We are excited to announce the completion of our second Kingdom Advancement School in April!
The main focus of Iris Central Mozambique is discipleship and evangelism. Many avenues are used to accomplish this work. We believe that one of the products of discipleship and evangelism is that new churches are planted. We’ve desired to see an increase of church plants. In considering how to make this a reality, I believe that the Lord gave us strategy to work with the churches that are already established instead of just trying to plant new churches through the direct work of the missionaries. It became very apparent that we needed to bring training to the local churches. This would encourage strength and growth within their own congregations with the objective that they would then expand their own ministries with evangelization and plant new churches.
We put together a month-long school specifically to train the pastor and assistant pastor in each church. We invite 8 churches to participate with each school for a total of 16 students. We have chosen to keep the school small so that we can personally know each student and have quality follow up to check on the growth of their ministries.
Many of the teaching are from materials that were developed in Dondo by the missionaries that have served here. These teachings focus on strengthening the student’s theology, love for the lost, public ministry through the power of the Holy Spirit, evangelism, relationships and home life, leadership in the church, personal and church finance, and church planting. Each topic builds on the next with the end objective being strong leaders and ministries that can plant new works.
Along with the teachings, the students participate in practical application. Each week they are sent out in the community to practice what they learned with evangelism and interacting in a God centered way with the neighborhood. We also took them all to help us minister in the prison for our weekly ministry there. They also ministered in two Jesus Film outreaches where we saw many people receive Jesus.
In the next few months, each student will be contacted to check on the work in their area. We want to continue to check up on them and provide them with support and discipleship to see them grow and succeed.
We will have our next school in October, and we hope to expand the number of student. We are so excited to see the expansion of the Kingdom of God in Mozambique through the growth and strength of the local churches and pastors. Please partner with us in praying for the success of these churches! God Bless you.