Why Friends of Madagascar Mission Supports Malagasy Evangelists Instead of Sending Missionaries

Evangelists

Evangelism is at the heart of the Malagasy Lutheran Church (FLM). It is one of the fastest growing churches in the world for good reasons: their love for Jesus, standing steadfast on the Word of God, true to the confession of their Christian faith, the care they give to the poor, and importantly, relying on evangelism as the life blood of their church.
From the beginning of the Friends of Madagascar Mission, Rev. David Lerseth, who had served as a pastor, an Assistant to the Bishop and then in the office of Global Mission of the ELCA until he retired in 2008, this man of God recognized that the West’s model of sending missionaries to areas in need of hearing the Word of God was not necessarily suited to Madagascar. The Malagasy Lutheran Church has been independent since the early 1960s, and it was growing. They weren’t hampered by knowledge or zeal. They have many believers who wanted to go to Bible School and seminary.
Bible schools are essential in the growth and nurture of the church there. They train evangelists to serve village churches and to bring the gospel to surrounding villages without a church. Bible school students have limited schooling but are eager to share with those who have not yet heard the Gospel, and to care for new believers. FOMM supports three Bible Schools, and each has 30 to 25 students enrolled in the two-year training program for evangelists.
Evangelists are the "new" missionaries. We know it works in Madagascar and believe it is a new model that is best suited in the developing world where there is a mature church. The new indigenous model is preferable, and we’ll give you a couple of the reasons why. First, they know the culture, language, territory. Western missionaries have to go to language school and can make mistakes because they don’t have a deep enough understanding of the culture. They have to work hard to earn trust, and since they are rich compared to the people they work with they are expected to be generous in a way that an indigenous worker is not. The last reason for now is that we do not need to bring the missionary and the family back every year or so, which is but one of the ways that the indigenous model is much more cost effective as well as results effective.
How effective are these 54 evangelists? In three months they visited 1,979 families to share the Gospel with them, which resulted in 608 children and 300 adults being baptized. As a board member recently said when reviewing the evangelist reports, “What would happen in the USA if we reached out to these many homes in a three month period of time?”
We have a goal of sponsoring 60 evangelists by year’s end. The cost for this is $800 a year, which includes access to medical coverage. If you want to be a sponsor, please get in contact with us. You can do that on our website madagascarmission.org as well as learn more about this program and others.
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