Vision

We are asking God for 65% of the least-reached people groups having at least 5% of their population following Christ and gathered into disciple-making communities.

Background

• Nigeria is the seventh-largest nation in the world
• There are 251 least-reached people groups living in Nigeria
• The Gotel Mountains cover eastern Nigeria and extend into western Cameroon
• Ten least-reached people groups live in the Gotel region

History

In the early 2000s, Converge saw the need to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping through Nigeria. In 2004, Converge missionaries Art and Dorothy Helwig formed GECHAAN (Gembu Center for HIV/AIDS Advocacy Nigeria) to address this need. James 1:27 was their guiding verse. For 10 years, they worked in the HIV/AIDS community, treating it as a moral issue as well as a medical issue.

When the Helwigs retired in 2014, Dan and Tina Gibbs joined the ministry. Since that time, GECHAAN has expanded influence in the community providing community services in many areas, including health care, leadership development, children’s ministries and educational and empowerment programs providing training in many occupations and skills in how to maintain and run successful, godly businesses.

With this positive impact and reputation in the community, it has also given us a platform to address the needs and concerns of many internally displaced persons in our area because of Boko Haram and refugees from Cameroon escaping the violence happening in English-speaking Cameroon. We plan to use this platform to develop a disciple-making movement among the people indigenous to the Gotel Mountains.

Dakar is the capital city of Sénégal, West Africa. It is the westernmost point on the continent, with a population of 3 million people and growing. Dakar is a transportation hub for West Africa, with the largest port in the sub-region, and a magnet for university students from every French-speaking country in Africa. The country is 95% Muslim and 4% Catholic. Only ~0.02% of the Senegalese in Dakar are evangelicals.

Our vision: We are asking God for 10% of the Dakar metro population to become Christ-followers, gathered into multiplying, culturally appropriate Kingdom communities.

Enabled by the Holy Spirit, we aspire to do this by launching multiple disciple making movements in different segments of the population, with a special focus on the least reached ethnic groups.

• Expand and deepen our prayer network: We are working toward having 1,000 people fasting and praying for the people of metro Dakar and God’s Kingdom work here.
• Identify like-minded existing ministries and partner with them: Already, there are exciting possibilities, such as working with WEC and a few national pastors in a poor suburb of Dakar. Another is partnering with CMA as they train, equip and encourage a small group of Fulani believers.
• Recruit additional long-term global workers: We need more expatriate missionaries to take advantage of ministry opportunities.
• Develop new leaders from the harvest: We place a high value on training new leaders from the harvest, equipping them to carry on the work.

The Africa Impact Team serves to recruit, develop and lead a team of leaders to come alongside indigenous and cross cultural leader/missionaries to reach the least reached and unreached in their areas of influence.

The Africa Impact Team co-labors with missionaries and indigenous leaders to strengthen their ministries and train them in reaching the least reached and unreached peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Only 400 Christians can be found among 10,000,000 Wolof and Peul people in the Sahel region of Senegal. This arid, infertile band south of the Sahara is one of the least responsive parts of Africa to the gospel of Jesus. Folk Islam has a strong hold on society and culture, and every year the number of Muslims born far outstrips the slow growth of the church.

Jesus said few would find the “narrow gate” and follow the “hard way” that leads to life. Yet, he commanded us to go and make disciples among the Wolof and Peul who will make more disciples.

Every Wolof and Peul should have opportunities to hear about Jesus’ amazing grace and life-changing love. Whether they finally “find” the narrow gate and travel the “hard way” is between them and God.

We are to live in a way that honors our God and proclaim the forgiveness, joy, and hope found only in the kingdom of King Jesus.

Our prayer and purpose is to initiate small, locally reproducible Discovery Groups that will develop disciples of Jesus who can and will make more disciples of Jesus until the Sahel region of Senegal is fully peppered with small bands of Jesus disciples.

We are asking God for 5% of the Wolof and Peul people to become disciples of Jesus gathered into multiplying Kingdom Communities in our generation.

How does this miraculous gospel movement begin in a people group who are 99.9% Muslim?

• Only by God’s grace and empowerment! Therefore, we pray and fast like never before. And, we mobilize a prayer movement for the Wolof and Peul. Our goal is to have 1,000 people regularly praying and fasting for these two unreached ethnic groups.
• Pray for and seek “people of peace” (Luke 19:5-7) in the community—people God has already prepared to hear from His Word.
• Teach and coach “people of peace” to lead discovery Bible studies with their friends and family.

The 6º Initiative is a church planting movement focused on the unreached people groups just north of the equator in West Africa. The Sixth Degree spans across the balmy African coast that has been impacted most by voodoo and its exportation of precious human life through the slave trade.

We, as Converge missionaries, are partnering with national leaders to plant churches in the least-reached cities of the region. A concentrated church-planting movement within these culturally significant cities is serving as a launch pad for ministry into smaller communities.