African churches are closest to Africa's unreached peoples. This tool kit gives them a way to adopt one. It comes in English, French, and Arabic, for use across ten countries.
Africa holds some of the fastest-growing churches in the world and 638 unreached people groups, home to more than 537 million people. The obstacle is usually not opposition. It is that a church has no idea which peoples are near it, or where to begin.
African churches are already sending, and they are nearer to these peoples than anyone. What is missing is the way in: which group to adopt, what adoption actually asks of a congregation, and who to report to. That is what the tool kit supplies.
Two phases. The first puts the kit in leaders' hands; the second lets them print it themselves.
Phase 1
A digital tool kit in English, French, and Arabic, written for African churches rather than translated at them.
It goes to denominational and mission leaders in ten countries, with an invitation to adopt a people group.
Phase 2
Leaders who commit receive printed adoption booklets.
Joshua Project grants a reprint licence so a partner can put its own logo on the booklet and print as many as it needs. On a conservative estimate that reaches more than 10,000 local churches and mission stations.
Four steps, each with something concrete to hand a church at that point.
Each step comes with videos, prayer cards, case studies, and research guides. A tracking system records check-ins, so a commitment made in the first year is still visible in the third.
One digital kit and one printed booklet. They do different jobs: the kit is for casting the vision to a congregation, the booklet is for the church that has decided.
The printed booklet in full. PDF, 6.4 MB.
The kit covers the whole continent. Three regions get particular attention because they have the fewest churches and the hardest access.
Christian presence across the Sahel is thin, and in places unregistered. Adoption here often begins as prayer and research long before anyone travels.
North Africa's people groups are among the least engaged on the continent, and several have no known church of their own.
Muslim communities along the coast, where an adopting church needs to understand the context before it does anything else.
Five numbers we expect to be held to.
The kit is being built now. How many churches receive one depends on how much of the funding below comes in.
