Churches Helping Churches Send
In the 21st century, any church can send their own missionary personnel anywhere in the world. In the 20th century, most churches believed they could not send their own missionaries. Distant lands were too far away and too difficult to reach. So, we trusted others to do it for us and delegated missions sending to boards and agencies.
But the world has changed. The 21st century is a connected world that functions more like the first century than the twentieth. Every church is connected to the ends of the earth.
I recently preached in a church in Temple, Texas and asked the congregation of a little more than one hundred to raise their hands if they had traveled outside the United States. More than seventy raised their hands. I asked the same question in chapel at East Texas Baptist University with nine hundred present. More than 80% raised their hands. When I asked them to tell me where they had been, the response sounded like Pentecost!
Our people are already going and they are already connected. And churches are waking up to the opportunity and responsibility to send them to serve long term. That is why WorldconneX provides Front Line Services. These services help any church send those whom God is calling to serve anywhere in the world.
The WorldconneX Board of Trustees authorized the creation of a Church Sending Missions Fund during their recent meeting on September 18. This fund operates as one of our Front Line Services. It allows churches and individuals who want to give to missions to help other churches who are sending missionaries and need their help. The fund is church-driven and donor-directed. Churches do the sending. Donors choose who they want to assist and WorldconneX partners them together.
In this newsletter you will hear from two churches who are already sending out their missionaries. In the case of Trinity Valley Church in Carrollton, the church was willing and ready to send Steve Marshall to France but could only provide ten percent of his support. The Church Sending Missions Fund will allow churches and individuals to help this church and other churches like it.
As of today, our WorldconneX Front Line Services has assisted fifteen churches and twenty-three people they are sending, and the number is growing.
If God is calling someone out of your church whom you need to send, or if you want to partner with other churches seeking to send their own, contact Walter Justl, our Front Line Service Leader at WorldconneX (; 214-421-7999). For more information about how God is re-shaping the world so that churches can send and people can go, order my book, Finding God’s Vision: Missions and the New Realities. We will be glad to send you a copy free (write to ). Your can purchase additional copies for your church or missions leaders at http://www.veritaspublish.com.
Bill Tinsley