In this episode of Faith & Clarity, host Mark Turman sits down with Dr. Louis Blom, president of Judea Harvest, for an inspiring conversation about how God is moving across the continent of Africa.
Dr. Blom shares his remarkable journey of faith—from growing up under apartheid in South Africa to leading a movement that has planted thousands of churches and trained countless pastors and evangelists. Through creative ministry tools, such as tent churches and solar-powered audio Bibles, Judea Harvest is helping to bring the gospel to some of the most remote and unreached communities in the world.
Together, Mark and Louis reflect on the spiritual landscape of Africa, where persecution and poverty often meet profound revival and resilience. They explore how digital innovation, local leadership, and global collaboration are shaping the future of evangelism—and what the Western church can learn from Africa’s deep faith and dependence on God.
It’s a conversation that reminds us that the Great Commission is still unfolding today, and that God’s Spirit is powerfully at work in every corner of the world.
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Topics
- (0:00): Welcome to the Faith & Clarity podcast
- (01:04): Introducing Dr. Louis Blom and Judea Harvest
- (03:03): Dr. Blom’s journey to faith
- (06:49): Experiencing apartheid in South Africa
- (14:47): The Great Commission and global evangelism
- (21:55): Understanding Africa’s spiritual landscape
- (24:58): Persecution and conflict in Nigeria and Mozambique
- (26:37): Economic and religious motivations behind conflicts
- (29:20): Spiritual landscape and revival in Africa
- (33:10): Judea Harvest’s church planting strategies
- (36:21): Innovative tools for ministry in West Africa
- (41:32): Future plans and how to support Judea Harvest
Resources
- Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Judea Harvest
- YouTube: Judea Harvest
- 2024 Judea Harvest Annual Report
- Is Nigeria committing genocide against Christians? – Denison Forum
- Tariffs on trial, Nigerian Christian persecution, Dick Cheney, Mamdani and Dems win big & NFL trades | Ep. 44 – Culture Brief Podcast
- Nigeria is becoming a “mass grave” for Christians – Denison Forum
About Dr. Louis Blom
Dr. Louis Blom, a visionary South African minister and global evangelist, has devoted over three decades to igniting a continent-wide revival through church planting, pastoral training, and holistic community development. As President and Co-Founder of Judea Harvest, an international Christian nonprofit, Blom has spearheaded the establishment of more than 35,000 churches across 40 African nations since 1999, transforming remote villages into beacons of faith and hope. His passion for the “Great Commission” has mobilized thousands of believers, earning him recognition as a key figure in modern missions.
Born and raised in South Africa, Blom’s early path blended technical precision with spiritual calling. He completed engineering studies in Industrial Electronics and Instrumentation, attaining National Technical Qualification, before a profound sense of divine purpose redirected his trajectory. In 1991, he graduated from Auckland Park Theological Seminary, equipping him for pastoral ministry. Blom’s initial decade in service was spent pastoring two congregations in Kempton Park under the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) of South Africa, where he honed his skills in local church leadership and community outreach.
In April 1999, Blom co-founded Judea Harvest alongside Pastor Hansie Henning, responding to Africa’s urgent spiritual needs. What began as a modest initiative has burgeoned into a multifaceted movement, emphasizing rapid church multiplication through “John’s Journey” evangelism—a simple, replicable model inspired by the Apostle John’s relational witness. Blom’s academic pursuits amplified this work: he earned an Honours Degree in 2001 and a Master’s in 2004 from the University of Johannesburg (UJ), exploring African cultural contexts and gospel integration. His 2009 Doctorate (DLitt et Phil) in Missiology focused on tailored evangelism strategies for the continent, directly informing Judea Harvest’s scalable approaches. Over the years, he has preached and trained leaders in more than 30 nations, fostering partnerships that extend beyond Africa to Europe and North America.
Recognizing evangelism’s interconnectedness with social justice, Blom launched Judea Hope in 2006, addressing HIV/AIDS, poverty, corruption, and education gaps. This arm supports 1,300 child care centres—often makeshift tents in churches—providing meals, schooling, and care for vulnerable orphans, breaking cycles of despair in war-torn and impoverished regions. In 2013, he established Judea Training to equip over a million untrained African pastors, offering practical theology and leadership development to sustain church growth. Blom’s influence extends to authorship; his 2020 eBook, Sharing Jesus: Evangelism – John’s Journey Style, distills decades of fieldwork into accessible tools for disciple-making.
On a personal note, Blom’s steadfast partnership with his wife, Thea, whom he married in 1987, has been the bedrock of his ministry. For 38 years, they have served as a tandem team, raising their son, Leonardo, while navigating the demands of full-time mission work. Recently, the family relocated from South Africa to the Tyler, Texas area, enhancing ties with U.S. partners and expanding Judea Harvest’s North American footprint. Blom’s life embodies joyful obedience: “We find fulfilment in living out God’s plan as a family,” he reflects.
Today, at the helm of Judea Harvest—a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) with international reach—Blom continues to champion a harvest-focused gospel. His legacy? Not mere numbers, but transformed lives: pastors empowered, children nourished, and villages awakened to Christ’s love. In an era of global disconnection, Dr. Blom reminds us that true fruitfulness blooms from hearing God’s voice and discerning His hand in every endeavour. As Africa stands on the cusp of revival, Blom’s unyielding pursuit inspires a new generation to “go and proclaim.”
