Dear Friends.

Read the four-minute version in red below.

↓

As promised in the recent update, this article is devoted to an assessment of the conference ministry we have conducted for 23 years with Editora Fiel and missionary colleague Karl Peterson. It also focuses particularly on the 2023 Fiel Conference held in Nampula ten weeks ago.

We report on our 2023 and previous Fiel Conferences.

Some will not have the time or the need to digest this analysis of what God is doing through this part of our ministry. If this describes you, I encourage you to use the two-minute summary in the right margin to skip the details of this evaluation and then return to the main text where the headings are written in red font.

395 church leaders participated in this year's Fiel Conference. Our choral group is seated at the front.

To skip the statistics, jump to the red headlines.

For context, it is important to note that the theme for this conference was “The Power of the Gospel.” The 19 sessions included:

• six expository messages on salvation by grace through faith from Romans 1-4,
• two topical messages summarizing all that grace represents according to the Bible,
• two topical messages on Biblical faith,
• five sessions related to the power of the gospel to transform lives and cultures,
• one message exposing five false gospels commonly preached in Mozambique,
• a workshop addressing eight errors or deficiencies often manifested in evangelism, and
• two sessions devoted to six case studies of common church problems that arise from faulty gospels.

I would be remiss not to mention our preachers. Samuel Quimputo, an Angolan, did a wonderful job for us, as did Ben Lane from HeartCry Missionary Society. I preached five sessions and two Mozambican brothers preached two messages.

It is worth noting that all the highest scores on the effectiveness of each session went to the three African brothers

This year's theme was "The Power of the Gospel".

As can be discerned in the above program, eight of the sessions challenged commonly held viewpoints related to the gospel here. They were:

• three sessions devoted to case studies and errors in evangelism,
• four sessions devoted to the Bible’s teaching on grace (far more than mere forgiveness of sins) and on true saving faith (not a “name it and claim it” lever for getting whatever we want), and
• the message on five false gospels common in Mozambique.

Besides expositing the true gospel from Rom. 1-4, we exposed popular distortions of the gospel.

I wanted feedback from the participants on the content of these sessions to know if we were winning people over through our teaching or if we were merely alienating multitudes who persisted in disagreeing with us. So, at the end of every session, the MC asked the group to rate the content of the material for that session on the evaluation sheet covering all 19 sessions as to their overall helpfulness. Each session could be rated on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being most useful and 1 being most unhelpful.  

Participants rated each session's usefulness. This helped us to know the mindset of our listeners.

The results were indeed informative. For example, one participant rated all the sessions at a four or five except for the one on Common False Gospels in Mozambique. That message was preached by a Mozambican brother, a founding member of Mission Ekklesia who is part of the faculty of the Reformed seminary starting now and who is intimately familiar with the Mozambican church. His message and outline received the highest rating of all the messages NOT preached by our Angolan speaker, but this particular reviewer flunked it, giving it the lowest rating possible, “1”. It seems likely the reviewer was a man whose message was one of the false gospels exposed by our speaker! On the other hand, the highly favorable rating the session received from almost everyone else indicated the speaker’s points resonated well with the hearts of his listeners, even if they came from churches characterized by the false gospels he was exposing!

Ibrahimo addressing five common false gospels here

We were happy the message on false gospels was well-received, with one notable exception!

My workshop on 8 common errors or discrepancies associated with evangelistic methods (a la Charles Finney) got the lowest rating, which I would have predicted. However, while some people had their toes stepped on for embracing the errors of this 19th century American evangelist still promoted today in evangelism classes around the world, I was pleased that at least one person expressed his deep gratitude for the session. For him it was a Godsend, as it dealt with reservations he had long sensed without fully understanding why and without knowing how to correct while keeping the message urgent, compelling, and winsome.

As expected, my class on common errors in evangelism got the lowest rating. Many venerated presentation methods were impugned.

Curious readers can see the outline of this evangelism workshop here. The text has been translated by Google, so pleaser forgive the style!

Here's its outline.

The next lowest ratings were for the six controversial case studies. This also was no surprise. The strength of case studies is they get participants debating about matters where light and darkness often take opposing sides. I hoped the debates would continue in small groups during mealtimes and throughout the evenings, with much help being dispensed by the Biblical proponents. Perhaps in some cases this is what happened.

Case studies related to poor results from spurious gospels got the next lowest rating.

