Year End Report

I would like to thank all of you who have faithfully stood with us this year. Your prayers and financial support made our soul winning crusades in Pakistan possible!  Because of you, over 25,000 new souls will spend eternity with Jesus! That is amazing!!  I just can not say thank you enough.

Please, do read Pastor Cornelius’ report, who is BMM’s head leader in Pakistan responsible
for the post-crusade work processes.

During this year alone, and despite the very tense situation, 22 churches were founded through this kind of work.
Our goal and purpose is to gather a maximal harvest after the Crusade. As our first step we take care of the decision cards. They are counted and sorted out according to the areas, towns and villages they represent. Then, a meeting with local leaders is called in order to hand over the decision cards as well as to encourage them and mobilize them to visit new believers in villages and towns. Together, these church leaders and church planters visit these people personally on a one-on-one basis. The believers eventually invite them into their homes. Usually, if 2-3 or more members of the family have received Jesus into their lives, the door of this house is opened for the church planter. The local leader and pastor introduce the church planter to the families he will visit regularly for their spiritual feeding and fellowship. This is how a house church starts.

Key Persons

The next step after the one-on-one strategy, they try to find out how many families in one village have accepted Jesus. After examining this, the whole body of believers in that village is introduced to each other. During this process the Lord gives the church planters ‘a Man of Peace’. This Man of Peace becomes the leader of the village who becomes the link between the church planter and the village. A couple of weeks or months later, the fellowships of several houses decide to cooperate and meet together. Together with a couple of key people in the village, a proper meeting place is decided upon. Now the battle starts.

Persecution

As the joined meeting of new body of believers starts, persecution begins from the inside and the outside. Muslims living in the area become angry seeing believers who gather for joined times of worship. But God has always been faithful: As soon as the persecution starts, God comes in with His power, using these new believers. In one village, for example, God started using a newly born young man with healing power. A married couple came for prayer, sharing with him the woman was 8 months pregnant; yet, the baby was in a wrong position. Doctors told them about c-section, but they had no money. Intercessor of this newly planted church prayed and when the time came the baby was born normal. This testimony touched the whole village and they stopped persecuting them. In another village, a young boy who was crippled was healed by the Lord miraculously and as the whole village saw the miracle of this young boy walking normal and working in a shop, in a wrong position. Doctors told them about c-section, but they had no money. Intercessor of this newly planted church prayed and when the time came the baby was born normal. This testimony touched the whole village and they stopped persecuting them. In another village, a young boy who was crippled was healed by the Lord – miraculously and as the whole village saw the miracle of this young boy walking normal and working in a shop, they were amazed and stopped persecuting Christians.

The Church as a Hospital

It is normal that a newly planted church becomes like a small hospital; sick people are brought there and men and women of God pray for them and they are healed. In another village, the local Muslim clerics were provoking Muslims to persecute Christians. Suddenly, his daughter got demon possessed. Although his family did everything, nothing was able to help. Eventually, he brought the girl to the church believers prayed and the girl got delivered immediately. That brought a tremendous change in the life of the Muslim priest and his family.  The testimony touched the Muslims enormously.

Solid Bible Teaching

Our responsibility is to visit these newly planted churches as often as possible to see if they get solid, Bible based teaching. Our first goal once the church is planted is to make sure that people experience the Holy Spirit. For this, we organize a seminar for village churches where various local villages get invited. This seminar is extremely helpful for the local church planter as well as the new body of believers: In the seminar all sorts of questions they struggle with are answered, and they get baptized with the Holy Spirit. Secondly, they understand that they are not all alone. They are connected with the other members of the body of believers.

Needs

So far, we have planted 157 churches all over Pakistan. Many of them are working on building a simple meeting place. The biggest needs these newly planted churches have are of financial nature, to help them build a simple place of joined worship. The church planters would need transportation bicycles, and some who are currently taking care of many churches in the several villages need motorbikes. A lot of church planters need financial help for the simple reason that the newly planted churches cannot support them financially. We also need more members of our organizing team to reach more cities and villages for follow up and subsequently for helping new church planters in their challenges.

Building churches in rural areas

Last Crusade – Call of salvation

During the last evening, even on the way to the crusade location, we could feel the unseen world stirring. During the call for salvation I suddenly had the impression: “Don’t stand still – move back and forth, so you won’t be an easy target if someone aims at you!” At the same time, Khalid as well as another evangelist had the same impression and went to hide from the crowd. It all went very fast from there: Suddenly commotion went through the masses, armed security forces ran to the back and pursued some fleeing persons, while we tried calming down the crowd, being determined to call people to Jesus Christ, their Savior. Later, we learned what had really happened: Four armed terrorists with machine guns had disguised themselves as police men in order to kill us. At the time of our alter call they got ready to shoot us, when at the last moment one of the security men identified them as terrorists. Three of them were able to escape the chase, yet one has been caught. The enemy is “roaring” and he does not like what is happening in his territory at all. But in the midst of this “storm,” we were able to see how God revealed Himself as Savior, performing miracles, and healing the blind and the lame; especially many tumor stricken people were healed. 13,000 people came to the very last evening of the crusade alone, and 13,229 decision cards were being filled out by people who had accepted Jesus as their Savior.