Orality Discipleship Grows in the Africa Central Field
The church planting efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to grow. Thanks to the efforts of many pastors and leaders, Jesus Film teams are opening churches in some of the most remote parts of the DRC. As churches are planted, discipleship becomes a focus in order to help the new members learn the word of God. However we know that getting printed bibles in local languages is difficult.
Over the last two years, the JF field coordinator Rev. Nzola Dieumerci has been encouraging the church planters to use oral bible storytelling in the local languages to be our primary focus for discipleship development. This passion has continued to grow across this great nation under the leadership of District Superintendents like Rev. Celestin Chishibandji in Lubumbashi, Rev. Désiré Bugeshi and Rev. Pigeon Wanyabose in Goma and now Rev. Louis Okende in the region of Kisingani.
In January 2022, Rev. Nzola traveled to Kisingani with Rev. Wilondja from Goma to complete the phase two orality training and to officially install Rev. Depa Babulaka as the Africa Central Field orality coordinator. Rev. Depa is a student with ANU Master’s Program and is passionate about church growth and development. He will work alongside Rev. Nzola to further promote, train, and develop the continuing growing numbers of story tellers across the nations in Central Africa Field. Under the direction of FSC Rev. Mario Martinez we believe this will strengthen the church planting efforts and continue to support the making of Christ-like disciples across these nations.
This is the testimony from Rev. Nzola about this recent event:
“It was a great time during our Orality training at Kisangani. Kisangani is in the Tshopo district in the DRC. I had a privilege to lead the training alongside with two other champions (Pastor WILLONDJA and Rev. DEPA BABULAKA) for 3 days from 17th to 19th of January 2022 with a participant of 40 champions who were trained.
What excitement of spending time together and equipping such talented men and women of God, with all ages represented old, young, and some selected children. On that journey we discovered together with participants the truth on how we can share the articles of faith, and how to do discipleships among children, young people, women at their place of selling, marketplace.
After explaining about the scarf with the twelve story about Jesus, participants were excited to grab it, unfortunately I had only one, for sure they are ready to have it and use it for discipleship. As a testimony, I spent two Sundays when I have seen the practice of orality in the Sunday school; one church the Sunday school on orality was led by a Woman, and another one was by a child on their Sunday school for children and was so amazing to see how children could respond to the questions by using signs or symbols.
The end of our training was the distribution of the recording set for local stories to the Tshopo district and a 3-month plan developed according to the zones where the participants came from.
Our thanks and appreciation to:
Our God who made it possible; our Regional Coordinator, for accepting our plan, for coaching and supporting; our FSC, for his approval and guidance; our partners, for their willingness to accompany us financially; the Tshopo district leadership, for organizing such an amazing event; my fellow trainers, for giving their best to the entire program.
To God be the glory!”
Let us continue to pray for these leaders and orality champions as they continue to build the Kingdom of God and disciple new believers through sharing the stories of the Bible!