Explosive Global Evangelism Fueled by Passion, Not Command
TORONTO – Missions will not go on forever and there are signs of “explosive” evangelism around the world that suggests that the end of missions is near, said the head of a mission organization.
“Many people think that missions is going to go on forever – we’ll always have MissionFest, we’ll always be doing this,” said the Rev. Ron Pearce, executive director of Empower Ministries, on Friday at “The Beginning and the End of Missions” seminar at MissionFest Toronto.
“No, in actual fact this all comes to an end one day,” he said. “This is the hope of the believers – the fact that it does end.”
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In a room packed with attendants of the largest mission conference in central Canada, Pearce shared the success of current native evangelism movements around the world -.
The first destination on his spoken tour was Ethiopia, where Pearce said there are currently an estimated 12-13 million believers – most converting from a Muslim background. He shared about an Ethiopian Christian man he met who brought 170 people to Christ in four months and who showed him lakes where 2,500 and 4,000 people were baptized recently.
Pearce attributes this unprecedented explosion of evangelism to tears, hard work, determination, and unwavering faith.
“Missions is not a hobby; missions is not a job; missions is a passion and it is the missions attitude that you have to get into your heart,” he declared.
Pearce said the beginning of missions is not a command or order but a motivation of compassion for those who are lost and a heart to do anything to see the people saved.
The Empower Ministries head, who has traveled extensively to meet with native church leaders, said one of the differences between the leaders of the new national churches and those in the West are their determination and focus.
“The people in the national churches are filled with fire, they are filled with a drive to get this job done,” he said.
As example he pointed to the communist country of China where most believers have to hide to study the Bible.
China only recognizes officially registered churches and reports indicate persecution of Christians from unregistered or “underground” churches. Christians from underground churches refuse to register on the basis of their belief that the Chinese government would control the church rather than God being the head of the church.
On a recent trip to China, Pearce met with underground church leaders who told and showed him how Christians receive Bible study in China. They said that they had just finished a training session with 750 people who met under nets in ginseng fields – a Chinese root used in medicine - to conduct Bible studies 24-hours a day for four days.
There were four pastors who would take turn teaching while the others rested on the ground in the field. He said that Christians would walk for miles to the ginseng field for the open-air Bible studies when they heard of the opportunity.
Pearce also witnessed about an abandoned warehouse outside of Beijing where some 80 young Bible students would be literally locked in for three months during which they would study the Word for 12 hours a day, pray for four hours and sleep and fellowship during the rest of the time.
The students slept on newspapers on concrete floors, used a barricaded hole in the ground to the sewer line as a toilet, an open water pipe for water, and two air vents in the roof for air during the three months, according to Pearce, who peered through an small opening the size of four bricks during his visit to China.
After the students run out of food, they break out of the warehouse using a sledgehammer given to them in the beginning and go out for two months to wash clothes, take bathes, and regain strength. They go back into the warehouse for another three months of training when they hear word that studies are beginning again. This cycle goes on for about three years.
“We are doing this all over China,” said an underground Chinese pastor to Pearce. “This is the hunger for God we are sensing today,” he observed.
The Chinese government has recently for the first time acknowledged that there are some 130 million Christians, including unregistered Christians, in China.
According to Chinese church leaders, a pastor in China leads about 100 people a month to Christ in the countryside.
The neighboring country of Vietnam is also witnessing an explosive Christian revival. In 1975, Vietnam has about 50,000 baptized believers and today there are about 1.5 million Christians.
Pearce spoke of a church planter referred to as “Happy” who accepted Christ eight years ago and has planted 30 churches during that time.
Happy, who is always smiling and in the front row of the church clapping to the choir, told Pearce a few weeks ago during his trip to Vietnam that in one village where he was working the police had used his family as an example to discourage people from accepting Christianity.
The police had stripped Happy’s wife, who was four months pregnant, and whipped her to the point she lost the baby. The police then turned on him and using logs beat him on the face and crushed the bones on the side of his face and literally dislodged his eye.
Afterwards, his wife and him crawled behind a hut prayed and push his eye back in. Although Happy says his eye is fine and never complains, his right eye always looks outward.
Furthermore, the police has burnt his house seven times and has beaten his two young daughters.
Rather than retreating, Happy and his wife and two daughters continued to plant churches living on one bamboo mat in the ashes of his home.
He has since refused to build a home because he said the police will burn it down again and lives in a structure made out of tubes where 15 other persecuted families have joined as well as three orphans the family has adopted.
“This fellow does not stop,” said Pearce. “It doesn’t matter what they throw at him, what Satan throws at him; he will not stop. He will win as many people to Christ in Vietnam before the end comes as he can.”
“This is passion. This is what Jesus saw when he came over the hill – he saw needy people,” said the mission leader. “This is what Happy sees; he sees people who are desperate in Vietnam - they are lost either lost in Communism, Buddhism, animism, or some other form. They don’t know the truth about Christ and he is committed to taking that truth to them.
Pearce also informed about the revival in Colombia where during this past New Years in the western city of Cali, a 24 hour prayer event was held in a football stadium. At midnight during the altar call, 2,000 people accepted Christ in this country renowned for its drug lords and corrupt lifestyle.
“I tell people this: I want to go to heaven tired,” said Pearce.
“That is my goal. I have one goal in life – to go to heaven tired simply because we work as hard and feverously as we can right now to take the Gospel to every single individual that we can because the clock is ticking; there is a time limit,” he added, referring to Revelations 7:9 on the multitude of nations during the last day.
Empower Ministries is an international mission organization that provides assistance to national churches in 27 countries through supplies of Bibles, New Testament and training materials; national worker support; and tools such as bicycles, lanterns or boats for evangelism. The mission group works with many underground churches in Asia.
On the web: empowerministries.ca
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