We also launched the Evangelism Bootcamp in 2020 (a 6-month intensive training for evangelists specialising in mass evangelism) and graduated the first 52 students. What’s more, those graduates were the key to another huge breakthrough – the first Operation Decapolis campaign in which we conducted five crusades in five cities over two weeks. Here are just a few of the astonishing statistics from this campaign:
- 1,148 outreaches conducted (schools, markets, street corners, etc.)
- 1,159 partnering churches
- 481,478 decisions for Christ!
- 106 personal evangelism seminars conducted in local churches
- 5,150 Tanzanians trained in evangelism (through those seminars)
- 74 organisers
- 2,590 days of preparation (between the 74 organisers)
Looking forward into 2021 we are planning to take everything to the next level. The next class of the Evangelism Bootcamp will have 120 students (which represents a significant expansion over the 52 that graduated from the first class – especially since we are still praying for the provision of a much needed larger facility and will be conducting this school in our office building which is already bursting at the seams).
We are also training (as part of this upcoming class of Evangelism Bootcamp) the instructors that will be sent out to launch satellite Bootcamps in South Africa and Brazil (we have thousands of students on a waiting list in Brazil alone). By 2025 we plan to launch satellite Bootcamps in every region of the world. The goal is to train 20,000 evangelists by the end of the decade!
God willing, we also still plan to conduct multiple Mass Gospel Crusades in Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Rwanda in 2021. Please pray for the doors to be open so that we don’t miss a single harvest!
Now, I’m coming to the main point of this vision letter.
Many of you know (because I have spoken about it often) that in 2017 the Lord began speaking to me about the “Decade of Double Harvest.” You may also remember that the key to this strategy was “Multiplication & Collaboration.” What most don’t know, however, is that I saw much more in my spirit than I was permitted to share at that time. I knew that what was coming would require a “new wineskin.” I want to share with you what this means (and what it does not mean).
When the CfaN team gathered from around the world for our Annual Planning Meeting in February of 2017, I pulled out a whiteboard and wrote at the top “150-Million Souls” (the number I felt God had given me for the Decade of Double Harvest). Then I began to write on the board the other initiatives, departments, projects, offices, events, etc. that we were working on as a global team. They were enough to fill the board (I actually ran out of room). Then I started connecting them with lines, showing how each one impacted the other and how all of them together formed an irreducibly complex “ecosystem” that was necessary for us to complete the mandate God had given us of 150-million souls this decade.
What I did not share at the time (but what I was very conscious of in my spirit) is that there were several missing components, that would be needed to carry the vision forward. As strange as it might sound, I have almost felt pregnant with burdens that God has put in my heart for a number of years. Some of them have already been birthed and are fast-growing now (like the Evangelism Bootcamp). Some of them are still in a process of gestation, waiting for the right time and season. Others are just about to be born and we are eagerly awaiting their arrival. I want to tell you about one of them now.
When the Lord said “Multiply & Collaborate” I knew that this would require more than just good systems and structure (although these are critical as well). I knew that above all, it would require community, relationship, and proximity. I knew that people would come from around the world to be a part of something bigger than the sum of its parts. I knew that it was exactly what many people were looking for and that they would give their lives to it. And that has already started to happen. Amazingly, we have seen people who are called into evangelism relocate to Orlando, Florida (where our headquarters are based), just to be close to the CfaN team. And then, of course, the Evangelism Bootcamp made the need for community undeniable . . .
. . . This is why, in 2021 we are birthing another key component of that CfaN “ecosystem” – a local church – Nations Church!