One of twenty groups at the conference debating the case study assigned to them

A weakness of the case studies was that we had time to review only three of the six during the plenary session, and the reviewers doing the presenting were the participants themselves. Though many fine comments were made in the brief time each representative had for presenting his group’s analysis, it may have been more satisfying if one of our speakers had spent the entire hour methodically explaining from Scripture how and why faulty views of the gospel often lead to stunted Christians and weak churches as illustrated in these real-life examples. However, in case studies it is important that the groups synthesize and then present their own conclusions.

These were debated and presented by the participants themselves.

What was clear to observers was that the case studies did elicit vigorous debates within the twenty groups. Each group was assigned one case study to discuss. I suspect more than a few were dissatisfied by the fact that their position, right or wrong, did not carry the day. The rating the case studies received may have been a reflection in part of disagreeing with the outcome or disliking the fact that the problems needing to be fixed were too characteristic of one’s own congregation!

They provoked vigorous debate, as the false gospels are embraced by so many churches.

This was the kind of information I was hoping to obtain about how our teaching and each session was received by the listeners. I knew we were presenting controversial material and wanted to know if we were convincing listeners or only irritating our audience.

I appreciated all the feedback, including the "low" scores.

Though I have spoken about “low ratings” for some sessions, that is only a relative term. The scale we obliged people to use ranged from a low of 1 to a high of 5, and while some of the sessions topped out at 4.93 when all 301 evaluations were summed and averaged, even our lowest session received a very high mark of 4.69. No session dropped below that, meaning that using the usual grading scale, the lowest session earned a 94% score for usefulness and the highest a perfect 100%!

Ben Lane, Africa Regional Director for Paul Washer's HeartCry Missionary Society preaching effectively from Romans 1

In reality, all our ratings were high; the lowest was 94%!

This enthusiasm was mirrored in the comments people voluntarily wrote on the general evaluation form for the conference. There was not one negative comment about the messages in any of the reviews. Here is a sampling of the comments received regarding the messages. (Statements below with slash marks represent two to eight reviewers expressing themselves in a similar way.)

Attendees wrote:

• All the messages were marvelous!
• The messages at this conference were of great benefit. I learned so much!
• The themes were of great benefit to pastoral ministry. They will radically change the methods of evangelism that we have been using.
• The messages were very useful, transforming, and foundational for me. The truth was unveiled!
• I learned so much from the material. It corrected many mistakes I have been making!
• The teachings on the gospel, grace, and faith were a great blessing / of great value.
• I heard just what I needed to learn. It was so useful!
• The program was well elaborated and resolved many doubts and questions that I previously had.
• The program and content was excellent / rich and so appropriate for the realities of the church in Mozambique / made a powerful impact / marvelous and effective!  
• The themes and messages were excellent, constructive, and well-developed. They left me with a clear picture of the grace which we have received from God! Salvation not by works of the law but through faith in Christ – this is grace!
• Marvelous! Oh, may there be more opportunities like this! The messages closed so many of the gaps in my understanding of the full and mighty gospel!

"The teaching was marvelously beneficial, just what was needed."

"It will change how we under-stand and present the gospel."

• The messages were well selected and have left a deep impression upon our hearts, a major change. May God bless all the speakers. All that remains is for us to apply these messages to our own churches.
• The messages were extremely productive for my spiritual life. I have committed myself to teach the same material to my own congregation.
• The messages were an important experience for us that must be lived out in our own churches.

"We must preach these truths in our own churches and put them into practice."

• The theme and the messages were immensely useful / highly valuable / excellent / exceedingly good / perfect / marvelous / fantastic / transforming!
• Glory to God for the faithful exposition of the true gospel!
• The messages preached were extremely important for my life. I am so thankful to God for the privilege of participating in this conference. I was greatly blessed!
• The program was exceedingly excellent! I learned things I had never heard before!
• The program was perfect, well organized, and there was good collaboration among all the speakers. The messages were so encouraging. I learned much and was extremely encouraged and spiritually transformed.

"Glory to God!"

The conclusion for me after reading all the evaluations is that our confrontational messages alienated virtually no one, but in fact, I hope, won many to a true understanding of our wonderful gospel! As one person wrote on social media immediately following the conference:

Our confrontational style evidently worked.

Thank you for this richly productive and powerful conference . . . there are indications that most of those present have now begun to understand the true gospel! The messages, the case studies, and the responses to questions and objections from the audience were all excellent. 

Through Christ Jesus, the pride of man was cast down before the Sun of grace, the power that destroys us in order to rebuild us on the eternal Rock!

