Adjusting our plans in light of COVID-19
I find comfort in the truth that “we have a certain God in uncertain times.” In the current worldwide coronavirus uncertainty, APT Ministries is adjusting our ministry to continue training pastors and church leaders in Africa. Since there is no single social distancing or country reopening policy for Africa, we are having to promote and conduct our Thompson Bible workshops on a country by country basis. In every country, we will follow the national guidelines for group meetings.
Pre-shipping of Bibles allows us to proceed
After training nearly 600 leaders in Ivory Coast and Chad early in 2020, all workshops were put on hold as the coronavirus began to spread. However, the Lord enabled us to ship Bibles early in the year in anticipation of providing workshops in 2020 for the various countries we are currently committed to: Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Sudan, and South Sudan.
Maximizing opportunities in light of available resources
As the Lord provides funding, we will seek to conduct as many workshops as we can in the plan to use as many of the Bibles we have on hand in Africa for the remainder of 2020. We will trust in God’s timing for when, where, and how many pastors and leaders to whom we can bring encouragement, pastoral training, and the provision of a wonderful study resource: the Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible.
How APT Ministries is making a difference
If you haven’t done so, please take a few minutes to look at our longer video above. It will give you a very good sense of the need to help equip pastors in Africa for their ministry, as well as why pastors are eagerly waiting for the “restart” of the Thompson Bible workshops. To date, we have trained nearly 16,000 pastors in Africa. We hope to add several thousand to that number by the end of 2020!