Last year, we celebrated 20 years as Integral Vision in Southeast Africa! To commemorate this incredible milestone, we had a field-wide conference in South Africa and invited all of our members as well as pastors we work with throughout Southeast Africa to join us and celebrate together. We were blessed with great teaching and encouragement from mission leaders and local pastors.
It’s hard to believe that it all started at the turn of the century when a South African man got ahold of the Building on Firm Foundation Bible teaching materials that New Tribes Mission (now called Ethnos360) developed. He had been teaching Mozambican Christian leaders and wanted materials to teach the basics of the Christian faith. After sharing this desire with someone over dinner one night, they told him about the Bible teaching materials and helped him get a copy. He ended up translating the materials into some of the languages he was working with and used them in his ministry with local pastors.
After a while, He urged our leadership to visit Mozambique to see the need to reach those with little or no access to the gospel and Scriptures in their language. This trip was instrumental in helping our organisation realise the need for our type of ministry there and we joined forces with this South African brother to investigate what it would take to work in Mozambique.
In 2003, our organisation registered as Visão Integral in Mozambique, and today, 20 years later, we have village works in Mozambique and Tanzania in five areas. In four of those five areas, the people now have God’s Word in their language and growing churches that are continuing to reach out and share the gospel with those around them. We also have two locations with teams that are building relationships with local churches and individuals in their communities as they investigate what it will take to work in nearby unreached people groups.
There is also an enthusiastic and growing movement of local Bible teachers being trained to take our Bible teaching materials into their churches and other remote areas. The original idea of the Building on Firm Foundations Bible curriculum has evolved and been developed for an African context in English, Portuguese, and Swahili. It is very exciting to see God use this material to help people better understand who He is and why He sent His son Jesus to this world, starting in Genesis and going all the way through Revelation. This new curriculum is called From Eternity to Eternity, or E2E.
We are blessed to play a small part in what God is doing around the world. It is humbling and exciting to see how He has used Integral Vision during these last 20 years to assist the ministry of the local church through mobilising, equipping, and coordinating believers to evangelise unreached people groups and see indigenous churches established that glorify God.