People came to understand the true gospel.

The Grace Missions admin team that planned and executed the conference. From left to right, Stélio, Hannah, Charles, Bonifácio, Elga, and Calton

Coming Into the Light

One of the blessings of serving in a place like Mozambique where the works gospel is so prevalent, where church-goers strive to gain and then maintain their salvation yet fail conspicuously because of the weakness of the flesh, is that no one can appreciate grace like those who have labored under the heavy burden of the Law for so long!

For former Mozambican legalists, grace is a beautiful thing.

A year ago, I wrote about a Pastor Tomondera who came to the conference as a prophet in a health and prosperity neo-Pentecostal church. God dealt with him that week and he called home in tears telling his wife that they had been doing everything wrong, but now it was all going to change. He stayed on an extra week for the first seminar offered by Equipping Pastors World-Wide and then another week so he could take my course on soteriology. He left saying that by God’s grace he was going to transform his neo-Pentecostal church, which he had inherited from his father at his death, into a “Reformed” church, and he has actually done that! He was back this year with three of his fellow prosperity proclaimers who have since abandoned their old ways, having been convinced through their interactions with him. They have been meeting to discuss good literature they are reading together as they study their Bibles, and they are actively participating in WhatsApp groups established among Reformed-minded Christians scattered across the northern half of this country to encourage and strengthen one another.

At our 2022 conference and seminars, God transformed Pr. Tomondera from a Pentecostal prophet to a Reformed leader.

As will be described below, we gave everyone a doctrinal survey before issuing them their conference manual. Of 358 people taking this “test” of 17 questions, the former prophet and prosperity peddler as of one year ago was one of only 7 people who this year answered every question just the way a PhD from a Reformed seminary would. But you probably will not find many seminary professors as excited about the gospel of grace as this man is, together with his friends!

Out of 358 respondents to our "theology quiz", his was one of only seven "perfect scores".

As mentioned, this year we conducted a two-part doctrinal survey that everyone had to fill in before receiving his conference manual. The first part consisted of 17 questions to reveal the participant’s views about salvation by Christ alone, salvation by faith alone, man’s inability, the sovereignty of God in salvation, election, sanctification, and perseverance. These questions were generic and employed no buzz words or theological terms. 

17 questions probed basic beliefs on salvation.

The second part included a list of ten common terms used to describe different theological viewpoints. We wanted to see how many people eschewed words like “Calvinism” or “election” because of their church background while embracing it in their actual beliefs as per the first section, and how many people embraced terms like “Reformed” or “perseverance” for the sake of the survey-takers while denying it in their answers in the first section.

Then we asked about 10 theological labels.

Additionally, we had a third set of questions where we learned about our participants’ age, sex, church responsibility, home denomination, local pastor, number of Fiel Conferences attended, how many times they had read through the Bible, whether they had participated in one of our three-year reading groups, etc.

We also collected demographic information.

Our administrator, Hannah M., loaded all this information into the computer and then generated a wealth of data which we have studied looking for trends based on church affiliation, local pastors, familiarity with the Bible, time spent reading Christian literature, exposure to Fiel conferences, etc.

Hannah analyzed the data.

Here are some things we found out – bearing in mind on the doctrinal matters that this survey was done BEFORE the 19 sessions of this conference took place. A participant who heard Hannah’s presentation of the results lamented the fact that we could not repeat the survey at the end of the conference to see the effect of the messages. However, we will keep using it year by year to monitor changes taking place in the convictions of repeat attenders taking the survey.

The survey was taken at the start of the conference.

The most common age group at the conference was 36-40 (11%). The next was 29-30 (10%) and the third was made up of youth leaders ages 23-25 (10%). Sixty percent of the attenders were 40 or younger, and 35% were 45 or older.

The median age was 37.

60% of the attenders had a high school degree or higher.

60% were high school graduates.

25% said they had read the entire Bible from cover to cover.

25% had read the whole Bible.

34% of the men were pastors. 66% had other leadership roles.

34% were pastors.

88 different denominations were represented in the survey.

88 denominations were present.

45% were attending their first Fiel Conference. We were surprised at this high number, but when we compared it to other years, we found that in fact we usually have 40% first time attenders, something we did not realize before.

45% were first-time attenders.

Also to our surprise, we found that only 30% of the attenders had been to more than two previous Fiel conferences. I thought we had a higher retention rate than that, but having the computer compare these statistics with previous years, we learned that the drop-off rate in attendance has been similar every year for the past twelve years.

