Oasis International

Dr. John Jusu, supervising editor of the Africa Study Bible and Dean of the School of Professional Studies at Africa International University, gives his perspective on why the Africa Study Bible is important.

Come to the Fountain: One Man's Passion for the Power of Knowledge

In the first official editorial meeting with Dr. John Jusu, someone boldly asked, “What makes you the right person to be the editor for the Africa Study Bible?” 

Leaning in, John responded candidly, without any hesitation: “Because I am Africa.”

He went on: “My home country [Sierra Leone] has suffered from civil war for ten years. I have been a refugee. I grew up in a rural village, where my family was very poor, but I have now moved to a large city. I live in a country that is not my own. I have adopted dozens of war orphans and help to care for them along with my wife. My father is a polygamist. I straddle the two cultures of my Western education, (which was begun by missionaries in my village), and my cultural heritage. I have lived every inch of the African experience. I am Africa.”

Oasis President, Dr. Matthew Elliott, recalls “it was at that moment that I knew beyond any doubt that God had chosen John to be supervising editor of the Africa Study Bible.” But how did a poor child from a tiny war-torn country in West Africa end up earning a PhD in Education at Trinity International University, and become one of the foremost African voices in theological education and curricular design?

Last week, in between the flurry of meetings, I was able to steal a few minutes to sit down with John and ask him questions about the process of editing the Africa Study Bible (the details of his responses to the complexities of editing a pan-African study Bible will follow in Part 2 of this blog post). At the end of our conversation, I finally asked him the question, “Why are you so passionate about this project? How did you begin this journey that has brought you here?” 

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and said incredulously, “Do you really want to hear this story?”

When I responded with a smiling “Yes. It's important!” he leaned back and smiled back. “Okay. Then I will allow myself to take my time.”

“Once you have denied people knowledge, when you deny them information, then you deny them power, you deny them wealth creation. Knowledge is power. I believe that people are being misled [in Africa] because they are not able to come directly to the fountain and drink. The water is instead being polluted as it is passed through the hands of many before they can access it.

“I was raised in a God-conscious family, in a village that had a strong missionary presence and a missionary school. When I reached Primary Five, my father told me that he could no longer afford to pay my school fees. That changed me. Up until that point, I had been maybe a C-student, but when I knew that if I was able to place in the top five students in my class, I could get a scholarship to go to high school. I burned the candle at both ends, and I was one of those five students, and was funded to go to high school.

But I now wanted to go to the university. I wanted to go to medical school. I knew that if I graduated at the very top of my class, I could get a scholarship to go to the university in the United States. I worked very, very hard, and I succeeded. I graduated at the top of my class.

But, because my dad was poor, and my family did not have much influence in the church, I was not given the scholarship to go to university in the U.S.. When I was denied the scholarship, I was furious. When  you deny people education, you have disenfranchised them. I was so angry at these missionaries, and I rebelled against the church. I began studying destructive ideologies and made my anger with these missionaries very public. This rebellion lasted for five years. I managed to scrape together money and attend some college. While I was there, I tried to start a popular revolt against the government with my student friends. Every one of that group was expelled from school except for me.

Then the head of the Christian Union Fellowship came to my room and said, “We know you were the ringleader, and if they were going to expel anyone from the school, it should have been you. Your family is poor, you are their only hope, and if you do anything again, you will be expelled, and you will lose your opportunity to have an education. That will be the end of you.

The following Sunday, I went to church for the first time in five years. I began to take my life seriously. I realized that I could not ascribe to God my suffering at the hands of human actions.

After I finished at the University of Sierra Leone, I wanted to go to medical school. But the means were not there. So, I went back to the same high school where I had flouted the missionaries’ authority. I wanted to teach there. But they would have none of me.”

Jusu continued, describing the process of reconciliation and forgiveness that took place between him and the missionaries who ran this school. He was eventually given a teaching post. With the financial help of these same missionaries who had once denied him a scholarship to college, he began to pursue his dream of medical school.

“While I was waiting to go to study medicine, I was made not only a teacher of the school, but also the chaplain. I had no training, but I was made chaplain to walk alongside and help troubled kids. Now, as chaplain, I started to garner some theological training to help with my work, and this is the beginning of my interest in theological training.

The missionaries had granted me a scholarship for me to study medicine in Liberia. But I had barely begun my studies in Liberia when civil war broke out there, and I went back immediately to Sierra Leone. I had already resigned my job at the high school, and the only place that they could send me was the theological school. I went to the theological school in order to wait for things to settle in Liberia so that I could go back to study medicine, and it is that waiting that brought me to Africa International University.

