A NEW VISION
Sharing the Gospel in Africa through Education
By Steve Vinton

It was war that caused us as missionaries to leave Congo and go to neighboring Tanzania. We thought we would only be there a short time, that the war would be over quickly, and that we would be able to return home to Congo. That was the country where members of my family have served as missionaries since 1928 when my grandparents first went to take the Gospel to the Lega people. My grandparents believed that the mission of the church was comprehensive and embraced all areas of life, and it was on that solid foundation that they lived with and loved those people. The idol shrines they found in 1928 have been replaced by more than 600 churches, and those churches today run more than 200 primary and secondary schools, a teachers' training college, a network of Bible schools, a pastors' school and a theological college, the largest hospital in the area, many rural clinics, and a multitude of community development projects which have enabled people to improve their lives.

We never intended to stay in Tanzania. We were simply going to help some other missionaries out by teaching at their Bible school for a semester or two until the war would end. Life was so different, though, in Tanzania. The last time I had taught a course at the theological college in Congo all of my students had finished high school and several of them had already been to other colleges and had good degrees. In Tanzania, all of my pastoral students had only finished primary school. Many of their wives could barely read and write. We saw in these villages around us very little to give us hope. The large village near the Bible School didn't even have a primary school yet! There wasn't a single secondary school in the entire area. The Gospel had come some fifty years ago, but most people still worshipped and feared the god they believed wandered in the hills around their villages. Missionaries had started a few churches, but the churches ran no schools or hospitals. My wife Susan and I began to feel almost as hopeless about the future as people in the villages did.

But it was impossible as Christians to not do something. You can't live with people and begin to love them and then to not care about them. And so we worked with people in those villages to start a secondary school for their children. The government had so few schools in the country that each year they could choose only a few children from each village and send them far away to boarding schools. Most never went anyway, and the few that did couldn't pass. In villages where people used to run away from me when I first came, literally thousands of people would sit out on the hillsides and listen as I told them that together we could build a school for their children and that, when their kids were educated, they would be able to be doctors and nurses and school teachers and get jobs and improve life for the whole community. It took months of hard work, but together they built those classrooms, and we opened school with 22 students. The second year we had 56 and then 106, then 272, and when we left, 598 students were enrolled, and the school had become a beehive of activity. Education was transforming the lives of those students and it was transforming the lives of their families. Few of our students had ever been in the door of a church before they came to school; now many were Christians. Their health problems were overwhelming in the beginning; now they understood how to prevent so many of the most common illnesses. And now they had dreams and hopes and plans for the future. The Gospel had truly come.

We also had our plans for the future - or so we thought. But it was growing increasingly clear to us that our plans of returning to Congo and leaving these people in Tanzania were not going to be possible. Every time we looked into the faces of those kids, we saw tens of thousands of kids just like them in villages all across that country who still had no chance to go to school. Tanzania is not a wealthy country. The government is doing the best that it can. But the best that it can means that last year, out of a country of 35 million people, only 15,000 people graduated from high school. As Christian people we came to believe that we must do something. For us, following the call of God means not returning to Congo. It means working until we can work no more, in order to try to help as many villages as we can to build schools so that every child gets at least a chance to go to school. And to do that we believe God has called us to start a new organization - Village Schools International - in partnership with Equip to mobilize the resources of His Church in order to bring the transforming power of the Gospel to those villages. Hundreds of thousands of children this year - and every year - will fail to get a chance to go to school, unless as Christian people, we do something.

We are convinced that God does indeed desire His Church in these coming years to do something and to give these kids a chance. Our aim is to impact the lives of the poorest of the poor who live in thousands of villages across the continent, not only without schools, but also with no clinics, no access to safe water, and no hope of escaping from poverty. As Christians we feel compelled to care about these people, and to care enough to actually do something. We believe that schools open doors to transforming a community. Schools enable missionaries to go to villages where they might otherwise never be able to go to share the Gospel. Schools enable missionaries to work with their students in community health programs. Schools enable missionaries to help people get out of poverty. Schools make it possible for missionaries to address, in comprehensive ways, the needs of people. We also believe there are many American Christians who would be willing to serve in Africa for several months or a couple of years. Through Equip we will provide training and organize people into teams so they can minister effectively. Living and teaching in a village in Africa is a tough job, but we believe it's the toughest job anyone will ever love.

As we prepare to launch Village Schools International, our priority is to start new schools in the country of Tanzania in eastern Africa. We will aim over the next two decades to start fifty schools in strategically located villages throughout that country. Those fifty schools will open the doors to starting fifty medical clinics, fifty community development centers, and will lead to planting, we hope, more than two hundred churches among unreached people groups in that country. And so, if you are a Christian and you are a teacher (or willing to be trained as a teacher) and would be willing to serve the Lord as a missionary teacher in Africa, Equip and Village Schools International would like to hear from you. We need missionary teachers starting in September, 2005, to teach for four months, for a year, or for two years in Tanzania. Kids from villages in Tanzania need to learn English so that they can have a chance to go to school. Our solution is a four month English boot camp. Kids come in not speaking a word of English, and they go out ready and able and confident enough to start school. You can't leave America and go to a village carrying a sign that you have come to tell them about the true God and salvation in Christ and be taken seriously. But you can go to a village, teach English and provide a life-changing door-opening opportunity for your students, and create a wonderful opportunity to share with them your life and your faith in Christ. After English boot camp we need teachers who are willing to teach any and every subject from Math to History, but who will also live with our students and love them and share the Gospel with them, teachers who will be there when they are sick, when they are hungry, when they want to have fun, when they need someone to talk to.

Nearly 2000 years ago, Paul reminded his friends of his feelings for them: "We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel but our lives as well because you had become so dear to us." (1 Thessalonians 2:8) Today, Village Schools International, in partnership with Equip, is preparing to send missionary teachers to live in small villages in Africa to teach students, to get involved in their lives, and to become so attached to them that sharing the Gospel is the natural result of loving them. Then the Gospel will have truly come to those villages as well.