July 25, 2007
The goal of Alliance missions is to establish self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing churches at home and abroad. In Gabon, West Africa, this goal has been achieved.
After a U.S. missions investment of more than 70 years, The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) national church in Gabon is moving full circle from being a recipient of Christian missions to becoming a partner in sending missionaries to unreached peoples.
“These churches are fully organized with official recognition from the Gabonese government,” says Bob Fetherlin, vice president for International Ministries at the U.S. C&MA National Office in Colorado Springs. “Over the next two years, our U.S. missions personnel will be transitioning to other countries.”
The U.S. missions staff at Bongolo Hospital, which is affiliated with the C&MA in Gabon, will remain in the country until 2015 to work through transition issues. Each year, hundreds of Gabonese people receive the promise of eternal life through Alliance ministries.
In Bongolo Hospital alone, staff workers have seen more than 700 people make decisions to follow Christ in 2007. This is not an unusual number of conversions from the hospital’s ministry. Since 2001, more than 6,000 patients, family members, and friends have put their trust in Jesus.
The hospital has undergone a major expansion with the addition of a two-story HIV/AIDS clinic and an eye clinic. New doctors and nurses have been recruited and trained, and permission has been granted for missionary partner Air Calvary to enter the country and provide air service for Bongolo Hospital.
A recent celebration honored the churches of Gabon for maturing to the place that the U.S. C&MA no longer needs to place long-term church-planting missionaries in the country, with the reassurance that Alliance leaders will continue a ministry relationship with the national church.