Mission Frontiers

March-April 2015:

Frontier Ventures

Contents:

New Era: Embracing a New Era in the Frontier Mission Movement

From the Editor

by Rick Wood

Catalyzing Kingdom Breakthrough

by John Lambert

Frontier Ventures

Fulfilling our Legacy to Reach the Unreached

by Greg H. Parsons

Venture Center

Creative Collaboration for the Unreached

by MF Staff

Innovation Lab

by Paul Dzubinski

PRIME

by Christopher Lucey

New Generation

Engaging Each New Generation in the Frontier Mission Movement

by John Lambert

God Desires His House of Prayer

by Ben Zobrist

Is Our Misinterpretation of the Great Commandment Ruining Our Application of the Great Commission?

by Prudence Dancy

Perspectives

Mobilizing Into the Future

by James Mason

Perspectives Global

The Power of Partnership

by Bruce Koch

Joshua Project

Bringing Definition to the Great Commission

by Dan Scribner

WCIU

Bringing Distance Learning Close to Those Who Need it Most

by Beth Snodderly

INSIGHT

Equipping the Next Generation to Catalyze Kingdom Breakthrough

by Todd Pokrifka

Global Prayer Digest

Fill the Bowls of Incense with Buckets, Not Thimbles!

by

The Roberta Winter Institute

Destroying the Works of the Devil to Make His Glory Known

by Brian Lowther

Impacting the Unreached in Our Own Backyard

by Jerome Hannaman

William Carey Library Publishers

Equipping Workers to Build God's Kingdom

by Jeff Minard

Editorial

New Era: Embracing a New Era in the Frontier Mission Movement

From the Editor

by Rick Wood

In 1976, a mild-mannered professor at Fuller’s School of World Mission named Ralph Winter launched a daring effort to change the world by purchasing a $15 million college campus in Pasadena, California. His goal was to foster a collaborative movement of mission agencies, churches and students to bring access to the gospel to the then estimated 16,500 “hidden peoples,” now referred to as unreached people groups. The impact of this effort has been nothing less than profound. Not only was he able to raise the money over 12 years to complete the purchase of the campus, but in the process, he was also able to raise the awareness of hundreds of thousands of believers to the need to reach the unreached peoples. New mission agencies like Frontiers, Pioneers and many more were founded with the purpose of going to these unreached peoples. These efforts led to a dramatic shift in the focus of the evangelical mission enterprise and the Frontier Mission Movement was born.

The generation of young people who surrounded and supported the Winters and their biblical vision of reaching the unreached peoples are now becoming grandparents. It is now time for succeeding generations of Jesus followers to get involved in proclaiming this biblical vision of spreading God’s glory and his gospel of salvation to all of the unreached peoples—now numbering around 7,000. We are retooling to equip ourselves to reach new generations of believers with this God-centered, biblical vision and to mobilize them into action.

With this latest issue of Mission Frontiers we are announcing and celebrating the birth of Frontier Ventures—from the legacy of the U.S. Center for World Mission. This is more than just a name change but also a significant reorganization of the various ministries and assets that the Frontier Mission Fellowship (FMF) represents. The FMF is the parent organization of both William Carey International University (WCIU), and the U.S. Center for World Mission (USCWM), with its various projects and initiatives, which includes Mission Frontiers. The FMF and the USCWM are now becoming known as Frontier Ventures. The former college campus in Pasadena, California, where Ralph Winter founded the USCWM and WCIU nearly 40 years ago, will now be called The Venture Center. All of this and more are explained in this issue of MF starting on page 6. We not only explain the changes but we also introduce you to a number of the ministries that Frontier Ventures represents. If you want to introduce your friends to Frontier Ventures, this is a great issue to hand to them.

With all of these changes, there are some things that are foundational to who we are. We are retooling to increase our effectiveness in carrying out our mission of establishing kingdom breakthroughs in every unreached people group, but the vision and values that we have grown up with will remain with us. Here are some things you can count on as we move forward.

Unreached Peoples-R-Us

From the founding of the U.S. Center for World Mission, we have been strong advocates for those “hidden” or unreached peoples that have no viable, indigenous movement to Christ. This focus is integral to our DNA as an organization and will not change. We are as committed as ever to seeing breakthroughs among the unreached peoples. For us the ultimate goal of the missionary task is about providing access to the gospel so that every person may have an opportunity to say “yes” to Jesus. The problem is that individuals are cut off from the gospel because they live within people groups that are unreached or unengaged. We will continue to mobilize the global church to initiate kingdom breakthroughs in every unreached people.

We Are About Kingdom Breakthroughs

While on earth, Jesus spoke most often about the kingdom of God. There is a lot of confusion about what this term means but at its heart it is about the rule and reign of Jesus in the hearts of his followers. When you have a growing number of Jesus followers in a particular people group or region faithfully making disciples and planting churches, it begins to have a transformative effect on all aspects of life and society. It brings about human flourishing under the Lordship of Jesus. We refer to this as a kingdom breakthrough. Overcoming the barriers to these kingdom breakthroughs and learning how to establish them in every unreached people group is our highest strategic priority as an organization.

If these kingdom breakthroughs are to develop and have their full potential impact, the body of Christ must learn how to make disciples who disciple others and establish reproducing churches within every people. It is only with this type of exponential multiplication of disciples and churches that everyone within every people group will have access to the gospel and God’s glory will be made known in all the earth.

