Author: Muyiwa Olarewaju
There is a moment in every great Christian story when words stop being enough.
For Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo, that moment didn’t come with a microphone in his hand or a crowd roaring its approval. It came in a “green room” in Ghana, half watching a video he was too tired to notice until he did. What caught his attention wasn’t the preaching. It was the rice.
Thousands of bags being distributed in daylight, in the same cities where revival meetings thundered at night. Gospel and groceries. Miracles and medicine. Preaching and practice. That, he tells me, was the turning point for what would become CCRW (Compassionate Crusades to the Rural World).
And suddenly, a lifelong evangelist realised something vital: Africa didn’t just need another crusade. It needed love it could touch.
Ashimolowo’s theology here isn’t trendy or radical. In fact, it’s almost embarrassingly obvious. He points to Acts 10:38, a verse many of us quote quickly and move on from: “How God anointed Jesus… who went about doing good.”
Not preaching good.
Not declaring good.
Doing good.
For decades, the global Church particularly in crusade culture has excelled at proclamation. Less so at provision. Ashimolowo is refreshingly candid about this imbalance. He’s equally honest that compassion without the Word is incomplete. The Salvation Army, he suggests, tilted one way. Much of evangelicalism tilted the other.
CCRW is his attempt at the middle ground: surgery and salvation, food parcels and altar calls, pastoral training and public evangelism all in one expression.
It’s not flashy. It’s ferociously expensive. And it’s happening far from the algorithm’s favourite places.
In an age obsessed with platforms, Pastor Matthew has chosen the periphery.
Africa’s cities are swelling, he explains, not because rural areas are thriving, but because they’ve been abandoned. CCRW intentionally targets those left behind the people with no hospitals, no infrastructure, and often no sustained gospel witness. The irony is striking: these “forgotten” places are where some of the Church’s most faithful growth still happens.
So CCRW meets on the edges literally between city and village. Stadiums chosen not for prestige but for safety. Buses hired to transport rural communities. Systems put in place to avoid stampedes when compassion is delivered at scale.
Nothing here is accidental. Love, Ashimolowo insists, must be organised.
What makes CCRW quietly extraordinary is its structure. Ashimolowo describes it as a “five-finger” approach:
- Free surgeries, announced publicly, regardless of faith.
- Night crusades, where the gospel is preached plainly.
- Relief distribution, accessed through attendance not manipulation, but invitation.
- Pastors’ training, resourcing the local Church rather than replacing it.
- Village evangelists, equipped with PA systems and tools to continue the work long after the lights go down.
This isn’t parachute ministry. It’s succession planning.
And crucially, converts don’t funnel into Ashimolowo’s church. Decision cards are handed to other denominations. Bishops from outside his ministry oversee the follow-up. CCRW is funded largely by him but populated by the wider Body of Christ.
In an era suspicious of motives, that detail matters.
What audiences don’t see, Ashimolowo admits, is the cost.
The sleepless nights.
The empty bank accounts.
The 200 contractors to be paid.
The four hours of rest between preaching and prayer.
One crusade costs around £1.1 million. Rice alone runs into hundreds of thousands. Medicines, surgeries, logistics it all adds up. This isn’t prosperity teaching in theory. It’s prosperity emptied out and redistributed.
His point is blunt: anything that holds cannot grow. Seeds only multiply once they’re released.
It’s hard to argue with fruit like 20,000 recorded decisions for Christ and entire communities experiencing tangible relief alongside spiritual hope.
What struck me most wasn’t Ashimolowo’s passion, but his quiet challenge to sectors beyond Christianity.
“If a government doesn’t know how to do this,” he says, “let them come and ask us.”
It’s not arrogance. It’s invitation.
CCRW stands as an uncomfortable witness not just to churches, but to politicians, business leaders, and NGOs across a resource rich yet poverty-heavy continent. If the Church can organise compassion at this scale, what excuse does anyone else have?
Perhaps the most telling moment comes when Ashimolowo talks about Muslims attending CCRW events not for miracles, but for medicine. Not for sermons, but for surgery.
“Love conquers,” he says simply.
And suddenly, that overused phrase feels weighty again.
In a world drowning in Christian content, CCRW reminds us that credibility often comes through kindness. That sometimes the loudest sermon is a bag of rice. And that the gospel, when embodied fully, still has the power to gather crowds both in stadiums and in hearts.
Not because it trends.
But because it cares.
