What is God Doing Around the World?
Welcome Back!
It has been a long time since I published a blog post but I intend to begin posting regular short encouraging notes. Some posts will be updates from around the world, some will be teachings and periodically, a summary of a good book.
I am writing today’s blog from Brazil where Cheryl and I and several of our ECC Elders are on a trip with Randy Clark. Brazil is a nation that has been in revival for 15-20 years with many conversions and explosive church growth. They are hungry for the Holy Spirit and very receptive to impartation. Many healings are taking place here. The best news for me is that this nation now leads the world in the sending of Missionaries!
The purpose of this trip was simply to learn more about the ways of God in His use of healing to reach the lost as the most prominent of signs and wonders. We also wanted to visit a nation where the Kingdom is expanding rapidly to enrich our vision for the upcoming harvest. Prayer times with Randy, who has championed healing around the globe, is one way that God imparts anointing and faith to move in healing.
EVERY time in the gospels when Jesus sent people out to evangelize, he included instructions to “pray for the sick”. If this was, and is, important to Jesus, it must still be important for us today. Reading books like “Christ the Healer” by F.F. Bosworth helps give a scriptural foundation for our faith for healing. I will not tell a lot of stories from our trip but in the last few days several of us have witnessed blind eyes being opened and beginning to see, something that I only read about or heard about until this week! It is quite a thrill to experience and is one of the signs of the Kingdom that Jesus listed for John’s disciples.
This month, one of the church planters in Albania who Steve Shank, an HNI team member, is coaching has had yet another public water baptism of mostly Muslim converts. I have now lost track of how many he has baptized, but there must be 40-60 just in the 18 months since he started multiplying house churches. It looks like the beginning of a movement there in the Balkans.
Michael Schott, an HNI partner in Germany, has begun Bible studies on WhatsApp during the pandemic. Last I heard, he was on his 4th four-week study and growing toward 300 people from all over Germany. He is a good example of our need to use creativity in reaching the lost and in discipling believers in our day.
Many people in Ukraine have come to Christ in the last few months as the churches there have reopened and have seen greater attendance during the war. Also, some who fled to Poland began evangelizing immediately. One young lady named Mashia who we met in Poltava began preaching in front of the Warsaw rail station within a day of her arrival. Daily I see posts of meetings she has conducted all over Poland. She has been doing this since she was a teenager with great boldness and a lot of love for people.
We have plans for a church planting seminar in Poland in early October and a visit to a team in Asia. This team of 30 moved there to establish a base to reach what will most likely be the last of the unreached people groups to fulfill the great commission.
Coming up in November, our annual International Summit will focus on the use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit for evangelism and church planting. I do believe that these nine gifts are essential to fulfill the great commission around the globe. Our banquet on November 2nd will share a lot more of what is happening around the globe. The following two days of the Summit, Thursday and Friday, will be filled with high-impact messages by a variety of speakers, including Randy Clark, about the supernatural and the harvest. I hope you can join us.
