The Congo Consortium

        	              

A New Way to Partner Effectively in Missions




Civil war. AIDS. Poverty. A province the size of Indiana without an inch of paved roads, with no electricity, no running water.   




Imagine your church in partnership with churches in this setting, helping to empower people to break the poverty cycle, care for the ill, train widows and orphans. That’s what has developed in an exciting three-way partnership called the Congo Consortium.




The Congo Consortium is a group of North American churches which have a commitment to working together in partnership with the Evangelical Free Church of the Democratic Republic of Congo (The Communauté Evangélique du Christ en Ubangi or CECU). The third partner is ReachGlobal, which serves as the catalyst for the partnership.




The History



The CECU is the national church that developed as a result of the work of the EFCA beginning in 1923. Over the next decades churches were planted, schools started, medical ministry launched and theological training for pastors developed. The Ubangi is the far northwestern corner of the country, roughly the size of Indiana, with about 1.5 million people. Over the years, the CECU has been the major protestant evangelical body in the Ubangi.




For years the mission was making plans to gradually disengage from Congo as the church was doing well. But with war and other chaos, the decision came to a head and the final missionaries left definitively in late 1996. During the next years there was civil war, economic hardship and disruption of infrastructure. AIDS became a fact of life and death in the Ubangi. 




Yet through all this, the church grew and by 2008 the number of churches had doubled to almost 975.  Membership has almost doubled to over 250,000 with many more attending regularly.



The Challenges



The medical work was struggling with only one physician up to 2004. Massive numbers of widows were filling the churches and thousands of orphans were in the churches, on the streets and in the villages. HIV/AIDS had infected thousands of people and affected many more thousands of people and families.




The pastoral training schools were functioning but with only the most minimum of resources and staff.




As contact was re-established with the church after the war, the leaders shared with ReachGlobal that there were two big areas of help that seemed to be their priorities.  



The Opportunities



The Congo Consortium is working with the CECU in these two main areas:




Leadership Development: This includes help with training in the theological schools, provision of training materials, Bibles and libraries, and non-formal training for leaders at all levels. This also includes scholarship help for potential future leaders.



    

  • Congo Bible Project, helping leaders and laity who don’t have Bibles to get them at a very subsidized rate 
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  • Center for Continuing Pastoral Education, an initiative of the Congo Free Church to keep training their pastors to higher levels while continuing in ministry 
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  • Books for Bible Institutes — helping provide resources for the schools that train the pastors in the Congo Free Church 
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  • Scholarships for Theological Leaders — training the top potential future leaders of the church in Congo
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  • Short term Vision trips for Pastor to teach in the Bible Institutes, the Seminary, and in seminars for pastors in ministry 
    • 




Ministries of compassion: This includes ministries that focus on holistic care for the people in great need. Examples include:



    

  • Medical ministry, which now includes the Tandala Hospital, 30 rural Health Centers, 5 Congolese physicians, and thousands of patients seen every week 
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  • HIV/AIDS ministry reaching out with programs to educate and care for those in need 
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  • The GlobalFingerprints program for sponsoring orphans in the Ubangi 
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  • The Elikya Training Center for widows, orphans, unwed m others and the handicapped, helping train them with job skills and to have a livelihood for the future 
    • 



The Invitation 



The Congo Consortium is a group of churches committed to partnering with the CECU into the future. These churches work together to help the CECU move forward.  Together the churches send short-term teams, help sponsor various projects, whether buildings, training programs, satellite communications, medical care and much more.




Your church can work together with other churches helping a vital, growing but needy national church in healthy ways, avoiding dependency but impacting thousands of lives for eternity. 




Questions? Email Africa@efca.org




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