EvangeCube Helps Carry Reconciling Gospel Message to Rwanda
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
March 23, 2005
(AgapePress) - A simple evangelistic tool is helping to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ in war torn Rwanda. In 1994, thousands of people were killed over a 100-day period as elements of the Rwandan military staged an uprising, taking part in a wave of genocidal violence. Today Rwandan courts are hoping that bringing offenders to justice will help foster reconciliation between survivors and murderers.
However, Nathan Sheets of Global Missions Fellowship (GMF) has just returned from an "EvangeCube" or "e"" training in Rwanda, and he reports that this specialized evangelistic training is accomplishing work there that is instrumental to bringing about reconciliation in a nation riddled with ethnic strife.
Global Missions Fellowship and EvangeCube Global Ministries (EGM) are affiliated organizations under the same Global Partners Ministries umbrella. GMF works to mobilize churches, pastors, and lay people to plant new churches throughout the world, while EGM supports these efforts with evangelism and discipleship training and other Christian missions resources.
"There is a huge move for reconciliation between the Tutsis and the Hutus," Sheets says, "so there is a big push in Rwanda for just reconciliation. And we have found in this ministry that there is no greater reconciler than the gospel in Jesus."
In the "e"" training sessions, Christians are taught to make use of a unique handheld tool, the "EvangeCube," which is designed to present the gospel through illustrations. Missionaries can use the device to help overcome barriers of language, literacy, or culture as they communicate the basic truths of their faith.
Sheets says the global ministry is helping to spread the healing message of the gospel in Rwanda "by going in and equipping Christians with EvangeCubes, both Hutus and Tutsis, so that they can now go out and tell their Rwandese brothers and sisters about Christ." The evangelistic training has shown great evidence of effectiveness already.
"We've trained close to a thousand Rwandese with EvangeCubes," the Global Missions Fellowship spokesman notes. "Of the churches that went out and did evangelism after we left, one church saw 97 people come to Christ the next day, another one 60, another one 67."
The churches in Rwanda caught the vision quickly, Sheets adds. Now he says his hope and prayer is "that the continued vigor and passion of reaching other people for Christ will continue to motivate and mobilize the Rwandan church [to go on reaching] out to their own Jerusalem."
The goals of GMF and EvangeCube for East Africa this year include planting 50 new churches, equipping 40,800 East Africans with EvangeCubes, and facilitating four million gospel presentations.
