Madagascar's Explosive Growth

Church Planters equipped with GPS units

One of the more fascinating reports I heard at the recent MANI conference I attended in Nairobi was on mission outreach currently happening in Madagascar.  Off the coast of southeastern Africa, Madagascar is the fourth largest island of the world, about the size of the state of Texas.  It’s also one of the more unreached areas of the continent, especially in the rain forest area which dominates the entire eastern seaboard of the island.

Villages in the Madagascan rain forest now identified
for church-planting outreach

Sharing all this with me at the conference was Dinah Ratsimbajona, Director of the Islands Mission and also MANI Regional Coordinator for the Island countries of the Indian Ocean. He claims his mission has seen explosive growth in new churches thanks to an aggressive strategy called CPM (Church Planting Movements.)  Three generations of trained national workers, 480 in all, have been deployed with GPS satellite receivers to map out where unchurched villages are located in the forest. Then, using the CPM strategy to seek out the “man of peace” in each village and initiate a Discovery Bible Study in his home, the workers have successfully started over 2000 churches in just 20 years!

Twelve-year old boy already a veteran church-planter

One of the amazing stories Dinah shared is that his third generation of church planters includes a young boy only 12 years old.  This lad has actually been the key to getting three different Bible study groups initiated, all which are on their way to becoming house-churches.

There are most likely over 15,000 villages in the rain forest, most of which are not even known to the government. “The GPS information our church planters have gathered on the villages have actually given us better data than any of the authorities have to date,” Dinah said. “Now, our plan is to expand to both northern and southern regions of the rain forest where there is still much work to be done.

Island Mission has benefited extensively from the help of both Mission Aviation Fellowship and Hellimission, a Swiss helicopter mission, that have tranported church planters from the capital of Antananarivo to remote areas in the rain forest.

What an encouragement it is to learn about an indigenous ministry like this one that is making significant progress in advancing God’s Kingdom in the mission fields found right in its

own country.

On-going Movement

During the closing days of the of the AD2000 & Beyond Movement in 1999, veteran New Zealand missionary, Ross Campbell, gathered a cross-continental team of aspiring African leaders and together committed themselves to continue encouraging African mission outreach.  That commitment became a new movement by the name of MANI. Now, fourteen years later, MANI is a mature, proven network of outstanding contemporary African leaders honing their strategy to catalyze a new generation of African mission endeavor.

Why all this interest in MANI? Because I’ve been invited to participate in MANI’s three day leadership forum held here in Nairobi, Kenya. Using the facilities of a Catholic guest house in a quiet, wooded area outside of town, our team of 30-some folks are engaged in back-to-back meetings from 7:00 AM till 9:00 PM at night. Reuben Ezemadu, a key Nigerian mission statesman and long-time friend, is the continental coordinator leading our sessions. He has each day focused on a different theme: 1) leadership transitions,    2) ministry focus and 3) strengthening partnerships.

As I listened to the first full day of regional reports, I was given a strong reminder that Africa’s demographics is a lot more diverse than I usually think. Leaders from West, Central and East Africa may look alike because of similar Bantu heritage, but when you add in an Ethiopian from the upper Nile, a Dutch Afrikaner for South Africa, an islander from Madagascar and even a Chinese-background citizen of Mauritius, I have to remember that all these folk have equal right to call Africa their home continent.

With this richness of perspective, I am anxious to see how these three days will unfold and look forward to learning how this team of men and women are helping to promote MANI’s three key objectives: 

1. To Catalyze an African Mission’s Movement
2. To Redefine the African Mission Field
3. To Mobilize an African Mission Force.

Stay tuned for some follow-up reports. I’m sure there will be some neat things to pass along about what God is doing through this important network called MANI.