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.
Karl and Per together at a public campaign announcement—an older image with a continuing story.
From daylight fields to evening crusades, the scale changed from place to place while the purpose remained constant: preach Jesus clearly and connect people with local churches.
Sound-stage trucks, tents and aviation made open-air campaigns and remote access possible. The equipment evolved over the years; the field purpose stayed the same.
Different generations of mobile trucks carried sound, staging and campaign identity from one field to the next.
Helicopter access helped teams connect with remote communities and support practical field needs.
Campaigns depended on teams, training and temporary field infrastructure long before the first public meeting began.
Abbi and Per Åkvist lead Joshua Campaign Ethiopia and the Sweden office. After fourteen years of church planting across the former Soviet Union—from Siberia to Baku, Azerbaijan—they came to Ethiopia in 2005 and joined Joshua Campaign two years later. Their shared vision is direct: reach the unreached and help the helpless.
Per is from Borås. A former biker, he encountered God in Sweden’s faith movement in the mid-1980s and began a life of pioneer ministry. Abbi was born in Ethiopia and came to Sweden at fifteen after a childhood marked by poverty and hard work. Adopted into a Swedish family, she describes being healed from hatred and bitterness through God’s love and receiving a lasting call to bring the Gospel and practical help to poor women and children in her first homeland.
“A human right for every person to hear the Gospel at least once in their lifetime.”
Their leadership keeps Joshua Campaign close to the local church: campaigns mobilize pastors, new believers are connected for follow-up, and pioneer leaders are equipped for sustained ministry.
Hear Per speak about Joshua Campaign
Karl Härgestam founded Joshua Campaign International. He left Sweden at 21 with a mandate to take the Gospel to unreached peoples in Africa, and together with Jennifer Härgestam helped establish a movement marked by pioneer evangelism, large-scale outreach, aviation and church planting.
Today Karl serves as Global Missions Director for the Pentecostal Church of God. His enduring message—One Chance for Every Person—connects the founding impulse of Joshua Campaign with a wider global call to ensure no person is overlooked.
Karl’s PCG leadership profilePowered by One Chance
Joshua Campaign keeps its own story, leadership and field identity while standing in clear alignment with the One Chance conviction: every person has a birthright to hear the Gospel at least once. Operation 326 puts that conviction to work by identifying frontier gaps and helping prayer, pioneers and resources move toward them.
The connections shown here are shared mission and public ministry relationships. They do not imply that these distinct ministries are legally controlled by Joshua Campaign.
Proclaims Jesus through campaigns, mobilizes local churches and helps establish lasting Gospel witness in Ethiopia and beyond.
Articulates the shared global conviction and invites pioneers, churches and supporters into the assignment.
One Chance for Every Person provides the public ministry home for frontier research and mobilization. Karl serves as president of its board.
OCFEP’s frontier initiative researches people groups reported to have no known Christian witness so prayer, pioneers and resources can move toward the gaps.
A twelve-week train-and-deploy pathway that raises a new generation of missionaries for practical engagement among unreached peoples, with mobilization hosted through OCFEP.
Provides a wider global church family and mission context—one mission and one movement, serving until the whole world hears.
The Joshua Campaign way
Three commitments shape the work: proclaim Jesus through mass evangelism, mobilize local churches to reach beyond their walls, and build mission networks across churches, denominations, ministries and movements around the world.
“Go through the camp and tell the people, ‘Get your provisions ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you for your own.’” — Joshua 1:11
Campaigns are not the finish line. They serve the local church’s long obedience—disciples formed, leaders raised and congregations planted where the Gospel needs a durable home.
Stay connected
Follow the work from Ethiopia, pray with the team and help local churches carry the Gospel farther.
Per Åkvist writes about once a month with news from Ethiopia, journeys across Africa and other parts of the world, and practical ways to pray. The signup form is hosted on the Swedish ministry site.
Join the digital newsletterJoshua Campaign has offices in Ethiopia, Sweden and California. For ministry questions, campaign partnership or giving support, contact the team by email.
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Stand with Joshua Campaign as local churches prepare new campaigns, pioneer leaders carry the Gospel forward, and unreached communities receive a clear chance to hear.
