Unleashing A Movement of Givers
Trees have always fascinated me. As a child, I loved to lay under these majestic organisms, gazing at the reflection of sunlight playing through the leaves. Trees mark highlights of my personal life. As a young adult seeking truth, I met Christ reading under a tree. Trees have a significant place in Scripture. Think of the tree of life or the saints pictured as trees of righteousness. Fascinating!
Spiritual Awakening
In the early 2000’s, a spiritual awakening in Bamenda, Cameroon caused many to convert to Christ. People were standing in rows at church doors to receive prayer. Many churches were planted in the rural areas. Spiritual blessings were poured out, but the church remained economically poor. The ones suffering the most were the church leaders' families. They were hungry. In these circumstances, many leaders were tempted into preaching a prosperity Gospel to ensure their livelihoods. The prosperity message revolves around the idea of ‘what can I get from God?’ But the danger is that it keeps our selfish nature intact. The awakening was slowly quenched out by greed.
Laying Down His Life
Steven Babila, a pastor in Bamenda and one of the leaders of the awakening, chose differently. In 2003, he laid down his church ministry and started growing vegetables to provide for pastor families. We recognized the heart of Jesus in this act of humility and started supporting him. By 2014, his farm became self-sustaining, supporting poor pastors, Bible school students and missional activities using Cameroonian resources. Many young pastors were sent out as church planters into rural areas, but they suffered because the mother churches could hardly provide for them. We sought God for a solution: How could Christians in Africa become economically viable producers and change from being ‘takers’ to ‘givers’?
Movement of Givers
Praying for keys on how to unleash a movement of givers, we envisioned a tree – an organism where giving leads to multiplication. This led us to formulate a new vision in which pastors practiced and taught sustainable agriculture. Most Africans are farmers and these agri-pastors meet people in their biggest felt need: hunger. We envisioned equipping poor farmers to not only provide for themselves, but also to be good disciples of Jesus, disciplined stewards of God’s land, and become producers – generous givers that share and give back from their increase. So a movement will be created whereby these same individuals, families, and entire communities themselves BECOME the solution (as disciples of Jesus). THEY are the solution to the poverty third-world Africa is experiencing.
Training Farmers
We trained 51 farmers in Balikumbat, Cameroon, providing them good quality seeds from our farm. After a successful harvest, they returned seeds so we could continue to help others. We also invited farmers to give freely from their harvests towards the church. The pastor could then take care of the church and the needy. We found that the church grew, not only in a spiritual and socio-economic perspective, but also in dignity. Now they were producers, able to ‘give’. What joy there was in this community.
Training Trainers
In 2017, we discovered that Foundations for Farming was practicing a complementary process: combining conservation agriculture with stewardship and so we partnered with them. In 2018, we brought the Cameroonian team to FFF, Zimbabwe. Many puzzle pieces fell into place for them. They left with a vision to reach a nation for God and unleash a movement of givers by using FFF as a tool to equip the church-planting movement to steward their resources well. We train people to use a variation of the Pfumfudza plot (52 rows of mais), which is a plot to feed a family of six for one year. We teach them to plant 55 rows – 52 for their food security, one for the trainer (Deuteronomy 25:4), one for the church (Leviticus 27:20), and one for the poor (Leviticus 23:22). We aim to create a culture of joyful giving and have people experience the Lord’s provision and His multiplication (Proverbs 3:9-10).
From Takers to Givers
At present, we are establishing a national training center on this farm, which is steadily growing despite a military conflict. Food security doesn’t mean the end of poverty; we need to connect these people groups to the market. What we experienced in our first pilot – training 51 farmers in one village – was that the amount of crops they harvested flooded the local market. We managed to buy a fair amount of their produce and created a storage facility in the church so that it could be sold off later in the season. We believe that this is a good business model for the local church. Most local churches lack the liquidity to practice this, but once put in place, they can quickly return the investment. The next level up is product enrichment – our passion is to make these poor, small scale farmers a vital part of an honest value chain.
Understanding Poverty
Since the early 2000’s, I’ve been involved in ministering to ‘the poor’. The world associates poverty primarily with a lack of material resources. The Bible acknowledges this type of poverty, but also looks at the condition of a person’s heart: man's heart is evil from his youth (Genesis 8:21). In serving the poor, we’ve come to realise that to come out of poverty, a heart change is needed. Whether rich or poor, one could say: ‘no poorer life than the life of a selfish person.’
Christ is the Antidote in a Selfish World
When we get to understand the Gospel’s diagnosis of our inner state, we realize that it’s not at all about us. Jesus stated: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life, will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me and for the Gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:34-35). One of the things that attracted me to Christ is His boundless giving. How could we practically give without making people dependent? How could we teach people to start giving so that Jesus could do the multiplication?
Don’t Despise Small Beginnings
Let’s look at a tree as a life-giving organism. A tree starts its life as a tiny seed. Some trees can become giants and live up to 2,000 years. These majestic creatures bring glory to God as they point to our Creator. But even though we might be impressed by a tree’s sheer size, enjoy its comfortable shade or tasty fruits, a tree’s purpose is not just this. The soil, sun, rain, air – the entire organism serves to produce seeds that bring forth life according to its kind. The purpose of a tree is a new tree, or even a new forest! Likewise we as Christians are meant to bring forth new Christians (and churches – new churches).
Multiplying by Sharing
Jesus states in John 12:24, ‘...unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ This is exactly what Christ did; He laid down His life for us and in doing so, gave us eternal life. This life is multiplied in others that are ‘born from above’. Jesus secured His legacy on earth, sharing His life with His disciples; equipping them to lay down their lives as well. There really isn’t much we can add, but share the little we have and surrender it to Him. His part is the miraculous event of transformation and multiplication.
Favourable Conditions
The degree of the success of a tree depends on its conditions. Air, sun, water, nutrition and soil all play their part. As ministers of God, we can create favourable conditions for the miracle of transformation to happen in the lives of the poor. Sharing the Gospel of Christ’s love with them, modelling selfless giving, and inviting them to do the same. As poor people start giving of the little they have, the Lord may perform a miracle….
The Tree of Life project aims to strengthen rural farmers by training trainers in Foundations for Farming, Family, Finance and Health - a holistic approach to poverty eradication. In everything we do, we aim to include discipleship (stewardship) and the principle of self-support (or group-support). We are currently setting up training centers in Cameroon, Malawi, Kenya and Angola. We also come alongside existing training centers with the aim of assisting them to become more self-supporting. We have developed the Tree of Life app to tell the world about Foundations for Farming, Crown’s ‘I Was Hungry’, monitor our trainers' progress, and facilitate them with offline training materials and a soil scanner.
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This is one of the 2020 CEF Whitepapers. For more information on the Christian Economic Forum, please visit their website here.