Beyond Evangelism: Establishing a lifelong faith in Jesus
Beyond Evangelism: Establishing a lifelong faith in Jesus

MISSION STATEMENT

"Training the Church how to follow-up new believers."

Our purpose

  • The purpose of FFICM is to help new believers build a foundation for their faith–a foundation that is firm because it is based on a strong relationship with Christ. After conversion, most people are inadequately followed up and are not taught how to have a strong relationship with Christ, with the result that most people who become Christians do not continue in the faith. In other cases, believers may continue to identify themselves as Christians, but do not follow Christ with the commitment or passion that He desires.

Our Vision

  • Our vision is to ground believers in their faith so that they will have a lifelong, active faith in Jesus Christ.

Activities

  • TRAIN
    • FFICM trains national pastors, church leaders, and church members in evangelism and follow-up so that the people who come to Christ through their ministry will be established in lifelong discipleship.
    • We train until not only the information is understood, but trainees can confidently lead a group of new believers towards the development of their faith in Christ. Most of the training work of FFICM is to church leaders and lay leaders; however, there are times that teaching directly new believers is necessary.
    • The training materials used by FFICM have been written by Dr. Richard Gardner based on his doctoral work, with assistance from the Community & Rural Life Enhancement Initiative and input from the team of FFICM trainers around the world.
  • ORGANIZE CONFERENCES
    • FFICM organizes conferences around the world to teach biblical methods of evangelism and new believer follow-up. We invite international evangelists and trainers to speak at the conferences.
  • DEVELOP MATERIALS
    • FFICM develops culturally contextualized materials for evangelism and new believer follow-up and discipleship. They are written so that the basics of who God is and how to live life with Jesus can be accurately communicated and understood by members of any specific culture or subculture. We translate our materials into local languages on an ongoing basis.

Rationale for ministry

  • New believers are often combined in groups with mature believers and do not understand the content of what is being taught.
  • Most Church or para-church programs either concentrate on helping people making a decision for Christ or discipleship programs that are often too complex or confusing for a new believer to understand. There is a pressing need for ministry geared towards the unique needs of the early stage of discipleship, to ensure that the follower of Christ fully understands and masters the basics of the faith. We call that initial discipleship with new believers “follow-up.”
  • Certain foundational knowledge, attitudes, and practices were unintentionally omitted in the early stages of most believers’ lives and cause fundamental problems that need to be corrected.

Statement of faith

We believe…
 
  • The Bible, consisting of the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments and given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is the only inerrant, infallible, and authoritative Word of God. The Bible is the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, our salvation, faith, and life.
  • There is one God, the Creator, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
  • God created Adam and Eve in the divine image. They sinned and thereby incurred both physical and spiritual death. As a result of Adam’s sin, all human beings are now born with a sinful nature and are guilty before God.
  • Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary; thus, He was and remains fully God and fully man. He lived a perfect life and died for sins as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice, according to the Scriptures. Then His crucified body was resurrected, and He ascended into heaven.
  • All who repent of their sins and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone are saved by God’s grace alone. Believers are justified before God, born again of the Holy Spirit, adopted as children of God, and surely have eternal life. To God alone be the glory.
  • All believers are sealed with The Holy Spirit, who indwells and gives spiritual life to believers, enables them to understand biblical truth, empowers them for godly living, and equips and assists them for growth and ministry.
  • There is one global Church made up of believers who represent Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the head of the Church. God calls each believer to serve in a local church community that teaches Scripture, tells people everywhere the good news about salvation through Jesus Christ, helps them become more like Jesus Christ, and observes baptism and communion.
  • Believers have a blessed hope in the personal and imminent return of Jesus Christ to the Earth. All persons will stand and give an account of everything they have done. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved, and the everlasting punishment of the lost.

We further clarify that we believe the Bible teaches:

  • God endows all human life with inherent dignity, and it must be respected and protected from conception to natural death.
  • Any “gospel” that draws people away from devotion to Jesus Christ is false. This includes a promise for health and prosperity, undue attention to miracles, focus on signs and wonders, combining with other religions, or teaching that good works pay for any sin.
  • God immutably creates each person as male or female. These two distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God.
  • Marriage means the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, life-long union.  We believe that God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other.
  • There is a single human race, descended from Adam and Eve, all equal before God and individually responsible to Him.