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, the Faith & Clarity podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to Faith and Clarity at Denison Forum Podcast. I’m Dr. Mark Turman, your host for today’s conversation. If this is your first time, we welcome you to Faith and Clarity. If you’re a returning listener, we’re thrilled to have you as well. We want to help you find some hope beyond today’s headlines and hot takes.
We want to help you live by faith rather than by fear, and we do that in a number of ways. If you, as you heard me before, we wanna help you think. Critically and biblically, we wanna help you live faithfully. And we wanna help you serve both locally and globally, wherever God may lead you to bring about flourishing communities until Jesus comes back.
And we’re really gonna focus a little bit on that serve intentionally part. Of equipping people today. One of the things we love to do at Faith and Clarity is to bring you into the awareness and give exposure to what God is doing around the world and, and create an opportunity for you to have a [00:01:00] conversation with God about how.
He might want you to be involved. And so we’re gonna focus today on what God is doing in Africa, this beautiful, incredible continent that you may have visited. But perhaps you have it on your bucket list to go there sometime if you haven’t. And we’re gonna be talking with my conversation partner, Dr.
Louis Blo. Who is the leader of a ministry that we’re gonna learn about called Judea Harvest. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Blom. He likes to be called Louis, and so we’ll call him that in just a moment, but he is a visionary South African leader for the last 30 years. Working to share the gospel and to ignite revival with the spirit of God all across Africa.
He is also the president and co-founder of Judea Harvest, which was started in 1999. It’s an international Christian nonprofit. That now serves more than 35,000 churches in 40 African nations, which is pretty substantial. In a lot of ways [00:02:00] their work is to mobilize Christians like you and me, and also to be a key voice in the, the blending of two things I thought were beautifully expressed.
Evangelism, the sharing of the gospel as well as. Practical compassion, those two things always go together. Louis pastored two congregations in South Africa before starting Judea Harvest. And now their work has expanded not only into evangelism, but also into serving 1300 childcare centers that serve orphans.
They also equip thousands of pastors and help them to get some training in theology and leadership. And he is gonna share with us a little bit, his unique perspective on what God is doing and how they are getting to be a part of the gospel ministry of sharing Christ all across this magnificent part of the world.
Dr. Blom Louie, welcome to the Faith and Clarity Podcast. We are great, grateful to have you today.
Dr. Louis Blom: Thank you, Dr. Mark. It’s my pleasure to be with you and I’m sure we are [00:03:00] gonna have fun.
Dr. Mark Turman: Let’s roll. Let’s just jump right in. Tell us a little bit about the Louis Blom story. A little bit about you, your family background growing up in South Africa and how you came to faith and, and tell us a little bit about that story.
Dr. Louis Blom: Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And so somebody sang a song. And I resonate a lot with that song. I’m just a nobody that grew up in Kazi Natal in the rural areas of South Africa with, with the Zulu tribe and the predominant in that area, and did my military after school. Those years, we.
We were, we, we did the two year military. It was still apartheid old South Africa. And about a year after military, 1984, just before Easter, I made a U-turn. And I in the beginning years of my life, I, I love to say I found Jesus, but later I discovered he found me
Dr. Mark Turman: right.
Dr. Louis Blom: So Christ was searching [00:04:00] for me and I was running away by when I was 23 years old, in, in a little church.
Coincidentally, the church that I chose to walk to that night when I found Jesus and Jesus found me and I turned my life around and started serving Jesus. Coincidentally, that church was founded by an American missionary that went to Africa in 1901. Hmm. And started a move of God that spread right throughout Africa and the birth of hundreds and thousands of churches.
So the church I picked was, was a church that was founded by an American missionary in 1901. I started serving the Lord my wife and I met in that church. We got baptized in that church. We were sent from that church to become a, a, a ministry, you know, to, to go to Bible school. At that point in time, I was studying engineering and my wife married me.
She was thinking she’s gonna become a rich engineer’s wife. I qualified and I worked for six months and we said, [00:05:00] let’s not make steel. It was a steel mill. I worked for, let’s not make steel for the rest of our lives, but let’s spend our lives making disciples for Jesus. Because during those years, the call of God, the passion of of Christ, and the zeal to do something for God and the.
The joy of being involved in being a co-labor with Christ to make one disciple is indescribable. That, that’s probably one of the greatest joys of Christian life, is sharing your faith with Jesus in Jesus with others. And that consumed us. And then we became pastors. Pastors for 10 years. The same zeal, the same drive.
Reaching the lost, going for the lost is what made me leave my church. Because back then I also discovered and saw the masses are not coming to church. The masses are outside. They in the, in the judeas. Jesus told us to be witnesses in Jerusalem’s, Judeas, amaria to the ends, and, and I discovered I’m now busy preaching to Jerusalem.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm, okay.
Dr. Louis Blom: Spending my whole life in Jerusalem and, and in [00:06:00] 99 I found a man of God coincidentally his granddad worked with this American missionary in 1901 and did crusades and church plants all over Africa. And I, I, this man and I met and we started dreaming together, and in 99 I resigned my church and started Judea Harvest.
So I’m just a nobody from somewhere in the bush there in Africa, found by Jesus, and now loving to serve and follow him.
Dr. Mark Turman: And the, the great thing is, is that all of us in some way feel like nobodies, but Jesus makes us somebody because of Yes.
