentley, American missionaries with the evangelical "Churches of Christ" moved to Mwanza in Tanzania in 1991, they could hardly imagine that their work would create 40 new churches in a very short time. Following a difficult start, including language and cultural studies, they began working amongst the Sukuma, a farming tribe. In summer 1993, they had already planted 4 churches in the Kwimba district, in summer 1994, they had already reached 12 churches. Today, there are around 45 churches in the Kwimba district and surroundings. In the meantime, people come from neighbouring villages to ask the preachers to come to tell them about "the true God and his son". Greg and Bob receive petitions with the names of the people asking them to visit, and they have far more invitations than they and the leaders of the newly-planted churches can cope with.
Source: Churches of Christ

USA: Bible reading prevents reimprisonment

A special study of 402 inmates in U.S. prisons shows that Bible study is a very important factor in reducing the rate of repeat offences. The study was carried out by Dr. David Lawson of the Prison Fellowship, and the U.S. National Institute of Healthcare Research, and published in the "Justice Quarterly". "The present prison programmes have shown themselves to be ineffective; the current rate of reimprisonment is between 50 and 75%, tending upwards," says Lawson. The study shows that only 14% of the 201 convicts studied who took part in a Bible study during their imprisonment were subsequently convicted of another crime, whereas of the 201 other convicts studied, who did not take part in a Bible study, 41% were later convicted of another crime.
Source: Prison Fellowship

South Africa's first cell denomination

Not only an increasing number of traditional churches are returning to the New Testament house church or cell-church model. This model, in which the focus of church life is not the traditional pastor-oriented services in church buildings but in small, flexible, easily-multipliable house churches or cells, often led by unpaid Christians, is also being adopted by whole denominations: the "Apostolic Faith Mission", South Africa's largest Pentecostal movement (600,000 members in 1,050 churches) has adopted the concept and declared 1997 to be the year in which the whole denomination makes the transition to cell churches.
Source: Klaus-Dieter Passon, Charisma issue 101, fax (+49)-211-665491

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