How are you doing? How was your last trip? How’s ministry going? We are often asked. Lately the answers are we are doing well, in fact, quite well. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, we are doing well. And our ministries are doing well too. Elaine’s Bible studies and small groups continue to be lively, and people are growing in their followership of Christ. John is doing well with developing leaders here, near, and far and just came back from maybe his best trip ever to Asia.
FOCUS ON UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUPS
Our Asia Impact Team has been working with one ministry partner that is presently working with 14 Unreached People Groups (UPGs) by sending about 65-100 missionaries into nearby regions. This partner has requested our Asia Impact Team to equip them to develop a more focused and effective ministry among these people groups. They have a growing vision to expand their number of missionaries to over 300!
In June, John was in Bangkok with another teammate Phu Pham for some strategic planning with these partners. They sent along 12 leaders who we met for 5 days and conducted evaluation and vision planning. The results were far better than we expected.
John over two days began the time with these leaders by laying a foundation of missions with the theme God wants His Glory to be seen in All the World’s Peoples. The six sessions were: The Glory of God, The Gospel of God, The Church of God, The Peoples of the World, God’s Sent Ones, and God, Us, and All Peoples. Each leader completed their personal assignments and participated in small groups to apply their learning. Everyone determined their role in God’s plan for the world.
Dr. Pham and John then led the group in some strategic planning exercises. The entire group produced over 50 items of strength, weakness, opportunities, and challenges to their mission program. From this list the 12 leaders narrowed down their priorities for change and implementation. Their four priorities were 1) A Comprehensive Mission Strategy, 2) Mobilizing for Mission-mindedness, 3) Proper Recruitment and Assessment of Missionaries, and 4) Proper Training of Missionaries. From here small groups of leaders suggested specific goals for seeing progress in each area. These leaders left our meeting with many tasks to accomplish in the months ahead. We hope to walk along with them as they develop the mission strategy and systems. We made some tentative plans to meet again next year to check progress and welcome a larger group of leaders for this expanding mission project. John will be joining some of them in a regional missions conference which will include many of their missionaries this fall. John is invited as a speaker and a resource person.
One exciting vision that has come from this project is they have targeted a large island inhabited by unreached people with nearly no churches. Our partners want to saturate this island with churches over the next 15 years. Pray they would recruit, fund, train, new missionaries to see this vision fulfilled.