Catalysing church planting through micro enterprise

OM’s Micro Business Development Ministry, which started in 2006, has run more than 600 business training groups in 48 countries, with over 6,000 participants who have graduated from the program. Currently, there are 50 trainers working across 35 countries to empower marginalised people groups through microenterprise. Recently, some of the most fruitful work has occurred in the Sahel region of French West Africa, an area plagued by socio-economic difficulties, armed conflict and harsh climate conditions and where very few followers of Jesus live. 

You wouldn’t think twice about the old desktop computer balanced on a rickety wooden table, next to a printer covered with plastic to protect it from the desert sands. But Yacouba*, a master trainer in OM’s Micro Business Development Ministry, is proud of his “internet café,” the third small business in his expanding portfolio. 

Shortly after starting his first business – selling soybeans – Yacouba launched a second business. Within two months, the proceeds allowed him to source the computer and printer. These tools not only provided another stream of income for Yacouba but also increased his connection to the local community and funded his frequent travels to other villages, where there are no known believers. 

“If you are a Jesus follower, faith and business are inseparable,” explained Bruce, who leads OM’s Micro Business Development Ministry alongside his wife, Laura, and who has been in close contact with Yacouba over the past year. 

“We don’t distinguish between the work we do and the gospel message. We are the gospel message as we dwell in community.” 

In fractious French West Africa, part of Africa’s Sahel region, the risk for Jesus followers who share their faith is great. “They literally live on the edge of being arrested or put to death,” Bruce explained. 

But for those, like Yacouba, willing to lay their lives on the line, the harvest is ripe. People are hungry for hope and eager to accept the love of Christ, demonstrated through His followers’ presence in their communities and explained in a way they can understand. 

Bringing seeds of change to the Sahel 

In 2020, just before the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, OM’s Africa Area sent a small team to the Sahel region to explore opportunities to share God’s love with least-reached people who live there, including Fulani Muslims, of whom less than 1 per cent are followers of Jesus. One of those team members was a Micro Business Development master trainer, who, during the vision trip, ran a business training in conjunction with an existing church planting school operating near a major city in French West Africa. 

“They were already teaching their people how to do multiplying, DMM (disciple making movement) church planting. But what they were lacking was a way in which to bring sustainability to their church planters,” said Laura. “Our partnership was just so obvious, and then we connected so beautifully.” 

During that event, the master trainer taught Yacouba, a Muslim background believer, how to start and run a business with $5 USD. Like the seed falling on good soil in Jesus’ parable**, taking root and increasing one hundredfold, Yacouba has faithfully and fruitfully multiplied the business training he received—not only practicing and teaching the microenterprise principles to more than 200 people in the region but also sharing God’s Word with least-reached people in other areas and establishing multiple house groups. 

By the end of 2024, Yacouba and his team had started 80 house groups. They then focused on consolidating the groups into 8 churches, training up elders to lead them and allowing Yacouba to continue his pioneering evangelistic efforts among other least-reached communities. 

Strategic business planning helps refugees thrive 

During his travels, Yacouba met a group of refugees who had fled from their home country due to insecurity. Having abandoned everything when they left, the refugees told him that they had begun to cultivate the land solely as a means of survival. 

Through the subsequent business training Yacouba offered them, they learned how to operate strategically on a group level and continued to meet weekly in community transformation groups. Several of the men began growing cassava and doing beekeeping, cultivating raw material and honey that they traded to earn income. Seeking spiritual nourishment, the refugees also began studying Scripture through the Discovery Bible Study method Yacouba introduced. 

In six months, they formed five new churches as well as more than 20 home groups of families praying for each other and studying Scripture together. 

“We are now able to feed our families to care for them and even find housing,” they reported to Yacouba. “On a spiritual level, we started listening to each other’s problems and started praying for each other. 

“The Muslims…who were with us were also interested in this activity; even if they do not observe themselves in the group, they speak to us in secret, and we pray for them.” 

*name changed for security