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TechnoratiThe continent of Africa has been in the spotlight in recent months for its escalating problems including the Niger food crisis, the Ugandan rebel army conflict and the Darfur Crisis in Sudan. Yet in a country neighboring these trouble-filled regions lie a hope for the Gospel of Christ to be brought to one of the most unreached regions in the world, where only one percent of the natives have ever heard of the name of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Charles E. Blair (Photo: Blair Foundation)
Dr. Charles E. Blair, founder and president of the Blair Foundation of Denver, Colo., recently completed the two-year project to secure sponsors to fund the planting of 1,000 evangelical churches in the previously unreached region of Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, an area bordering Sudan.
The project titled, “Ethiopian Call” was officially launched on Sept. 1, 2003, at which time there were only seven churches in the entire region. On Aug. 31, 2005, Dr. Blair and the Blair Foundation announced that the campaign to gather 1,000 sponsors had been successfully completed by the deadline.
In an interview on Oct. 18 with The Christian Post, Dr. Blair discussed the mission of the “Ethiopian Call,” highlighting the rapid growth of Christianity in the region and the cooperation among Christians worldwide in an effort to plant 1000 churches in this unreached region.
How did the “Ethiopian Call” begin?
I have been going to Ethiopia since 1990, which is after the fall of communism and when the people had the freedom to go to church and own pieces of property. I had been going to Ethiopia whenever someone asked me to come and help raise money for certain needs, such as for AIDS patients or for medical care. I was in communication with Christian organizations in Ethiopia when President Aysheshim became interested in how some of the churches had revolutionized an area. He was on business in the area where these local churches were and saw the great development in the region because of the churches.
He (President Aysheshim) began to contact the denominations of these churches while he was on business in Addis Ababa, the capital city, but the denominations would say, “We are very sorry. We can’t help you. We have no money. We have people but we have no money … but there is a man of God you need to see.” I think that’s an interesting phrase to identify someone by.
Eventually he found this man who happened to be the person that our church in Denver had hired to coordinate our work. And through this person the president obtained my address and wrote to me asking if I would come to Ethiopia and help evangelize the people of the Benishangul-Gumuz region bordering Sudan.
I accepted the challenge and went to Ethiopia to meet President Aysheshim.
How have you promoted this project over the past two years? What methods or efforts were used to make people aware of this project and acquire sponsors?
I would invite 15 of my friends at a time to Denver for coffee or lunch and I would tell them what we wanted to do and I would not ask them for money but I would simply ask them for their counsel.
I did this for 3 ½ months and I had a total of 102 friends – either my friends or friends of my friends. I told these people what the president had previously told me, which is that the people of this region are 2,000 years behind the rest of world and 1,000 years behind the people in Ethiopia. They don’t go to school but instead they hunt and fish to survive. There are about 800,000 of them living next to the border of Sudan and most of them do not wear clothes. So after hearing this we knew that this project would be quite a challenge to us. Yet all 102 of these friends voted unanimously to try to accomplish this mission and we made an all out effort.Continue »
