am the Lord, thy God and thy Guide.
Another than Me? There is none beside.
I teach thee to profit, and lead thee to go;
Call unto Me, and great things I will show.
God never slumbers nor sleeps, and the work of the Lord in opening Africa’s eyes to the gospel, turning them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, goes fast on into this exciting new year of 2024. We must, of course, always be up and doing, for we know not at what hour our Lord may come.
A Year in Review: 2023 Brochure
There is much to rejoice over concerning the wonderful works of God that transpired across the previous year. God willing, we will soon be producing and making available a brochure that covers all the labors and important events that happened last year, with some helpful commentary of hindsight. We will publish it on our website (Baptistsforafrica.org) and also send it to our email list. It will much help to put into perspective the work of this ministry, that you may remember and rejoice with us, and look forward with us to the ministry’s “breaking forth” on the right and left hand to “inherit the Gentiles” (Isaiah 54:3).
New Ministry Methods
God has blessed us with much innovation and creativity; we are always searching for more effective ways to serve him. In December, we discovered the Biblical practice of immediate baptism, that every baptism recorded in the Bible is said to be done immediately after the convert believed the gospel (see for yourself: Acts 2:41; 8:12; 8:36-38; 10:47-48; 16:14-15, 30-34; 18:8; 19:1-7). This does not mean we cannot baptize people days, weeks, months, or even years after their conversion, but it does mean, if we base our ministry methods on scriptural example, we ought to make baptism available to new converts as quickly as possible, even right after they hear the gospel. This practice of baptizing people immediately, among other things, has given us a greater appreciation for baptism, and dramatically increased the number of people who are led to Christ to get baptized. Accordingly, in these months of December and January, we administered a total of 206 baptisms (175 in December and 31 in January). All praise be to God!
Another practice we have begun employing is the sermon-series. Although we regularly preach expository, verse-by-verse messages through books of the Bible, and preach one-off topical messages quite frequently, we felt that there are many important lessons that would be better taught across multiple sermons, and have started using the sermon-series model in addition to the other two. This is not novel to the world of homiletics, of course, because many preachers utilize this technique. But it does signal a new development in our own ministry, which will contribute in a significant way to the spiritual growth of the believers here in Africa.
The Jesus Conference
Our first-ever conference, the “Jesus Conference” (December 11th-17th), was a success, but certainly not in the way we expected. It was a week-long session of evangelism Monday-Friday, culminating in a series of five sermons all about our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Tens of thousands of people received gospel tracts/invitations, thousands heard the whole gospel, a significant number of which doubtless trusted in Christ, and about a hundred in just that one week followed the Lord in believer’s baptism (which mostly explains why the baptisms for December were much higher than for January, in case one might have wondered). The Sunday morning session of the conference witnessed a record-breaking attendance of 160 people present in one service. We give all the glory to Jesus for sending the Holy Spirit to empower us to be used in this mighty work of the Lord.
Prayer Requests
Those who have continued to support this work through giving and praying, we heartily thank you again. Please pray with us (1) that from the soul-winners of BBC there would be more involvement in the practical mentorship of new believers (Matthew 28:20), (2) that God would grow this church in number daily (Acts 16:5), and (3) that God would continue working to raise up evangelists/elders from this congregation (Matthew 9:38). God bless you!