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TechnoratiThe Purple Book is proving to be a strategic weapon in the battle for a million souls in Baja California, Mexico, a ministry said.
(Photo: Baja Christian Ministries)A group of Mexican ladies in Baja California, Mexico doing Bible study with the Purple Book. There are usually 25 people or more in each Purple Book group.
(Photo: Baja Christian Ministries)A Mexican Child diligently learning the Scriptures with the help of the Purple Book.
(Photo: Baja Christian Ministries)A 74-year-old grandma has completed the Purple Book program at least twice.
After just a little more than a year, Baja Christian Ministries’ Purple Book Discipleship Program has graduated about 2,300 people with more than 9,500 currently participating in the program.
Organizers say their campaign to disciple 1 million people in the Mexican state of Baja California within 20 years using the Purple Book is going better than expected.
“It’s working. It’s actually working and it’s actually growing by leaps and bounds,” said David Angulo, BCM director of the purple book program, to The Christian Post.
Angulo, who is currently living in Baja California to oversee the campaign, said the Purple Book program has taken a “life of its own” and pastors are volunteering to introduce it to their congregation.
“When you go down to the nitty-gritty it’s warfare for souls that are living in darkness,” Angulo said, offering a mental picture. “Picture a superpower in the sense of funding, and you have allies that are brothers in Christ in another country. What we’re basically doing is supplying all these guerilla warfares with the tools they need to wage war on the battle for souls."
“We picture ourselves as gun runners for the Lord,” Angulo joked.
In Mexico, there is little Christian education in churches so most people have not had a chance to be discipled. Studies have even shown some Mexican pastors have less knowledge of the Bible than the average church-going Christian in America.
“I am just supplying for the troops out here,” the Purple Book director said. “Basically we’re just putting tools in their hands and they’re going out there and facing the enemy in their daily lives with these tools.”
Since 1992, BCM has worked in poor communities in Baja California – the peninsula located just south of the California-Mexico border – building houses and evangelizing people in the area.
But it was not until 2007 that the ministry incorporated a method to account for how many people it had discipled and how close it was to its 1 million goal.
The Purple Book: Biblical Foundations for Building Strong Disciples, by Rice Broocks and Steve Murrell, was used as the basis for the ministry’s tracking system. Each person that completed the Bible study workbook, dubbed the Purple Book because of its purple cover, would be counted as one new disciple for Christ.
“It is not just a matter of leading people to the Lord and giving them a Bible,” BCM founder Bob Sanders contends. “We want to actually see them grow in faith."
“This Purple Book is just the perfect tool because it engages them. It engages them in an active Bible study,” he said.
The workbook works hand-in-hand with the Bible by asking questions that readers can find the answers to in the Bible.
“It takes about 25 sermons to cover what is in this Purple Book and that’s why you are given a good dose of the Gospel to the people through doing this book,” Sanders said.
“They come out of the book knowing how to pray, knowing what it means to have faith, [and] knowing the importance of being baptized.”
Sanders, a self-described evangelist, shared that at many evangelism events people just raise their hands, come up to the altar, and are prayed for. But he wanted to go a step further and put a “solid biblical foundation underneath their spiritual life.” Continue »
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