Our Journey —Looking back and looking forward

Linda & Gene Wilson

 While teaching in Florida, the Wilsons answered the call of God to begin a pioneer work in Quebec, Canada. By God's grace, they started a vibrant church in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Seven years later in 1987, the new church called its first pastor. They then moved to Montreal to lead a church planting team. By 1999, the team had started a ministry center and multi-ethnic church that had, at one time, 14 nationalities. ReachGlobal leaders asked them to serve as church planting coaches for Latin America which they did from 2000-2009, working in 10 different Latino countries, training and coaching church planters.

Teaching Church Planting Principles to Sudanese

Gene became the leader of a Global Training team for church planters all over the world in 2000. He is currently working primarily with Asian church planters and missionaries, but has equipped leaders in about 30 countries including Lebanon, Egypt, Europe, Liberia and the Congo. As the Director of Church Planting, he leads a team of missionaries catalysts that train and coach church planters all over the world. 

“We love meeting brothers and sisters around the world and see how we can develop, empower and encourage them to multiply disciples and churches for Jesus. They inspire us and teach us as well. This has been our life ministry and it’s a privilege to come alongside ordinary Christians with extraordinary faith and sacrificial service.” –Gene 

Linda blessing sisters in Singapore

Linda travels with Gene several times a year, and when home, she has a James 1:27 compassion ministry to widows and women alone. In January 2020, Linda also used her English as a Second Language training, and M.Ed.in curriculum development in a new ministry in Cuba. She has also ministered to women involved in church planting in Venezuela, Czech Republic, Singapore, Malta, and other places.

They have two married daughters and 4 grand-children. Gene has contributed two published books to serve the cause of healthy church multiplication. The vision they share with the team is to see 100 indigenous church planting catalysts leading sustainable church planting efforts by 2025. Their life verse has been:

“And who is equal to such a task?  …Such confidence is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of the new covenant…” (2 Corinthians 2:16, 3:4-6)

Team working with Nepalese catalysts

They pivoted to online training and coaching to equip Asian church planting catalysts (indigenous regional leaders) during the Covid pandemic. Those catalysts are training a whole new generation of church planters! Since resuming travel, the team has also trained church planting catalysts for Bangladesh and Nepal. 

New discipleship groups in Rwanda

A couple African catalysts have recently helped us start disciple-making groups and new churches in Rwanda. The faith adventure continues! Please pray for wisdom to continue to raise up church planting catalysts who will equip more workers to multiply healthy churches. Thank you for your support!

For more information about their work and the resources they offer, visit:

www.churchplantingcatalyst.com or www.globalchurchplanting.net

 

Or email: gene.wilson@efca.org

Sometimes a change of plans is a good thing.

I arrived safely in Delhi at 3:00 a.m. on Monday after waiting an hour and a half in line for my visa. I traveled on to Dehradun the next day with only 4 hours of sleep. Thankful I adjusted to the time zone changes rapidly and God provided adequate sleep each night.

India was celebrating Diwali, their festival of lights. The streets were lit up. Sadly, few have had the opportunity to hear about the Light of the World, Jesus. Today Westerners can't openly share Christ in India and in an increasing number of States of India, they have passed anti-conversion laws so local people risk severe consequences if they share the true source of light that leads to eternal life. But we can help in many ways, and that partnership means a lot to them.

Monday though Thursday we met in a retreat center in the mountains north of Dehradun. One morning I was woken up at 5:00 a.m. by a band of monkeys making a racket outside my window. 

Dehradun is a hub city in the rural zone of Uttarakhand. Only 0.3% of the people are Christians and the government recently passed anti-conversion laws. There are literally thousands of villages without a local church. Because of this they have to start house churches.

(organizing team)

Now for the unexpected change. Pem, the organizer had invited a dozen people from Delhi to two weeks of training. But only two could afford to get away for that long. Pem shared the problem with the director of the retreat center. "Would they be willing to replace those who couldn't come from the capital with local workers?" 

The end result was a diverse group of very dedicated of church planters and pastors overseeing one to seven church plants each. One leads a movement with 82 missionaries that have started over a thousand village churches. Another is an apologist who works with the religious and political castes, having come to Christ from that background. So this Training of Trainers will have an impact on many as these leaders pass it on. (The Dehradun leaders asked that we not post any pictures so they are not compromised). 

We discussed principles and best practices to multiply churches. They loved it because that is what they were striving to accomplish! At the end of the training they shared their plans and prayed for each other. They invited us back next year. We will be coaching some of them between now and then.

