DAWN Fridayfax 1998 #35

News from Zimbabwe, Serbia, USA and Belize

In this issue:
Zimbabwe: It must have been angels!
Serbia: By truck to church
USA: Strategy not tactics
Belize: Alcoholic becomes pastor

Zimbabwe: It must have been angels!

Shortly before a strategy meeting of 100 Christian leaders from 9 nations in Zimbabwe in early summer 1998, Xolisani Dlamini, the main organizer, was brutally attacked by three men. After stabbing him with knives, hitting him on the head with a rock and stealing the money for the conference, they stripped him naked and left him to die. Hours later, Xolisani somehow managed to drag himself to his car, which his attackers had been unable to start, and drove home. "I have no idea how I managed it. Angels must have helped me!" he says. Eight days after the attack, Xolisani was sitting on the podium in the conference, covered with bandages and plaster. He was due to have another operation that day, but the doctors cancelled at the last moment after suddenly deciding that it was unnecessary. "One doctor said 'Something is happening which we don't understand'. That's a miracle."

6,000 new churches in the last 6 years

According to Xolisani's detailed research, significantly more than 6,000 churches have been planted in Zimbabwe over the last 6 years as part of a strategic plan named 'Target 2000', in which various churches and denominations aim to plant 10,000 churches between 1992 and 2000. The church-planting has added 2.24 million new converts to the evangelical churches, which is almost 20 percent of Zimbabwe's population. At the conference, Xolisani said "The devil is not at all pleased by the Christians' strategy. It is destroying his kingdom. He doesn't just sit around with his hands folded in his lap, watching people fill countries with churches. I can very well understand that Satan wanted to kill me. But he simply does not understand that I am now even more determined to continue, to do even more. I would happily give my life for the project of 'making disciples of Zimbabwe'."

New phenomenon: spontaneous church planting

The vision of planting churches now has such a strong position in the minds of Zimbabwe's Christians that it has given rise to a new phenomenon: spontaneous church planting. Pastor Richmond Chiundiza tells of a woman who recently came to ask him for assistance with the church which she had recently planted: "The woman was a member of my church, but I did not know her, much less that she had recently planted a new church. People simply move into an area which still has no church, and start one. I hear of these spontaneous church plants all the time."

Source: DAWN Report, DAWN Ministries

Serbia: By truck to church

The nation is politically isolated, and Christians sense that only God can change the nation's situation through revival. In the provincial capital Novisad, Christians follow a plan, praying around the clock for revival in the city and throughout Serbia, according to the mission agency AVC "Verfolgte Christen" ("Persecuted Christians"). Belgrade pastor Angelic is 77 years old, but travels to Bosnia to preach in various churches for 3 or 4 days whenever his health allows. In Leskovac, there was a revival in a Gypsy church, according to the AVC report. "Hundreds of people have been saved and baptised, filled with the Holy Spirit and now fast. People come to church by the truckful."

Source: AVC, fax +49 (0) 604 38 136

USA: Strategy, not tactics

"My whole life has been spent on tactics, not strategy," said one Californian pastor following a seminar about strategic transformation and church planting with DAWN Ministries' Dr. Jack Dennison. Recognition of the difference between short-term actions and long-term, visionary and strategic planning is a catalyst in changing how pastors see their own ministry, according to Dennison. "We have seen that the city level is the best form of missionary mobilization," he says. "Mobilization at national level, from the top down so to speak, simply does not work here." Apparently, there are already 25 cities, such as Miami, Florida, seriously considering a city-wide church planting strategy. Miami is also the host city for a strategic conference for all of Latin America. Between 16 and 19 November, some 2,000 key Latin American leaders are expected to attend the conference to work out a continental church planting target and encourage strategic partnerships. This decade, over 40,000 new churches have been planted in only 9 Latin American countries, and evangelical partnerships in 13 countries aim to plant 450,000 new churches by 2010.

Source and information: Dawn Ministries, 5775 N. Union Blvd., Colorado Springs, CO 85918, USA, fax (+1)-719-548-7475, tel. 719-548-7460

Belize: Well-known alcoholic becomes pastor

His mother prayed for 20 years that he would become a Christian, but Transito Mai fought against everything connected with the gospel. He was renowned for having threatened a pastor with a machete, and was a violent and angry alcoholic who also took marihuana and other drugs. Today, Mai is a pastor and missionary in his hometown San Pedro in Belize, Central America. Baptist missionary Victor Stefanini managed to persuade Mai to visit services in his mother's church. He showed up, but drunk and without a shirt. The sermons spoke to him, but something held him back, he says. Stefanini then visited Mai at home. "I prayed and cried," recalls Mai his conversion. "I immediately felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life." The following day, Mai went from door to door to tell people of his newly-found faith, and to reconcile himself with those whom he had harmed in some way. After 6 months, the change in his life was so obvious that San Pedro's Baptist church asked him to preach. Soon after, he became a pastor there.

Source: Southern Baptist Association of Churches, Belize.

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