Dr. Louis Blom: Amen.
Dr. Mark Turman: His perspective on us. And some of our, many of our followers read Dr.
Denison’s daily article. He even commented today that if we could see what God sees when we look in the mirror. We would have a completely different perspective on ourselves, on God and on other people as well. Louis, I was wondering if you could just comment, maybe a reflection or two of what it was like to grow up and to journey with South Africa through apartheid.
That’s [00:07:00] always a significant part of the history of Africa, particularly South Africa. It resonates and relates in some ways to America’s struggle with racial relations and racial reconciliation. From your perspective growing up and moving through that experience. How do, how do you look at that journey through apartheid?
How do you see God having moved in that experience?
Dr. Louis Blom: Thank you for the question mark. I brushed through those items very lightly in my introduction, but I’m very at liberty to share that in depth with you. So when I found Christ and I started serving the Lord in, in, in my local church, that denomination that was founded by this American missionary, John g Lake.
Had four churches in South Africa, a white church, a black church, a Indian church, and a colored church. So it was one denomination, but four distinct operations. The first person I ever led to the Lord in my life, it was the greatest joy of my [00:08:00] life, was a black Zulu speaking guy. That was the Storeman. In the workshop that I used to be then engineering and, and I bought him his first Zulu Bible and I discipled him and journeyed with him, but I was not allowed to invite him to church on Sunday.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow.
Dr. Louis Blom: Wow. ’cause he, he was not allowed in my church ’cause he was black. And that was, that was when the tension started for me. So I started questioning my pastor, can I bring the first guy I ever led to the Lord to to church? He said, no, take him to ma. That’s the black township in the town I grew up in.
When I became a pastor the country was still all South Africa. Mandela was still a, a, a communist terrorist in pri in prison. Hmm. And I, and the second church I passed it, they released Mandela. He, we had our first Democratic elections stood in queues for nine hours to vote. We, we voted our first Democratic, and then my church started turning slowly but surely, I, I, I, I, I, I spoke of our [00:09:00] board and started a Zulu speaking service in my church on the afternoon.
So then we had two services in the morning, one in the afternoon for Zulu, and then. One in the E two in the evenings in Africa, and said one in English that brought its own tension, having a multiple racial kind of thing in one church, but not in the same service. So South Africa turned very slowly.
That’s what made me say. In my city, there was 160,000 white people, but more than a hundred churches serving them. Wow. But in my city, if you fly to South Africa, that city where I passed it is called Kempton Park. That’s where the airport is. There were 2 million blacks.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow.
Dr. Louis Blom: And, and I couldn’t count 10 churches serving them.
I became friends of those pastors. I started reaching out to them. We started helping with building programs, training programs, and, and I’m sitting in a city. 2 million people, less than 10 physical churches, I could count. Wow. [00:10:00] 150 plus thousand people, 60, 70, a hundred churches I could count. It just doesn’t work for me.
And that’s how I, I, I, the scripture God gave me is if a good shepherd has a hundred sheep in one, he’s lost. And I sort of sat in a city where we had 95 lost and one and, and one and five in, and I told my church, I’m resigning. I’m going for that. And that, that was the birth of Judea. So in a sense. Judea Harvest was embraced by a lot of white South African suburban churches.
’cause they could sponsor a tent and go do God’s work and support God’s work in Judea, which would be the townships. That’s how that design looked like. Lots of. Tensions Marco, I would be not honest with you, if I say no tension, and you know, I left South Africa four, three years ago to come and work here full-time Fortune, they harvest and some of our other ministry partners, CMM, but I, I’m gonna lie to you, if I tell you the tension’s gone, it’s not gone.
Dr. Mark Turman: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Louis Blom: The country’s still grappling and, and we are [00:11:00] guessing it would take. Two to three generations to, to get rid of that apartheid wrongdoing. And then how to fix and correct that and how to, I read in America, you guys use the word re re appropriations or re re reparations or reparations.
Reparations. Mm-hmm. So South Africa have their own laws. It’s in the law book it’s called Black Economic Empowerment Rules and Regulations, and the country’s still grappling with that. It’s a lot of pain to transition. What we, what was a white supremacist you know, apartheid regime with its good and bad.
Not, not everything was bad. Yeah. But the, the, the transition is lots and lots of pain, even in the church that I’m part of and still a pastor of in that denomination. Funny enough, we have another white president of that denomination now, the masses and masses of Indians colored and blacks voted the white president in, and that’s kind of a miraculous thing.[00:12:00]
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, yeah. So many, yeah, so many things to think of. We might have to have another podcast just about those topics because there’s so much there. You know, right off. I’m like, you know, we had elections in our country yesterday and I, I’m not sure many Americans are, are ready to commit to nine hours of standing in line for the privilege of voting.
But that’s pretty phenomenal when you think about it and you think about people’s passion for. Participation and for freedom and liberty and the opportunity to have a voice in how they’re governed, that is an amazing thing in and of itself. And and not to go too far down this road, but tell me if I’m, if I’m correct here.
A a lot of this distinction and separation within the different groups and, and race is, is, is driven. It’s driven both by race and by language. Because it’s. It’s at least two or three different languages between AFRI and Zulu. And what let me just ask you, what are the predominant language groups that you [00:13:00] experienced growing up?
