A Small Sampling of God At Work in Ethiopia
An update from Riley Spring (Lead Pastor, Sovereign Grace Church Parramatta, Australia)…
Dave Taylor and I recently had an amazing trip travelling to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to take part in the Trinity Fellowship Pastor’s College. It was a joy to gather with Trinity Fellowship Church on the Sunday to celebrate the gospel together. We were blessed by the warmth and encouragement of this newly formed and vibrant Sovereign Grace Church. It was remarkable how similar it felt to our churches back home, as we all have the same gospel culture and DNA.
Over the week, we were hosted by Josh Pannell, Dean of the Pastor’s College, and Michael Granger, Senior Pastor, who took us around the city to give us a feel for what God is doing in Addis Ababa, and as well to find out more about what God is doing across all of Africa. It was so inspiring to see how God is on the move and to hear their bold and ambitious plans to plant more churches (ten in ten years!), raise up leaders, and fan into flame a gospel centered movement in their city and beyond. We also ate with leaders from City to City Africa and Voice of the Martyrs and heard more stories of the current work that the Lord is doing in Addis Ababa and Africa as a whole. They encouraged us to see Sovereign Grace as one of the most uniquely poised denominations to have a global impact. This is because of our strong gospel centrality and our clarity of doctrine, values, and partnership.
At the Pastor’s College, we spent the week teaching on church planting. Our assignment was to teach how to plant Sovereign Grace Churches, the Sovereign Grace way. We took the men through our Seven Shared Values and Seven Shaping Virtues as the foundation. We then spent the rest of the time looking at the practicals of what church planting would look like for them in Addis Ababa and in other African countries that God may be leading them to. We sought to make it as practical as possible so that they had a whole new host of categories to think through how to plant a church in their context. We shared our experience but wanted to ensure that we weren’t imposing a ‘western’ paradigm on their context. We finished our time by looking at the theology and practice of partnership, and how that would look for them going forward to plant churches in partnership with one another and with Sovereign Grace.
These men are very special men. They have a deep love for the Lord, for their local church, and a real heart for Sovereign Grace. If this is a small sampling of how God is at work in Africa, there is much to be excited about!
