March 01, 1997 by Rick Wood

A New Course For Mission Frontiers - What Do You Think?

Our goal at Mission Frontiers has always been to spread frontier mission vision across the world to as many people as we can find who will listen and get involved. Our primary desire is to promote the frontier mission movement and not ourselves. We want to effectively serve those agencies that make up this movement.

But for a number of years, we have struggled to overcome many obstacles to these goals. One of these has been to cover the costs of sending out 100.000 copies of Mission Frontiers to those in the US and overseas. It has been especially difficult to afford the cost of sending it to Christian leaders overseas.

We are currently able to send just one copy a year to these dear people. We continue to encourage those overseas who can afford it, to subscribe by airmail at the cost of $8.00 per year or by electronic mail at no extra cost. During our best year the "Companies of 70" plan has been able to cover no more than 50% of our costs.

We are currently considering the significant new step at Mission Frontiers of accepting paid advertising from those mission agencies that make up the frontier mission movement. We would only accept advertising that relates to frontier missions and we would ask our advertisers to help promote and distribute Mission Frontiers to their constituency. The advertisers would receive complimentary copies of MF for this purpose. It could be that through paid advertising we would be able to:

• Better serve and promote the work of the agencies that make up the frontier mission movement with lower rates than they are paying elsewhere
• Make Mission Frontiers an even better generic frontier mission resource to the global Christian community
• Gain greater credibility for the frontier mission vision contained in MF when people see agencies they respect advertising in MF
• Find those new people who would benefit from receiving Mission Frontiers
• Cover 50% or more of our costs each year
• Send out MF regularly to those Christian leaders overseas who would benefit from this resource, but cannot afford the expense.

This does not mean that we are giving up on the "Companies of 70" effort to collect donations of $145.74 or more to cover 70 other people in your area. We will still need your support. If a group of 70 people in your area cannot afford $145.74, send what you are able. If just 10% of our readers sent in $20 or more we would cover our costs. We need everyone to help us if we are to make MF the frontier mission resource that can bring a unity of purpose and direction to world evangelization.

This possible move to paid advertising is, however, less about money than about serving the agencies and the frontier mission movement. We have featured the work of a number of agencies through articles, but we cannot feature the work of as many agencies and the frontier mission services they provide as we can through advertising. We also believe that it is our responsibility to be a place where people can find out what everyone else is doing in frontier missions.

But before we take this momentous step, we want to get your feedback. Do you think it is a good idea, or a bad one? Will it ruin our image or give us even greater ability to spread the vision of reaching the unreached peoples. We would like to hear from you. Take a moment and fill out the Mission Frontiers section of the MF Response Form that talks about this subject and send it in. We will let you know how people responded and what we have decided to do in a future issue of MF. Pray for us as we work daily to mobilize the Body of Christ worldwide with the vision to reach the unreached peoples.