Joseph Mends woke to the sound of his mother's transistor radio. When the 21-year-old native of Ghana brushed the sleep from his eyes, he became engrossed in an interview on the air. As his feet hit the cool, terrazzo floor, he memorized the number given to call, then raced to a friend's house to use a phone.

"I heard your program," Joseph said, gasping for breath. "Can you help me?" Joseph explained his desire to see the mechanics in his neighborhood come to know Christ and how he had been reading the Bible to them. When he heard on the radio that the Great Commission Movement (Campus Crusade for Christ in Ghana) offered evangelism training, he knew this would help him be more effective.

Joseph is one of 14,500 people who received training in 1998 as a part of "Pass It On," a yearlong evangelistic campaign to reach 35 percent of Ghana with the gospel. The man who kindled this thrust, Valentine Kwame Hayibor, leads the Great Commission Movement in Ghana, a West African nation nearly the size of Oregon.

Valentine had been growing concerned about the influx of the occult and the growth of Islam in his plantain-studded country. At the same time, he watched the divorce rate rise among the Christians (an estimated 65 percent of Ghana) and observed an apathy for missions in the churches dotting the landscape.

He knew something drastic had to happen. Little did he know that God would use him as the spark to get a fire going.

As Valentine prayed, God showed him that when He had given Gideon the daunting task of delivering Israel from the Midianites, He had purposely cut Gideon's army from 22,000 men to 300. Like Gideon, Valentine had a small team. Yet he felt the Lord directing him to mobilize God's people to action.

Valentine pulled his band of 24 staff members together and shared his idea for Pass It On. "God wants everyone in Ghana to hear," says the 41-year-old father of three. "Without the local church, I don't see how we could fulfill the Great Commission."

	The Spark | 14,500 were trained to use a picture version of the Four Spiritual Laws. By involving 650 churches, they brought the gospel to 652,273 Ghanaians and planted 51 churches.

His team fasted, prayed and strategized how to involve churches. Valentine asked each person what role they wanted to play. Samuel Stanley Yamoah chose to temporarily move from Kumasi, Ghana's second-largest city, to the capital city of Accra, on the Atlantic Ocean, to serve as coordinator of the strategy. He went to work rewriting evangelism materials into picture form so the estimated 35 percent of Ghanaians who don't read could participate.

The team selected John 9:4 as its theme verse: "We must work the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work." And they began offering evangelism training on both national and local levels.

To create momentum, they set aside Saturday, October 3, as the Day of Proclamation, when people across Ghana would go witnessing. They arranged JESUS film showings in 15 languages.

Although some people, like Joseph Mends, jumped at the opportunity to join the campaign, others were leery. When Great Commission Movement staff member Henry Omane-Donkor visited pastors in Sunyani—the former market center for cola nuts and ivory—many feared that Pass It On would steal people from their congregations.

So Henry rallied his volunteers. "Let's pray and ask God for one pastor," he said, wiping sweat from his brow with a crisply ironed handkerchief. "If we get one, we'll trust God to use him to influence the others."

Shortly after that they met the Reverend Osei Owosu Cobbina, of Temple of Priest Church. When Rev. Cobbina heard about Pass It On, he was so excited he drove team members around to meet the osofos (a Ghanaian term of respect for pastors) one by one. Soon all the major churches in Sunyani met together to pray.

The pastors divided their city into areas within walking distance of their churches, so everyone would have an opportunity to hear the gospel and every believer could be established in their faith.

"Evangelism is one of the commands that people disobey," says Rev. Cobbina. "With a specific time set aside and training, it got people's minds set on the goal.

"The Day of Proclamation gave us an opportunity to discover what the ordinary Christian can do. A woman in my church, whom I never would have thought would want to do evangelism, had seven converts and brought three of them to church. If she can do it, anyone can."

Less than a mile away as the raven flies, Pass It On sparked Deeper Christian Life Ministry to train its branch churches. "Pass It On really helped us," says Brother Patrick Amankona, regional youth pastor and member of one of the major tribes in Ghana—the Ashantis. "We have a word called nnoboa (pronounced NOB-wa). It means: I can do it myself, but if he comes I can do it better."

Although the term is used in the context of farming, the spiritual application was clear as Patrick's church bought a copy of the JESUS film and sent evangelism teams from church to church.

Another Sunyani church saw members' zeal for evangelism rekindled. "As a pastor, I spend most of my time motivating people to go out," says the Rev. Acheampong Yiadom-Boakye of International Central Gospel Church. "But I didn't tell them how to go about it. Pass It On training told them what to say."