Only 30% had attended 3 or more prior conferences.

The primary motives causing people to attend the conference were first, to learn from the messages, then to enjoy fellowship, then to obtain literature.

Our teaching is the biggest draw.

On the doctrinal survey, 60% of the answers given to the generic questions lined up with the positions promoted by these conferences. The most doubted doctrines that we seek to encourage amongst the Evangelical churches were man’s inability, which only 9% of our participants fully accepted, and election, which only 22% fully accepted.

60% of responses given to generic questions agreed with our own answers.

Using theological terms, 48% said they concurred with “election” even though their answers in the first section proved that in practice only 22% fully embraced that doctrine. 38% said they were “Calvinists,” though only 14% of participants consistently answered questions in the first section as a Reformed Christian would. Only seven persons from the entire group answered every question the way we would (16 persons if you exclude questions on sanctification/carnal Christians). I am pleased that four of the seven with perfect results were graduates of my course, and that the former neo-Pentecostal brother was included in that number!

On lables, many embraced terms like "election" and "Calvinism" despite contrary responses to corresponding generic questions.

Scoring the survey as if it were a test with right or wrong answers revealed that the average score was 60%! This was a much higher result than we expected given the contrary doctrines that hold sway here. It indicates that despite their church backgrounds, the Fiel participants are more Reformed than non-Reformed, even though they come from churches that are contrary to the Reformed understanding of the gospel. To our surprise, there was no difference in average score comparing older individuals with younger individual (who we thought would score higher than the older pastors who have a hard time changing) or comparing people who had attended multiple conferences with people who were just starting. There was a clear, consistent trend toward higher scores among people who said they had read the Bible through multiple times, but to say this was not coincidental would require analysis using probability statistics which has not been done.

Dining on the hospital evangelistic pavilion

But overall, we're impressed with the 60% average score, given that local churches are almost universally contrary to the doctrines of grace.

Our team did a subsequent phone survey of the top 50 scorers on the theology questionnaire. All the ones we could reach were fully convinced of the doctrines of grace in salvation and all identified themselves as Reformed in soteriology.  

By phone, we polled the top 50 scorers.

Of the different ways these top scorers first came to know something of the doctrines of grace, reading their Bible was mentioned most frequently, with a score of 21%. 51% first discerned the doctrines of grace through various ministries carried out by us under the Fiel banner – 15% through attending the conferences, 15% through reading the literature we promote, 12% through my seminars, and 9% through participating in one of the reading groups sponsored by us or Fiel or Mission Ekklesia. Another 12% first heard the doctrines on the Internet. Another 8% had their first exposure through friends. Only 7% first discovered them through their pastor.

70% came to the doctrines of grace through Bible reading or our ministries. Only 7% learned them from their own church leaders.

Their solid conviction about these truths developed over time primarily through their personal Bible reading (44%). Reading good literature was the principle means by which another 29% were fully convinced, listening to sermons online was weighted at 15%, and interaction with friends supplied only 13% of the help leading to their well-developed convictions. The key thing to note here is that 88% of the credit for their understanding of these truths was ascribed to individual study apart from their local church. Even if the friends helping them in this discovery were all members in their own church, that only accounted for 12-13% of their development. These are the results only of the highest scorers, but it confirms that few people are learning these truths from their local churches. They must stumble across them and grow to fully understand them via other sources, largely through our outreaches or the ministries arising in our wake.

Local churches contributed less than 13% to their development in these doctrines.

As to how these high scorers first heard of our work, 40% said they were introduced to the Fiel ministries (but not to our teachings) by their pastor. Only 7% first heard the actual doctrines we teach through their local churches, suggesting that most pastors still are not passing on from the pulpit what they have learned from us. This confirms what we have long heard through the grapevine, that many pastors learn from our ministries but will not preach the Biblical gospel in their churches because of adverse consequences they expect from denominational leaders. The courage of Martin Luther is needed to fearlessly proclaim the truth in typical Mozambican churches! Pray with us for these pastors who know one thing and preach another!  

Pastors who learn these truths at our meetings need courage to preach them to their own congregations, knowing they will soon be opposed by their denominational leaders.

An additional 40% learned about our Fiel ministries through a trusted brother in Christ. Indeed, our promotion has almost always relied on this method – word of mouth from people who have already been helped by this ministry.

Inside the food service tent where 4,500 meals were served

Word of mouth brings many to us.

