Portland church energetically works to plant hundreds of churches in Ethiopia

     PORTLAND — Can a Portland church play a key role in seeing an entire African nation won to Christ?
     Pastor Ray Noah of Portland Christian Center believes so. That’s why in January 2010 he started promoting within his congregation the idea of planting 250 churches in the Ethiopian region of Oromia. The largest state in Ethiopia, Oromia is home to about 27 million people – about a third of the entire nation’s population.
     Already, the church, working in partnership with several agencies, has surpassed its initial goal and now has planted 361 churches. Since May 2010, Project Oromia has tallied a steady and growing increase each month in statistics: people presented the Gospel message (total 308,630 as of June 2011) people brought to faith in Christ (total 44,789); people baptized (total 15,496).
     Similarly increasing are stats on church development: church buildings completed: 146; church buildings with construction in progress, 173; additional churches planted by Ethiopian churches, 109.
     According to Noah, just a century ago there were only a handful of born-again Ethiopian believers. Today, according to the latest government census, evangelical Christians make up 18 percent of the population.
     Noah says Ethiopia is a spiritually stragetic region in the Horn of Africa — the key to not only the evangelization of the African continent, but to stemming the rising tide of Islam throughout Afrida.
    “The strategy for spiritual victory in Ethopia — and therefore in all Africa — is simple: plant churches!” he said.
     Noah, who was formerly an assistant pastor at the Portland church, returned to the Assemblies of God-affiliated congregation in 2008 as senior pastor after several years as pastor of a California church. But his involvement with Ethiopian outreach goes back to 2003, when he and Denver, Colo., pastor Charles Blair launched a church-planting effort in a different region of Ethiopia called Beninshangul-Gumuz.
     Almost 1,642 churches were eventually established and 93,546 people brought to Christ, with 69,246 baptized in water. That was done under the banner of The Ethiopian Call, a ministry launched by Blair in 1990s.
     When the work in Beninshangul-Gumuz began, that region had been one of the most undeveloped and unreached regions of the world, and only about 1 percent of the natives had ever heard of the name of Jesus Christ. The region’s president, a born-again Christian, had personally asked Blair to help build churches and develop the area. Although Blair passed away in 2009,     Noah is carrying the church-planting vision forward in Oromia. Oromia is made up of 17 zones, and the core zone of West Shewa has been the initial target of the new church-planting project.
     In 2010, working with the Evangelical Church Fellowship of Oromia (nine participating Ethiopian denominations), Portland Christian Center set out to plant 250 new churches. In the next three to five years, using what Noah described as a proven and effective church planting strategy, these 250 churches would plant another 750 self-sustaining, self-generating churches, giving a total of 1,000 new Oromian churches.
     “As 2010 came to a close, we had received pledges for over 350 new churches,” said Noah. “Not only that, but Portland Christian Center has now fully-funded and planted 361 new churches! Working with our proven strategy, in three to five years we believe there will be more than 1,500 new Oromian churches in Ethiopia.”
     Now, said Noah, the long-range goal for the coming decade is to plant 10,000 churches throughout Ethiopia. “Knowing that the local church is the hope of Ethiopia, it is our sense that millions of people will experience salvation, and that ultimately, all of Ethiopia will belong to Jesus Christ,” Noah said.
     Noah returns regularly to Ethiopia with a small team of teachers to conduct leadership training for Christians there. The church works in partnership with nearly two-dozen Ethiopian evangelical denominations to accomplish the vision. The Ethiopian Call supports no missionaries directly, but rather works with local denominations in the selection and training of missionary pastors who are sent into remote, unreached villages to plant churches. The Portland church is itself sponsoring hundreds of such missionaries.
     For more information on the churchplanting effort, phone 503-245-7735 or go to www.pcctoday.com and click on the Project Oromia tab.