Superhighways and The Queen of Sheba

Since 1982, I've had the chance to visit more than 25 countries in Africa but until now, Ethiopia was not one of them. That’s why this visit has been such an eye-opener for me and is totally altering my preconceived expectations about this country.

For the past few days, I've been involved in interviewing church leaders as a means of gathering “success stories” of African ministries and churches involved in successful, sustainable outreach projects. This endeavor even landed me the privilege of a two day road trip with the Executive Director of the Horn of Africa Mission (HOA), one of the premier church-planting institutions in the country, if not the whole continent.

Adopting the very successful strategy called DMM (Disciple Making Movements, also known as CPM or Church Planting Movements), HOA is reporting unbelievable statistics in the advancement of the Gospel.  Altogether during the past 12 years, they have trained over 15,000 lay-church planters, documented over 10,000 new churches planted and validated that 200,000 new believers have been baptized. When I first heard these numbers while sitting in the director’s office, I found them a bit hard to believe. Nowhere in the rest of Africa am I aware of such successes. But after traveling for two days with the man himself and interviewing a half dozen of his grass-roots church planters, I am now a confirmed believer!

I hope to share in subsequent blogs some of the amazing stories I've heard along the way, but for now, here are two reasons why I think Ethiopia seems different than other African countries and therefore positioned as a missional pace-setter for Africa. 

1. It’s never been under colonial domination. Everywhere I sense a very different mindset than elsewhere on the continent since folks have never developed the same mindset of dependency. There is a “can do” attitude here that results in superhighways, large flocks of cows and goats and thousands donkey or horse carts that do the transporting of goods instead of women with baskets on their heads.
2. It has an unbroken influence of Christianity dating back to the third century, not to mention a claim to the Queen of Sheba from the reign of King Solomon. Regardless of the rise and impact of Islam over the years, it is clear that a Judeo-Christian value system is deeply rooted in the social consciousness. I believe this has impacted everything from the way women are valued to the normal accepted work ethic.

As a result, Ethiopia seems to be the place in Africa where remarkable advances are taking place in church planting and discipleship movements all fueled by the national churches themselves. So much so, that other African leaders are inviting themselves to come for visits to see how they do it.

So, stay tuned. I hope to find out some of those answers myself!