Dr. Louis Blom: So the, the largest single language group in South Africa is the Zulus, and then, and, and then the Zas. Now Mandela was from the Za tribe. And then the the, there was some Swana as well. And so Afrikaans, my language is only spoken by the whites and only the Dutch descendants of the whites.
The, the, the British spoke English. And then there’s a whole bunch of people in Cape Town, million Plus that, that, that we call in South Africa. The colored people, they’re like a mixed race. They, they speak fris as well, but the divide and the tension was, was, as you say, driven by language and and and other things, but mostly by culture and, and also religion.
I, I, I think the cultural, religious mix. You know, stir the divide. But when we voted in 94, we all believed in the Mandela dream, the rainbow nation dream. We all bought into that. And in a sense, Judea is building that rainbow nation dream, doing [00:14:00] church building, planting, development work amongst kids and everything in the Judea, Samaria areas, the previously disadvantaged areas.
Okay? We are the bridge builders between white suburban South African churches. And, and that, that part of our world.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Yeah. And seeing the, just seeing the impact of the gospel come in and, and affect that kind of thinking and, and you know, my, my pastor taught me years ago that you can’t straighten teeth with a hammer.
That it takes, it can take, as you said, sometimes even multi-generations to change. Some of the ways that we see each other and some of the ways that we relate and even love each other and worship together and serve together inside and outside the church. It can, it can take, it can take a lot longer than we would want it to take in many cases.
I wanna Louis, I wanna kind of zoom out a little bit before we focus more on Africa. And just talk generally about what you understand. You have. Studied and you have served deeply in [00:15:00] focusing on the great commission of Christ that we read. Matthew 28, go into all the world, make disciples of all the nations, baptize them, and teach them to obey.
How would you see where we are right now? Not just limited to Africa, but even more broadly? You have a doctor’s degree in New Testament, missiology. Where do you think the, the general culture of the world is headed relative to the Great Commission? I come from a denomination that had the goal to share the gospel with every person on the planet by the year 2000 we were not successful in doing that, but that was a unifying mission for us and still very much a passion for us.
Where do you see evidences of revival in the church? Awakening among the loss. What does the, what does the broad picture look like to you?
Dr. Louis Blom: Thank you, mark. It’s a great question. And that’s the, I, I, that’s the, the, in South Africa we call gas, fuel or petrol. That’s the petrol in my tank. That’s what drives [00:16:00] me.
That’s what, what wakes me up in the morning and drives me. When we, when I left my church and we started Judea in 19 nine, I figured I have to go back to university and study again and make. The Great Commission and God’s work worldwide. My, my, my laser focus in studies, which I did, and I’m still a student today, so I wanna not fall into the trap to sit here for 20 minutes and quote statistics and numbers and percentages for you.
But I love to break your question down like this, and I did it the other day in, in the in the church that I preached at a mission conference in Houston. If you took and imagined that the world have 10 people today. Three of those would be Christians.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Louis Blom: But, but let me break down the three. One would be a Catholic.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Louis Blom: One would be a nominal Christian because his parents were Christian, born in a Christian home. He figures he’s a Christian. He writes. The tick box at the government statistics, when they come for census [00:17:00] Christian, only one of them are really properly serving and following and, and loving Jesus. So if the world have 10 people, three are Christians, if the world have 10 people, two of them are, are are Muslims.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay,
Dr. Louis Blom: two, two of them follow the religion of Allah and they live in, in the Muslim part of this world, the Middle East China. And you know, wherever you find Muslims, one of them would be a Hindu, and he lives in India.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Louis Blom: One of them would be a Buddhist and he lives in China. And then there’s a mixture of them that one person would Beano, he doesn’t believe in anything.
Half a billion people don’t believe in anything. They have no religion. They are, they’re post-Christian and they are agnostics and, and, and. And then another one would be mixed with the Buddhists and the agnostics. And there’s one left and he would probably be an alien.
So [00:18:00] he’s just a nobody. So thinking about this, after 2000 years. Jesus told us to go make disciples of all people. The, the strong word there is make disciples. If you turn Matthew 28, verse 19, one more page, you go to Mark, chapter one, you go to the first words. Jesus spoke to these disciples and he said to them, follow me and I will make you to become.
I will turn you into fishes of men. So it’s in the DNA of our calling as followers of Christ to make disciples, to become fishes of men, to reach other lost people for Christ. So how have we done? We, we got 30% of the job done in two after 2000 years.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow,
Dr. Louis Blom: that’s, that’s not so good. If you, if you wanna break that down into manpower, you know, the studies of how the church have deployed their people.
There, there are, there, there are or is. I’m not sure. My tensions are correct, but there’s only half a million. Christian [00:19:00] missionaries serving worldwide, and 95 plus percent of them are serving in nations and places where those three Christians live.
Dr. Mark Turman: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Louis Blom: So we have a massive deployment problem.
And now if you go and you look at some of the statistics of, of barn as frontier as well and even the Joshua Project and you look at money, we spending our money. Somebody wrote a statistic and said, the Lord has given the church a thousand times the money we need to do the Great Commission.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Louis Blom: But we only spend 5% of that money on missions.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm,
Dr. Louis Blom: and less than 1% of that goes to people that have never heard the gospel. So yes, the big driver I have, and it sits in my continent, it sits in Africa. It’s not the world issue. Africa still have 240 million people that have that live in Francophone, west and North [00:20:00] Africa.