This is how I became interested in theological education. I started to look at the curriculum critically. And I thought to myself, what I am seeing out there is not the same as what is in the curriculum. There was a distance between what I expected from my pastor and what I was learning in the curriculum. There was something that was really wrong with this thing we called theological education and the training of pastors for the African context." 

He earned two masters’ degrees from what was then Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), now Africa International University (AIU). Then, John was finally able to pursue his dream of education in the United States. As a recipient of funding from the Christian International Scholarship Foundation, John traveled to Deerfield, IL, where he obtained his PhD in Educational Studies from Trinity International University.  He returned to AIU, where he is now the Dean of the School of Professional Studies.

“When I was studying in the United States, what I wanted to know was, how have you processed your questions? I don’t want to take your answers. I want to learn to create tools and frameworks that will allow Africans to process their own questions using their own symbols, to reach the answers.”

 John describes his academic expertise as “understanding the epistemological frameworks of Africans striving to go into pastoral and teaching ministries of the church in Africa, and how that understanding will influence the production of learning materials and the pedagogy of such learners.”

The road is still one of revolution. But instead of a revolt against the political system, John has chosen to dedicate his life to revolutionizing the education and shaping of Africans in the church. He is dedicated to training leaders and providing tools that can lead African Christian brothers and sisters directly to the fountain of Scripture to drink truth.

This work is central to the mission of the Africa Study Bible, which seeks to make Scripture relevant to the everyday lives of African Christians. John’s expertise in understanding and shaping how Africans learn is essential in his role as the Supervising Editor, as he guides the material into a holistic learning tool for everyone in the African church, on all strata of society.

To this day, Jusu explains, he is still “very edgy whenever [he] sees injustice.” He hates to see people denied education and knowledge. This passion of empowering dispossessed communities continues, but it has been shaped and focused by a divine hand.

“When I tell my friends from college that I am working for the church, they say, ‘Forget about it,’ because they cannot believe it. But look what the Lord has done. He has changed me, and he has redeemed these passions for his people.”

“I’m still waiting to go to medical school,” he laughs.

Finish the Good Work: A Field Report on the Africa Study Bible

At the end of 2012, the Gospel of John, the first complete installment of the Africa Study Bible, was completed. Since then, print copies of these Gospels of John have been making their way throughout Africa in the hands of our ministry partners. Below is a special field report from one of our ministry partners on the impact of these Gospels. This report is excerpted from our 2013 End of Year Stewardship Report, which can be read in full here.)

Read more about the Africa Study Bible Project at www.africastudybible.com 
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Field Report from Scott Pederson, Ministry Partner at Willow Creek Church 

[On] my recent Malawi trip, I took several copies of the Africa Study Bible Gospel of John to give to some of our church partner and technical partner leaders as a gifts. Each and every one of them were very grateful and were looking forward to the completion of the entire Bible.

But the neat part of the story is that the little hotel  we were staying in had several young men who would clean our rooms each day. I had some conversations with them each day to say thanks. One of the days I had left a copy of the Gospel of John on a table. When I returned to my room, the young man came quickly down the hall and confessed that he had read part of it and really liked it, and wondered if I had an extra copy he could have. Of course I gave him the copy and he was overjoyed. A little while later I left my room and as I went outside there he was, with a friend reading it. I walked over to them and they both had huge smiles and the other guy asked if I had any more copies, which I did, so I got him his own copy as well as an extra for anyone else they wanted to give it to.

Then on Sunday I went to the front desk to ask a question and I got into a conversation with the gentleman working the desk. He was a Believer but usually had to work on Sunday, so I went back to my room and grabbed my final copy of the Gospel of John and took it to him. He too was very grateful and was happy to learn about the fact that African Christians had done the notes and comments. I was really happy I took some extra copies and I believe that all those who received them will enjoy reading the Bible as well as the comments written by fellow African Christ followers.

We are so thankful for all the work Oasis is putting into this special resource. I know that when it is complete it will have a huge impact in the African church, and individual lives.

I Am Because We Are: Christian Parenting in Africa

With around 40% of the African population under the age of 15, the coming decades will prove deeply formative as these children come to age in a rapidly advancing Africa. The next generation will shape the face of their continent, for better or worse. 

