Terry and Amy's Story
Terry and Amy Ruff were missions pastors in Louisville Kentucky. One of the tools they chose to motivate and mobilise people for world missions was the Perspectives course. They expected it to rock everybody’s world in the church, but it rocked their world. They caught a vision for church planting movements.
The next missionaries their church sent out were Terry and Amy. They joined Team Expansion and in 2014 headed to northern Ghana on the edge of the 10-40 Window to train nations to plant churches.
They were in Accra, the capital of Ghana preparing to move twelve hours north when a friend introduced them to Isaac, one of the national leaders they would work with for the next ten years. They began working with Isaac taking the gospel to the villages using Bible storying. In the villages 80% of people are illiterate. They planted over thirty churches, but few were reproducing.
They kept learning about best practice in multiplying movements. They read T4T: Discipleship ReRevolution by Steve Smith and Ying Kai and its application in Training Rural Trainers (TRT). They applied what they learned and introduced 3-Thirds discipleship groups. Soon the number of baptisms and new groups forming increased.
Then in 2015 they travelled to Burkina Faso with Isaac and Moses for training with Curtis Sergeant. That was the turning point.
Isaac and Moses applied what they learned immediately. During that week of training Isaac planted two churches in the local community and handed them over to local workers.
Curtis helped them simplify everything — we love God, we love others, we make disciples. They realised they were providing too much content for oral learners to pick up and pass on. The streamlined the 3-Thirds discipleship process. Everything needed to be less complex and easier to pass on.
Curtis taught them to load up their “tool pouch” and trust the Holy Spirit to show them which tools to use. Into the tool pouch went the 3-Circles for sharing the gospel and Mike Shipman’s Any-3 for sharing with Muslims.
Their workers go into an unreached village and say, “We’re in the village praying, and could we pray for you?” The offer of prayer helps identify receptive people.
Isaac and Moses, really captured the vision during the week in Burkina Faso.
They set a goal of one church for every ten households in the Gonga region of northern Ghana.
They came back, they implemented immediately, They trained others in the same process.
Curtis taught Isaac and Moses to focus on the few who are multiplying in order to reach the many. In 2017 there were 1,650 baptisms and 380 new groups. In 2018 there were 797 new groups and 3,511 baptisms. They baptised people from 46 different tribes. Now there were multiple generations of disciples and churches.
By 2019, there were over 3,000 people in discipleship groups and churches meeting weekly.
Technology has contributed to the movement. Most people are illiterate and poor, but every family has access to a mobile phone. So the team loads up Micro SD cards with audio Bibles in tribal languages and gives them away. Now whole families can listen and learn.
Money is invested in multiplication. A motorcycle is on loan when new regions are opened up. When a regional leader is raised up, he receives a bicycle and the motorcycle goes to the next unreached region. Churches are learning to give to the spread of the movement. Each church may only give two or three dollars weekly, but now there are thousands of churches, those funds can be used to buy motorcycles and to support the spread of the work to other African nations.
All this progress has cost more than just money.
Eight months after they arrived in Ghana to begin the work, Amy discovered a lump in her breast. For the next year Amy was in the US for treatment for cancer. Terry flew back from Ghana each time she faced surgery.
At the end of that year, Isaac had a moral failure. He claimed God had spoken to him in a dream. He announced he would return to Islam and take his disciples with him. Terry told him, “Your dream doesn’t trump the Word of God.”
Finally Isaac came and said, “I feel like a ram caught in the thicket deep in the bush and I want to come back.” He was repentant. With a local pastor from the same tribe, Terry began working with Isaac for the next eighteen months through lengthy restoration process.
Then Satan struck again. Another key national leader fell morally and resisted correction. Isaac, now restored, worked with Terry to confront him. When he finally broke he wept for hours before God. Then the restoration process began.
The Ruff’s have been robbed five times. On one occasion Amy was held a knifepoint. They have faced family crises back home, and the death of a teammate on the field.
Over ten years of battles Terry keeps reminding himself, “There’s so much at stake! We have to push through this, there’s so much at stake!”
Amy says they’ve learned three things. “First, we promised to always walk through the doors that he opens. Second, He wants this more than we do. Third, this is not our home this is not where we rest, this is not where everything is good. Heaven is where we will receive reward, we will receive rest and enjoy his glory around the throne.”
The movement continues to advance throughout northern Ghana. Through Isaac and Moses’ training and mentoring it has spread to other African nations — Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.
Interview: 194-Multiplying Movements in West Africa
