Reports

Many of the people using Zúme may live in areas of the world where their access to the internet is monitored. They have to be careful what they access and how, because their government is paying attention and may be hostile to certain types of online content. 

Renew World Outreach has a tool that may help. Their LightStream technology can distribute Scripture and Gospel content in places where the internet is monitored, spotty, or nonexistent. You can download a whole library of media onto the device—Bibles and audio Bibles in various languages, films, songs, and training material like Zúme—so that it can be downloaded offline in two different ways. 

The LightStream device can be used to download material onto micro-SD cards and lock them so that the material cannot be deleted off the card. From there, the cards can be distributed and installed in phones, where they can be further shared to other phones and devices. 

More uniquely, the LightStream can create a Wi-Fi hotspot through which phones can access its entire media library. This hotspot doesn’t grant access to the internet, but only to the media library, so it can’t be monitored like internet activity can. When users are near the device, they can stream the material without needing to free up storage on their phones. 

The hotspot feature has been used in creative ways around the world. 

1. Some people have left LightStreams in coffee shops, airports, or other public-access locations so that anyone passing through can access the material. 
2. Others have used them as a specific strategy to train pastors from remote areas—the pastors can travel to the area with the device, download the material they need in their language, and return to their villages to teach people there. 
3. Another method was inspired by the Methodist circuit riders before the Second Great Awakening in America. Like the old traveling preachers, users can travel to small churches, villages, and communities to offer free downloads in group gatherings. Then, communities in remote locations that wouldn’t otherwise have a good way to connect can have access to some of the same resources in their own languages. 
4. One user approaches groups of strangers with the device to offer free downloads in remote villages. Even people who aren’t connected to the church have downloaded the materials just because they are bored, and they are interested in some videos to share. 

Do you know someone who could use a device like the LightStream? Whether you are struggling with low internet access or high security risks, this could be an answer. With its security features, believers can even use it to safely share Gospel information without physically interacting—just passing by a place where the device is set up and connecting with a password. 

To learn about more ways Zúme has been used and distributed around the world, and to get inspiration for how you can share these resources, check out our podcast. 

If you’re anything like me, you spend your whole day—from waking to sleeping—with your cell phone by your side. (Perhaps you’re healthier than me in this way, in which case, well done!) It can be difficult to remember that there are parts of the world where many people don’t have cell phones, or the phones that they have are difficult to power since they don’t have electricity. Could even these people, people without electricity, without cell phones, without even literacy, access digital Gospel material? 

The answer is: of course! One tool that can help them do so is the Torch Audio Bible, produced by Renew World Outreach. The nifty device is solar powered to work in the most remote locations, and it can also function as a flashlight, lantern, and a charger for cell phones. Users can listen to the Bible individually or in a group, since the speaker is designed for groups of up to 50 listeners. 

The Torch was first developed for use crisis zones after natural disasters or wars, but it has also been used in a variety of different contexts. In one situation, software developer Josiah told us on our podcast, the device became a bridge to open people’s hearts to the Gospel in a very closed, dangerous context where it was “taboo” to speak about Jesus. Neighbors of believers in this remote community accepted the Torch because of its cool features—the flashlight, the ability to charge phones—and they listened to Scripture in their language just out of curiosity. After doing so, though, their hearts were softened. Because their believing neighbors had given them the devices, they were more open to hearing about the Gospel. 

In order to multiply disciples in our generation, those disciples must have access to Scripture in their languages. Tools like these audio Bibles are game changers for reaching remote communities with the Gospel so that they can learn, grow, and become disciples who make disciples. 

Go to our podcast for more stories like this from a worldwide community about how you can make a difference from your living room and around the world. 

It is no surprise to many that missions work is associated with colonialism, imperialism, and a paternalistic view of the “heathen.” Christianity provided a convenient excuse for especially European colonialization, from Britain, France, Spain, and other countries. Christianity and “civilization” have gone hand in hand for a long time. College students at many secular universities may take it as a given that the two are always intertwined, and that missionaries always look down on the local indigenous culture and try to replace it with their own. 

But people have pushed against that mindset for a long time, too. In the 50’s, workers were criticizing and working against the imperialistic attitudes and approaches of their colleagues. One wrote, “We should learn to live Christianity before we shove it down someone’s throat.” This perspective has grown and spread so that the imperialistic approach of the past is clearly and widely seen as damaging. 

On our podcast here at Zúme, Josiah, a software engineer at Renew World Outreach, spoke passionately about this topic. “I think that God is changing the hearts of missionaries and mission organizations all over the world to come in as servants, not as people trying to mandate what it has to look like and mandate their own programs and processes, but actually step beneath the people who are the Apostle Pauls of the modern missions movement, who are really planting the church.” 