However, millions of these children have been orphaned by war or disease. This burden weighs heavily upon the African church. Adults often care for dozens of children, and the struggle to raise so many young ones in accordance with Scripture and indigenous tradition is intense. Addressing these kinds of issues is at the heart of the Africa Study Bibleproject. The Africa Study Bible will feature detailed study notes written by hundreds of African scholars and pastors that connect Scriptural truths with the daily lives of Africans. This Bible will be an incredible tool for African Christians who face these and countless other issues that those of us in the West cannot begin to understand. 

Below is an excerpt from an article on godly parenting from the Africa Study Bible that comes at the end of the Gospel of John. The unique perspective on the concept of generational responsibility and the role of the church in childrearing are just one example of the illuminating truths that African perspective brings to Scripture. 

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Adapted from the article on Godly Parenting in the Gospel of John of the Africa Study Bible.

God places people in families, families in communities, communities in people-groups or tribes, and people-groups in nations. Since each of our children provides a link between one generation and the next, we protect the life of the child, both the born and the unborn. We uphold the sanctitiy of life since the newborn represents a collective rebirth or continuity of our heritage. To be alive denotes connection, generation to generation. Translated as "soul" or "breath of life" among some people-groups in Africa, moyo or mwoyo signifies offspring and descendants: the reality of being linked to the collective and the need to continue life through birth and childrearing....

....Grandmother Sara was mother to twenty-six children, all less than seventeen years old. When Gladys Mwiti met her in Rwanda three years after the genocide, she lived in a small house with all her little ones. "These are my children," Grandmother said as she introduced Gladys to them. A woman's trauma healing group became a safe place for her. The women in the group trained the girls for adulthood and asked Christian men in the community to mentor the boys. The church provided a place of worship and training in Christian living.

Sara and the other adults in her devastated community showed that the God of hope can use our resources to rebuild a traumatised community through shared Christian parenting. We all support the belief that every child should have a right to a family and home, but what happens to those who have lost both to tragic circumstances like war or AIDS? How do we parent those who are on the street as orphans and homeless? God calls the local church to model networking, community connectivity, and caring so that these little ones are not denied the basic need for parenting. 

This is the essence of Christ-centred parenting: to practice parenting that transcends our own family and children. We must undertake the training of a generation who whill follow after God's heart and who can, in turn, pass on godly values to the next generation. This is our hope for a continent that follows God's heart. The confidence to parent children in a new Africa is based on the fact that God is present among us, helping to shape our indigeous values in obedience to biblical principles. 



For more information on the Africa Study Bible project, visit www.africastudybible.com. 

Challenging Responses to Piracy

 

Pirated shipping containers confiscated by authorities in Nigeria

Piracy of books continues to be a huge issue for our distribution partners in Nigeria. Our Director of African Operations, Keith Wiederwax, shares about the challenge of responding to this crime.

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We spoke via a poor network connection on Skype yesterday. This dedicated salesperson in the Lagos, Nigeria office of our partner ministry truly coveted our prayers for wisdom and possible solutions to the piracy issue we face there. Piracy continues to destroy lawful, legitimate sales and hurt relationships that we have built there over many years. We learned that the efforts of pirates in Nigeria continue to advance. Not only have all of our best selling books been pirated, but the pirates continue to find new and innovative ways to avoid suspicion and detection as they ship books into the country.

Faced with an environment where he doesn’t even want to take a new version of The Purpose Driven Life to his customers to sell, lest it be pirated, what is his response? Calling out to God in prayer and asking us to do the same. Yet, he doesn’t simply stop there. He told us that he talks with current and former customers who buy pirated books for less. When asked by them for lower prices to match or beat the pirates, he refuses, knowing that in most cases it would mean selling at a loss and giving in to the pirates. What I hear in his voice is righteous anger and determination. He tells these pirated book-buying customers, “I am praying for you, but what you are doing is wrong. God will judge you.” Wow.

Now if all we did to combat piracy was stand our ground, we wouldn’t be very wise. This salesman is also trying to expand his contacts and clients beyond the main market where vendors sell pirated books at will with no threat of arrest or book confiscation by authorities. On certain books, we may be able to lower our prices without taking a loss. Or we might be able to persuade authors and publishers to lower their royalty rates to better compete on price. Oasis International Ltd is also working hard to expand Print On Demand services in Nigeria. We are cooperating with the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) in their efforts to confront piracy and put pressure on the Nigerian government to combat it. We are even working to develop an e-book application to sell books on smartphones and tablets. All of these things and more are needed to fight back against the pirates.

