Flying Goats and Member Retention

The freight manager made himself clear: “You can’t take six goats on the plane!”

Not to be deterred, the stewardship ambassador replied, “But we have to, it’s God’s work.” 

After much negotiation, a special timber crate was constructed, and the goats got their boarding passes.

Every year, more than a million precious souls around the world call the Seventh-day Adventist Church “my church” for the first time, and the 2024 PNG for Christ harvest program played a big part in that worldwide growth. However, for many new members, becoming an Adventist is far from easy. 

They choose to leave behind their essential incomes from vocations such as pig farming, selling marijuana or betel nut, or even a regular wage as the pastor of another denomination.

Retaining these dedicated new converts is a number-one priority for the Adventist Church in Papua New Guinea. The church’s Eastern Highlands Simbu Mission (EHSM) has pioneered a unique and effective method of member retention.

Life Skills Camps

Practical stewardship in the form of life skills trainings is taking the EHSM by storm, and they’ve even launched it into other missions including Morobe, South-West Papua, and Bougainville. From October 6 to 20, Mathew Kamo, the EHSM stewardship director, organized 18 one-week life skills training camps attended by more than 15,000 people.

The life skills programs, which also attract at-risk young people, revolve around the acronym GATE — God first, Agriculture, Trades, and Entrepreneurship — and are often accompanied by health education and outreach, including “10,000 Toes” diabetes prevention activities.

With hearts overflowing with God’s love, skilled church members generously give their time and resources to teach new believers more than 25 different life skills, including income generation from growing rice, tomatoes, citrus, grapes, mushrooms, and cocoa. The products and skills in the training also include sweet potatoes, tapioca flour, vanilla, baking, and sewing, as well as goats, poultry, fish, cattle, cooking, packaged meals, mechanics, solar electrical, plumbing, carpentry, and brick making. Finally, it includes literature sales, bookkeeping, business registration, and small business skills.

The camps include morning and evening spiritual messages for new believers, explanations about God’s tithe and offerings, and testimonies from beneficiaries of past trainings about how they have been blessed by God in their new-found faith and skills.

FAITH Gardens

A powerful part of the program was visits by Joanis Fezamo, EHSM president, and James Kiangua, EHSM secretary, who shared stories of their own personal commitment to growing healthy foods for their families.

With fast-rising food costs in the shops, the two pastors outlined the need for every household to have a FAITH garden. The acronym stands for Food Always in the Home and is a powerful reminder of God’s call for us to care for our families. Fezamo gave ready-to-plant rice and wheat seeds from his own family’s FAITH garden to each of the camp attendees and encouraged them to multiply the harvest.

EHSM’s practical stewardship activities are a testament to the members’ love for their neighbors. Many onlookers are seeing that they are Christ’s disciples because of their love for one another. Eyewitnesses are describing it as a beautiful re-creation of the early church’s sharing of their faith, love, and resources in Acts 2:44-47.

Many who are not yet Christian believers are also attending the life skills camps and are being introduced to the love of God through His people. The camps, originally aimed at new member retention, have become an effective outreach in themselves. 

Tim McTernan, the ministry innovations and marketing leader for the Adventist Church’s South Pacific Division, based in Australia, is making a documentary about the PNG life skills camps. It will be released to the world church in early 2025 to encourage others to retain new members through practical stewardship. 

So, what happened to those six high-flying goats? They landed safely in Bougainville, where they were used to teach a life skill to new Adventists. Now, they have even given birth to their first kids!

The original version of this story was posted by Adventist Record.