Global Fire Advance Reports from Africa and Chile
Global Fire Advance, an outgrowth of the Firewall Africa initiative spearheaded by Men and Women of Action, recently submitted two successful church planting reports.
Late last month in Kigali, Rwanda, a team from RIO Central church in Maryville, Tennessee, led by Pastor Tommy Roberts and Assistant Pastor Tony Simerly, trained over 100 Church of God church planters from the countries of Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of these pastors have seen their colleagues kidnapped, beaten and persecuted, but they have soldiered on.
According to Ronnie Hepperly, regional superintendent for the Church of God in Southeast Asia, 183 churches have been planted utilizing the Global Fire Advance and Harvesters Hub model church planting training in the last six months.
“These pastors’ faith and perseverance in the face of daunting odds makes you ashamed to complain or get tired,” stated Hepperly. “They definitely have something valuable and aren’t intimidated or reluctant to share it. It seems the tougher the resistance, the greater the harvest.”
The same New Testament phenomenon being expressed in this training site is being replicated in approximately 50 locations around the globe to the tune of around 6,000 new churches in the last year alone. Africans, Asians, Latinos, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists are being swept into the Kingdom of God, Hepperly said. “Trainers and students of the Church of God Global Fire Advance are going into the highways and hedges seeking and searching for the lost.”
Hepperly also reported on his recent return from a church planting training trip to the country of Chile. He spoke of an amazing reception from the Chilean National Overseer Patricio Ramirez and Scevola Armando, the Education and Church Planting Coordinator for South South America, based in Buenos Aries, Argentina.
“We trained Church of God pastors for two days on the Global Chaplain Coalition training and then two days of Global Fire Advance (Firewall) church planting, evangelism and discipleship training,” Hepperly said. “There is no doubt in my mind that God’s plans are bigger than our dreams and he is just looking for someone who will be obedient and available to the call.”
Hepperly stated GFA needs partners, strategies and resources t, “continue pushing back the darkness now as we seek to ‘Send the Light to the Cities’ and ‘Finish the Great Commitment.’”
For more information, please visit globalfireadvance.org.
