Consolidation

Did you know that only 10% of new converts are in church a year later? That means that the enemy wins back 90% of new Christians. With Love Extreme, we want to change that statistic. So we have a system to take care of new Christians, and turn them into disciples of Jesus Christ, not just converts.

During the whole day of Love Extreme, we wrote down the contact information  of each person who made a decision for Jesus Christ. The next day, and the whole following week, people from the church and 40/40s made phone calls to these people to set up visits with them.

During the next week especially, but even now, 40/40s and church members have been visiting these people to pray with them and  invite them to a spiritual retreat.

We made around 150 house visits and had 26 in attendance for the spiritual retreat the following weekend.

The spiritual retreat is the equivalent of one year of discipleship. The new spiritual babies are given training in the basics of the Christian life. We also had four people baptized.

The next step in consolidation is attending cell groups, which are essentially house churches. We started them last week! These will be the churches the Arequipa group starts.

We also have a discipleship school and a leadership school , with classes once a week, which have also just started. We are making sure that the church has strong members and leaders once we, the missionaries, leave.

After we got back from the retreat, we had a huge joint worship service for the new converts and the churches in Arequipa. 

During the service, eight more people accepted Christ!  These results tell me that this thing that began with the mega event is a movement. It will not stop with 700 converts. Their families will come to know Christ, them their neighbors, and it just keeps going until all of Arequipa comes to know Christ! The harvest field is ready and the workers are here!