Healthy Church Conference Goes to Côte D’Ivoire

For the past eight years, Purpose Driven has partnered with the West African country of Côte D’Ivoire to help train pastors, churches, and denominations in Healthy Church principles. Over 3,500 pastors and denominational leaders have been reached in that time, and this year, Pastor Ryan Nunez had the opportunity to make the trip and teach alongside Pastor Marc Zando. Here’s what Ryan had to say about the transformative trip!

“On this latest trip, June 21-30, we had two primary objectives: hold a one-day, large-scale Healthy Church Conference in Abidjan and launch a PEACE Center in the city of Biankouma. We began the trip by traveling north to Biankouma to equip local pastors and volunteers for a new PEACE Center that is being launched. The center’s focus is to begin meeting the needs and building relationships with the Tura tribe, an unreached people group located in the region in and around Biankouma. The PEACE Center will be launching with a medical clinic, adult education programs, savings groups, entrepreneurship classes, early childhood education, and a home for girls seeking educational opportunities not found in their remote villages. Our focus was to train the leaders and volunteers of these programs.”

“When we reached Biankouma, we found that the region’s pastors were significantly interested in attending the one-day Healthy Church Conference in Abidjan. However, it would be a 10-hour drive for them to attend. We decided to host an additional conference in the region on Thursday, June 27, and hosted 150 pastors and denominational leaders. We were able to bus them to Man, a central location, from five surrounding village centers for the day of training.

On Saturday, June 29, we held the Healthy Church Conference in Abidjan with over 450 local pastors, denominational leaders, and church network leaders in attendance. The day served as an introduction to the Healthy Church principles and a connection to the network of pastors, coaches, and model churches who can help further train these pastors and organizations.”

“In all, we were able to connect and introduce the Healthy Church principles to about 600 pastors. The ongoing training, equipping, and coaching will be done by the PD/PEACE initiative directed by a steering team of 20 church presidents and denominational leaders. A great success story is Pastor Raymond Abokan. He was part of our initial coaching group eight years ago. He has been applying the Healthy Church principles to his church and has seen significant impact in both growth and mobilization. When we met Raymond, his church had about 20 members meeting in a small building on his property. His church now runs several hundred people and has planted two additional churches he is overseeing in his area. Raymond serves as a Healthy Church model and mentor for dozens of other pastors in his region.”

We’d sincerely like to thank Pastor Nunez for his report, and the Healthy Churches community will continue to support Pastors and church leaders who are effectively spreading God’s word all over the world.