In places I’ve been there multiple, multiple times. That’s where a lot of our hard workers is that live in places. The where they have never heard the gospel. Wow. You go to Egypt, you walk in the streets of Egypt, 16 million people, 21 million people in the daytime, 16 at night. You walk in those streets.
You ask most people then, have you ever, have you seen a Bible? Do you know about a Bible? Jesus? No. So we live in a world where close to half of this world, the Hindus, the Muslims, and the Buddhists have never heard the gospel.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Louis Blom: So in our world, they call it unreached people groups. They’ve redefined it.
They call it frontier people, groups, unengaged people groups. It, it, it doesn’t matter what we call them, they’re fact is Jesus sent us into this world and told us to make disciples of everybody. Matthew 24, and then he will come back if everybody’s heard. Sitting in a world where more than half of the people of this world have never heard the gospel, and I’m not saying everybody should be saved and born again.
That’s not that, [00:21:00] that’s not a, a reality and a real goal in the Bible and in meteorology, but everybody to hear and have a fair chance, we are failing miserably, mark. And that’s why I’ve left my pastoral job and spending my life at mobilizing the church into this great commission story.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Thank you for that.
That so helpful in helping us to get a perspective of how we need to really think more deeply and think about some of the decisions that we’re making and how we can, you know, better more effectively get involved in what God is wanting us to do, what God is calling us to do at the core of our mission, which is to share this incredible story in gospel.
This, you know, we call it good news. It’s the best news anybody could ever have. Yeah, so how can we be more effective? And we’re gonna focus a little bit more on what God is doing now, specifically across the continent of Africa. I went back and refreshed my geography from college. Africa is [00:22:00] the second largest continent in the world, made up of 54 Nations, a current population of about 1.5 billion people, which by comparison.
All of the Western Hemisphere from the top of Canada to the bottom of South America. Last I remember, that’s about 1 billion people all across the Western Hemisphere. This is 1.5 billion on the continent of Africa. Very rapid population growth. Expected possibly to reach 2.5 million by the year 2050. If that gives you some idea of what’s just going on with the population.
Louis, could you. We’ve already touched on a few things, but are, there’s some things generally about Africa that you would want people in our audience, particularly here in the United States, to understand what do you what would be three or four things that would be important for us to know generally, and then some things spiritually about the continent of Africa?
Dr. Louis Blom: Yeah, so thank [00:23:00] you for that lesson in geography and population in Africa. That’s very accurate as well. So Africa, my continent, I call Africa my continent. I love Africa. Absolutely nearly been living in the US three years, but I’m working in the US for Africa and for the 40 nations that our ministry work in.
Africa is a continent of people. Africa is the continent of people. There are so much people. There are, there are millions and millions of people. The, the, the, some countries have a small population because of the deserts and, and, and, but most countries are overpopulated, have a lot of people. The people of Africa are the most friendliest people in the world.
They are such loving, friendly, peace loving people and they just go about their business. Unfortunately, Africa have a a, it’s fair dose of evil people. Unfortunately in the in the deep ancestor worship, dark world of that, there’s a lot of evil people. And unfortunately, Islam have [00:24:00] always been present in Africa.
So Africa is this continent of, of two sides. You know, on the one hand you have these wonderful, beautiful people. And let me say, let me add this. If people find Christ and start serving and loving Jesus. I mean, their lives drastically transform and, and, and and they become radical followers of Christ.
Most of the people that I know in Africa leaders are, are, are some of the most incredible people on earth. One of the largest churches in the world right now is in Africa. It’s in Nigeria. And so the people of Africa are so fantastic and fabulous. However, this evil party’s always there. And lately in the news, Mozambique, Nigeria and, and obviously the north north and e and western countries of Africa have always had a its dose of persecution.
So unfortunately that’s a big reality in, in Africa as well. And, and it’s a fight for light and darkness. There’s no other way to, to explain that.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So tell us, you, you [00:25:00] mentioned Nigeria very much in the news right now here in the United States because of reports of, of widespread persecution. Our Friends at Culture Brief, which is the other Denison Forum podcast, they’re talking about that and giving us some understanding of that as well.
If you wanna tune into Culture Brief, we’d encourage you to do that. But tell us a little bit about what’s going on in Nigeria and why has why has the American government, our president stepped up and said, Hey, we’re going to possibly intervene here. Nigeria is. Both generally, would I, would I be correct in describing it as being in the northwest part of Africa?
Yes. And what is going on there today, particularly related to Christians and persecution and what some are calling genocide that we would, it would be helpful for us to know so we can pray about possibly become involved in.
Dr. Louis Blom: Yeah. So unfortunately what you see in the news is real and it’s happening in, in [00:26:00] Nigeria specifically, it’s in the northern part of the country.
It’s isolated to the northern belt of the country where the Boko Haram terrorists have infiltrated that part of the country, and they are waging a war against the locals, displacing people. In, in Mozambique, and I’m just talking both those countries because in Mozambique it’s also Boko and they’re also displacing recently hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people.
There’s an American missionary called Heidi Baker that works there. Very famous lady that does a great ministry there. And, and why I am saying these two things, it’s also related to oil and gas. Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay.
Dr. Louis Blom: These, these terrorists have a religious slant and a religious Muslim persecution drive where they wage war.