Collaboration: It’s How We Do Our Mission

Ralph Winter’s vision for the Pasadena campus was always for it to be a place for collaboration to take place to reach unreached peoples. Collaboration is more necessary today than ever before. The task of establishing kingdom breakthroughs in each of the 7,000 unreached peoples is far too large for any one organization or denomination to accomplish. Our only hope is for the Body of Christ, in all of its various parts, to work together along the lines of its various ministry specialties to establish kingdom breakthroughs within each unreached people group. We are establishing the Ralph D. Winter Launch Lab here on our Venture Center campus for the purpose of fostering this type of collaboration and to bring various ministries together in new collaborative efforts. See page 20 for more on the Launch Lab. Frontier Ventures does not send out mission workers to the unreached. Our role is to be a catalytic force in the Body of Christ to bring people together on mission to reach the unreached. Collaboration is one major way that we fulfill this catalytic role.

Prayerfully Consider Your Part

We invite you to read through this issue of MF and to prayerfully consider what part that you can have in fostering kingdom breakthroughs among the unreached peoples. This issue is an open invitation to you to collaborate with us, and others, towards that end.

The Muslim World: Opportunity in the Midst of Crisis

With the rise of the virtual terror state of ISIS and the violent attacks by gunmen on the streets of Paris, radical Islamists have pushed their way to the forefront of the world’s attention. (Go to our Blog section at http://www.missionfrontiers.org for an interesting perspective on these latest events.) The world is struggling to know how to deal with this problem and even to know how to talk about it in helpful terms. Muslims themselves are struggling to make sense of it all since the majority of Muslims are peaceful and many of the victims of these atrocities are Muslims themselves. Since the attacks of 9-11, there have been many voices calling for moderate Muslims to speak out against the violent extremists in their midst. Few have spoken up, possibly fearing reprisals from the very extremists they might condemn. But in recent days this silence was broken in a very dramatic way.

On January 1st of 2015, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gave a little-covered speech at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. This university is widely recognized as the world’s leading center for Islamic training. President Sisi spoke to a gathering of Islamic scholars calling for a “religious revolution” within Islam to drive violent jihadist thinking and teaching from its midst. The Egyptian president said, “You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world—I say it again, the entire world—is waiting for your next move because this umma (Muslim world) is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands…. We have to think hard about what we are facing. It is inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible.”[1] Clearly, President Sisi recognizes that Islam itself has a vital role in confronting violent Islamist teachings in their midst.

I present all of this here to point out that we are in a God-ordained kairos moment in the history of missions to Muslims.  God is shaking the “house of Islam” and we must be ready and equipped to present to Muslims a loving and culturally sensitive presentation of the “hope that lies within us.” More Muslims are coming to Christ now than at any time since Muhammad, and the number of movements to Christ is growing rapidly. You can follow the growth of these movements among Muslims on the pages of Dr. David Garrison’s book, A Wind in the House of Islam. Let’s equip ourselves for the kingdom breakthroughs in the Muslim world that God is preparing for us.

[1] The Washington Free Beacon, Egyptian President Call for “Religious Revolution” in Islam, by Abraham Rabinovich, January 4, 2015.  http://freebeacon.com/national-security/egyptian-president-calls-for-religious-revolution-in-islam/

About The Author

Rick Wood

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Feature

Catalyzing Kingdom Breakthrough

by John Lambert

When I first came to the Pasadena community from Thailand nearly three years ago, I heard two specific words in my heart: “revitalization” and “intercession.”  I believed the Lord was planning a renewal of vision and purpose for our community, though I didn’t understand what this meant in particular. I began to encounter others in our community that were sensing the same things and working to bring needed change.

As I began to delve deeper into the story of our history and the legacy of Ralph Winter, I became even more convinced of the need to re-emerge.  “Intercession” was not simply about prayer, but also about standing in the gap between what is and what could be. Eventually I was asked by our leaders, whom you will hear from in a moment, to serve them directly. Through their calls for new organizational alignment and clarity, we began a strategic planning process that brought us into a rebranding initiative.

I became the project manager for this initiative and have carried it forward under their leadership until now. Working with our incredible partners, PlainJoe Studios, and our own Frontier Ventures Communications team, we were able to take the best of our legacy from Ralph Winter, the heart of our current leadership, and many of our community’s hopes for the future and translate it all into what you now see and read today, both here in Mission Frontiers, and online at frontierventures.org.

In this issue, we hope that you will gain a little insight into the thoughts behind our organizational changes, what values and aims remain constant for us, where we see ourselves headed, and what we are hoping to see happen in the days to come. Each of our subsidiaries will share a report about their own progress as well.  One thing is certain: we are more convinced than ever that the greatest priority in mission today must be a concerted effort to see the kingdom of God breakthrough where it is not, among the last remaining unreached people groups of the world.

Catalyzing kingdom break-through among unreached peoples is still our highest aim and priority. As we look to our 40th anniversary in 2016, we hope you will join us with fresh passion for a new day in frontier mission, for the glory of God.

Now, it is my pleasure to introduce you to the leaders of Frontier Ventures and give you the opportunity to hear from each of them.

Ralph D. Winter’s successor, Dave Datema, took the reigns as General Director in 2009. In 2012 he began leading with two other men, Chong Kim and Bruce Graham in a plural leadership model that continues today. Datema led the INSIGHT program before being asked to lead the organization. He grew up in West Africa and Jamaica as an MK and is an ordained Church of the United Brethren Pastor. He has an M.Div. from Winebrenner Theological Seminary.

Bruce Graham was originally recruited by Ralph Winter before the U.S. Center was established in 1976. Graham was instrumental in helping to start the IIS program, which later became known as Perspectives. He has served as a missionary to India for a total of 15 years. He carries an M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as well as a M.A. in Cross Cultural Studies from the Fuller School of World Mission.