We returned to Delhi Thursday night and spent time with some of the leaders who couldn't make it to Dehradun.  We are coaching with two church planters in New Delhi and we met with their leadership teams to discuss specific issues that they requested: The ministry of the Holy Spirit, Church Planting Teams, Reproducible Discipleship, Non-Professional Ministry, and Conflict Resolution. 

It was providential that we had Friday to meet with the leaders because they gave us critical orientation for our workshops on Saturday and Sunday. We see the importance of returning with "outcome-based" workshops that address sticking points. Knowledge will never change the world, but truth applied by faithful disciples continues to produce transformation.

These are young urban professionals. One pastor who was getting married the following weekend said that there were only 2 couples in the church and only one had any children. What a privilege to invest in these young lives.

Thank you so much for giving and holding us up in prayer. God is answering in wonderful ways!

For His sake,
Gene
ReachGlobal Mission
www.globalchurchplanting.net

New church planting start in Myanmar

The Evangelical Free Church of Myanmar invited our team to help them with church planting. This is an association of 181 churches with 50 missionaries. However, they don't provide any basic training for their missionaries. But, before sending us to equip their missionaries, they wanted to go through the training themselves. We started Nov. 6 and had 4 wonderful days of training and interaction, followed by a day of evaluation and strategic planning with the leaders. The pictures that follow speak for themselves. If you have ay questions please don't hesitate to email me at gene.wilson@efca.org

It was a real blessing to reconnect with my friend Chhuana in Yangon, the capital.

The next day I boarded a flight to go North to Kalaymyo, where the Miso people live in the mountains.

There I met up with two trainers on our team who had flown in from Thailand. Two other missionaries on the Asia leadership team also arrived before I did. George, the EFM president welcomed us all.

The Miso people of Myanmar were evangelized in the 1950s by one of their tribe from India, the man pictured below. He started one church, that later started a church in Yangon. But for many years it was just the 2 churches in Kaleymyo and Yangon.

We are told that the founder accurately taught the Word of God and to this day, this group has stayed faithful to it. But many were persecuted for their faith.

In 2002 the churches started reproducing in Yangon and now there are 4 mature churches and 10 house churches or Bible study groups. They all came together for Children's Day.

It was a family atmosphere. Lots of music and stories for all.

 In true Burmese fashion, the children take off their shoes to go on the rug. 

Children prepared memory verses and songs.

Here they are running into the library. 

It was my birthday. But they weren't singing for me. Part of Children's Day is singing Happy Birthday to Jesus. That was the highlight of the day.

Then they went around with the cake and everyone ate from the same spoon.

The skyline is riddled with Pagoda towers in this Buddhist country. After our training Chhuana took me to visit the most famous pagoda in Myanmar - really, as you will see below it was a village of pagodas and statues of Buddha, in every shape and size.

This is a picture of the diamonds on top of the above pagoda. People give them as offerings to curry the favor of Buddha.

Here they are doing ritual washings of Buddha. They also offer incense, ring bells, buy gold leaf and place in on the statues, kneel and pray and walk in circles the represent the cycle of reincarnation.

The biggest statue of Buddha in Myanmar.

This is also Buddha, with feminine traits.

When they leave, they have no assurance that anyone has really heard their prayers. But they hope and they return. They need to meet the high priest who can intercede for them to the Father.

These church planters have a challenging task sharing the gospel to Buddhists.

This family has dedicated their lives to reach those who follow Buddha. Paul shows how Buddha's 4 nobles truths point to the need for a Savior. The 8-fold path that Buddha taught is impossible to follow in human strength and there is nothing to take away sin in their religion.

The man is the center was a Buddhist monk from age 9 to 20. But he left the monastery dissatisfied.  Finally a friend shared about Jesus. When he accepted Christ and started going to church, his family disowned him. Today he is an effective evangelist among Buddhists.

We taught a group of 18 pastors and leaders how to make disciples and plant churches in a way that empowers them to reproduce.

After they learn the 7 fruitful practices, they are able to get up front and use gestures to teach them to others.

Here they are talking about "6" - the sixth practice, gathering disciples for worship in small communities.

While we were working with the men, missionary wives were teaching and encouraging the women. In one town they had 150 women show up!

Before leaving we had a very special goodbye dinner. Fish and veggies- very healthy!

