I just returned from Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is competing with Haiti to become the “poorest nation in the world.” The capital, Freetown, rarely has running water or electricity. Life expectancy is less the 40 years. 182 out of 1000 die at childbirth. By every U.N. measure, Sierra Leone rates near the bottom.
Even though our family has adopted Sierra Leone as our country (see familiesforafrica.org), I was ready after two days there to admit that even God can’t bring His rule and reign here. The country is too broken. I could stop praying that “His Kingdom come, His will be down, in Sierra Leone as in Heaven.” There was no way that the “world that is in Sierra Leone” will ever become the “world that ought to be in Sierra Leone.”
I thought all that. . . . until I met these students at Fourah Bay College.
Lincoln, Gerald, Simon, Mathilda, Robert, and Jacob give leadership to the Great Commission Movement (the name of Campus Crusade in Sierra Leone) at Fourah Bay College. For two hours, Chip Scivicque and I listened to their stories, heard their vision for Sierra Leone and Fourah Bay College, prayed with them and toured their campus (“this is where we showed the Jesus film, here are the dorms where we speak to students about Christ, here we have our weekly meetings and discipleship groups, here is where we invite freshmen to join us, here is where we pray for our campus, here is my engineering class where I’m preparing to do my part in rebuilding Sierra Leone.”).
To be honest with you, I was blown away. Rarely have I met such quality leaders–men and women who define what it means to be a disciple of Christ.
Alan Hirsch argues that all movements are fundamentally disciple-making systems. He writes:
It is interesting that when we really look at the dangerous stories of the phenomenal movements, at the most uncomplicated level, they appear to the observer simply as disciple-making systems. But the rather funny thing is that they never appear to get beyond this—they never move beyond mere disciple-making. This is because it is at once the starting point, the abiding strategic practice, as well as the key to all lasting missional impact in and through movements.
These young men and women reminded me again that movements must never lose the art of disciplemaking. In making disciples who make other disciples, we initiate a movement through which the world that is can be transformed into the world that ought to be. Even in Sierra Leone.
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