Our way of interpreting the results of these surveys, based on other information that we have through knowing the participants, is that many people come to the Fiel Conference in Nampula because they have already been influenced by friends who in turn have been influenced by the conferences. We do much of our publicity through people and churches already involved with us. We presume that these pre-conditioned participants, new to the conference or not, young or old, made relatively high marks on the survey. The overall average results across the board are brought down by the low scores of those in their same age bracket or category who have not been influenced by our ministry, either because they are only now getting to know it, or because they attend the conferences but derive little benefit due to their previously established frame of reference for understanding spiritual matters. We would have liked to see increasingly higher scores for people who have attended increasingly more conferences, but that was notably not the case in this survey.  We will follow this statistic in future surveys!

We think it's the same influencers reached mostly through the Fiel ministries who both convince people theologically and then bring them to our conference.

However, we are convinced that the relatively high overall grade of 60% is far better than what one would find if he were conducting the same survey at a non-Fiel Christian event, say one of the frequent prophecy conferences. To know this, we would need a “typical Evangelical Mozambican” control group to compare results with, not a select group of Evangelicals who all paid money to attend a Fiel Conference!

We suspect typical Mozambican evangelicals would score much lower than 60%.

And these test results, higher than we expected based on our experience with the teachings of local churches, cause us to think that the conferences and literature ministry are indeed causing those who associate with us to change significantly what they believe relative to what their denominations teach. Even people who have never attended one of our conferences, based on the results of the 45% of new attenders who represented 48 denominations, very few of which espouse the doctrines of the Reformation, who supposedly are friends with people and churches who do participate with us and who have introduced them to us – even these first attenders have already been changed in a favorable direction before participating in their first conference.

Leaders of Mission Ekklesia, major influencers, fruit of the Fiel work, and founding instructors of a Reformed seminary being established in Nampula, meet with Ben Lane of HeartCry Missionary Society

Thanks to their friends' influence, even first-time attenders scored relatively well.

A few supporters mentioned they would like to know my concerns regarding eight common errors or deficiencies manifested in typical evangelistic appeals, together with the corrections for bringing these appeals into line with Scripture. As mentioned above, those who are interested can read a brief summary of them at this evangelism workshop link.

You can read my evangelism workshop outline here.

One of the eight deficiencies I see is the very language we use in talking about salvation. Do we speak of our salvation as “I accepted Christ,” or as “God saved me!”? One can appreciate the umbrage some Christians might take when this common idiom is questioned. But is it appropriate that we naturally describe our salvation as something we did for Christ rather than something God did for us? Besides the fact that grammatically one phrase makes us the subject of the sentence and the center of attention and relegates God or Christ to the passive place of a grateful recipient or object of our condescension in accepting Him, there is the question of who we perceive to be the principal agent in the mighty work being accomplished in saving a sinner.  

"God saved me" is a better description of salvation than "I accepted Christ".

How would Lazarus have described his resurrection from the dead to the people who came to see him afterwards? “I was dead for four days, then I heard a voice, I saw a light, I walked toward it, and embraced Christ”? Or “I was dead four days until Christ came to the tomb and raised me up again!”?

How would Lazarus have described his resurrection?

We all understand that the resurrection of Lazarus was clearly miraculous, so we attribute it to Christ and never to the things Lazarus himself did in the process. But according to the Bible, our own salvation is no less miraculous. Still, many assume it is something they accomplished themselves, at least in the way they describe it grammatically, because they do not understand or perceive the miraculous nature of it! And indeed, I fear that for some of these people, “salvation” never involved anything more than what they did acting alone, without any divine participation before, during, or after the event!

It, like our salvation, was a divine miracle that naturally would be ascribed to God, not anything Lazarus did!

Making a decision or changing one’s own mind is how people convert to other religions every day, and no doubt many “convert” to Christianity in just the same way. But the Bible assures us that genuine, life-changing, life-long conversions happen only by the grace of God working mightily in the life of a sinner, saving and transforming him by a power so wonderful that it must originate outside himself, even though he himself participates in every step of the conversion process!

Conversion to Christ is more than a human decision.

The above reality underlies an observation set forth in one of the conference messages about Biblical faith. Ephesians 1:19-20 speaks of the miraculous power exerted by God in causing a dead sinner to understand and truly believe the gospel. In that passage, Paul prays that the Ephesians might comprehend the “exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.”

According to Eph. 1:19-20, it is God raising a spiritually dead person using the same power that raised Christ - or Lazarus!

