They were called the “Cambridge Seven” in 1885 and they packed their bags to go to China as missionaries. The C7 group were the point leaders in the modern missionary movement from the USA. The next year in 1886 100 students were stirred to missions when they heard a challenging sermon from D.L.Moody. In 1887 those 100 students became the Student Volunteer Movement. At that point there were not many Christians outside of the western hemisphere. With God’s blessing those missionaries and the ones who followed have done their jobs well. Today, according to a recent report from Leadership Network, 88% of Christians live outside of the U.S. and 50 of the largest churches in the world are outside of the U.S. as well. The U.S. represents only 12% of global Christianity. That said we still need to have global mission vision. There are one billion people in the world who have no church, bible study, or Christian witness. The world population is expected to grow to 8.5 Billion by 2020 so there will an ongoing large number of people that will need to hear about Jesus.
Here at MFMC we are passionate about leading people to Christ and embracing them into a community of growing Christians so we support several missionaries. Check out our mission’s board in the church lobby. You can also go to www.fmwm.org to get the latest news, blogs and newsletters from our missionaries. We make it easy to keep current on what God is doing through our global mission outreach.
The Christian movement is also beginning to use technology to evangelize. You can go to www.globalmediaoutreach.com to see the many web sites set up to provide places for people to turn to Jesus. These decisions are tracked in real-time on www.greatcommisssion2020.com. It’s exciting to see how God is calling people to himself and they are making that turning point.
Technology is a great tool but personal relationships fuel our zeal. In our congregation there are several people going out on global mission journey this spring. One couple is heading off to Jocoqui, Mexico the end of this month. Another couple will be joining the Ryan & Jenn Willson in Rwanda come the end of April. They will join the 1.5 million American Christians who go out on short-term global missions each year. On Sunday, February 20th hear about one of our university students following in the tradition of the Student Volunteer Movement as she reports on an upcoming mission journey to Phnom Penh, Cambodia during spring break in March. Check out the updates of others out there in global mission on our mission page of our web site. Then look for the local mission outreach through service to our community featured in other sections of our web site as well. We have a passion for Jesus and his causes! Feel your heartbeat catching His heartbeat!
Comments are closed.