Breakthrough in Chad
Three churches were birthed when a local chieftain, who formerly combined Islam and the occult, came to Christ. In the another community, new believers were baptized, and two new churches were planted. The Sultan of a third came to Christ. And in a fourth community,* underground converts are being discipled. All these evangelistic victories began when PCET, unfoldingWord’s church-planting partner in Chad, began community-testing eight new translations of Open Bible Stories.
*names withheld for security reasons.
Here’s how the breakthrough began.
In 2016, representatives from 22 Chadian Christian organizations began meeting to pray for their nation. They prayed for two years and adopted a name, the Church Growth Project of Chad (Projet Croissance des Eglises au Tchad) or PCET.
At that time, unfoldingWord was just forming and had a visionary plan for how God might use its Church-Centric Bible Translation model, but we had not met PCET. That’s when one of those God-engineered coincidences happened.
At a 2018 church conference, two PCET leaders heard unfoldingWord CEO David Reeves speak on Church-Centric Bible Translation. Afterward, they invited unfoldingWord to help with their church-planting mission in Chad.
PCET had a God-sized vision. They wanted to leverage Bible translation as one of their strategic outreach tools to plant 1,000 churches in 22 languages among Chad’s unreached people groups over the next two years.
Reaching these nomadic people groups is difficult. More than 50 communities live in and around the Saharan desert. As PCET wrestled with the challenge, unfoldingWord suggested, “Why not start with Open Bible Stories? It is not the Bible, but you get the whole story in a concise text that will engage people evangelistically as they translate it.”
PCET’s leaders loved the idea and set up a training event in May 2019. That’s when things got interesting. unfoldingWord’s team arrived expecting to train Christians in PCET’s network, along with a few invited representatives of the unreached people groups. But God and PCET had other plans.
More than 45 Muslims from ten language groups filled the tables, listening to Bible stories during Ramadan! The Islamic time of fasting and seeking God was providential because hearts were open and sensitive.
Only two of the language groups dropped out, because of the Christian content. The rest worked through 10-15 stories in two weeks, learning the basics of a good translation, team-based drafting, and community checking for accuracy.
By the end of the second workshop, that group of nomadic Muslims was working through the stories of Jesus and asking, “Who exactly is this Jesus person? We’ve heard about him all our lives, but not like this.” They discussed the Jesus stories with great excitement and interest. By the end of the third workshop, PCET leaders reported that one Muslim man had given his life to Christ.
The team completed drafting all 50 Open Bible Stories for the first eight languages, then took the book through the community-checking process.
Chad has many Christian missions, but they have never successfully engaged these unreached people groups. Mission workers report that this is the first time that any ministry has established effective connections with them. Islamic leaders have come to Christ and churches have been planted. Please pray!
The pandemic and political upheaval interrupted unfoldingWord’s work in Chad. But PCET has invited us back to launch a second Open Bible Stories translation project. This project will use the Chadian Arabic version of Open Bible Stories developed in the first project and employ a team of ten new people groups.
With your help and prayers, unfoldingWord will return to Chad in the fall and continue this vital partnership with PCET. Generous financial partners have offered a $95,000 matching grant to help fund the project.
Click HERE to partner with this breakthrough work in Chad.
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