In view of this assertion, my response to those who believe that the faith that saves them is something wrought by themselves is this: “When you can take me to a cemetery and show me how you, by your own power, can raise up people who were interred two days previously, then I will believe that the faith by which you were saved really does arise from your own power to sincerely and truly believe something as incredible as the gospel!”

A natural man can no more truly believe in Christ than a dead man can rise from his grave.

What we ourselves do in salvation, we indeed do ourselves – but only because Christ by His power has effectually called us to Himself and then enabled us, as in the case of Lazarus, to carry out every step we do in the process – hearing, understanding, believing, repenting, and obeying!

It is God who enables us to do our part in salvation.

And surely everyone would agree that it is far more glorious to describe our salvation in those wonderful terms, “God saved me!”, “God opened my heart!”, “God made me understand!”, “God made me hate my sin!”, as Paul and the Bible express our conversion, rather than the way so many of us have been trained to describe it in our man-focused age!

Some of the 30 volunteers under the direction of Elga Massingarela, front right, who helped make this conference a blessing to many

Let's focus our story on God!

One of the most deeply ingrained beliefs in the Evangelical church in Mozambique is that men must do good works to merit the gift of salvation. And after receiving this gift, they must continue in good works to avoid losing the gift. It would appear that in Mozambique, the gifts and calling God bestows upon His people are not irrevocable, unlike in the rest of the world. Here, Romans 11:28-29 has somehow faded from the page in our Bibles.

Mozambicans are convinced that good works are necessary to gain and maintain salvation.

Yet God's word affirms that people who are once saved will forever persevere despite their stumbling steps (I John 2:19). They will be zealous for good works even though they still wrestle with sin (Titus 2:14). They will practice righteousness, not iniquity (I John 3:9-10). This is because the Spirit of God is at work within them, causing them to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). But every time a preacher tries to make these changes happen in the lives of his flock by telling them God will not save them unless they do this and this, or that they will lose their salvation if they start doing that and that, he is only driving an ever-widening wedge that “severs them from Christ.” He is giving them a mighty push over a deadly precipice, causing them to “fall from grace”. Thanks to their pastor, “Christ will be of no effect unto them” in the Day of Judgment, for the pastor has “cut them off from Christ”! Their only hope of being delivered now is if they can “keep the whole Law of God” without a single slip from birth to death!

Yes, Christians will manifest their faith by their actions, but pastors must not preach a works-based salvation as it causes their hearers to believe that faith in Christ is insufficient to save, severing them from Christ and from the salvation they seek!

The pastor’s zeal to constrain unruly sinners, people who were superficially saved by a faulty gospel and who are still strangers to the Holy Spirit, to perform good works they really do not want to do and will not do without threats, has convinced his listening sheep that no one can be saved by faith alone! Galatians 5:2-6 concluded the messages on salvation by grace. There Paul warned the church that men who got circumcised thinking that faith in Christ was not sufficient to save them were cutting themselves off from Christ, had fallen from grace, would receive no benefit from Christ in the Day of Judgment, and could only hope for salvation by keeping the whole Law. Men of grace will not follow in the steps of the Judaizers, but there are many Judaizers in local pulpits today. God grant that we will not be such misguided pastors or evangelists, severing our listeners from Christ!

Like-minded ministries spawned through our outreaches promote their projects in the exhibition tent

The Bible sternly condemns this approach, almost universal here, in Galatians 5:2-6.

For those who pray for this ministry and support it financially, I am deeply grateful. The conference and literature ministries are costly, and there is still much work to be done before I will feel content with where we have come. We need your prayers that God will continue to work upon the hearts of our hearers. Pray that He will increase our retention rate, as next year I want to carry on with Romans 5-8 on sanctification, or "Transformation through the Spirit," then in 2025 with Romans 9-11 on the attributes of God and His sovereignty in salvation, then in 2026 with the persecuted yet victorious church, persecution being the inevitable consequence of becoming different from local culture, then in 2027 the Biblical family, where departure from current culture is urgently required. Every one of these conferences must build on the foundation laid in the previous conferences to yield the best results for Mozambique and the churches here, but that cannot happen if only 30% of attenders return after two conferences!

We want the same attendees to faithfully return for our next four conferences on sanctification, God's attributes, persecution, and the family.

Would you please continue to help us through your intercessions for this work?

By His grace,

Charles and Julie Woodrow

Please pray for this to happen!