The Logistics of Growth

I had a little reminder of what growth takes this morning. I'm talking about ministry growth not personal growth.

I am in the LaunchPad department here, which is the after school Bible classes that are taught each week in Churches and schools in Qwa-qwa. Right now we have 7 classes in 7 locations with an average attendance between 15-50+. The current term is about to end with a new term starting in August.

A goal the ministry has is to get more Leadership Summit (Thrive's abstinence and leadership course) students to come to LaunchPad. If we meet our goal this would mean 50-100 more students in each class next term. This growth which would be a blessing, also brings tremendous logistical concern.

With more students, we need to figure out how to make the most of each location. How do we organize the game, how do we break up the lesson? How do we do it all in the 90 minutes that we have? Most crucially we need more people. More interns, more staff, more interpreters. Without the workers their can be no harvest.

I saw these issues come up at my camp last summer. I skipped the summer of 06, but between 05 and 07 my camp experienced tremendous growth. We went from having 125-150 kids be a good week to having over 200 as the norm. This brought with it many blessings but many issues too. Most pertinently the staff seemed more stressed more often because simply put there was just more kids. Office work became more of a challenge because there was simply more paper and computer work to do. I do not think we were understaffed we were simply trying to adjust to more people to deal with.

Growth by every measure is a blessing, but a blessing that brings many challenges. The long-term goal of Thrive is to have LaunchPad classes throughout Qwa-qwa (keep in mind an area of 1.8 million people is not small). Thrive wants to have Leadership summit in every school.
The devil certainly does not want this. But can you imagine? Bible teaching and leadership development classes throughout a township where no other outside ministry currently is working. An entire township revolutionized by the godly generation of leaders that it is producing. A country (South Africa) and region (sub-Saharan Africa)changed because of leaders from Qwa-qwa.

This honestly wasn't a fundraising pitch but now that I'm at this point I'll put it out there. Thrive Africa has been slowly growing for ten years. It appears to me that huge and radical growth will happen in just the next year or so. Will you consider giving now at this critical time to impact Africa in a lasting and meaningful way? Thrive will one day be throughout the whole of Qwa-qwa. Will you be able to say that you helped bring this about?

Thanks for reading, blessings.