By the end of the year, 650 churches from 20 denominations had participated in Pass It On. Scripture Union, World Vision International and other parachurch organizations joined in. College students involved in Campus Crusade from Nigeria and the United States came to help. They passed the gospel on to 652,273 Ghanaians and planted 51 new churches.

A Gideon's Army | Valentine (above) asked each member of his team to carve out a role in Pass It On. Samuel Stanley Yamoah, campaign coordinator, spread the news by distributing more than 20,000 pieces of information.

Throughout the campaign, Valentine visited all sites at least twice. "I knew that in the midst of the challenge of Pass It On," he says, "my team could [easily] neglect their [financial] support and marriages. We looked at any personal needs or challenges they faced." He shared some of his own struggles, helped them where he could and focused on the Word of God.

"I want to see people who [pass on the gospel] better than I do," says Valentine. "I want to be involved in helping develop leaders who are actively involved in fulfilling the Great Commission."

Valentine got his first inkling of the need to influence others while still a youth. After high school, he read a book that convinced him that the key to changing society was to change the individual. He became a Marxist and decided to change people through writing or starting a military revolution.

Then a friend convinced him that without Christ, his influence would have no lasting value. He prayed and received Christ, then went off to the University of Cape Coast, located in the former center of the slave trade.

While in school, he met Dela Adadevoh, then a Great Commission Movement staff member himself and now Campus Crusade's vice president of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. "Why don't you have a ministry on my campus?" Valentine asked.

"We need young men like you," Dela said.

Dela challenged Valentine to think about building a movement of evangelism and discipleship. By the end of that year, 22 students were witnessing on campus. "You can't change a nation through guns or decrees," says Valentine. "It would take the Lord Himself to change people from within."

By the end of two years, 72 students had joined Valentine's movement.

After graduation, Valentine decided he wanted to join God's army—discipling men and passing on the gospel. So he joined the Great Commission Movement. Three years later, he got together a dowry—including clothing, money and jewelry—to give to his bride, Hillaria, and her family. Six years later, Valentine was asked to lead the team in Ghana.

"Valentine is a leader who develops other leaders," says Samuel Stanley Yamoah, Pass it On coordinator. "He has no fear to delegate to people who have potential. He gave me wide exposure to ministry, took me on trips with him and personally supported me [financially] when I had low support."

Valentine even taught the lanky 37-year-old how to drive, since most Ghanaians don't own cars. "He asked me to help him wash the vehicle," says Stanley. "If I didn't do it well, he'd show me how to do it better."

"If we don't focus on indigenous leadership, one day we'll wake up and find that in all our activity we don't have leaders," says Valentine, eyes intense behind gold, wire-rimmed glasses. "Campus Crusade doesn't operate this way."

Like any good leader, Valentine called his team together after Pass It On to celebrate the results. They shared stories, praised God and formulated ideas on how to consolidate the fruit. Since then, Valentine and his Gideon's army have provided advanced training for those who want to train others. Many of the churches hold an annual Day of Proclamation or send out witnessing teams on a regular basis.

"My church is primarily carpenters," says the Rev. J. Nelson Osei, of Mercy Baptist Church in Kumasi, as the ever-present smell of burning wood from the nearby timber market wafts by. "Great Commission Movement showed us how to use the ‘wordless' book and did follow-up training. Every Sunday after church, we send people out into this community."

Many people in his Kumasi suburb, known for fetish worship, pray to idols and sacrifice animals at shrines in their homes.

"Pass It On brought a new dimension to our ministry and helped us expand to the entire country," says Great Commission Movement staff member Henry Omane-Donkor. "Valentine knows where he's going and is able to mobilize people to go along with him. Once he has set himself on something, Valentine doesn't get swayed by other things, no matter how juicy."

	Passing It On | Joseph Mends passes on what he learned to auto mechanics in Accra, Ghana's capital city.

As Valentine set himself on the task God gave him, he sparked a fire that spread from church to church and individual to individual. A few days after Joseph Mends first heard about Pass It On over the radio, he pulled 40 mechanic's apprentices together before work.

As the young men emerged from their cars, where they sleep, and began chewing Nim tree bark to freshen their breath, a Great Commission Movement staff member presented the gospel. All of the mechanics indicated decisions to receive Christ.

Since then, Joseph has passed on the gospel to seamstresses and hairdressers. He's started nine Bible studies with 285 people and has trained leaders in each one. As they go on to train still others, the fire ignited by Valentine will continue.

It only took a spark.

For training to pass on the gospel in your own community, contact Church Life, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, at 1-800-873-5222, or e-mail churchlife@ccci.org.