Expeditions 2015

Mission 2015: ‘Take the Gospel everywhere’

Pastor Rich Friday’s treks into the nearby Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda have not gone unnoticed. Pastors in Kasese have asked why he is spending so much time in the mountains preaching the Gospel.

“I am telling them that Jesus has called us to take the Gospel everywhere to win souls to Him,” Pastor Rich has said.

Pastor Rich caught the vision of Climbing For Christ – to GO where others cannot or will not to deliver the Good News of Jesus – and began making crusades into the Rwenzoris.

Why does C4C exist? The primary purpose of Climbing For Christ is to GO and deliver the Gospel in the mountains of the world, where other missionaries cannot or will not.

It is important to note: C4C emphasizes serving spiritual needs ahead of physical needs. We address physical needs to open doors to the spiritual and also because Jesus told us what we do for the least of these we do for Him. But we must never allow serving physical needs to supersede the spiritual. As we have seen, relief that addresses the secular side of life is “just that – relief; it does not and cannot address those issues that are most fundamental to the human condition.” It is a Band-Aid applied to a terminally ill body. But it might be a stepping stone to eternal cure.

“Throughout His life, Jesus did numerous other miracles to give glimpses of His kingdom,” authors Peter Greer and Chris Horst wrote in the book Mission Drift. “In the Kingdom of Heaven, there won’t be any sickness. So Jesus healed the sick. In the Kingdom of Heaven, there won’t be any hunger. So Jesus fed the 5,000. In the Kingdom of Heaven, there won’t be any death. So Jesus raised Lazarus and a little girl from the dead. Christ regularly pointed to His divinity by acts that give a taste of what the Kingdom will be like. Yes, Jesus did good works – but there was a bigger reason behind them.”

He was the Reason behind the miracles. He wanted people to know Him and to have a life-changing relationship with them.

He still does.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” – John 14:12 (ESV)

He is sending us to the unreached and to the unengaged at the ends of the earth. Here is the 2015 Evangelic Expedition schedule:

TANZANIA – The training of evangelists among guides and porters working on 19,341-foot/5,895-meter Mount Kilimanjaro (see “Planting, watering, and God-given growth”) will continue in March and November. Also an opportunity to climb Africa’s tallest peak.

NEPAL – The ninth expedition to this Hindu (and Buddhist) country will feature our fourth trip in three years to the country’s least-reached Far West, where mountain foot-trails offer the only routes.

INDONESIA – Returning to the world’s most populous M-slim nation.

TURKEY – The fourth expedition to eastern Turkey since 2010, and our third straight year to Mount Ararat. The goal is to continue outreach among Kurdish people living on and around the 16,854-foot/5,137-meter mountain. Only 0.01 percent (about 1,400) of the estimated 14 million Kurdish people living in Turkey claim to be Christian.

UGANDA – Trek into the Rwenzori Mountains to participate with ongoing evangelism efforts.

PERU – The fifth expedition in as many years will return to the Cordillera Blanca, revisiting Chalhua and exploring a new area on the north end of the range on a five-day trek.

NIGERIA – The second expedition into the troubled northeast. C4C has ministered in the Atlantika Mountains along the Nigeria-Cameroon border since 2011. Several tribes in those highlands are unreached with the Gospel, mostly practicing ethnic religions.

PHILIPPINES – Two expeditions are in the works along with a year-end trip to meet with pastors from Kibungan as our work among the Kankanaey dating to 2008 continues.

MOROCCO – A trekking paradise that’s made for C4C with hard-to-reach mountainous places in a country that is 99.98 percent M-slim and only 0.02 percent Christian.

MALAWI – There’s also ongoing work in southern Malawi, which includes our Project 1:27 orphanage support.