And they, and they do their, their Holy War and they have great names for it, and they strike fear into the hearts of these communities. But behind that, there’s also an economic. ’cause it’s when and when you look at these Muslim persecutions right throughout Africa, [00:27:00] sadly it’s always been there. It’s, it’s interesting for me that this one bounced into the news, but this is not new.
We’ve, we’ve been made aware and seen articles in Africa for the last 10 years of, of Muslim persecution in, in, in Nigeria. I dunno why it made the news right. Now, and I, and I donate if there’s a larger fight for oil and gas resources and oil and gas and even other minerals that, that Africa has that’s needed and that’s why, why it made the news.
Here’s, here’s my experience. These things have been Christian persecution, Muslim persecution, and a lot of other unrest. They have been in Africa. Since the day I was born, it just hasn’t made the news that much. And from time to time, in some spaces, for some reasons, it makes the news. However it does, it does create chaos in those Christian communities, in those villages, they, they are disrupted.
They are displaced. They have to start their lives all over again. Mostly they never get to go back and they never get to reclaim their land of their, of their [00:28:00] forefathers or their ancestors that left that land for them. There. And the land that, that these fights are taking place in are harsh territory.
It’s, it’s not the greatest land that you can grow veggies and carrots in it’s harsh territory, but it is oil and gas and mineral related.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and that’s another thing, you know, often we see these kinds of things and they’re as people like to say, ma multifactorial there’s spirituality and ideology that’s driving some of these conflicts, but there’s also economic factors.
Some people will know that Africa has some of the largest resource of gold of oil and gas of diamonds. Things like cobalt and diamonds. Probably the world’s largest repository of some of those things are found all over Africa, right? And obviously those, those become very sought after by different groups.
People are interested in controlling those assets. For their own purposes. And so those become purpose [00:29:00] purposes or reasons for conflict as well. Louisie and describe,
Dr. Louis Blom: I’m sorry to interrupt you, and the Chinese are playing a very big role in that. Okay. We, we call that a, a Chinese economic. There, there’s a new colonization going on in Africa.
It’s Oh, wow. A Chinese economic colonization.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Because of, of the pursuit of those minerals and other things. Yeah,
Dr. Louis Blom: exactly.
Dr. Mark Turman: Absolutely. Talk about it from a spiritual standpoint. How there’s at least several different things going on. There’s a, a significant Christian presence across Africa. We’ve learned, you know, that in many ways the African Christians are significantly conservative and.
Orthodox in their commitments even more so than some of the groups here in the United States. We know there’s a, a significant Muslim presence. There’s a lot of tribalism. Describe the spiritual kinda landscape of Africa as you work in these different countries.
Dr. Louis Blom: So let me start with South and Southern Africa.
We call it Sub-Saharan Africa. [00:30:00] That’s where I grew up. That’s where I lived and that’s where I spent a lot of my ministry time. We are seeing one of the greatest Christian gospel revivals the world have ever seen in the last hundred years. The rapid growth of Christianity and the strength of the church and the government statistics in Southern Africa says 87% people profess to be Christian.
Wow. So there’s a real great revival, Kenya, Uganda, and down, and we are so excited about that. That presents its own challenges because it comes that rapid growth comes with a price, and the price is quality discipleship and the price is a lack of leadership. Training. However, we have to deal with that.
And that’s one of the reasons Judea, as a pure soul winning organization, ventured into training because that, that’s the next challenge of this revival in South southern Africa is quality, discipleship and leadership. The, the eastern part of Africa and east to north into Egypt. We are not very much involved there.
It’s a [00:31:00] different region. It’s a different kind of people. It’s a lot of Muslims and Muslim influence from, from Egypt down into all those countries, and we don’t really work there hard and, and, and a lot. So the third part of Africa that has a distinct area is Francophone West Africa and then the northern parts on top of that, and starting with Nigeria, then going into Western North Africa.
And those areas are real tough areas to work for. Garden. And I don’t want to insult my French Christian brothers, but the French were horrible colonists. The other colonists, the Brits and the Dutch and the Portuguese that colonized Africa, they left good infrastructure and great systems when they left and turned over the country.
Democratic to the locals, but not the French francophone. West Africa is very poor, very underdeveloped, very, very, very under-resourced. And when those people became free and the colon and the French colonists left. [00:32:00] I mean those countries, if you go into any one of them and we work in all of them, it’s poor.
It’s full of ancestor worship and and voodoo. It’s a capital of voodoo. Voodoo was birthed in in Benin in Benin, the Voodoos statue, and then you have. Muslim persecution from the north. Okay, so you have poverty, you have misery, you have lostness, you have ancestor worship, you have, you have no infrastructure.
And those countries really find it hard to develop and go forward. And those Christians in those nations are in dire need of help. So Judea Harvest works really hard there, and that’s also where you find most of the 240 million plus people living in those nations that have never heard the gospel. So the unreached part of Africa really sits on the Northwestern part, and we really focus hard on that.
So the continent, there are three different areas in this distinct lifestyle, distinct people, language and culture.
Dr. Mark Turman: There’s, there’s a lot [00:33:00] to think about there, both spiritually and from a mission standpoint. Yeah. You, you would have to tailor strategies. Yes. In many ways. And that sounds like what Judea Harvest is doing.
