Ethiopian Leader Uses AIMS Training to Share the Gospel
in the Ethiopia's Rift Valley

AIMS News: Posted 2/1/06

For years, "Jina" had suffered from migraine headaches and severe fatigue. The pain left her incapacitated. She was unable to work in the fields or walk to town to visit the market.

As an Oromo, Jina lived in a village with her people in the middle of central Ethiopia's Rift Valley. Like many people in the region, the Oromo people have no church presence. Out of the 2 million people in their tribe, only about 10,000 have heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

One day, "Bakar" - a missionary in her village - visited her home. An Oromo, Bakar was one of the few who had heard about and accepted God's love and grace. He listened as she shared the difficulties of her illness. He prayed for her, and immediately she was healed. That day, Jina returned to work in the fields. Her whole family surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ and joined the church that Bakar had just started in her village. Today, 34 new believers attend Bakarís church.

Bakar is one of about 14,000 missionaries that Ethiopian churches have sent throughout the country.

"According to our liaison in Ethiopia, the missionary force and their emphasis and knowledge of unreached people groups are the direct result of Harvest Connection seminars and Equipping for the Harvest conferences during the past 14 years," said "Josiah," AIMS Equipping for the Harvest Coordinator. "The church continues to grow at an unprecedented rate -even faster than the persecution years of the house church movement during Communist rule."

Many of these missionaries are spreading the Gospel among tribes and villages that have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This revival movement is currently impacting one of the darkest regions of Ethiopia -The Rift Valley of Ethiopia.

Advances in the Rift Valley

Spreading through the central and southwestern regions of Ethiopia, the Rift Valley is 90% Muslim, and relatively untouched by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 2001, AIMS held an Equipping for the Harvest conference in the city of Awasa just outside the Rift Valley. One of the 110 participants was a man named "Tesafaye," a former intelligence officer of the Ethiopian army. The conference changed Tesafaye's life. He began working with the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Southern Ethiopia (ECFSE), ministering and planting churches in the Rift Valley.

"Dr. Howard Foltz is my spiritual father," said Tesafaye. "He has revolutionized the way I understand missions and has revolutionized missions in the Fellowship."

Since Tesafaye began working with the ECFSE, he has taken the AIMS training and began to systematically apply it to every aspect of his evangelism strategy in the region. As a result, more than 380,000 people have heard about Jesus Christ, more than 20,000 (a majority of which were Muslims) have accepted Him as their personal Lord and Savior, and more than 300 churches have been planted.

Today, more than 160 missionaries minister in the Ethiopian Rift Valley and the surrounding highlands of Southern Ethiopia. Among them are 40 former imams- high ranking officials -who have accepted Jesus Christ. Leaders of the ECFSE hope to implement the strategy they used in the Rift Valley to other regions of Ethiopia and into other countries.

Sharing the Gospel in a Cultural Context

When AIMS held another training conference in Ethiopia last October, Tesafaye and the leaders of the ECFSE realized they had another problem. Used to indigenous forms of worship, the new converts had trouble acclimating to traditional Ethiopian Christian church services.

"We've been taking our pews, lecterns, and guitars into the villages, but the churches are not growing," one leader told Josiah.

During the conference, Tesafaye learned more about how to share the Gospel within the cultural context of the people. After the training, he told Josiah that he planned to remove the pews and replace them with mats common in area mosques. He wants to train missionaries working in the region to focus more on discussion-driven services and incorporate more cultural forms of music for worship. The familiar atmosphere would attract more villagers, but the message would remain on Jesus Christ.

Members of the ECFSE believe that Ethiopia is strategically placed to reach the rest of Africa and the Islamic world. With Ethiopiaís strong national background in Christianity, the ECFSE wants to focus its attention on mobilizing churches throughout the country to follow the Rift Valley example and get involved in missions. Although a true national missions movement has not yet occurred, Ethiopia has the strong foundation to make it happen.

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