In May of this year I committed myself to serving the Lord by participating in a two week road bike tour. I am participating with a team of riders traveling 873 miles, an average of 73 miles per day from northwest of Chicago, IL to Messiah College, PA. This event is intended to raise: 1) awareness of the needs of our Christian brothers and sisters in Liberia; 2) funds to help bring beauty out of the ashes of Liberia’s fourteen year civil war.
NEED
The Global Ministries Commission (GMC) is committed to supporting the E.C. Church of Liberia in their wide-reaching efforts to help bring healing to their homeland by spreading the love of Christ. Currently the church in Liberia offers such rudimentary programs as the Evangelical Children Rehabilitation Program (ECREP) which caters to the holistic needs of Liberian children who have been brutalized by the effects of war, and the Evangelical Women’s Assistance Training Initiative (EWATI) which helps to provide single mothers with the tools necessary to survive by offering micro-loans and training programs. They are doing so much. Yet there is still so much more that needs to be done.
By working with OMS International (OMS) to plant and multiply healthy, autonomous, well-equipped churches, followers of Christ will be well-equipped to answer the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the nation of Liberia. OMS is a mission organization that focuses on the training of nationals as church leaders and workers. The movement is grassroots. Early last year, OMS approached the GMC to propose a unified effort between our Launch Liberia campaign and an OMS church multiplication initiative known as “Village Church Planting.” As the idea was explored, it has become very clear that collaborating with OMS in Liberia offers the greatest opportunity to resource the E.C. Church of Liberia. In the plan, OMS will provide training and supervision to three E.C. Church leaders in Liberia. Those people will then each train 15 local church planters to start new E.C. congregations in each of their villages. OMS has run similar programs in other parts of Africa with astounding success.
ACTION POINT
As a team rider, I am trying to raise $100 for each day I ride – a total of twelve days. If fully supported, our partnership will provide $1,200 or about 1% of the need. Please prayerfully consider joining this initiative with a gift of $50, $25, $10, or $5 per day.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
In an email dated 10/30/2007 – Bruce Bennett, OMS trainer in Liberia, wrote: “We reviewed the VCP program, and the OMEGA and TTI manuals, and helped the teams devise implementation strategies and training schedules. The teams are confident that they will have identified their targeted villages, people of peace, church planters, and training sites by end of December, and will start with training early January [2008]. Both the EC Church and Baptist convention each sent one more trainer to the training than was budgeted for. Both groups will look to see what they can do about starting 4 as opposed to 3 training centres. Each of the 6 budgeted training centres are targeting 15 first generation church planters who will each be committed in turn to finding and training two second generation church planters. God-willing within 6 months we should have 90 embryonic first generation churches, and a further 12 months should see them adding a further 150 churches (emphasis added). These faith goals, based on our experience, are not unrealistic.”
