The Gospel is Advancing Amid the Pandemic

God is using the pandemic to strengthen the ties of the global Alliance family. Twenty-three national Alliance churches are working together to help vulnerable communities affected by COVID-19 through long-term development projects. Twenty-one national Alliance churches are partnering in different missionary projects.

In these unprecedented times, God is using the pandemic and the critical circumstances that it is bringing to remind us about his sovereignty and his goodness. God has absolute control of everything that happens in our lives and in the universe. Certain experiences may be viewed as setbacks or may produce suffering. The pandemic is one example. It is comforting, however, to know that all this is part of God’s plan for us, for his church. God is using the pandemic to strengthen the ties of the global Alliance family so that we can work together for the proclamation of the gospel, by words and deeds.

The AWF Global Response to COVID-19 was one of those opportunities for the global Alliance family to honor God by expressing his mercy and compassion toward the most vulnerable communities we serve.

After completing the first phase, focused on relief projects, the AWF Relief and Development (R&D) Team completed the evaluation of 75 development projects submitted by 15 countries. After a thorough evaluation and revision of the proposals, 24 projects from Angola, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Congo RDC, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Liberia, India, Iraq, Jordan, Mali, Mongolia, Philippines and Paraguay were approved. The total budget of $278,760 USD was funded by generous donations from the Christian and Missionary Alliance of Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Peru and the United States. Honoring a donor’s request, a small part of this budget will be used for training, which is aligned with the purpose of this program. This is an opportunity for the national churches to build capacity in Relief & Development work that is fully integrated with their church planting and missionary efforts.

Another expression of this global collaboration is the AWF Global Network of Mission Leaders. Again, it is wonderful to realize that God is leading people in different parts of the globe to a common purpose. As the mission leaders share about how God is guiding them toward some people groups or countries, more and more opportunities for cooperation arise. In some countries, such as Senegal, we have missionaries coming from five national Alliance churches. We also identified projects from different countries aiming to reach out the same people groups, such as the Pashtun or the Fulani. Other initiatives include the engagement of Christian businessmen and professionals to do evangelism and discipleship among people living in countries closed to Christianity. Diaspora missions and ministry has brought many opportunities for cooperation to reach out to the Frontier Unreached People Groups. These are people groups with 0.1% or fewer Christians of any kind and no evidence of a self-sustaining gospel movement. The Alliance has today more than 1,700 workers that crossed cultural or geographical boundaries to witness Jesus Christ.

The gospel is advancing amid the pandemic.