Chong Kim was born in Korea and immigrated to the States in his teen years. He joined Ralph Winter in 1987 and was instrumental in establishing mobilization efforts in the Korean American church. He started a new mission structure focused on the frontiers.  Kim was mobilized through the Perspectives program and received his Master’s degree in International Development from William Carey International University.

The following messages from our leadership were excerpted and adapted from talks given to our community this past December.

Contextualizing our Constants

by Dave Datema

Over the last five and a half years, we have been going through a major transition as an organization. These last five and a half years have been hard for our community in various ways, but I believe we have emerged into a new day.

Through it all, I believe there has been a consistent message: we are not going to change our primary purpose of catalyzing kingdom breakthrough among the unreached AND we are not going to change the vision of the Pasadena campus as a center for collaboration that points to and equips them for the frontiers of mission. These things are not new and these things are simply not going to change. They represent organizational constants. This is where we have great continuity with the past.

The responsibility for these constants now belongs to us. If our vision for breakthrough among the unreached or a campus full of collaboration for the frontiers is to be fulfilled, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to pay the price. It cost those who went before us and we understand that it is going to cost us as well. We have had to wrestle with the question, “How bad do we want it?” But we believe that these constants are worth the cost.

As we fight for these constants, a lot of other things have changed or are in the process of changing.  And I believe that all of us serving in the frontier mission movement must make the necessary changes to our ministries if we are serious about continuing to labor for the unreached in a new day and age, and captivating the next generation for the frontiers.

Dr. Winter—and some of you reading this article who have been at this for a long time—successfully captivated the previous generation for the cause of unreached peoples and the frontiers. Now after 40 years we find ourselves amidst another generation. And this is the challenge—we’ve got to do it all over again. Success with one generation guarantees nothing. Just ask Borders, Circuit City or Blockbuster Video. If we’re going to be contextual, if we’re going to speak to people where they live, if we’re going to captivate this next generation for the frontiers, we will have to change.

We are beginning to see some of these changes as our publications get re-vamped and re-tooled, as Perspectives changes to meet new demands and as we have begun to develop a Launch Lab to start brand new projects that will address the unique needs of the new age we are in.

Our rebranding is one important way that we are “contextualizing our constants.” We are working to contextualize our constants for a new generation that God is calling to the unreached. And while much is new and much will change, we trust that those who are familiar with us as well as those meeting us for the first time will see plainly that we remain focused on catalyzing breakthroughs among the unreached peoples. We remain focused on collaboration that accelerates breakthroughs. And we remain focused on identifying barriers to those breakthroughs and helping find solutions with others. Those remain constant for us, even as we seek new ways to do them.

Our Collective Miraculous Past

by Bruce Graham

We Are On Our Fourth Name

I want to give just a little bit of historical perspective on our name change. We are actually on the fourth iteration of our name since the days we began.  The first one was when we incorporated—and I was helping Dr. Winter sign the incorporation papers. We incorporated at the beginning as The Center for World Mission in 1976. This name was directly connected to Erik Stadell’s prayer that the Pasadena campus, which had been recently vacated by the Nazarene denomination at that time, would become a “center for world mission.” Then some people said to us, “That’s a little bit audacious…the center for world mission?” So, we changed it to the U.S. Center for World Mission, in light of the fact that we hoped to see other regional centers in other countries.  We would associate with other “centers for world mission.” Then 1990 came along and we began to realize that as projects began to grow and identities associated with projects and directions of projects began to go one way or another, we needed to articulate what is at the heart of who we are and we needed to change the incorporation to the name Frontier Mission Fellowship in order to distinguish who we are apart from our projects. So we had the U.S. Center for World Mission and we had William Carey International University as well as other projects. Now we are crossing a 40-year threshold in which we are changing our name once more.

The Vision, The Order, and The Land

When we began there were basically three key things of significance growing in Dr. Winter’s mind. One was the increasing awareness of large blocs of humanity, like islands in the midst of countries, to which the gospel had not yet gone. And existing evangelism was not spreading among these peoples. There needed to be a new kind of evangelism, a new approach to people, a new way of helping people understand the gospel. That vision was emerging before we had the campus. This was 1972, 1973.  It got pretty well articulated in 1974 when Dr. Winter was on his way to Lausanne Congress.

The other key idea percolating in his heart and mind was the significance and enduring quality of the Catholic orders. He was keen on starting a Protestant type of mission order undergirding this vision. It would be distinct from a local church, from an agency, or an academic institution. It would be a task-oriented community.

Then the Pasadena campus came up for sale. It was to be, in Dr. Winter’s mind, a laboratory whereby this vision, served by this order, could explore new ways for the gospel to get in among those peoples. Dr. Winter loved to tinker, and he loved to create, and he loved to solve problems and develop new ways of doing things. So the campus was meant to be a place where these kinds of things could happen in a collaborative, germinating kind of environment.

We were originally given just one room on the campus.  Across the street from us, on that side of the campus was Summit Lighthouse, a New Age cult. They venerated all kinds of “ascended masters” with Elizabeth Claire Prophet being their prime leader. I reflect back on all of this and I say to myself, “this is kind of prophetic…what happened here in the early days.” If you can imagine us stepping out in faith to purchase this campus for this vision and on that side of the campus was this New Age cult that the Nazarenes (the former owners of the campus) surely did not want to sell it to. Summit believed in all kinds of “ascended masters”: Muhammad, Buddha, Jesus, and so on. We were given one room on this side of the campus to see if we could rally people to the vision in this unique environment. It was all very prophetic in my mind.

