(a recent prayer letter from Jonathan & Anna Saliba, Colombia)

We’ve had a consistent feeling that we’re doing well as a church. We’re used to seeing a lot of new faces online each week. We have faithful attenders who we’ve never met face-to-face, and some who we knew for months before they came to in-person services. We have also seen several people saved.

Those feelings were confirmed when we finalized the attendance for 2020. The church grew by 19% in 2020, just like the previous year.

From a quick glance at our discipleship list, there were 28 people involved in the discipleship program either as a leader, apprentice, or student. That number is incredible! More people finished the program this year than ever. Please pray for continued numerical growth, but even more for continued spiritual growth and discipleship.

Last week we told Albeiro, the pastor at the church in the north, that it’s time for us to move on to our next church-planting project. The church doesn’t need us anymore, even though they might feel like they do. Interestingly, this new project will not take us to a new city, neighborhood, or building.

We’re planning a furlough from May to October of 2021. When we return to Colombia at the end of the year, we plan to start a new church, and eventually move that church into the same building where the church is meeting now, but at a different time. It’s unconventional, but it’s the start of a dream that God gave us back in 2016 to plant multiple churches in one building.

Even if we could plant ten churches in this neighborhood, we would only reach 1% of the population! We don’t even need to go to a new location to find a whole new mission field. Please pray for us as we prepare for this next step!

We are starting a brand new project called the Colombia Building Fund. Soon we’ll have a website that will explain the whole project, but for now, here is a very simplified explanation:

The Colombia Building Fund will solve a lot of problems for churches by purchasing a building where our current and future church plants can meet, sharing one building in one community with 200,000 unreached people just a short walk away. It will be a self-replenishing fund, so churches started in the building will pay rent into a fund that will purchase future church buildings. Instead of wasting 60% or more of the church budget on rent, every bit of rent that churches pay will purchase future church buildings in other parts of Colombia!

If you’re one of those people who just immediately wants to give to this new project, that’s great! You can give at donate.bbfimissions.com. Just search for “Colombia Building Fund” under special projects. We would actually encourage churches to wait until we get in touch before setting a giving goal for this project. We think when you learn more about the project, you’ll want to give a little more. Pastors, we’ll be in touch shortly to explain the project and to offer a lot of creative ideas to help you participate in this project. Right now we are looking for 15 churches or individuals to be the first big-givers, giving between 2 and 5% of the total need of $1,000,000. If that might be you, let us know and we’ll spend some time together talking about the project.