This story first appeared in our Windows into the World blog. Check it out for more exciting stories about what God is doing through Team Expansion around the world!
by workers in Bohol, Philippines
Kristen* wanted to come to our multiplication training weekends so she hired a girl from her village to watch her baby during the sessions. Some time later, the girl told the mother she needed more stories. She heard about telling Bible stories during the training so she made a group of 80 kids from the village and told them all the Bible stories she remembered from sitting on the sidelines of the training. Now she needed more stories!
Bohol had a big earthquake in 2013. Kristen was converted after the quake in one of our evacuee camp outreaches.
Because Team Expansion had required (blessed) us to take Jonathan Training, when disaster struck in Bohol (and weeks later, a super typhoon in Leyte) we had an army of volunteers trained in simple, reproducible church concepts. The ministry was able not only to serve others, but to harvest and plant churches. When nature knocks down almost all the buildings and life is moving too fast to send someone to seminary for years, the simplicity of the simple church was the perfect mindset to take into the harvest field.
About a year later, we were leading a training for national leaders of several denominational churches. The head evangelist for another organization said something to the effect of, “After the earthquake we spent twice what you guys did (close to $100,000) to help people. A year later, we can’t identify a single convert from all of that giving. You guys spent half of what we did, and have 50 new churches. I wish we would have known about simple, reproducible churches earlier.”
*Name changed
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