EGM in Amazonas, Peru

Strategy. Enterprise. A lot of people tell us that the way EGM empowers national leaders to lead their own ministry is too messy, its too hard, its not as fast and effective as a hierarchy of authority, a top-down approach. We say, we know! It is hard - its messy - it makes for many ministry challenges. But we at EGM believe in national leadership. We cherish the diversity of languages, cultures and customs that God has created on this earth and we want to support that by refusing to do missions the way missions has been done for so long. We believe that this is the way to long-term, sustainable ministry.

For EGM it's not all about numbers, time-tables and risk evaluations. Sometimes it's about values and heart and doing what we believe in.

In the effort to create a broad network of ministry contacts and find potential board candidates for a future EGM-Peru, we should spend our time in major cities. We should meet with important people who have busy schedules and secretaries and ride in crazy taxis on crowded highways. But we wanted it to be known from the beginning that EGM will not be another ministry centralized only in the capital city, reaching thousands with ease, but neglecting the fewer who have the most critical need.

So our first ministry trip was to a remote location where we were invited by contacts to share about EGM's ministry. We sat in a small concrete room and spoke to 30 people, some church leaders some not, and told them how much God loves the children in their town and that EGM wants to help them as churches, fulfill the Great Commission to reach children with the love of Jesus. A few days later we presented EGM's ministry in a larger form by offering a training for children's workers. Since there is nearly no children's ministry being done in this town, everyone who came were either people curious about what to do or public school teachers, grasping at any training they can reach to help them in working with children.



It was clear that the need is great. It was with pain that we told them we were not sure when we could come back to help them more, but it was with great hope that we told them that we believe that not long from now God will form a team of Peruvians whose sole purpose will be to reach all of Peru with the leadership development and resources they need to minister to children in their churches. We asked them earnestly to pray with us that this come about - that God would continue to bring us the connections, raise up the leaders and the funding, and an EGM-Peru would begin seeing children transformed in Christ through His church.