The large auditorium on campus, now known as John R. Mott Auditorium, was full of the chanting of Summit Lighthouse. We went in one time. It was amazing…the music…the mantras: “I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life.” In their minds, they were god. You’d hear it all over campus. I find it amazing that now as you walk around the campus, nearly 40 years later, you hear worship to Jesus night and day because of the house of prayer for all nations now established in Mott. In much the same way that the Nazarenes held camp meetings in that building, we continue to hold worship, prayer, and missions mobilization gatherings today. Former Nazarenes around in those days are delighted to hear what is happening.

There was something very foundational in our DNA that was emerging in the midst of these beginnings. We started Haggai community up the street from the campus.  Haggai community had to do with not putting our hands to our own house but to His (God’s) house that lay in ruins. And there was a restoration of priority they were being called to…His house over “paneling” our own houses. When this priority was lost, money went through holes and their fields were not productive. We believed that if we put God’s house over our own house, God would meet our every need. This was the essence of the Haggai community and the spirit which pervaded the campus in those early days. Over the years, this all germinated and grew—the vision and the community on this entrustment of land. I believe all of these things reflect something of our core DNA.

Building A Bridge

There was a looking out to the field and there was a looking back which began to define our posture as an organization. It was as though we were a bridge linking together these two functions. We were mobilizing a new generation towards this great task in this way. And our campus was the place where this collaborative effort was based.

This whole first generation, for 40 years, articulated and mobilized toward this vision. We went through a lot of time and effort to articulate what was needed. A key word encapsulating this was “frontier mission.” And we worked with others to create and define terminology that would help people understand the nature of the task. Much of this you can find in our Perspectives Study Program reader.

Securing the campus took us about fifteen years. Promotion of the vision secured the campus. The community developed a number of significant projects, with which many people in the mission community are now familiar including Mission Frontiers magazine, which initially began as our news bulletin; Global Prayer Digest; and Perspectives. We had other mobilization initiatives beyond these projects. We had training initiatives. We had educational programs through William Carey International University.

These first forty years were shaped by these things. After Dr. Winter’s passing, we entered a transitional period. In the early 1970s, there was a great ground-swell of devoted, highly committed young people with hearts on fire to share Christ. There was the Jesus movement. We were involved in a significant work among young people out in Park Street Church in Boston. Many things have developed from their work in those days. Yet there is still the need to see the gospel planted among thousands of people groups still sealed off from any present evangelistic outreach. Now stirring all across this country is a new inspiration and revitalization taking place among young people. Could it be that God is preparing once again a major new initiative over the next 40 years toward fulfilling this vision?

A Whole New Generation

We are in the midst of a transitional period. Do you feel the stirrings among young people? What will harness their commitment and devotion? We want to shout a clarion call that is understandable, enticing, and motivating toward this vision. Part of this has to do with our name and our identity as an organization.

The last generation of effort has launched all kinds of people to the uttermost and in many cases they have bumped up against walls in making the gospel known. It’s time for a new generation to rise up and take their place in God’s purposes for the unreached, to build on the work of the previous generation and to carry it further.

May God find in us a willing heart for him to write another chapter in this generation. When he purposes to do a new thing, he often gives people a new name, and that is what much of our new name and branding is about. Our new name is Frontier Ventures. The campus entrusted to us will be known as the Venture Center. And at the heart of Venture Center will be a house of prayer and the Ralph D. Winter Launch Lab. It’s who we were at the beginning. It’s who we are now.

Our Heart's Posture

by Chong Kim

If I can broadly categorize Dave’s input on “contextualizing our constants” as our present challenge and opportunity and Bruce’s talk as understanding our past, I’d like to focus on our future as Frontier Ventures, especially as it relates to our core purpose and distinctive contribution as a committed frontier mission-focused community

Reflective Activism

Some 40 years ago, one decisive cornerstone for establishing the U.S. Center for World Mission was the conviction of reaching the Unreached People Groups (UPGs). We were the sole flag bearers of championing the vision of reaching the UPGs. Some 40 years later, we are not the only organization that is waving the flag of the UPGs. One natural question we have asked is, “what then makes us unique and compelling?”

I am not saying that we stop waving the flag of the UPGs. Over 7,000 unreached people groups still remain, so we still have work to do. But I believe we have to do more than wave the flag. We must realize that these remaining unreached peoples are unreached for various reasons. I’m convinced the remaining progress will not be made by mere or more activism alone. What’s needed in missions today and what I’m calling for our collective community to embrace is the concept of “reflective activism.”

Paraphrasing what Dr. Winter said, the major progress of the gospel was made among peoples who had little to lose by adhering to the Western form of Christianity. “Western missions effort by and large is a single failure of listening and learning from the local and indigenous contexts. This failure allowed perpetuation of a “western” flavor of Jesus followership all over the world,” observed Richard Fox Young in his opening editorial in the book, Asia in the Making of Christianity: Conversion, Agency, and Indigeneity, 1600s to the Present. We need to concern ourselves with how to best reach them without making them be and look like us. I believe this is where the word, kingdom, and our mission of “identifying barriers and pursuing solutions” becomes critical. And these two concepts are interrelated.

Why Do We Focus on Kingdom Breakthrough?

We focus on the kingdom because Jesus did. And yet the three most important creeds basically missed it all together. Listen to what E. Stanley Jones penned.

