Farming to reach the Nations

With hundreds of people groups still waiting for the Good News of the Gospel in communities and countries around the world, our passion and commitment to reaching the unreached only gets stronger. We remain committed to our vision of almost 35 years now to take the Gospel to wherever and whoever is yet to hear. Over the last few years, God has been tremendously gracious in opening up new doors for ministry across new borders. Our team has greatly increased in number and capacity. New ministries have been launched and new projects have been initiated. God is at work among the nations and we are excited to be co-labourers with Him as He works to make His Name known among all peoples.

As the work increases, so does the need for resources. With new training schools being setup in different countries, new teams being sent across new borders, increase in cost of travels, additional security concerns and growth in the individual families of our team members, our need for finances and resources keep going higher than what we have been used to. We know God has been faithful to meet our needs and to finance His work over the years, and we realize that for us to be able to respond to the new needs and maximize the new doors God is opening to us, there must be new sources through which God will send us funds for this work. We are thankful to the individuals He has used for decades and still uses to make resources available for His work.

As we have been praying and trusting God for provision, we also feel led to create some profit making platforms whose proceeds will exclusively be used to finance the work of taking the Gospel into different nations. God recently enabled us to purchase a 24,000 sq/m farmland in the South-West of Nigeria. This was bought to serve whatever future needs the organization may have, but at the moment, we have engaged in a form of “organizational tent-making”. We are using the land to farm, and using the proceeds from the farm to finance the ministry. Early in 2018 we created a poultry farm for about 900 birds on the property. The farm is owned and run by the ministry, and all proceeds are ministry income.

 

We are confident that this is one of the ways that God has decided to finance His work at the moment, and we are trusting God to enable us to make the most of it. It doesn’t matter the channel through which the resources come, we understand that the source is the same – God. It is the same God who touches people’s heart to give directly to missions who will also bless these endeavours to produce a hundred fold beyond our imagination and will enable these ventures to be used to disciple communities and nations.

We understand also that those who work in these businesses or projects are not any less missionaries than those who work to plant churches and launch Disciples Making Movements across borders. We are all working for the same purpose. We just ask the Lord to help us to steward people rightly, so that we do not send people who should be ‘farming for the nations’ to go plant churches , and the other way round.

Our Expectations and Desire

At this point, we invite you to join us to pray for some very specific things.

  1. We need individuals on our team who are called into this form of ministry – helping run for-profit enterprises that will exclusively finance the spread of the Gospel. Skilled people, trained people and passionate people. This goes beyond farming and agriculture. God may have placed a burden in your heart or that of someone you know to help ministries raise funds through businesses. We are open to welcome such people into our team or collaborate with them to see how their skills and ministries can be of help to us, so that those who are called to go plant churches won’t be distracted with running businesses.
  2. We need to maximize the opportunities available to us. The land we have can accommodate thousands of birds and do more things. We trust God for expansion and new ideas on things to do there to generate more resources. An investment in that land to setup more poultry cages, farm transportation, or a mini-processing plant will help us make the most of it. We are open to such inquiries, conversations, donations or investments.
  3. That God will make us faithful stewards of time, resource and people. We do not want to get distracted, or to poorly manage God’s investment. We also would not want to wrongly deploy people. This is for us a sacred ministry as preaching the Gospel, planting Churches, building schools, clinics or training missionaries.
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