Samaritan Strategy Africa, in collaboration with local churches, held a Vision Conference in Ngaba location/Kinshasa last May. The conference was facilitated by Harvest and Samaritan Strategy trainers Jeff Sikabwe, Jean N’soseme, and Byamungu Kisangani.
Sixteen churches were represented, including Ministère International pour le salut des âmes, la Croix de Golgotha, Bethesda Miracle centre, Assemblée Chrétienne Ecole des vainqueurs, Centre des gagnants, Ministère Evangélique la colonne de feu, Eglise de la résurrection, Eglise Pentecôtiste pleine Evangile Assurance de salut, Temple d’Elohim, and Ministère Evangélique la puissance de la délivrance.
Jeff Sikabwe noted that the conference “was a good opportunity for church leaders to discover new ways through which they could serve their communities to see positive change in the lives of their people.”
The 33 participants included pastors, choir leaders, deacons, ushers, Sunday school teachers, youth leaders, church elders, evangelists, and community development staff.
Participants committed themselves to demonstrate God’s concern to their surrounding communities by carrying out four Seed Actions:
- Distribution of soap, clothes, sugar, and food to poor widows and orphans living on Kisangani Avenue in Ngaba location.
- Organizing recreational activities (boxing, karate, soccer) as a public awareness campaign with the goal of helping youth in various gangs in the Lobo area learn to lead productive lives.
- Evacuation and collecting of the rubbish on Lobo/Ngaba avenue.
- Enhancing the street lighting on Kongo Avenue in order to increase security in an area which has cost many human lives.
In addition to these seed actions planned during the training, participants committed themselves to more acts of service in the future in order to experience positive substantial change.
Several participants expressed their appreciation for the training.
Thank you for the work done with love and sacrifice. May these teachings go farther. I have just discovered that the whole Bible is filled of God’s love and therefore, we must show it to others. Christians are really Christians if they are for God’s kingdom.
My prayer is that these teachings become a curriculum for Bible studies in our churches for strengthening believers for a good understanding of the expression of God’s love.
All these lessons converge towards only one goal: love. As God is love, and Jesus being God’s fullness, he is also love. The church being Jesus’ fullness must therefore be rooted in this love to play effectively her role in the community.
These teachings of the Strategy Samaritan are a light that helped me to criticize my worldview.
This training helped me to change my way of doing Bible studies, of understanding things and of seeing the world as God created it. Now, I understand that one of my major tasks is to invest in lives of others – that means to help the poor, the orphans, the widows; in other words, to support the weak ones
This conference has just given me a new vision on how to live according to the Gospel. That means it’s about putting in practice the Word God for the development of the church and the world around me in all aspects of life.
Pastors Jimmy Ekakola and François Matumona served as the organizing team. At the close, pastor Ekakola summed up the week:
The teachings reminded us of things we already knew, and gave us new discoveries as well. These teachings were a big blessing for us. We are convinced that they also will help us direct the church of Jesus Christ towards a new horizon. We know that the task is not easy to change our ways of doing things but as we had learned it, the development is a process that starts today with me and as the Holy Spirit guides us we will reach that point.
