Displaying items by tag: learn from Ebola crisis

Ebola caused a tremendous set-back for the New Generations ministry in Sierra Leone. They saw an average growth of 2,000 new churches annually, but in the epidemic this dropped to less than 200 annually. Fear of getting infected caused people to avoid personal contact. In disciple-making the Gospel spreads through natural social networks, by contacting people - in the same way as the virus. Church planting halted, so they decided to trust God and repurposed themselves to serve their communities, the government, the NGOs, and wherever the need was high. This made a strong and lasting impact in the predominantly Muslim communities. People who were quite closed before Ebola opened up to the Gospel because of the serving attitude of the church planters and their timely interventions. The enemy can use fear to bring the Church to a standstill, so the most important enemy to overcome is fear.