“By the time the creeds were written in the 3rd century, what had happened to the conception of the kingdom of God? The Nicene Creed mentions it once, but only in reference to our life beyond the borders of this life, in heaven: “Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.” The Apostle’s Creed and the Athanasian Creed don’t mention it at all.

The three great historic creeds summing up Christian doctrine mention once what Jesus mentioned a hundred times. Something had dropped out. A vital, vital thing had dropped out. A crippled Christianity went across Europe, leaving a crippled result: a vacuum was left in the soul of Western civilization.

The word and concept of the gospel would have no meaning without the phrase “gospel of the kingdom,” or “gospel of Jesus Christ.” People in Jesus’ day were familiar with the word, gospel (euangellion), referring to any great deeds performed by the emperors of Rome. Jesus used the same word to convey the concept of the good news but only in the new and revolutionary context of the kingdom (not earthly but heavenly), himself, or of God. Thus, the context was everything.

We are called to make disciples of all nations. I believe what’s captured in the Lord’s Prayer is why we do what we do: we make disciples in order to see God’s kingdom come “on this earth as it is in heaven.” Notice we are not saying “disciple making breakthrough” or “church planting breakthrough.” Our vision is directly aligned to what Jesus taught us to pray and live out as in “kingdom breakthrough,” especially where the kingdom is not yet. This is where our laser focus on the unreached comes into view.

So how does kingdom breakthrough happen?

Our concern for kingdom breakthrough won’t happen without the effort of identifying barriers and pursuing solutions. We have to understand that not all barriers are the same. The more foundational barriers are, the more hidden they are, because they are at the level of assumptions and worldviews. We cannot be satisfied with surface type barriers and solutions. We have to go after the assumption-level barriers.

What’s ironic here is that these assumption-level barriers “feel” so far removed from directly reaching the unreached, yet because they are foundational in nature, they do address root barriers and solutions. If we have learned anything from our history, we have learned that solutions are often relatively easier to pursue than identifying foundational barriers.

However, to borrow from the store, “Toys-R-Us”, I believe one of the foundational barriers is us—“Barriers-R-Us!” One prevalent reason why we as westerners interface with many cultures but often plant expressions of “western Christianity” all over the world is that the western missions movement has often failed to recognize the brutal fact that we were the main barriers. However, I am certainly not saying that there weren’t other barriers. This is precisely why Dr. Ralph Winter talked so reflectively and extensively about the critical need to de-westernize the gospel. The gospel of the kingdom somehow morphed into the gospel of western Christianity.

So can we honestly reflect the concept of us being the major barriers? How do we overcome this barrier among us? How do we help everyone (wherever they are from) to see that major barriers are themselves? Accepting the idea that we are the barriers is humbly and honestly seeing “the log in our own eyes,” missiologically speaking. Let’s face it. Our natural tendency is to try to make others be like us. We often make others do church like we do. We require others to follow Jesus like we do. We require others to love God like we do.

I believe if we acknowledge “the log in our own eyes” and the fact that we ourselves may be the barriers, we will go a long way in seeing the rest of the world embrace Jesus as their own. So what does it mean for us to acknowledge “the log in our own eyes?”

Our Foundational Assumptions

I think one starting point would be for us to recognize our foundational assumptions about life and how we do it, i.e. worldview both in its strengths and limitations. One obvious example has to do with our cultural penchant for individualism--both its blessings and curses. And we also need to acknowledge that our worldview is not completely aligned to the biblical kingdom worldview. Recognition of our foundational assumptions will set us up for taking forward steps on what Nouwen describes as cultivating “the poverty of heart and mind.”

Here, I’d like to borrow some words from a recent paper I wrote for the American Society for Frontier Missiology in 2014:

Mark Twain said wisely, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Richard Rohr, in his talk titled, “The Beginner’s Mind,” says, “Ignorance does not result from what we don’t know! Ignorance results from what we think we do know—but don’t! Most ignorant people are, in fact, quite certain.” One defining characteristic about kingdom spirituality is our willingness, tenacity, and commitment to unlearn and let go of our wrongly assumed realities. One reason why some do not readily embrace the “poverty of mind and heart” as much is because there is often a great deal of confusion and even pain involved.

Missiological Love In Action

The kingdom coming in us, among us, and beyond us can only be ushered in through love. The end of kingdom spirituality is love. Thus kingdom breakthrough can essentially be interpreted as a love breakthrough. Think through some of the major breakthroughs in your life. Would you not qualify them as “love breakthroughs”—as in God breaking through to us in and through love? God is love and inevitably love is what we will experience.

Therefore, we can begin to “see” more clearly that these are not mere warm, feel-good spiritual breakthroughs but a revolutionary missiological breakthrough of love. Not imposing our cultural ways of doing spiritual life and following Jesus is missiological love in action. This is directly related to the vision of seeing Jesus movements all around the world not in monochrome but in a full and bright spectrum of God-ordained colors. Love is both powerful and empowering. It changes our lives and others’ lives. And we can be used by God to live this out with the vision of seeing all peoples come to Christ. At the end of the day, this is the heart of Frontier Ventures.

About The Author

Twitter: @JohnLambert

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Feature

Frontier Ventures

Fulfilling our Legacy to Reach the Unreached

by Greg H. Parsons

In 1976 the U.S. Center for World Mission was born. Ralph and Roberta Winter felt compelled by God to step out from the secure and stable environment of a tenured academic position to focus on “waving the flag” for the Unreached Peoples. Just two years before, in the summer of 1974, Ralph had given a plenary address at the Lausanne Congress. The Winters were’t sure at the time if anyone really grasped what they were trying to say. Perhaps more importantly, God was calling them to do something about these people groups which were “hidden” from the view of Christians around the world.

