From its first mission to Pietermaritzburg in 1962, African Enterprise has organised citywide missions. The goal of every citywide mission is to make a real impact for the Gospel on an entire city. This may seem to be a daunting task, which is why the method of stratified evangelism was developed in order to reach all people groups in a society.
It has also always been crucial for African Enterprise to try and involve the entire Church in a city in such a citywide outreach. Local Christians have the connections to invite evangelists into their school or place of work. Once the mission is over, the new believers need to be nurtured by mature Christians to ensure that they can grow in their faith. As a body of itinerant evangelists, African Enterprise simply doesn’t have the capacity to do this, but the local Church which remains in the city does. African Enterprise has always placed great emphasis on equipping the local Christians so that they may confidently disciple new believers after the mission.
Over the years, African Enterprise has expanded on their programmes of training and equipping local believers. This has included evangelism training, which equips many local Christians to go out themselves during the citywide mission and evangelise along with the African Enterprise team. This has allowed them to deepen their impact on cities.
Local Christians are also trained in the social action programmes that are a part of each citywide mission, so that they may continue these programmes long after African Enterprise has left. Thus, the Church can continue to make a contribution after the mission.
African Enterprise has helped the Church around Africa in many cities to have these citywide missions, all with great impact. African Enterprise considers itself to be a catalyst for missions, and thus the equipping of the saints has been the way in which these missions have become more and more efficient.