Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Week of Prayer 2014 | Churches share the task

The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® enables IMB missionaries to live and work at the forefront of lostness and extend our witness through their full-time ministry. Southern Baptists send missionaries from their churches, through IMB, to go into the world making disciples in the name of Jesus. In that partnership, Southern Baptists provide the funding to send and support these missionaries and their ministries. The more resources they provide, the more missionaries can be sent.

Mike and Heather McAfee have plans for putting wings on their vision to reach Abidjan with the Gospel.

This sprawling West African city, getting on its feet again after a decade of war and turmoil, is not an easy fix. As the economic capital of Ivory Coast, more than 6 million people and 60 indigenous language groups live here.

“And that’s not counting the immigrants that come from other countries such as Burkina Faso, Liberia, Ghana or Mali,” Mike says. But help has come through U.S. churches committed to sharing this task. The McAfees envision partnering Southern Baptist congregations in the U.S. with local Abidjan churches.

“They would go into areas of the city that do not have a Baptist presence and work together in evangelizing, reaching out to the community, telling [Bible] stories … to start small groups that will eventually become churches,” Mike explains. In July of 2013, Valley Baptist Church in Searcy, Ark., sent a team to explore partnering in this sacred effort. Valley Baptist Church is now working with a local congregation to plant a new church in the AttĂ©coubĂ© area of Abidjan.

“Our vision is to encourage our pastors [here] to look outward where God is working in people’s lives and see if we can’t go there and start planting churches,” Mike says.

Pray for the McAfees as they tell the story of Jesus to the people of Abidjan and for U.S. churches sharing in this task.

Pray for churches to be planted in every corner of Abidjan.

Scripture to Claim: And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.  Matthew 24:14

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