With little money and no donor base, they stepped out in faith to begin the USCWM and to purchase an old college campus in Pasadena. It took twelve years of struggle and hard work to pay off the campus.

While solid, encouraging progress has been made among the unreached, the body of Christ is not yet established in all peoples—as outlined in the Bible from Genesis 12 to Matthew 29 to Revelation 5 and 7.

When Dr. Winter chose Dave Datema to replace him as General Director—just days before his death in May of 2009—he wrote to the staff about the future, "I am immensely proud of our people. I believe our fellowship is stronger than ever and will continue to grow stronger, and that its best days are beyond my lifespan—if you are willing to work as a team, rather than a clutch of terrific individuals."

Our entire leadership—now led by Chong Kim, Dave Datema and Bruce Graham, who form the Office of the General Director—is passionate to continue the legacy of the vision, especially to pass that vision on to coming generations. To do this, we believe it is time for a fresh way to communicate that core idea imbedded in God’s word: the establishment of Christ’s church among all peoples.

Why a New “Look and Feel”?

The frontier mission enterprise is now global. We have learned a lot about our world, including where God is working and how he is bringing peoples to himself. Workers are being sent out from people groups that were untouched when we started in 1976. They are reaching still new unreached groups.

And yet still we are watching…praying…working to extend the gospel to the places where—as best we know—there is not a viable, indigenous fellowship of believers. That still includes whole sections of India, parts of Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, with total populations numbering over two billion!

We wait on the Lord; but that’s not passive. With the core vision comes the need to articulate it in ways that make it clear what is left to be done in a way that impacts the generation of servants who will follow us.

A New Identity

We have chosen Frontier Ventures as our new identity. Because there are unreached groups still untouched by the gospel, our central vision remains the same and the word Frontier remains foundational in our new name—or any name we might have chosen. Many do not realize that since 1990, our legal name has included the word Frontier: Frontier Mission Fellowship. It was chosen to reflect not only the idea of frontiers yet to be reached but also that of a community focused on that task. That remains our unwavering focus. It is what drives us to get up each day to pursue God’s kingdom advance.

The word Ventures speaks of the need to strategize and plan for serious outreach into places where the gospel has not yet taken root. This is not a day hike. It is an enterprise that is pointed toward an undertaking to bring the light of the gospel to the least reached. Serious stakes await us in frontier mission service. Global servants in organizations we work with all around the world have seen lives sacrificed for gospel advance. It is not a simple task.

Ventures also speaks of taking on something under God’s direction, will and purposes—it is his undertaking. It is something that ultimately, cannot fail—though at times pioneers do not see fruit in their lifetimes or their lives are cut short in pursuit of a people for his name. This task demands resolve and determination.

We take this very seriously. It requires preparation, on-going growth both spiritually and practically—from those who’ve gone before us and those who are engaged in the task now. As John Piper put it,

Nothing…nothing can be more important than what the Son of God died to achieve.…reaching all the peoples of the world with the saving news of Christ’s death and resurrection so that God worshipping, Christ exalting, Bible honoring, people evangelizing, mission advancing, justice pursuing, society changing, growing communities of believers can be established through faith in the Redeemer that the greatest works of the church that can possibly be in this age.

Having worked here since 1982, including 27 years with Ralph Winter, I, and others with me, feel a strong sense that we are stewards of his legacy. As a result, we considered how to further Ralph’s exceptional insights on the task and how it could be better understood and acted upon. We are also looking for those who are currently speaking into issues of kingdom advance.

By 2013 we had established the Ralph D. Winter Research Center, which seeks to be biblically grounded, strategically focused, and globally engaged. The RDW Research Center’s purpose is to Advance strategic collaboration and effective networking of mission leaders, thinkers, scholars and activists into the future. This is being accomplished through:

1. the online availability of Winter’s (and others) insightful writings, letters, and archives;

2. face-to-face collaboration at the facilities of the Venture Center and other locations globally—wherever and however rightly gifted leaders can collaborate and brainstorm on specific subjects.

Already, we’ve held forums on:

- The Legacy of Donald McGavran

- Rethinking how we work among Hindus (annually)

- The intersection of faith and genetics

- Vulnerable missions

Information and insights from these have been published with specific lives impacted and ministries enhanced—for which we are thankful to God. A new website is being developed that will enable access to some of the best of Winter’s writings—much of which has never been published. By the time you read this you will be able to access the site at ralphdwinter.org.

We sponsor the Ralph D. Winter Lectureship each year. In May, 2015, the Lectureship will include presenters Scott Sunquist—Dean of the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Todd M. Johnson—Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.

Please consider joining us here in Pasadena at the Venture Center for the Lectureship and WCIU’s next graduation from May 14-16, 2015.

Conclusion

In the early days of our ministry, the Winters worked hard at getting key leaders to endorse the work. One day in 1978, less than 2 years into the work here, Ralph and Roberta interviewed Bob (Robert) Pierce, Founder of World Vision and Samaritans Purse. He was frail and could only climb three steps outside of our library on campus. There he recounted his life:

I came to this campus…as a teenager…I came to start high school here, my father had died, my mother was an invalid, this was my first home away from home. I was just 13. Now the years have passed, my life is spent…. Nothing would please me more than that every inch of this campus should be devoted to all men from all over the world especially this great unreached part…where there’s only a grain of mustard seed…[we must get out the gospel] in the little time we have left before Jesus comes.

