Madison, Wisconsin, is home to one of the three international offices of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). (The others are in Oxford, England and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.) The work of IFES is featured in an article by Amy Lewis in the November 18 issue of World magazine.
Zelalem Abebe took a circuitous route to the meeting of campus ministers he had traveled hundreds of miles to encourage. First stop, a hotel. But partway there, he switched cars. He had to make sure he wasn’t being followed. From the hotel, he drove to the meeting in a house. He watched someone else enter and then waited 10 or 20 minutes before entering himself—by a different door.
Abebe can’t say who he visited, in part because he doesn’t know their names. The ministry’s leaders keep their identities a secret, even from each other, in case any of them are arrested.
“If someone caught them, they force him to tell who is who,” Abebe explained.
This is what campus ministry looks like in a country where war, political instability, and government pressure force workers underground. Some ministry graduates are in prison—and have been for years—because of their involvement in sharing the good news of Jesus. But even under such difficult and dangerous circumstances, ministers persevere in preaching the gospel to reach new students.
Abebe belongs to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), an association of autonomous national campus ministries that preach Christ.