A focus on the community has helped the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Samoa record the highest growth in the Trans Pacific Union Mission.
Every second month the Church allocates a Sabbath to community outreach where church members visit homes, pray for the household and conduct family worship. If they see a need, they will return to the home during the week to help out. Street preaching is one of the other activities held on these special Sabbaths.
The community outreach is part of the Church in Samoa’s commitment to the harvest model of disciple-making. Every Samoan church has been busy following this model of preparing the soil, sowing the seed, cultivating the plants, harvesting and multiplying. And it’s having a big impact as it encourages members to move out of their churches and into the community where disciple-making is happening.
According to the year-end report of the Trans Pacific Union Mission (TPUM), Samoa has recorded an average growth in baptisms of 7.4 per cent over the past 10 years, the highest of all the TPUM missions.
TPUM president Pastor Maveni Kaufononga said these results are a clear sign that God is blessing the work in Samoa.
“Samoa Mission’s number of baptisms was 830 for this year,” he said. “This is a fantastic result that can only happen when the Holy Spirit is upon the work.”
Samoa Mission president Pastor Sione Ausage reiterated the importance of the community outreach. Members have visited hospitals and health clinics, prisons and aged care facilities—wherever support is needed.
“Our ADRA work is very strong with projects to help the vulnerable people of our country,” Pastor Ausage said. “Our Church is known with the description of helping people. When our invitation goes out to people to come for our small groups, Bible correspondence course, health talks, evangelistic campaigns, people came. We believe that is the reason why. When you do your groundwork well and meet the needs of the people, they respond to our request for evangelism.”