So let’s talk about this. Your ministry that you launched is 25 years old this year. Tell us what it, what a typical church plant looks like. I know I’ve seen some of the ways that you measure impact relative to kind of community churches, even what you would call a tent church. If you were up in that area of northwest Africa and you were trying to reach an unreached group or an unreached community, what does that look like and how do you get started?
Does it start with just a small tent and a gathering? How do you, how do you engage ministry in some of these areas?
Dr. Louis Blom: Mark, you were so right when you were saying because of the distinct differences in some of the areas, you have to have distinct strategies. So Judea have two strategies that we, that we work and that we’ve developed over the 25 going on to 26 years.[00:34:00]
The first one is the South Southern African strategy, and that’s the one where you have friendly nations friendly people pitch. And that’s where we use our tents. We don’t use our tents in North and West Africa. These blue and white gospel marquee tens of hours. You can go to our website and have a look at them.
It’s judea harvest.org. You’ll see some photos of our tents. We are approaching tent number 5,000. We’ve deployed. Wow. 5,000 of those tents in the last 20 odd years, and we simply deploy 10 or 20 a month. That’s how you get to those numbers. You keep on doing the same thing over and over for 26 years.
You get to those kind of numbers. So what that looks like is very. Simple and easy and very effective. We find those leaders that live in these Judea areas, these previously disadvantaged areas, all over southern Africa. Outside of the town, in town, there’s a lot of churches. Mm-hmm. But outside of town, in the rural, in the villages.
There ain’t much. You [00:35:00] pitch a tent, you don’t need to own the land. You have to have a team of laborers, a pastor, a preacher, a singer, a organizer. You pitch a tent, you put some jazz in it, you start preaching and within a month or two you have a congregation. That’s how ripe the harvest fields are in South southern Africa, and that’s how easy.
Now nothing is easy, but let me just say that’s how easy it is to work for God to plant churches, right? So you’ll find our statistics, say we have close to 5,000 tents in the field. We’ll soon be celebrating tent number 5,000, and they have planted 12,000 new churches since we started in those rural areas.
And the. Plant as soon as it happens and that church becomes strong and sustainable. They buy the land, they build their own buildings, and we, and we help them with the training. And then the children’s programs and the feeding programs are added to that. So that whole church becomes a full fledged sustainable church that lasts forever.
And, and we, and we run that [00:36:00] work in all the nations of South Southern Africa with that. TT and then building church plant kind of strategy.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. And the other strategy looks like what?
Dr. Louis Blom: So our West Africa strategy looks like this. We don’t build buildings. We’ve built buildings for churches in towns where persecution is not that high, and then the building doubles up as a training center.
Okay. But in Francophone West Africa, we deploy these little players. Everybody that’s, that’s aware of the Christian mission world, knows about them. Mm-hmm. So it’s charged with the sun. It’s a, a solar charge. So solar
Dr. Mark Turman: powered. Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Louis Blom: Yeah. And then it’s just the audio player and we control the content on the, on the memory stick.
So that’s one of the reasons I live in America now, to to mix Judea Harvest into. This Wealth America and the church in America has this wealth of resources and training and materials and stuff. I went to New Mexico. Faith comes by hearing met Morgan, Jackson. They make it their business to [00:37:00] put the Bible in written format, onto audio format.
So we get Bibles in audio format from them at no cost. They bless us with it. And if we find languages and tribes that don’t have bibles, they translate it. And we have some partnerships going on that, and then we put the SD card in here. But we go one step further. We’ve developed our own training material and it’s the basics of, of what, what a local church planter pastor needs.
And we’ve taken that training material, put the audio so I’m just showing the audience a book. This is called Following Jesus, right? I wrote a whole bunch of books sharing Jesus, that’s soul winning 1 0 1. Following Jesus’ Discipleship and then house church planting and those and the audios of these books, the audio files are on this player,
Dr. Mark Turman: are all on that player and
Dr. Louis Blom: available.
So the player becomes a Bible and a Bible training tool. We deploy these in Francophone, Western North Africa amongst our church planters that we train and [00:38:00] we give a church planter 12 of these, and he goes back to his village and he starts. Listening groups that become discipleship groups that become house churches.
Dr. Mark Turman: Wow. Okay.
Dr. Louis Blom: So we’ve deployed 55,000 of these in Franco and West and North Africa.
Dr. Mark Turman: All because all in a digital, it really resonates a lot with what we do at Denison IES Denison Forum. Doing things in a digital format because I suspect based on what you said a moment ago, that the internet and cell phones are not readily available in this part of the world.
Yes, yes. We tend to think that, you know, we, we take it for granted. That things like electricity and the internet and cell phones are everywhere. They’re not in this part of the world. This is how, this is how poverty stricken this area is. They’re, they’re, this is where deep levels of poverty exist.
Correct. You’re, you’re using these devices, digital technology, driven by solar [00:39:00] power. And I, I would suspect some of the Bible translation and that type of thing is, is. Being driven by artificial intelligence or will be yes. Because one of the areas that AI is making a big difference is in the acceleration of Bible translation.
And being able to take those devices and yeah, put them into the hands of people. I I would imagine they’re transformative in every way.
Dr. Louis Blom: This is magic. Mark, you are so right. This is magic. I, I spoke last week at a conference and I said. Because of technology and the digital world we are entering into now.
And ai, the finish line just moved up 10 years.
