Thousands of Africans Brought to Faith in Christ
Cru staff members in Africa worked during the summer of 2006 on 2 major gospel-saturation campaigns in Malawi and Benin.
The goals of both campaigns, named Andrew and Jericho, were to train local church leadership in evangelism and discipleship, as well as to show and distribute JESUS DVDs, Bibles and other ministry tools. Conducted mainly during the month of August, these ministry efforts focused on each country's largest cities and capitals.
Operation Andrew focused on reaching the people of Malawi through strategies involving FamilyLife seminars, leadership dinner outreaches, preaching in local churches, open-air meetings and JESUS film showings. Through the 5-week missionary outreach, 35,120 people were exposed to the gospel message and 10,570 indicated decisions to received Christ as their Savior.
One of the concerns that pastors in Malawi have had in the past is the lack of follow-up with new Christians-getting them more involved in their churches and training them in evangelism. To help turn this around and move things forward, Cru staff, along with 44 partnering churches, spent 4 months leading evangelism and discipleship training. Some of the churches are already reporting increased attendance and want to encourage the members of their congregations who show up only for services to take part in small discipleship groups.
In Benin, Operation Jericho had unique challenges to meet. Staff members brought the gospel to a nation whose main religion is voodoo and which is the only country to have a national voodoo holiday. Nearly 200 churches came together to join in the evangelism effort with 20 Cru staff teams to show the JESUS film in the capital of Cotonou every night. In total, 78,225 people were exposed to the gospel and 8,587 indicated decisions to receive Christ as a result of Operation Jericho.
Dela Adedovah, Cru's Vice President for Africa, the Middle East and Central Asian Republics, shared one of the ways he saw God working during the project. "One of my personal highlights was the attendance of a JESUS film showing at a voodoo shrine," he reported. "About 600 of over 1,000 viewers indicated decisions for Christ."