However, out of all these measures, I like best the response I heard yesterday.

“Please pray to the Lord for wisdom and a solution to the piracy problem in Nigeria.”

 

We Had Better Not Kill What God Has Made

Dr. Gladys Mwiti of Oasis Africa, Kenya is a member of the governing committee for the Africa Study Bible (ASB). She is also a contributing writer to the study notes for the Bible. In this excerpt, she shares her thoughts on the importance of understanding what it means to be both fully African and fully Christian. 

     Eunoto, the coming of age ceremony of the Maasai warrior, can involve many days of singing, dancing and ritual. What is Christian there? Everything, except any practice that is sinful. Whom does the ceremony glorify? God, who smiles as he watches the Maasai dance. Why? Because he is God of beauty and diversity. He created them all—to walk in holiness in their dances and cultural attire. The role of the Church? Help the Maasai critique their culture. They will be taught to put off sin and put on holiness, and still remain Maasai—Maasai Christians, beautiful in their diversity. In my opinion, this is the kaleidoscope that the Africa Study Bible ought to encourage: men, women, youth and children or every tribe, every tongue, standing in their full regalia, before the Throne in worship. 

Who we are is derived from Whose we are (God's) and Where we were born (Africa). Whose we are and Where we were born describes What makes us Who we are. And that's the Why of African names, African traditions, African processes, African music, African dance, African parenting, and so on. If Africans attempt to deny our roots, then we repeat the evils committed by Western missionaries. We continue to uproot our very being. No wonder, therefore, that an African Christian will sing praises and pray in tongues in the morning Sunday service and see a witch doctor at night.

We in Africa need indigenuous theologians, scholars, pastors, and other Christian leaders to help us develop a biblical critique that will assist us in filtering true culture from sinful practice. Then, after the critique, because we are African, we have the responsibility to name the positive aspects of our African-ness and rename ourselves. In the past, we have suffered the violence of being trashed and as a result, we went ahead and trashed ourselves. Sadly, we continue to do the same even after years of scholarship.

     This is the background from which I write on godly parenting for the Africa Study Bible:

Christian parents must learn how to embrace positive parts of our cultures while discarding what is not helpful. Many years ago, one church in Kenya banned female circumcision as part of training young girls for maturation into womanhood. But they threw the good out with the bad. They were wise in banning female circumcision, but they neglected the positive training that had accompanied the rite. This Church, realizing their mistake, revived the rite of passage through a process of mentoring and verbal instruction. Young women would no longer be circumcised, but their mothers and aunts would continue the rite of training them with words and activities to prepare them for womanhood. We must have wisdom to take up the challenge of training while leaving harmful traditions behind.

     If as a Christian I feel I cannot accept both my African and Christian identities together, then my people will shake their heads. This Christ, who disowns their very existence, can never identify with the problems of Africa. My people will go to church, sing platitudes and go back to their ways with no guidance on what to put on and what to put off. 

     As an African psychologist and theologian, I take seriously Paul's words in Ephesians 4 where he outlines that we need to live a new life but do so in our diversity. I am not suggesting syncretism, but holistic Christianity that appreciates our creation, identity and belonging. What we put off are not our cultural roots but the sin that belonged to the old self. Some of the old self may be personal sin and disobedience or certain practices and observances belonging to my culture or my person. However, there is much in my culture that is beautiful and Christ-like. This, I want to keep and reinforce in me and my community. This is biblical application. That's the Why of the Africa Study Bible. We had better not kill what God so fearfully and wonderfully made.  

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In 1990, Dr. Mwiti, together with her husband Dr. Gershon, founded Oasis Africa, a pan-African professional counseling and leadership training organization. It was born out of a vision of providing professional counseling, research and publishing, as well as training of counselors and leadership development across Africa. Dr. Mwiti obtained her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif; a master’s degree in Christian leadership from the School of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminaries with an emphasis in integration studies; a master’s degree in counseling psychology and a bachelor’s degree in psychology, both from the United States International University, Nairobi; and an Approved Diploma in Education from Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.

 

"Why Not Free?": Money, Charity, and Ministry in Africa

Keith Wiederwax, Director of African Operations confronts a tough question and shares his thoughts on the complexity of money, charity, and mission in Africa.

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I recently sat in a small room here in Nigeria with group of busy, yet dedicated men and women. All of them love Christ and want to see the spread of bibles and Christian books throughout Nigeria and all of Africa. We were in a board meeting for our partner ministry that Oasis International founded here in Nigeria. The board members are Nigerian, and the ministry is currently growing in independence. Communication, cultural differences and ministry philosophy can be difficult challenges, but especially when ministries are at this phase of development.

