Brother Tefera
Brother Tefera grew up in Ethiopia, where he embraced atheism and chaired the Young Communists Party in high school, before coming to faith in Christ at university. His math degree earned him a teaching position in an unreached area of northern Ethiopia. While teaching high school math, he helped to plant twenty-seven new fellowships of believers in eleven years, and was imprisoned for his faith three times. For the last twelve years, Tefera has worked side by side with Galen Burkholder to lead Global Disciples, which works to equip and train followers of Jesus, so that every person has an opportunity to hear the Good News in a way they can understand and respond. With the Global Disciples team, they serve over 1,450 clusters of churches in sixty-two countries and have helped launch more than 2,000 training programs. In the past decade, these training programs have seen over 400,000 new believers added to the kingdom, most of whom now worship in 18,000 new fellowships, planted mainly among people least-reached with the gospel.
“Discipleship is a team sport. We are at our strongest and most effective as disciples of Christ when we are in healthy relationships with other fully surrendered disciples.”
- Galen Burkholder and Brother Tefera, Ordinary Disciples, Extraordinary Influence: Stories to Fuel a Life of Unshakable Faith