 This boy at children's day expresses his thanks. And we join him in thanking you for helping us to prepare workers in the harvest. They loved the principles we taught. We were invited back to teach level- 1 to their 50 missionaries and they will sent 2 of their leaders to team teach with us.

  

Church planting advance in the Balkans

September 22, 2017

Gene leaves tomorrow for Belgrade, Serbia, then drives four hours to Leskovac, in the south, close to Macedonia. He will be working with Ritch Trca, a colleague who lives in Prague. You may remember that Linda and I went on an exploratory trip last fall to meet the Roma (Gypsy) church planters there.

From September 25-29, we will be equipping about 30 Roma leaders interested in Church Planting. Miki Kamba, a Roma leader from central Serbia, is inviting people from Balkan ethnic groups that were once enemies, to join hands for a new church planting movement. He will be coordinating, leading worship, and doing some teaching. Please pray for the three of us. On our skype call this week Miki said that forty people had signed up and they are still waiting to hear from Roma from other Balkan countries.

Please pray that everyone that God wants involved in a new wave of church planting for Serbia and the region, would be there. Pray for Miki Kamba.

Please pray for God to provide $1,320 which represents less than 5euros a day for each trainee and covers their noon meal, manual and translation/interpretation into the Serb language.

From there Gene and Ritch go to Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is a fascinating, and spiritually needy place. Fifty-five percent of the people are Muslim, descendants of families converted under the Ottoman Empire. The minority Christians are mostly Orthodox and Catholic. There are only 3,000 Evangelical Christians in this country. The capital, Sarajevo, with a population of 350,000, has only three visible churches and a smattering of house churches. Our missionaries went to help with physical and spiritual needs at the end of the Balkan war, and stayed to form a small house church movement. Now they are passing the baton to the Bosnian leaders. It will primarily be a ministry to help missionaries transition to a new role, and pass the baton to Bosnians. We also will discuss plans to further support the local house church leaders with training and coaching.

Thank you for standing with us in prayer. We are seeing much fruit. Ten years ago, Gene developed a Spanish Church Planting Course that continues to be used by God to impact Latin America. Seven years ago, we helped leaders from Africa develop their own curriculum for equipping African church planters. It is now used in 31 countries of Africa, and 20,000 have been through at least one of the levels of training. To God be the glory!

The Roma don’t have much. We would like to help by providing $1,320 to cover a noon meal each day, and the cost for interpreters and materials. If you are able to help, please contribute whatever God puts on your heart, one of the three ways indicated below. Thank you so much for helping us equip church planters and leaders in this region that has been devastated and fragmented by war.

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Gene Wilson

Serving with our Brothers and Sisters in Singapore

Last March the keynote speaker at our Mission's Leadership Conference in Berlin was Dr. Edmund Chan, pastor emeritus of Covenant Evangelical Free Church and author of an excellent book on discipleship, "A certain kind- Intentional disciplemaking that redefines success in ministry." The church leaders invited us to join Drs. Craig and Alice Ott to equip their missionaries and staff in church planting principles and best practices. We said "yes," and we went the last week of June.

 We had a great week of ministry in Singapore. They kept us very busy from morning until night, but we loved it. There were 110 people attending the church-planting conference. They were from many parts of Asia: Singapore, China, Vietnam, Nepal, India, Thailand, etc.

  Gene and Craig taught 4 sessions a day all week and the meetings went until 9:30 p.m.

Covenant church sponsored the training and invited its missionaries home for it. It is a mega-church of 5,000 that has 90 people on staff. Yet they are sending people to work in difficult places were house churches are the norm, like China and Vietnam. The common emphasis is on starting disciple-making gospel communities, whatever the size! We felt quite honored to be asked to come and they treated us so graciously

 

Linda and Alice had a great ministry! They taught several sessions with the wives, and met several times with small groups and one-on-one. The last day, they had a two-hour Q and A for all 4 of us about all the material that was presented.

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 New friendships were formed. God's Spirit was at work!

 The kids had their own teaching times and fun times. 

Senior pastor Tony Yeo brought several inspiring devotionals. He was preparing for the 50th anniversary celebration of the country. Christians rented the largest stadium in Singapore for a prayer rally.  Most people are Buddhist or Muslim, but biblical Christians are growing in number and influence.

 We thank God for a fruitful ministry, safe travel, new friends and church planters working in a dozen Asian contexts better equipped to plant healthy churches that bring transformation.What a privilege to partner with our Asian brothers and sisters who are responding boldly to the missionary call.