One board member, honestly seeking to understand, asked, “Is it true that books that are donated to you for free you charge us for?” It was a great question and one that speaks to a deeper ministry philosophy issue for Oasis International. The answer was simple. “Yes, we do.”

On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make sense. If you desire to see as many books and Bibles reach Africa as possible, why would you charge for books that cost you nothing? Well first, those books and Bibles didn’t come without a cost. Someone has worked long and hard to develop a relationship that resulted in that donation. Second, and even more importantly, it’s because we seek to sustainably distribute Christian books and bibles. Oasis International has expenses and we want to be able to pay them and be around to continue to send resources to Africa next month, next year and, Lord willing, next decade. So in addition to standard shipping and customs fees, we do include a charge for donated books. However, it is much less than their retail worth. This price also still allows our partner to sell them at a profit to average Christians there in Nigeria who can still afford to buy them.

In this way everyone shares in the blessing of the donation—Oasis International receives a little income to help pay ongoing expenses and continue new initiatives, our partner receives good books that they can resell and use to pay local workers, and the Church in Africa is blessed with Christian material that was previously unavailable or far too expensive. Distributing things for free helps an immediate need, but can also perpetuate a culture of dependence that can do more harm than good. On the other hand, a Christian bookstore in Africa can help people discover the truths of the Gospel and be responsive to the needs of the local church for years to come while creating a good local business.

So if you feel led to give something away for the sake of the gospel, I hope this won’t discourage you to do so. Just realize that if you give books to Oasis, we will be charging wholesale and retail partners something for them. Why not free? Because we honestly don’t believe that "free" is in the long-term best interest for them, us, or the people we all want to see reached with the good news of Jesus Christ.

For more on this topic, check out 2 Major Reasons Why We Sell Books Instead of Giving Them Away.

Seeing the Future: E-books in Africa?

Keith Wiederwax, our Director of African Operations, just wrapped up a weeks-long trip in Ghana and Nigeria visiting our partners there. Here he shares his thoughts on the potential development of e-books in Africa and how this could affect Christian book distribution across the continent. 

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What does the future hold for African Christian publishing and bookstores? That’s a good question and one I think about a lot.

As I sat outside at a restaurant and talked with the head of operations of our partner in Ghana we discussed this and what has been taking place over the last couple of years. Piracy has had a great effect on the Christian book market in places like Ghana and Nigeria, which have far more Christian bookstores than the majority of Africa. Pirates monitor what books are selling and can easily send a copy to a printer in India or China and have a large amount shipped in quite quickly. With corruption all too frequent, they can often avoid paying the normal customs and other legal fees. Other wholesalers then buy those books not truly caring where they came from. They just know that they are less expensive than what the legal sellers are charging and after all, “business is business." Combined with increased competition from shops that sell the most popular titles and young people spending more time on the internet than reading books, it is very hard time for Christian booksellers in Africa.

With the cost of smartphones and tablets continuing to drop, the rise of e-books in Africa will occur quickly too, I’m sure. While its still in its infancy right now, Oasis is working towards coming out with an e-book sales app that will let us sell e-books to customers in Africa and allow them to pay either a local bookseller or pay through cell phone credits. We believe this will be a great way to also help serve local conferences. Conference leaders could “bundle” a group of books by conference speakers and offer them at a heavily discounted price as e-books. The conference attendees download the application to their smartphone, purchase a card with a code for the amount of the bundle, put the code into the application and download the books. Voila! All that excellent content is now in the hands of a pastor or leader who needs it and the conference manager didn’t have all the work and hassle of ordering and shipping lots of copies of many different books to the conference location and distributing them.

Of course we know that there will always be a need for physical copies of books and that too is a good thing. With technology continuing to get better, the Print On Demand systems like Oasis is now beginning to roll out in Africa will help keep costs low and availability of various titles high. Titles that would not be available otherwise because they would not sell enough to be profitable in the old, “print in a foreign country and ship them in” method.

So while the current market is difficult, we need to expand ever further throughout Africa to serve the many countries where competition and pirates, much less Christian bookstores, do not yet exist. For our current partners, we want to serve them better through Print On Demand machines and work together to make e-books a reality down the road. As for the future… we’ll do our best and leave that to the One who is already there and knows our steps before we make them. It is He who is worthy of all our best efforts to serve the church with Bibles and Christian books in Africa and throughout the world. To God be the glory!

