An Example from Ecuador

I posted earlier in A Guide to Getting Beyond Typical Church Outreach about good soil producing a minimum 2,900% increase. (By the way, now that I am recovered from surgery and travel, I plan to post the rest of that guide soon.)

I also posted an example of this in post WWII China in the post An Observation of Good Soil.

Guy Muse, one of our IMB missionaries serving in Ecuador relates another great example of this declaration of Jesus. This story is so simple and personal. A great read. Here is an excerpt.

What follows is an attempt to briefly describe how seed planted in the life of just one person has produced well over the 100-fold described in Matthew 13...

Marlene was a member of a local Baptist church in Guayaquil. For several years she tried to motivate her fellow brothers and sisters to be more engaged in evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Excuses were always along the lines of "it is not in this year's budget," "we have a meeting planned to discuss this next month," "we have several outreach activities planned this year that will hopefully bring some new people into our church," "we don't have the money to plant a new church." No surprise that little to nothing was being done.

Marlene was part of an organic church planting training we were asked to do at her church through an invitation made to us by the pastor.
At the end of the training, Marlene respectfully requested permission to start a new house church, explaining to her pastor she wanted to put into practice what had been learned during the training. Her pastor gave his blessing.

Within a few weeks Marlene had won several friends and neighbors to the Lord through her house-to-house visitation, and through contacts made in her local business.

The first year Marlene baptized 18 and spent many hours discipling these new believers. They began meeting several times per week in Marlene's home as a new church start. The "mother church" with all their programs, budget, and paid ministry staff baptized three people that same year.

The story continues, relating how the discipling of one specific couple led to an entire family network coming to Jesus (30 fold), then how relatives, friends and neighbors were reached (60 fold), and finally how this turned into a network of new churches of new believers (100 fold). Read it all in the post 30,60 and 100-fold on The M Blog.