Supporting worldwide mission
Last week we started a bunch of training courses at church that are designed to be practically focussed as we live out our Christianity. I’ve got the opportunity to run one called “God’s Worldwide Mission”. There are a number of goals of the course:
- To remind us of the eternal plan of God to save a people for himself
- To drive us to prayerful dependence on God
- To inspire us to be more committed in our support of world mission
- To be creative in our care for link missionaries
- To empower you to be advocates for world mission at church
In the end I hope that those coming will be theologically informed regarding God’s plan of salvation throughout the world and throughout history. This should remind us of the privilege that God bothers to use us – weak and frail humans – in telling the world about the good news of his Son. Aware of the privilege, how can we best play our part in God’s plan? How can we support our link missionaries? Should we consider going ourselves?
This week we’ll be brainstorming about creative ways to support our CMS link missionaries. One benefit of living in the 21st century is the improved communication methods compared to when CMS started over 200 years ago in the UK. So, this week, in an endeavour to learn from one of our link missionaries how we can better support them, we’ll be doing it through a Skype video call.
I’d like to start brainstorming early. What are some ways you and/or your church have done to support link missionaries? What are some things you’ve heard done to help raise awareness in the regular attender of world mission?
Disclaimer: I’m a big fan of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) as is our church, which is why I particularly mention it. Would love to hear of ideas for supporting any missionary, with associations with any mission agency.
Awesome, Josh! From our experience, one of the most effective ways to support is to actually go and visit the worker in situ. It gives a much fuller understanding to the work, the environment, culture, the issues (both personal and related to the work) they are dealing with on a day to day basis etc and is of mutual encouragement to both the supporter and the person on the field. We’ve also found that people who actually come and visit are the people who will continue supporting the worker over a much longer time period. We’ve had a lot of people who support us for a year or two, but then the support/interest wears off after a while, sadly.
In this technological age, too, things like skype can shorten the distance considerably, as you’ve mentioned.
Having a person who is on the field ‘attend’ a home group in the home country can also be hugely encouraging. Although they can’t attend in person each week, they could still follow the same series, send through points of intercession each week, visit by skype every now and again and, of course, visit in person when they are in country.
Hope the training courses go well. Would love to be there!