Steinar Opheim

African tentmakers who have gone through the tentmaking course developed by Global Opportunities and Tent have started at least 181 new prayer groups and house churches the past six years.

According to detailed reports presented by Africa-director Tiowa Diarra in Tentmakers International (TI), 3,751 persons have now gone through a limited version of the GO Equipped TENTmaking course. The course participants have reached out to 15,100 people with the gospel and 181 new, Christian fellowships have been started.

– We are still missing reports from several nations, so the real numbers of people being reached and fellowships being started is even higher than this, says Tiowa Diarra.

He has been a leading figure in the African tentmaking movement that has been emerging the past six years. In 2004 he made connections with Global Opportunities European sister agency, Tent, in order to arrange a tentmaking course in his home country Mali. Since then the development of the movement has been like an adventure. In 2007 Mali hosted the first ever All Africa Tentmaking conference with participants from 17 nations. The second All Africa Tentmaking conference was held in Cameroon last summer. At present TI has national representatives in the majority of the African nations. The tentmaking course has been recorded in both French and English and is now distributed on DVDs to the national leaders in the movement.

– The tentmaking strategy is a good fit for the churches in Africa. Through tentmaking even churches that have small resources can take part in the worldwide misson task, says Tiowa Diarra.

He is now making plans for a third All Africa Tentmaking conference that will be held in Tanzania in 2013.

– By arranging these international events in different parts of the continent, we can introduce even more people to the tentmaking idea, says Tiowa Diarra.