Are we witnessing a true movement of God in Colombia?
Dear Fellowship,
Last week, we overcame all Covid barriers and trained about 225 pastors in Colombia’s 3 largest cities— Bogota, Medellin, and Cali. As always, our focus is on the gospel of life. That’s short-hand for training biblical/prolife bioethics and crisis intervention strategies in countries targeted by abortion advocates.
As the picture below shows, pastors are already training their own people the 4 Questions that lead people to live out the gospel of life in 4 powerful ways:
- Treasure human life,
- reject abortion,
- experience God’s forgiveness in Christ and
- answer the call to rescue the innocent, one mother at a time, as neighbors helping neighbors.
A significant percentage of the pastors that we trained in the 4 Questions returned to meet with us to consider a larger, city-wide campaign to train other pastors who will train their people in the gospel of life.
After each pastor contributed to the larger city-wide effort and then the plans for all three cities were combined, a sense of movement swept through them. They were now all part of a specific, detailed and dated plan to train up 184,000 people in the gospel of life by the end of October!
How did this come about? I presented the various approaches we’ve seen adopted by pastors in China, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, and Guatemala. Each country approached the mass training differently, based on their cultural context.
In Bogota, the pastors got on their knees and prayed. Then they started talking. Some testified to their own abortion regret. Some told stories of mothers and babies rescued. Some off-beat stuff got tossed out and sparked debate. I was not sure where things were going to end up. And then…
One leader stood. He drew everyone back to the central questions of who, how many and by when. Like a tulip in spring, a beautiful consensus unfolded as to how to make a plan that was measurable and had completion dates. The leaders clapped and hugged. They got on their knees again and pledged their full effort. All I could do was whisper to myself, “Thank you Lord. Movements being born are a beautiful thing to see.”
So what’s the plan? To interpret the numbers on the white board in the photo above, here is a guide to the middle column from the plan that emerged in Medellin:
The number of pastors attending full day training on the Gospel of Life.
The number of pastors who returned to plan a larger training effort.
The total number of pastors to be trained by the 20 pastors by mid-October.
The estimated average of people per church.
The total number of people in the 432 churches (the 20 original churches plus these 412).
This number is 25% of the 21,600. Around the world we use 25% as the good faith estimate of the percent of people who will gladly share the 4 Questions with 10 of their family and friends in the following week if challenged to do so. (I’ve been eyewitness to a much higher level of participation, but this keeps things realistic).
Total number of family and friends who watch the 4 Questions video in the last week of October.
Total of people in the Medellin area to be trained to stand for life by the end of October.
Total of people in the Bogota area to be trained to stand for life by the end of October.
Total of people in the Cali area to be trained to stand for life by the end of October.
The grand total number of people to be trained!
We will be tracking and reporting. But rejoice with us. This is how your gifts and prayers are being multiplied, and a movement of God appears to be unfolding. We are sending them about 10,000 fetal models now, and each one becomes a little missionary proclaiming the wonder of human life and Him who made it. So please continue to pray and give what you can.
Thank you.
Rev. John Ensor