“What have you got in your hand?”

It’s disheartening that mission sending to unreached peoples is a decreasing priority for many Western churches. However, it’s exciting to see the increasing burden for the unreached nations falling on the Global South/Majority World Churches. It’s such a privilege to stand alongside many African churches and leaders as this ‘eleventh hour’ momentum builds.

We ended 2024 with a very full and, we trust, worthwhile autumn involved in training across Africa, and we would love to take this opportunity to thank all those who prayed for us. We spent a full month in Ethiopia, travelling and holding missions seminars with many leaders of the Full Gospel Church, and we met up with friends from Burundi, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ivory Coast at the excellent Global Member Care conference in Nairobi. We spent 10 days in Ivory Coast with William and Rosalind Brown, teaching leaders of the UFM related UEESO churches, and we finished the year with two emerging mission sending groups in Burundi.

Although the Evangelical church in sub-Saharan Africa is now the most numerous continental church on earth, with over 180 million members and huge potential to become a mind-blowing force for World Mission, there are still some huge obstacles to overcome. 

When we began mission mobilisation in Africa, over fifteen years ago, we were advised by Mike Adegbile, the then leader of the Nigeria Evangelical Missions Association, to do all we could to help the African church to break free from their dependency on the West and to be continually asking the question, “What have you got in your hand?” This has been our mandate from God ever since. 

Walking alongside our African brothers and sisters, we are striving together with them to come to a  place of humble trust and Christ honouring iterdependence, using and maximising all our God-given differences, gifts, abilities and resources for the kingdom of God. The Western and African Church can truly work together as equal partners as we all learn to depend on God alone. 

How do we as Westerners help without recreating a spirit of dependency?

But to be brutally honest, we often feel the heat of the spiritual battle that rages to keep the unreached lost in hopelessness and darkness. We wonder how the Church of Burundi, for example, will ever send mission workers when the economy is collapsing, cars queue for days to get fuel, and many can’t afford to eat once a day, let alone three times? How do we as Westerners help without recreating a spirit of dependency? Many questions, but God has answers!

Our doubts turned to hope and joy when we recently visited a mission training school in Kenya where four young Burundian men who had been at our training, were preparing for mission. They were so happy to tell us that they were trusting God for their fees and that God was supplying! Hudson Taylor said, “There are three stages to every great work of God; first it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.” It seems that we are somewhere between stages one and two, but stage three is coming. All praise to Jesus!

Phil and Elspeth previously served in Africa and are now based in Wales, travelling regularly, at the invitation of African churches, to train leaders and mission workers.