Reflections on Mission Africa

AE's Congo Team Leader Leonard Kiswangi preaches during Kikwit mission.

I think, as many of you know, I have been privileged to serve on the Lausanne Executive Board as Chairperson of the Mission Africa venture by which we have sought to bring Congress participants to Africa to join up with other African evangelists, and especially with AE teams, to share the Gospel in many places in the five- or six-month run-up to the Lausanne Congress itself. My colleague Songe Chibambo, our Pan African Missions Director, has been co-director of this venture with Scott Lenning, Setup Director of Scott Dawson Ministries. We are immensely thankful for the blessings the Lord has poured out through the Mission Africa ventures. Some 500,000 people have heard the Gospel in recent months through our project and some 58,000 people have professed first-time commitment to Christ.

One of the specially blessed missions seems to have been the one in Congo with our Team Leader Leonard Kiswangi partnering with French evangelist Emmanuel Maennlein from France. This particular mission was in a city called Kikwit where our team had prepared 45 senior pastors and 125 local evangelists to participate in the outreach. The Mayor of Kikwit welcomed our brothers Emmanuel and Leonard to the Opening Rally with some 7,000 people present and over 1,000 giving their lives to Christ. In all about 31,000 people were reached during this outreach with 3,000 professing commitments. (Do, by the way, please pray for our Congo team. Their financial needs and difficult context are so difficult and such a challenge).

We really praise God for these international partnerships of cross-fertilisation between our teams and overseas evangelists related to the Lausanne Movement and we will be keeping in touch with them and continuing the relationship. In some cases some of our own evangelists will be invited overseas to countries which sent evangelists from their shores. Good cross-fertilisation.

- Michael Cassidy
(AE Founder)