By Johnmichael Poulin, Regional Coordinator For Africa and South America
“We need your help!” That is something we hear all the time. Normally when we hear it, the first thing that comes to mind is that someone wants our money. This time we are not asking for your money. I am conveying a request that was made to me recently on my last trip to Africa. On this trip I was able to visit three countries where the BMAA has a presence — Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia.
As I visited these three countries, I was able to visit with pastors, and as I did, I heard about what God was doing in all these beautiful countries. I was also able to listen to their needs — both physical and spiritual. I was able to listen to their difficulties. Most are the same difficulties we have here in the United States, and some are specific to the region in which they were working, but none are new to ministry or following Christ.
As I listened to all their needs, there was one common theme in all three countries. They were asking — truly they were begging — for our help in theological training. Most of the pastors in these countries do not have large libraries. If the truth were to be told, most of them only own a Bible, and if it is a study Bible that is something very special. Most of them have not studied formally. The only training they have received is reading the Bible and the discipleship of their former pastors.
These churches understand that, ultimately, it is their responsibility to train their people. They are not trying to shift their responsibility to anyone else. They are asking sister churches to come alongside them and help them in their theological training so they might be able to train their own pastors and leaders in the future.
This is where we’re asking for your help. We are asking that your church make a three-year commitment to a specific area in Africa to help train these churches. BMA Global will help to identify an area that would best fit your church. We will help with training material that will be doctrinally sound and easily reproducible so they can teach their own people. We will also provide all the necessary pre-field training for this commitment.
Let’s talk about what this three-year commitment looks like:
• Three Trips Per Year — The first thing that we would ask is that your church would commit to making three trips per year. Each trip will be to the same area, hopefully working with the same pastors. If your church cannot do three trips in a year, you could partner with two other churches and each church could do one trip per year. BMA Global can help in the coordination of this.
• Do the Training — The second part of the commitment would be to do the training that BMA Global provides. The first part of that training would be security training. This is for the safety of your team members as they travel abroad. The second part of that training would be on the topic of “when helping hurts.” This will help you understand why we will not be meeting every request that is made to you and to us concerning physical needs.
• Come Up with the Plan — The third part of the commitment is that you come up with a plan of what will be taught on the nine trips that will be made over the three-year commitment. BMA Global has great material we would love to share with you. We also understand that some pastors feel more comfortable developing their own material. We ask that this material be easily reproduced so they can teach it to others. We also ask that there be a systematic plan to what is being taught.
I pray that we will have several churches that will commit to helping our sister churches in Africa who are pleading for help. Truthfully, most of our Sunday School teachers here in the United States are better trained than most of the pastors that are in Africa. I pray that our churches in the United States will be willing to help our churches in Africa so they will be able to help themselves in the future and help neighboring countries, just as we were able to help them.
To learn more, contact me at johnmichael@bmaam.com or (901) 848-2294.
