Report Jan 2012 – 70 pastors trained in CPM

South Africa Church Planting Seminar, Dec 2011, and Launch of 55 Weeks of Prayer for Africa

Report from Jacob Phiri, 20 Jan 2012

The CPM seminar in all, trained 70 church leaders. Most of them were hearing about house church almost for the very first time. But the passion and zeal the people attached to this seminar was overwhelming. The most challenging questions I had was how to make a paradigm shift from the traditional church to the N.T church and the importance of water baptism. Pastor Naidoo, an Indian has been a Pastor for 7 years and had never baptized any one in his church. I gave him a challenge and he was willing to invite me to his church service on New Year day. I was teaching on the “Great Commission”, with an emphasis on water baptism. I gave an appeal to those who wanted to be disciples of Jesus and the result was shocking to me. Over 70 people gave their lives to the Lord and the same evening we conducted water baptism at Naidoo’s residence and we baptized 105 people.

Just 2 days ago, the pastor informed me of 5 house churches that have been planted by new disciples of Jesus.

But the major lesson I have learnt from the RSA trip is the need of training “master trainers”, that way it becomes easier to make follow ups and see the impact the training is having on people. Mass trainings is only good for awareness purposes, but to have results that will bear fruit to last, master trainers have to be identified quickly and more time invested in them. 10 master trainers are better than 100 excited people who do nothing after the seminars.

I am grateful that Naidoo and Emmanuel put money together to pay for our return air tickets, though we were more than glad to have come by road, ooch 27 hours on the road. We plan with the guys there to have a follow up meeting after 3 months and with a goal of planting 50 churches.