Q & A About All Nations Cape Town
/Including Our Twenty Year Dream
1. What is the overall mission and purpose of All Nations Cape Town?
We do three things in All Nations: we plant churches, train leaders, and make disciples. We do this by engaging the poor and unreached through practical programs to serve people’s needs, and by sharing the good news of Jesus. All Nations has churches and workers active in about 25 countries worldwide. Sally and I are based in Cape Town, South Africa. We work in the poorer communities of Cape Town where we reach people with the gospel and equip church planters to go to other parts of Africa and the Middle East. We are passionate about reaching the unreached people groups of Africa and the Middle East, especially Muslims. There are about 400 million people among Africa’s one billion people who have never heard the gospel one time.
2. What specific task(s) has God called you to fulfill?
As mentioned above, we have 3 tasks we focus on: disciple making, church planting and leadership training. We seek to equip local Africans to lead the way in planting 1000 churches in the next ten-twenty years amongst the least reach people groups of Africa, especially amongst Muslims.
3. How is your work being accomplished?
We form and train teams that are engaged daily in the high-crime, extreme poverty areas of Cape Town. We do projects that include sports, job creation, AIDS awareness and prevention, life skills training, art and music, abandoned baby rescue and helping children at risk (child headed households), education, and farming. We engage in all these projects with the aim of gaining access to the hearts and lives of people, then discerning who is the “person of peace” (Luke 10:5—7), then starting a Bible study with that person, and then as the Bible study grows, turning it into a new church plant. We have planted about 50 churches in the last three years following this approach in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia and Mozambique. Many thousands of people have been ministered to, but more importantly, many hundreds have been and are being discipled. Scores of quality leaders are being equipped.
4. What are your specific goals for this coming year?
Our goals for this year:
Develop the vocational training program to equip Africa church planters with job skills/trades to enable them to be self-supporting and self-sustaining. There are 10 of our leaders now in various stages of vocational and work skills training. Some are involved in a work/live program. Others have participated in the following training seminars in the following disciplines: computer literacy, non-tillage farming, hospitality, education, business. We plan to develop each seminar into a full-service training track in the trade school.
Break through to 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation church plants by the initial churches we have started in the last 3 years. Approximately 35 churches have been started since October, 2006.
Establish church planting hubs in Zambia and Zimbabwe and send full time workers to Zanzibar and Ghana.
Send exploratory teams to research possible locations for church planting among unreached people groups in Angola, Lesotho, Sudan, Ghana and North India.
Pay off the remaining debt on our training center of $160,000 US. This will allow us to go into phase two of developing the training center. Presently, we can house 35 students at Africa House. When the debt is retired we would like to build an additional accommodation/class room wing that will increase student housing to 60 students and allow the church planting and trade school classes to run simultaneously.
5. What are your greatest internal needs in the ministry?
We need a full time administrator, and a operations director for the training center.
Funds to retire $160,000 debt at Africa House so we can enter the second phase of developing the facilities, a $300,000 project.
Greater level of prayer and fasting. Our teams and workers fast different days of the week, but the level of intensity and faith needs to go to a higher level.
Embrace the grace of God for suffering and sacrifice that is necessary to reach the 450 million lost people of Africa. 350 million of that number are Muslims.
6. What are the greatest external threat(s) to the ministry in Africa?
Islamic fundamentalism and it’s violent response to the progress of the gospel amongst Muslims
Spiritual warfare against our workers as they move into unreached people groups: sickness, auto accidents, wars, corrupt government leaders, Muslim extremists who oppose our work, lack of funds for our African church planters.
African animistic world-views, reinforced by ancestor worship and controlling family leaders to maintain tribal customs consistent with those practices and world views
Poverty mentality among Africans that leads to passivity and hopelessness
Violent crime
Corruption among government leaders
Family expectations that Christian workers should support elders and other family members financially
Sexual promiscuity in the townships and villages of Africa
Marriage practice of lobola (bride price)
7. What are the greatest opportunities in Africa?
10,000’s of Africans willing to be trained for cross-cultural church planting
Openness amongst Africa’s 350 million Muslims to the gospel
Governments are open: they need help in responding to needs in education, job creation, community development, AIDS, etc.
Natural resources: Africa can feed itself
Unemployed university students: there is a vast army of young adults waiting for a cause to give their lives for
Education systems are open to Christian programs
There is huge potential in Africa to mobilize thousands of workers to go to other continents and aid in the completion of the great commission
8. What is your 20 year dream?
100 apostolic leaders leading church planting movements in the hardest places of Africa
1000 churches planted that are self-sustaining and reproducing
5 Major training hubs in each of the major geographical regions of Africa: Southern, Northern, Western, Eastern, and Central Africa
10,000 workers who have been trained and are self-supporting church planters
CPx training programs in each of Africa’s 54 countries