Gymea Baptist | empower / love / engage

Project 4

The Francophone Pastors' Book Sets project (PBS) equips 18,000 pastors and evangelists in French-speaking Africa by providing them with a set of Bible study resources – over 20 books including an NIV study Bible - in the French language. These personal libraries are a reference resource for pastors, increasing leadership skills, and enriching and enlightening their ministry and helping them stick to sound doctrine.

Over a period of 4 years, pastors from Cote d’Ivoire, Congo, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Togo, Benin, Mauritius, Niger, Madagascar, Senegal, Guinea and Mali will be trained in the use of these resources at conferences held throughout their country, where the book sets will be distributed. Some of the teaching is undertaken by the actual authors of the books.

This is a matching funds project. The pastors pay 50% of the costs, and they are getting the books at 10-20% of their retail value. Many pastors make the acquisition of the money for the books a matter of prayer and faith. Some churches help the pastors to raise the money as they also are the ultimate beneficiaries.

That said, there are many, particularly evangelists, from situations of such extreme poverty that they simply cannot raise even the AU$78. For these people, we are asking donors to provide scholarships so that the amount required to be raised is only $36. SIM is proposing that the people of GBC may, in faith, provide $18,000 for book set scholarships for 500 pastors and evangelists in situations of extreme poverty.

The ultimate project purpose is to equip pastors and evangelists to clearly explain and teach the Word of God, leading to a mature and growing church. The impact of this project will reach over 1 million people in congregations and many times this number as Christians mature in their faith and are mobilised to share the gospel. This impact will go on for many years as these books are referred to over the coming decades.