Then he turned to Ralph and Roberta and said, "Ralph you have not only my prayers, as I live and breathe you have my dying prayers and I promise from the battlements of heaven I’ll be cheering and praying and interceding and reminding the Lord and if there is any way I can I’ll be prodding the conscience of every Christian to see that we will have done everything we wish we had done before we meet Jesus face-to-face."

Four days later he was in the presence of the Lord.

Hebrews speaks of our need for endurance (10:36) saying, “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” (10:39) He then moves to recount an amazing array of faithful servants who sought to follow God—often in great difficulty and imperfection. Chapter 12 calls these a “cloud of witnesses” that we have surrounding us!

I believe we can also look to those who have gone before us—people we knew of or have been impacted by. People like Bob Pierce, Ralph and Roberta and a host of others in recent years. The Winters led the way for us 40 years ago. We look forward to the next 40 years.

As we look to the future we long for that day when we too will meet Jesus face-to-face. I encourage you, like Bob Pierce, to commit to pray and engage even more in this frontier venture. Could it be that God is calling you to serve with us in some way—from your home or in Pasadena? God continues to use people with all kinds of different skills. Please let us know if you are interested in discussing how you might serve in this work.

About The Author

Greg H. Parsons

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Venture Center

Creative Collaboration for the Unreached

by MF Staff

One of the specific ways Frontier Ventures is seeking to catalyze breakthrough is by creating a collaborative environment that encourages creativity in several key areas of mission activity—in prayer, research and strategy, innovation, media, mobilization, training and education. This campus, originally purchased for the U.S. Center for World Mission, is now known as the Venture Center and its purpose is being made more explicit for a new generation and a new era. It’s a place for diverse partners to come together around the common goal of breakthroughs among the unreached, believing that we are truly better together.

The Venture Center is a 17-acre campus located in sunny Pasadena, CA, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. The campus is 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles and within an hour of hundreds of

unreached people groups dispersed throughout the greater LA metro area. Its location makes it an ideal place for addressing issues related to the unreached peoples of the world and the diaspora populations (see article on page 45).

The campus itself is home to many different groups including churches, mission agencies, organizations and schools. In the past couple years the Pasadena International House of Prayer, the Call, Epicentre (a mission-minded church), and YWAM Fire & Fragrance (a branch of YWAM focused on prayer and outreach) have all been brought into the mix. (You can read about several of these groups in our July/August 2014 issue on prayer movements.) The drive to get more groups like these is part of the strategy to focus on reaching out to the next generation of young people whose hearts beat for the nations. “We wanted to bring together like-minded people, with common vision but diverse backgrounds and expertise, into a space where insightful collaboration can happen,” says Bruce Graham, one of the General Directors of Frontier Ventures, “We really feel like this is a time where God is doing something new, bringing convergence between different streams of the body of Christ, for the sake of the nations.”

Becoming a Space Dedicated to the Unreached

Though the name Venture Center is new, the campus is not. It has been a “consecrated space” since the early 20th century when the Nazarenes purchased it to be a gathering place and eventually a Bible college. They built the historic Mott Auditorium despite the scarcity of steel and other building materials brought on by war efforts of World War II. It hosted revival meetings that would build faith, transform lives and ultimately impact the nations. By the 1970s the Nazarenes were seeking to relocate and sell their Pasadena campus.

Mission SOS Director, Erik Stadell, a Swede who was living close by the campus while he studied at Fuller Theological Seminary, noticed that the campus was for sale and became curious to know what God intended for the campus. Drawn to the prayer chapel at the center of the campus, he was gripped by an intense burden to pray and fast for an answer. After a week, he was convinced he’d received that answer: the campus was to be consecrated as a center for world mission.

In 1976, with little money or backing, Ralph Winter stepped out from his faculty position at Fuller to purchase the campus—putting in a bid against a cult with a lot more money—in order to launch this center for world mission. Winter had a vision to use this campus to awaken one million evangelicals to the cause of the unreached. The Nazarenes desperately needed the money for the campus, but they felt sympathetic to this cause and desired to see the campus remain in the hands of those who would use it for kingdom purposes. They agreed to sell to Ralph and Roberta Winter, and the U.S. Center for World Mission was born.

The purchase in itself was a saga stretching over twelve years and involving many young people who came and sacrificially joined the Winters and their work in Pasadena, Thousands of believers from across denominations and traditions contributed small $15 gifts to help the nascent U.S. Center make its monthly payments—which were often made miraculously, just in the nick of time. Despite the challenges that came from purchasing the campus with few resources, Winter said he never felt more convinced that God was in it.

During the decades that followed, many mission agencies retooled to add an unreached peoples focus to their ministry, while other entirely new groups sprang up to focus exclusively on the unreached. Numerous agencies have called the campus home and others, like Create International, GMI and Frontiers, were founded in the visionary and collaborative atmosphere of the campus. Nearly 40 years have passed since the founding of the U.S. Center for World Mission, and by God’s grace outreach to the unreached has greatly multiplied.

Collaboration & Cross-pollination

This place, now called the Venture Center, continues in that tradition. Its name conveys the purpose and spirit of its heritage, as well as its future—that it would be a place dedicated to the launching of new ventures for the kingdom. The idea of “venturing” with God is a big one for Frontier Ventures and is a staple of its mission. “We believe that to see breakthroughs happen, we must be willing to venture beyond the boundaries of the familiar and known,” says Dave Datema, one of the General Directors of Frontier Ventures. “We must be willing to trust the Holy Spirit’s guidance and to employ all the creativity and critical thinking he has given us—for the purpose of reaching the unreached. Winter was fond of saying, ‘More of the same will not get the job done.’ At its heart, that’s what the Venture Center is about.”