We strive at Zúme to empower each simple church to become self-sufficient and self-multiplying, not constantly relying on the intervention of outsiders to spread God’s Word. “We’re willing to come in low and serve and we want to see movement leaders be more productive in the ministry that they’re doing,” says Josiah. When we provide resources like Zúme and tools like those produced by Renew, that can be a way to come alongside leaders in their own cultures and support them to do well in the work that God has set before them. 

Find more stories of how Zúme is used around the world on our podcast, and start our training yourself for free online. You don’t need any experience or training to lead a group—just load up the slides and click next!

When R first signed up for a Zúme on Zoom online course, I asked him what he hoped to gain from the course. He said he heard it was a powerful disciple-making tool and after he took it, he wanted to teach it to his whole nation (in East Africa). Since taking it, he has led at least 2 dozen people to the Lord, trained 30 people in Zume and started 2 Simple Churches. Then he gathered 50 other pastors in his county and encouraged each of them to go through discipleship training, take the Zume course and teach it to everyone in their churches. Most recently he has gotten approval from 20 local secondary schools to have pastors come in and share the gospel to the entire school weekly. He has gathered 4 other pastors who work together to cover teaching all these students. They hope to make many teenage disciples.

T is one of the most humble, gentle people I know but he has a passionate burning in his heart for spreading the gospel. He has gathered a group of leaders who have been doing street preaching and training in Zúme and other disciple making training. He recently started a WhatsApp group of 25 leaders who receive daily encouragement in disciple-making. One of the other leaders in this group gives a content-rich Bible lesson and customized prayer for each day and challenges everyone in the group to lead someone to the Lord EVERY DAY! Three of these leaders are taking my current Zúme on Zoom training course and thriving.

One of our Zúme coaches just shared an exciting update from his recent trip to South Sudan. Over 900 people have given their lives to Jesus in the last six months. There are now 72 simple churches and 60 more leaders ready to be trained. Praise God, may He continue to receive all of the glory as the Good News goes forth in the midst of very hard circumstances.

While the Salvation Poem Project continues to distribute their gospel poem, the ministry has expanded to include new resources. The president of the Salvation Poem Project calls the group, “a team of filmmakers, game developers, and multimedia storytellers whose goal is to share Jesus with the world through song and story.” Two of those stories are the Light of the World animated film and the Clayfire interactive video game. 

The Light of the World film is based on the story of the disciple John. The story begins when John is a young teenager who meets Jesus and embarks on a journey that looks nothing like what he’d expect. Trent Redmann, head of ministry partnerships at the Salvation Poem Project, compares the film to a well-known show: “Instead of quoting verse by verse from Scripture, we’re creating a story that’s biblical, probably even more connected to the story of the Bible than The Chosen.” The film releases in the summer of 2025. 

Trent describes the Clayfire video game as playing off “some of the light and darkness themes that are found in the Gospel of John.” The all-ages fantasy parable will bring players into a whimsical world in which they will bring light back to the darkness. “Our team tells me it’s a game in the spirit of Narnia,” Trent shares. “That kind of a heartfelt story.” The team is working hard to bring Clayfire to gaming platforms in 2026. 

Part of being in the community of God is supporting each other in our work for the Kingdom, so Zúme loves to feature groups like the Salvation Poem Project on our podcast. If you want to learn more about resources and organizations like Zúme, subscribe to our Multiplying Disciples podcast and hear more stories like this one. 

Zúme loves to feature creative resources from likeminded organizations! Look for two of those resources soon to come from the Salvation Poem Project: an animation of the Gospel of John and a biblical parable in the form of an interactive video game. 

When Richard Ford was 78 years old, he found Zúme’s discipleship training. The course provided a helpful guide on making disciples who make disciples, but what would he do with it? Richard had been wheelchair-bound for more than 40 years, and he couldn’t move across the world to spread the gospel. 

So, Richard did what we recommend in the second session of our course—he looked to his personal network. Tim Ahlen, Richard’s Zúme coach, shares that, “In 2021, Richard was really beginning to feel some health issues coming on, but he [invited] all of the neighbors in his neighborhood association . . . to a meeting out at a local country club.” He paid for the lunch and shared with them about “this amazing disciple-making process called Zúme.” When he was done, he offered his guests a few options: they could be part of a community prayer network, they could join a Zúme training, or they could decline to be involved at all. Most of them chose to sign up. 

