Thursday, July 24, 2014

Africa Rising...Still

At the beginning of the 21st Century Africa was known as a hopeless continent.  We in ICM have always held that the key to unlock the future for Africa was people...and people are not hopeless.  Of course since that time things have changed dramatically.  Africa is now see as the rising economic star.  It has all of the right ingredients: lot's of people (becoming ever more educated), abundant resources that are still untapped, and now governments that are shifting from oligarchy to greater democracy.  China, India and other more developed countries are rushing in to help build an infrastructure to get the resources out of Africa and are at the same time building a growing middle class who will by products made from them.  But is that what God wants for Africa?

Matthew 25 tells us that poverty is something that needs to be dealt with.  And it is.  Over the past 50 years extreme poverty has been cut in half.  But there is more.  Africa, like the rest of the world will always have poor, sick, orphans, widows, etc. But Africa, like other continents, will also have a middle class that have disposable income.  The question is, "what will they spend that income on?"  In the US we spend our disposable income on a lot of stuff for us.  Billions of dollars are spent on vacations, pet food, cosmetics, alcohol, tobacco and on and on.  While many of these things are not bad, they end up leaving very little for Christian ministry and missions.  Africa can be different.  If ministry leaders join with lay leaders to help provide market place training with the goal of expanding the churches influence things just might turn out differently in Africa.

The 21st belongs to Africa.  What will the do with it?

Africa Rising - Global Affairs

Church Based Business as Mission (CBBM)


International Christian Ministries Inc