For more than two decades, Joshua Campaign has carried the message of Jesus into communities across Ethiopia and Africa—working with local churches so people can hear, respond and belong.
The work on the ground
Jesus Christ remains at the center. Campaigns are prepared with local pastors, followed by discipleship, and connected to the long work of healthy local churches.
Five-day campaigns proclaim Jesus as Lord—His life among us, His death and burial, and above all His resurrection—with prayer for accompanying signs and wonders. Local congregations prepare, host and follow up with those who respond.
Campaigns on the Swedish siteJoshua Campaign works with Ethiopian leaders to establish congregations where the Gospel has not had a strong presence—building local capacity beyond the event.
Church planting workMission aviation and field teams extend access to remote communities, supporting missionaries, medical response and practical connection where roads cannot.
Mission InstituteWednesday through Sunday. Large meetings are held each evening, while daytime teaching in a local church welcomes pastors, spiritual leaders and believers. The Swedish site reports tens of thousands responding in salvation through these campaigns.
A campaign is normally planned six months ahead, including two months of active preparation, and costs approximately SEK 250,000.
Campaigns are prepared with local pastors and the Evangelical Churches Fellowship (ECFE), an umbrella in which Ethiopia’s evangelical denominations participate.
Follow-up material and local church connections help those who respond continue in teaching and Christian community.
Since 2007, the work has grown through a close relationship with pioneer pastor Belay Kekeba. A new Ethiopian denomination was formed with a six-person church-planting core team in 2015.
Pastor Mohammed Seid Ali leads daily work in eastern Ethiopia with vice director Zekarias Kitaba. A pioneer pastor can be supported through the Swedish office at SEK 600 per month for two years.
The Mission Institute uses helicopter access to move missionaries and medical teams toward remote communities.
Flights also support rescue and hospital transport, food and medicine supply, vaccination and health teaching, and noncommercial service requested by local authorities.
Joshua Campaign reports giving away 5.2 million salvation books through its history.
The measure is not simply a gathered crowd, but people welcomed into local discipleship and congregations.
Culture varies between Ethiopia’s peoples, cities and countryside. Teams choose the approach that serves the community best: a relational house church or an open public gathering.
Supporters may give SEK 600 or SEK 200 per month for at least two years, choose another monthly amount, or make a one-time gift.
Prayer Camp opens its doors to people who want quiet, focused time with God and Scripture, strengthening their relationship with Him.
Helicopter Program helps the Christian mission community reach remote areas. It has carried missionaries and medical teams, transported people to hospitals, supported rescues, supplied food and medicine, enabled vaccination and health teaching, and assisted public authorities when needed.
“The mission is to take the Gospel to the most remote places on earth.”Joshua Campaign vision
About Joshua Campaign
Karl and Jennifer Härgestam founded Joshua Campaign in Ethiopia in 1997. Karl, raised in Storuman in Sweden’s Pentecostal tradition, began mission work in Tanzania in the late 1980s. A call to reach unreached peoples took him to California for helicopter training, where he met Jennifer. They moved to Ethiopia in the early 1990s, and Karl flew with the Swiss organization Heli-Mission before launching Joshua Campaign.
Today the ministry has offices in Ethiopia, Sweden and California, with partners around the world. Since 1997, millions of people—mostly in Ethiopia—have heard the Gospel through its work. The Swedish archive records an earlier milestone of more than 3.8 million salvation books distributed; the campaign’s current milestone is 5.2 million.
Joshua Campaign’s Swedish history also places the ministry within Ethiopia’s wider evangelical growth, describing a rise from about 2% of the population around 1992 to about 20% in its later account. Campaign meetings reach hundreds of thousands in a year, with local churches carrying the work forward.
The mission today
Since 2007, Abbi and Per Åkvist have led Joshua Campaign’s work in Ethiopia and the Sweden office—preaching Jesus, helping the vulnerable, serving local churches and carrying the founding vision into a new generation.
Per leads from the campaign platform, keeping public proclamation connected to prayer, local pastors and long-term follow-up.
The Joshua Campaign archive
These older photographs preserve the story behind today’s work: Karl and Per serving together, mass campaigns taking shape, teams forming, and field tools changing as the mission reached farther.
An enduring picture of the handoff between Joshua Campaign’s founding vision and the leadership carrying the mission forward.
