IMFC doesn’t like to give numbers when we write or speak publicly. More often than not, you’ll read or hear more stories about changed lives than actual numbers found on a spreadsheet. Jimmy rarely ever uses them, and I only occasionally mention them. You see, it is more important that names are recorded in the Lamb’s book of life than in a computer file stored in the offices in Kampala, Nairobi, or Hiram, Georgia. Even though numbers are important we haven’t spent a whole lot of time or effort counting heads. Our thinking is simple really: It is more important to continue developing men and women into disciple makers than counting the ones we have. Also, we don’t estimate numbers, simply because the temptation would be too easy to over-estimate. But with that said, the world where we live revolves around reports, and rightly so, because important decisions involving lives and resources have to be made, and those decisions need to be based on hard reliable data from the real world.

Yesterday, we received one of our annual year end field reports from Tom Asea. The numbers you see below are derived strictly from things we can reliably count. The number you see from the baptisms - we know their names. The house churches that are reported, well we know where they are and who leads them. As well those who are enrolled in discipleship, we know who completes the courses, and we especially know who is discipling more people. Our discipleship system is well suited for that purpose.

Uganda reported 116,417 individuals enrolled into discipleship in the year that ends today - 2018. Of that number 93,198 of them completed discipleship courses. This is a completion rate of 80.06%. 8,871 people were baptized. IMFC is involved in 10,054 house churches. (These numbers are from Uganda alone. You see, the infrastructure in Kenya is still young and growing, and their current reporting capabilities only extend to how many books were printed and distributed. There is no infrastructure in the Congo or other east Central African nations at all, yet we know the IMFC influence is there, because we hear the stories and quite often see the pictures.)

From Tom’s year end report several things can be learned.

Baptism numbers are lowest from Kampala, where we have the largest staff. This is not a moral/doctrinal/ethical/motivational problem; it is simply an unclean - unsafe water issue, which has solutions.
The Discipleship Curriculum needs to be translated into the following languages in order for the Gospel to run even faster - Runyankole/Rukiga for Western Uganda, Rukonjo for South-Western Uganda and the Kasese district as well along the Congo border. Eastern and Northern Uganda need the books translated into Japadhoia and Luo, as does Kenya in the Tororo region. Tribes in the Congo need the books translated into Lingala and ultimately Portuguese.

3) All of this happened because Jesus loves His children and wants them in His presence.

Finally, Tom’s report says that there were 93,385 people who made positive decisions for Jesus Christ in 2018 because of the field work of those who associate themselves as IMFC. Of that number, we have no idea how many were real, because an internal soul decision can’t truly be counted by anyone other than the individual who made it, so this will be the only time that you see it or hear it. This number though is important because of what lies behind it, which is 7,077 people in Uganda actively sharing the Gospel message along with the story of Nicodemus and then leading those who made positive decisions through a 4 stage discipleship process, and planting churches of whom we know personally.

Here are some very important numbers that I can’t give you. We have no idea how many man hours nor how many people are praying daily for the movement of God we see throughout East Central Africa. We just don’t know. Also, we haven’t counted the number of Americans who gave their time working, sweating, and sometime bleeding in the dirt or mud. We could count this number easily, but actually it only occurred to me a few minutes ago to do so, or even that we should. There is another important number with names that I could give, but I won’t. There are a lot of precious people who believe in the movement of God in Africa, and they want to see it spread, so they provide funding for 110,000 books printed and distributed in Uganda, along with an equal number of books for the new believers in Kenya. They provide money to keep the Manna program running, and to buy septic tanks or cots for those who find themselves in prison. They give funds for orphans who find themselves alone and outside the official UN refugee system. They buy thousands of MAMA kits so pregnant women and their babies can be born safely. Some have provided funds for boda bodas (motorcycles) and even office space. None of the numbers we provide above would happen at all without them.

As one of the thousands of people across the world who call themselves IMFC, I say thank you to all those who provide, pray and work. Thank you, because you will never know the full extent of what you do here on earth. An interesting thought is that even though we don’t dwell on “field numbers”, they are incredibly important, because Jesus loves His children and wants them in His presence. Thank you for being IMFC.

Blessings,

Steve DuVall, IMFC