Dr. Mark Turman: Oh wow. Wow. Yeah. And maybe more and maybe more.
Dr. Louis Blom: We can get this job done now. Technology’s just amazing and that’s one of the reasons I live in America. Judea was out, was out of the mix. And we never heard or, or was aware of all these resources and all these things that, I mean, when, when I came here, we had 10,000 of these in the field.
Now we have 55,000 of these in the [00:40:00] field. Wow. Wow. And we dream to have a million of them. And this thing has no limits.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr. Louis Blom: It absolutely has no limits. And therefore, even our children’s, we have a, we have a, and this ministry is in America as well. It’s, this ministry is in Louisiana. Praise works. And they help us make available children Jesus in me and the Jesus story.
So this is soul winning and disciple making. And this book’s available in all languages. All in every language. And it’s beautifully pictured and animated. Yeah. And we print hundreds and thousands of these in partnership with our friends here in Louisiana.
Dr. Mark Turman: And for, and what you’re telling me is, is that for many people.
In Africa, particularly Northwest Africa. This is the very first Bible that any of these children and their families have ever seen, very first time they’ve ever been exposed to the basic story of Jesus.
Dr. Louis Blom: This book goes into a hut, into a rural area, and it’s. The first only, and probably last Bible they’ll ever get.
And then obviously these are very powerful because this becomes a Bible [00:41:00] for a village. It becomes a Bible for, for 10, 12 people we hear and have the most amazing stories and testimonies in. Stuff happening because of these things. We probably need 365 days on a podcast just to tell all those stories.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr. Louis Blom: But so these are very powerful tools God have put in our hands to multiply the gospel. ’cause that was, that was what Jesus told us. It, it’s like the fish and the bread, they multiply.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. That is so great. Just love to see how God is using technology and people mm-hmm. To just make this kind of a difference.
Louis, as we get ready to wrap up this morning in our conversation what’s coming next for Judea Harvest? How would you want believers to be praying for you and for the ministry? What, what final word would you wanna leave with us today?
Dr. Louis Blom: Yeah, so we’ve done a lot of work on our website, judea harvest.org, and it’s our American website that explains all these projects that we talked about in detail, gives listeners an opportunity to press a button and to donate [00:42:00] $10 or whatever amounts on their heart towards buying these things and getting that rolled out.
And so what’s next for me is I’ve been here three years and some of our friends that introduced us to to, to Dr. Jim Dennison and to you. In Dallas or helping us. And we are just building our fundraising base in America to so if I say we have 55,000 of these out in the field, it sounds incredible, but we have a hundred thousand applications for them.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay.
Dr. Louis Blom: People that are saying, train me, gimme 12, I’m ready to go. So what’s next for Judea is when we were living in Africa and working in Africa. We were thinking that Africa would fund everything we do, and it did. South Africa funded for many, many, many years. Everything we did, but as we talked about South African, the challenges and the, we call it a brain drain.
The white South African businesses, because of the BE laws, have simply just. Packed up and left said, we don’t do business under these legal circumstances, [00:43:00] and we just left. So we lost a lot of our donors and partners. What’s next for me in America is to find masses of people that would help us, support us.
Keep $10 here at $50 there and help us buy and develop these tools and stuff. Then the big next thing that we are busy with that I want to just quickly mention is in Houston with the First Baptist Church, west University, first Baptist Church, Dr. Roger Patterson. He’s, he knows Jim as well and he and Mark Edward, he is involved in that as well.
I think you know them as well. Mm-hmm. You know, mark as well, we are putting together a more comprehensive curriculum.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm.
Dr. Louis Blom: That, that will not just touch on the basics that I showed,
But that’ll go deeper and give bare minimum necessity theological training to these pastors on this thing, right? And on text and on video delivery resources that we are working on.
So what’s next for us is we are completing our curriculum with a bunch [00:44:00] of friends and partners in Houston. Okay. That’s really exciting. As I mentioned, the laborers, the component of the god’s raised them up. They’re there, they wanna work for God. There is this revival, but you need to train them up,
Dr. Mark Turman: To not only help them know and believe the gospel initially, but that that second part of the Great Commission, which is to follow Christ in everything and in every area of life.
And that takes. A lot of infrastructure takes a lot of leaders. Yeah. And that’s just great work
Dr. Louis Blom: and, and great. That’s giving them the tools to get the grade commission completed. This is the final push to get the local African church and their leaders to get the great commission completed,
Dr. Mark Turman: right?
Yeah. To make the. Make the church indigenous as it always Yes. Should be in every culture and in every part of the world. Dr. Blom. Thank you, Louis. It’s just been a great, great opportunity to get to know you and to get to know about this work and get to know a lot about Africa where so much of the world’s attention is turning these days.
For a lot of reasons and just want to encourage our audience to learn more, [00:45:00] they can go to judea harvest.org as we’ve mentioned and follow along, join in the ministry, pray about becoming a supporter both peripherally and financially as God would lead you. And they can find out more by going to that website.
And we look forward to tracking with your ministry in the future. I just wanna take a moment to thank our audience for tuning in, and if this has been helpful to you, please rate review us as we always ask you to do. Share it with others, share it with your pastor, with your church leaders. They may want to become involved as a congregation, and that would be a great thing as well.
Wanna thank you for following Faith and Clarity and we’ll see you next time on our podcast. God bless you.
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