Developing the Africa Study Bible: Spring Progress Report

Gathering together qualified African writers for the Africa Study Bible can be a challenge. In order to be truly representative, our writing team must have specific percentages from English, French, Arabic, and Portuguese speaking Africa, be equally distributed geographically, and have balanced representation from men and women.

Oasis International has been blessed with the estimable Janice Muchai to work as the Writing Coordinator for the Africa Study Bible project. A Kenyan, Janice has been involved in leadership development in Africa for over 12 years, and her work in coordinating the writing for this project has been phenomenal!

Here is Janice's full Spring report on the progress of the writing for the Africa Study Bible. To make sure that you receive notification of these reports, sign up for our Africa Study Bible mailing list at the bottom of this webpage. 

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JANICE: Every one of our weekly editorial staff meetings in February closed with a sense of “more” is needed. The project needed more writers, especially from North and South Africa. I had to find more women writers. More French speakers were needed! We needed funds to meet our monthly obligations. On the editorial front, with many writers sending in pieces at the same time, we began to experience a backlog of content in need of review.

Then came March. Through help from our tireless “friends of ASB,” I received contacts of North African writers [a difficult region to find writers for], and we were able to sign on a writer for one of the key Articles. That contact also produced two others, one from South Africa and one Ethiopia. They in turn have gone on to produce others… But it is not just writers who made the Spring outstanding. It was also the highly respected theologians who spared the time to write letters of commendation when we requested. It was the professors who volunteered the names of their students, and pastors who gave us their personal feedback and further contacts.

Spring also brought much excitement and relief in other areas. Much of the editorial work has been brought to date. I continued to receive responses from the more than 200 emails I sent out and in March alone we either began discussions to contract, or concluded the contracts with more than ten new people.

I solicit your prayers and assistance as my colleagues and I trust God to bring us more people who would commit to write. We pray that those who have been contracted send in their items on time and that the writers would adhere to given writing guidelines. Thank you for your continued support and prayer.

- Janice Muchai, Writing Coordinator for the Africa Study Bible Project

As part of our effort to keep you up to date on the progress of the Africa Study Bible, we will be bringing you regular progress reports on its development and production in the coming 18 months. 100+ African pastors and theologians are currently contributing to these study notes, and we are hoping to receive all of the written content for the Bible this summer!

Have a question about how you can be involved with the development of the Africa Study Bible? Email us at [email protected]. If you are interested in giving the the project, you may donate here.

Impacting a Continent for Christ: The Africa Study Bible

This post comes with two exciting announcements about the Africa Study Bible (ASB) project:

First, we are excited to see 5,000 copies of the Africa Study Bible's Gospel of John going out through the work of AIM in Southern Africa. God is using this project even before the completion of the Bible! Oasis was thrilled to complete the Gospel of John portion of the ASB in December of 2012, and it is incredible to see the hard work of African pastors and theologians already making an impact on lives. (If you are unfamiliar with this groundbreaking Bible project, stop reading right now and go here: africastudybible.com/the-project/vision)

Second, our President, Matthew Elliott, wrote this update for us on the Africa Study Bible project, with encouragement from fellow Kingdom worker Jim Mason: 

I wanted to share about a meeting I had last week. I was in Toronto for meetings and was able to spend a blessed hour before catching my flight with retired SIM missionary, Jim Mason. Jim is a large part of the reason Oasis started ministry in Africa in 1994.  

As a lifelong Kingdom worker in West Africa, Jim focused almost exclusively on equipping the church with literature. He saw many millions of books and Bibles go out in Nigeria and Ghana when living in Africa, and upon handing these works over to national leadership, God used his vision and energy to see hundreds of thousands of pastors equipped through the Pastors Book Sets and conferences. He is also known to us as the founding and driving force behind the landmark Africa Bible Commentary.

As we talked and he held the Gospel of John for the ASB, he said with confidence, "Many millions of these are going to go out to people in Africa. It is a wonderful project. There is a great hunger for content that speaks directly to the African context."  

There could perhaps be no greater endorsement and blessing on this great work.  In the midst of our struggles, discouragements and delays—we are greatly encouraged that this elder statesman of literature ministry in Africa believes in the potential and in our good God's ability to bring it to fruit.

Thanks be to God for these wonderful encouragements to the Africa Study Bible project! If you're interested in learning more about how you can become a part of this project, visit here.