Zambia Northwestern Catalyst Team

Because of your generosity to this ministry, we trained 25 adults and 10 young people to understand God’s Word and share Him with others.

Praise God that last year’s Bible school graduates are training a new group of believers for Christian ministry, and a member of our team conducts youth training in several churches, so that they can lead youth discipleship groups in their own churches.

Through these programs, local believers are growing in Christ, taking leadership in their churches, and living out the Great Commission here in Zambia and beyond.

In addition, our team is moving forward in revising the Kaonde translation of the Old Testament. We are also training mature believers to repair water wells in rural areas, so that they can share the gospel, disciple believers, and plant churches in these communities.

Thank you for joining us in catalyzing Zambians for kingdom work! You are investing in the Zambian church and its future.

Please continue joining us in prayer:

• Pray for our team as we mentor a new crop of church leaders to follow God’s call.
• Ask God for wisdom as we translate the Kaonde Old Testament.
• Pray specifically for our Zambian partners to remain faithful to Scripture as they train others to follow God’s Word.

Thank you for serving alongside us in Zambia and throughout this region by faithfully giving and praying for this ministry!

“Why can’t I just use the Bible to say what I want to my church?!?!” Chando* blurted out in frustration.

He expressed the annoyance of many of the 16 students at Truth Mining Bible School when the school opened in 2021.

Over time, however, Chando and the others grew in their understanding of Scripture, as they learned how to study, interpret, and teach the Bible accurately.

Because of your generosity to this ministry, we recently graduated eight students.

They now testify to the changes in their hearts, lives, homes, and churches, as God transformed them through His Word.

Thanks to you, each graduate received a starter library of 10 books, enabling them to continue their studies.

Four of these students will continue at the Bible School, moving from pupils to teachers. They will prepare a new crop of students to “rightly [handle] the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15b).

Thank you for partnering with us to disciple and train Zambian believers to lead churches and equip fellow Christians.

Please join us in prayer:

• Praise God for a new branch of the school, located in a rural region, which already has 16 students. Ask God to help them effectively train believers for ministry.
• Pray for Truth Mining Bible School to continue faithfully equipping Christian ministry partners for many years to come.
• Ask God to use Chando and other graduates as they serve the Lord, disciple believers, guide churches, and even teach new students.

Your faithful gifts and prayers train Zambian believers whom God calls to minister in ways we cannot. Thank you for investing in this Great Commission ministry.

*Name changed

Thank you for joining us in training believers in Zambia’s Northwestern Province to grow in their faith and plant healthy churches. Recently, a local Baptist association recognized that its current church planting strategy struggled to produce thriving, faithful churches.

Working together, we developed a new strategy and trained 19 volunteers to implement it because of your generosity. These teams will lay a strong foundation by sending trained evangelists into a new community for one to two weeks, followed by a rotation of disciple-makers for the next two months. These disciplers will focus on the foundational truths of following Jesus and equip believers to continue learning and growing spiritually on their own. As those believers remain faithful, experienced and trained, church planting teams will follow up to help the community establish a healthy church with biblical characteristics.

We count on your partnership in prayer:

• Ask God for wisdom as they identify new communities to begin work.
• Pray for the teams to find fertile soil to plant and tend gospel seeds so many will accept Christ as Savior and grow spiritually into healthy churches.

Thank you for joining us in addressing the world’s greatest problem: lostness. Your gifts and prayers for this team enable us to reach Northwest Zambia with the good news. You are a co-laborer with us in the gospel, and we value your partnership!

To our surprise—but not to God’s—Kelvin* started a church! When he announced he would be moving to the Kimikusu area, church leaders were disappointed. They had poured so much into Kelvin over the past couple of years. They were confident he would become a leader in their church, but now he was moving on to find new farmland. Kelvin settled into the new community and noticed it desperately needed a healthy, biblically grounded church. Without missionaries nearby, Kelvin responded to the Holy Spirit’s leading to start one.

Though our team focused on training church planters in Northwest Zambia, God saw much, much more. God multiplied the training your gifts provided to Kelvin. When he arrived in his new community and realized the need, he began sharing the gospel with his new neighbors. As they began to accept Christ, he started discipling them. Eventually, they began a church.

We call this church a “third-generation church” because it was begun by a national believer who came out of a “second-generation church” that resulted from a “first-generation church” missionaries planted. This kind of growth is exactly what God called us here to do: equip, train, and mobilize Zambian believers to carry out Christ’s kingdom work in Zambia’s Northwestern Province and beyond. Thank you for making this new church possible.

Because of your generosity, Kelvin learned to recognize the false teaching prevalent in Zambian culture. Because of your support, our team has trained many Zambians to share the gospel wherever they go. Because of you, Kelvin and other Zambians learned to disciple other believers. Thank you for your partnership in reaching Zambia for Christ!

Please join us in prayer:

• Pray that Pastor Kelvin and the church continue growing and sharing the gospel.
• Praise God for the support Kelvin has found with the local association of churches who are helping him show the “JESUS” film in his village.

Thank you for joining us in addressing the world’s greatest problem: lostness. Your gifts and prayers enable us to train Zambian believers to evangelize, disciple, and plant healthy churches to deliver the love and hope of Jesus Christ to those who need it most.

*Name changed for security

“Remember how you used to argue on every point in every class?” When I asked Peter* to recall this memory, Peter and our entire class of students erupted in laughter.

In 2023, when Peter joined our Truth Mining Bible School, he challenged everything we taught. By God’s grace, I remained patient with him and consistently pointed to Scripture as our authority for faith and practice.

By the end of the year, Peter experienced a change of heart. Although he had believed in Jesus and Scripture prior to joining the Bible school, he attended a church that did not hold the Bible as the ultimate authority. Instead, he and his fellow congregants considered their church leader the ultimate authority on all things spiritual. They didn’t realize the leader was not actually teaching according to the Bible. As a result, every time I taught from Scripture, Peter objected.

Fast forward to January 2024, and Peter is now encouraging our six new students to look to the Word–not to people–for truth. He testifies that many who claim to speak the Word of God do not even know what the Bible says. Peter has left the church he attended in 2023 and is growing greatly in his faith and biblical practice. He says that he cannot quit Bible school because there is so much more to learn.

Thanks to your financial gifts to our Zambia Northwestern Catalyst Team ministry, we can accommodate more students this year by purchasing more tables for our growing class. Your financial gifts are also helping us acquire valuable study books and commentaries so that we can provide each of our graduates with a ministry library starter kit. We expect to have ten graduates in December 2024!

• Please pray for each of our 20 students as they study and are repeatedly challenged by Scripture.
• Pray for resilience, encouragement, and provision for each student so that they finish well.
• Also, pray that they will apply all they learn to their life and ministry so that they lead others well.