You may feel like there’s not much you can do to spread the gospel in your life. You may be hesitant or dubious that you can make much of a difference. Many of us feel that fear, but examples like Richard’s show us that we can always make an impact. God puts people in our orbit whom we can influence for His plan, and we only have to say, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isa. 6:8). 

Try inviting your friends or neighbors for our free online training. You can get together in a 10-day intensive or once a week for 10 weeks—either way, you’ll have taken the first step to join the community. 

This is not a picture of believers in Ghana.

In 1727, a Moravian community in Saxony began 24-hour prayers. 48 men and women enlisted to each pray for an hour of the day—within months, the small, fractured community began to grow. The community continued the prayer watch for over a hundred years, in which they spread the Gospel around the world. 

Today, Christian communities in Ghana are implementing a similar method for powerful prayer. “Right now,” Ghanaian leader Isaac shares, “prayer is going on 24 hours a day—women praying, men praying, children praying—and it all started with this prayer wheel.” 

It may seem intimidating to spend an hour in prayer—Where do you start? How do you stay focused? Zúme’s Prayer Cycle offers a helpful framework based on 12 ways the Bible teaches us to pray. Each part becomes a 5-minute segment: praise, waiting, confession, reading, petition, intercession, praying the Word, thanksgiving, singing, meditating, and listening. By the end of the process, you have avoided the common trap of staying stuck in petitionary prayer. One of Isaac’s ministry partners, Terry, says, “If people learn to listen in prayer instead of always making requests, then God will speak to us.” We need to learn to listen and pray like the Bible teaches, like the church in Ghana. 

The community there took the prayer wheel and multiplied it, having a member commit to praying for an hour of the day and find others to join them. Sometimes, they even use the prayer cycle for overnight prayer meetings, praying each segment of the wheel for each hour of the night. “One of the common denominators in all disciple making movements around the world is prayer,” says Terry. Why? Prayer fills believers with the breath of God and keeps us rooted in the True Vine (John 15:1–10, Heb. 4:16, 1 Thess. 5:17). 

To learn more tools like the Prayer Cycle, sign up for our free course. “These tools in Zúme are very simple,” Isaac says, and “simple things multiply. And the simple things grow.” 

Photo by Luis Quintero on Pexels

You may be familiar with Zúme as an online resource, offering YouVersion Bible plans, a Live Chat feature, and online training. You might even know about our downloadable guidebook and other offline resources. But did you know that Christians in Ghana are bringing Zúme to illiterate rural communities? 

Americans Terry and Amy and Ghanaian Isaac recently joined us to share how they have brought Zúme’s discipleship tools to the rural Ghanaian countryside. After Terry, Amy, and Isaac got the vision to pray for Gonja land, in the north of Ghana, they went through a weeks-long training with Curtis Sergeant in Burkina Faso in 2015. “Those ideas of disciple making movements really took hold,” says Amy, “and the guys really captured a vision for reaching all of Gonja land, and then beyond.” They divided Gonja land into 12 segments, visiting “almost all the villages” in an area the size of a U.S. county in a year and a half. They each took an apprentice that first year—in the second year, each apprentice took their own apprentice. In the same way, “they have branched out into eight or nine other West African countries.” 

In poor communities without internet, smartphones, computers, or literacy, the teams share the Gospel orally as the story of God’s deliverance, and they share Zúme’s tools the same way. “We take the tools, we learn them together with the people, they practice several times, and they get it. . . . they want to share them with others,” Isaac says. They rely on the MAWL method—model, assist, watch, and leave—to equip and enable more Ghanaian believers to spread the Word. 

Learn more about the many ways Zúme tools are used around the world on our podcast, and learn those tools for yourself with our free training. 

Photo by Seyiram Kweku on Pexels

Ezekiel had brought about 7 young men into our Zume class. They did a variation of the “list of 100” by creating a list among the 7 of them totaling 100 and went out and talked to all 100 people. This got conversations going in the area and Ezekiel decided to hold an evangelism meeting. He preached (3 hours per night) for 11 out of 14 nights and 100 people decided to give their lives to Jesus and are registered for baptism. Since then, the number has grown to 150 people. Baptisms, especially in large numbers, are difficult in this area.

Because of recent wars and famine, there is no water being pumped into the city. Furthermore, standing water for baptisms can’t be done because of highly contagious diseases such as hepatitis and infectious skin diseases. There needs to be flowing water, not standing water. The nearest river is 18 miles away and no one has a car. Vans are extremely expensive to rent. We are working on possible solutions.

— Zúme trainer in North America shares about a trainee he is coaching in Africa

Photo by Philipp Schwarz on Pexels