One missionary task, carried by the global church.
We equip churches in four ways. We walk teams through the six phases of the core missionary task. We prioritize indigenous and near-culture church planting.
Four ways we partner with churches.
We are not a sending agency. We come alongside the local church to help her do what only she can do.
Training
Local churches disciple aspiring missionaries for ministry, with our coaching and curriculum.
Appointing
Churches recognize and set aside missionaries for service, after biblical examination.
Sending
Churches release missionaries to strategic locations across the 10/40 Window.
Supporting
Churches provide prayer, financial, and practical support, sustained over the long arc of a missionary life.
Six phases in one missionary task.
Every team we walk alongside follows the same arc, from the first day of language study to the day a new church stands on its own and begins to send.
Language and cultural acquisition. The slow, costly work of becoming present among a people, learning to speak the way they speak and live the way they live.
Faithful proclamation. Telling, in the cultural texture of the place, the story of the gospel as it has always been told.
Building up new believers through the Word, equipping them to teach the Word to others.
Establishing healthy local congregations that gather to worship, share fellowship, and observe the ordinances.
Training indigenous pastors and elders who meet biblical qualifications to shepherd what is becoming a self-governing church.
Empowering local believers and connecting the new church to the global body so that, in time, it begins to send its own missionaries to the next unreached people.
Indigenous church planting.
Local believers planting churches within their own people groups. They speak the language already, understand the culture already, carry no foreign passport, and build trust we never could.
Near-culture church planting.
Believers from neighboring cultures pioneering work among unreached people groups close to home, carrying the work until indigenous leaders rise from within.
The mission field becomes the mission force.
Prioritizing indigenous and near-culture missionaries is not a matter of preference. It is a matter of obedience, fruitfulness, and stewardship.
Obedience to Christ's commission. The Great Commission is given to every nation, not from one nation to the others.
Faster language and culture acquisition. Indigenous workers speak the language already and know the culture from within.
Better identification in resistant regions. Local believers carry no foreign passport and bear the gospel without the baggage of a foreign messenger.
Lower missionary attrition. Workers serving in their own context endure where many foreign workers cannot.
Significant cost efficiency. Foreign missionaries can cost more than 1,000% more to support than indigenous workers doing the same ministry.
True partnership and sustainability. Shared leadership and shared ownership produce churches that stand and send long after the original team is gone.
We do two things well.
We do not commission missionaries ourselves. We equip the churches that do, then walk with them as they send.
Developing national cooperation.
We assist churches to partner for ministry together and to train leaders and aspiring leaders for the work.
Alongside those churches, we help appoint and commission missionary teams, and we help churches send and support them well over the long arc of a missionary life.
Facilitating global partnership.
Beyond any single nation, we connect the work to the wider body of Christ so churches and missionaries are not laboring alone.
We assist agencies through an agency leadership network and build international church partnerships that strengthen and sustain the mission across the Window.