Full Gospel Mission Church

I will be going to an Asian country that is closed to the gospel. The country does not allow the gospel to be preached openly from foreigner to the locals. There are many security risks involved with sharing the gospel publicly and so most (but not all) evangelism is done relationally. There are plenty of opportunities to share as the area I'm in has very few foreigners compared to the rest of the big cities in our country.

Our purpose here is to plant churches. In order for me to stay in this country I go to school to learn the language. There are many people who know English and want to practice English with native speakers. Although I don't teach English professionally, I utilize conversational English to build relationships. There are 'English Corners'* throughout the week where locals and foreigners meet together to speak English, this has been one of the best opportunities to reach many people at one time. * There are also other evangelistic methods, this happens to be one of them.

When there are people who receive salvation or who want to know more about what it means to be a believer, I disciple them or teach them on topics such as salvation, baptism, lordship, repentance, forgiveness, etc. When people decide they want to follow Jesus we start a church. There are at least two people in a church: two team members (myself and another team member) and at least one local person. What we do is divide up the aspects of church: worship, communion, word, and giving/offering. We first teach them what the purpose and significance of each of these means and then show them until they can carry it out for themselves.

The purpose of church planting is to gather together fellow local believers and raise up leaders among them until the leaders are able to lead their own church while the foreigner steps back. Also, the goal for the local church is to grow; when the number of members of the current church becomes too many, they will divide themselves into smaller groups with the leaders that have been trained. All the while, we (the foreigners) will continue to begin church planting among other groups and be used to start initiatives in other areas.

This is an outline of what we would like to see happening. In the past year, we (myself and another team member) have started two churches. However, our church faced trials very early; societal pressures, being discovered by authorities and fear, have turned them away. It has been a little discouraging but nevertheless we continue to look for those who haven't heard and don't know God in order to bring life and salvation to this nation.