“Our church is dead”, announced the Baptist Deacon to the other leaders. It was piercing words to one couple who had come to Christ in that fellowship and had been with it for many years. Over the last years they had steep competition among the Matigsalog tribal churches. A city based group moved into town with a leader claiming to be the “new” Son of God. (In their strange theology, their founder is promoted to the Son of God as Jesus got promoted to be God the father. I am not making this up!) Anyway, they lost a bunch of people to this wealthy cult group.
The leaders had just started coming to Antioch Institute training so they decided to implement a training center to disciple the remaining believers. They started training the believers in the basics of what the church was about, how to share the gospel and how to show love to other people in practical ways. Very soon, not only had most of the people who left come back, but also an leader at the Catholic church renounced his vows and came over, including five other Catholic families. Just two days ago they had a baptism where they had five new believers baptized. They are now the most active church in the whole area. In one month they went from being a “dead church” to having new life!