The Venture Center plans on supporting collaboration in seven critical areas of mission: prayer, research, innovation, media/publishing, mobilization, training and education, and strategy. These areas are key to the acceleration of breakthroughs in today’s fast-paced, globalized and connected world. Because these seven “hubs” are in such close proximity to one another on the campus, they are a place where collaboration

escapes its usual bounds within a single field of study or practice and cross-pollination can now occur. The hope, for instance, is to see media, prayer and innovation come together to create an app to link people together in intercession for specific unreached people groups, or for trainers and innovators to work together to develop better models of training for the field and better ways for non-field workers to contribute meaningfully and fruitfully to field efforts.

To facilitate the innovative aspects of the vision, Frontier Ventures is establishing a space dedicated to such activities. Dubbed the Ralph D. Winter Launch Lab, it honors the founder’s legacy of innovation. The lab will seek to bring the kind of creative and critical thinking focus to mission strategy, financial limitations within the support-raising model, mobilization challenges, and other tough problems in mission that need creative solutions. It’s designed to be a place that will benefit all the ministries on campus and stimulate new ideas among the Venture Center campus collaborators and even out into the broader mission world.

From the people perspective, the Venture Center is a community. It’s believed that much of the impact of the Venture Center will come through organic interaction and “un-programmed” activity—that “chance” connections can be as significant as those that are planned. Creating an atmosphere where those of like mind and heart can gather and encourage one another day in and day out is as important as the projects and activities they produce. “We really see the campus as the physical expression of a spiritual community,” says Chong Kim, General Director overseeing the Venture Center’s strategic development, “We believe that collaboration comes out of this kind of atmosphere of prayer, worship, creativity and skill. God called and anointed workmen to build his tabernacle and we believe this is a similar endeavor. We are convinced that it is God’s heart to have the generations working and doing life alongside one another. That’s really what we’re trying to build. It’s about people, and it’s about building a place that supports that kind of community—from the use of buildings to the look and feel of outdoor spaces and common rooms for brainstorming and creativity. At the end of the day, it’s about seeking God’s heart and catalyzing kingdom breakthroughs among the unreached.”

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Innovation Lab

by Paul Dzubinski

When the leadership of the Frontier Mission Fellowship and the US Center for World Mission decided to rebrand the organizations together, a discovery was made. The rebranding did not fully embrace a key aspect of the spirit of Ralph Winter. He created new ministries and looked for the missing pieces in our efforts to fulfill the Great Commission. The Ralph D. Winter Launch Lab was then proposed to fill this need.

The Ralph D. Winter Launch Lab exists to discover and help implement ways to bring kingdom breakthroughs to the frontiers of mission. It is founded in the spirit of the scholar-activist Ralph Winter. Discovery, innovation, and implementation are its main functions. It is designed to bring forward motion in creating these kingdom breakthroughs.

There is a lot packed into those two words, kingdom breakthrough. Simply put, a kingdom breakthrough is cooperating with God to multiply Jesus-centered faith communities and help in the growth of
human flourishing.

In more detail, the full definition of kingdom breakthrough is the work of God’s Spirit creating new communities of faith which are loyal to Jesus and the Bible and which express those loyalties through the paradigm

of their own culture and language. Expressions of loyalty to Jesus and the Bible would include the multiplication of similar types of communities as well as the growth, in the wider society, of human flourishing that is based on Jesus’ teaching.

The Launch Lab hopes to participate in this kind of kingdom breakthrough where it is least known, at the frontiers of mission. To that end we hope to establish the Launch Lab as both an incubator and a research institute. In many ways this has been what Dr. Winter did at the US Center for World Mission. Numerous ministry startups began at the US Center and were inspired by Dr. Winter’s innovations in missiological thinking and mobilization.

Two Steps Beyond Relevant Church

There is a lot to be discovered and innovated if we are to effectively make disciples for Jesus in peoples where his name is not even known. The truth is that even where Jesus’ name is known some churches are not that relevant. Relevance is pretty important.

For cross-cultural workers to be relevant in making disciples and starting churches, innovative and adventurous hearts are required. Their ministry is two steps beyond starting a relevant church in their home culture because they have to do it in another culture and language. Their task is more than the success of engaging a lot of people. They even need more than spiritual faithfulness to fulfill their calling and ministry. As Tim Keller concludes in his book Center Church, “a more biblical theme for ministerial evaluation than either success or faithfulness is fruitfulness.”[1] This requires a theological vision. Keller defines that as “a vision for what you are going to do with your doctrine [the gospel] in a particular time and place.”[2] To help cross-cultural workers develop their own theological vision we hope to start Discovery Workshops in ministry locations. At the workshops, participants will work together, investigating ways to take those extra steps for bringing kingdom breakthrough.

Launching Well

James Allen said, “Dreamers are the saviors of the world”[3] but it can be difficult to bring a dream down to earth. Helping people launch their dreams has long been the work of tech and business incubators.

The people at Entrepreneur.com define an incubator as “an organization designed to accelerate the growth and success of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services.”[4] We at the Launch Lab would like to help the dreamers realize their dreams in this same way.

Forbes reports that “niche incubators are springing up all over the country, covering a range of business types that once would have stood no chance of getting an incubator to accept them.”[5] The Launch Lab incubator has a niche: we desire to help people start social ventures[6] that will contribute to human flourishing in geographical areas where Jesus is not known.

Thinking Well, Doing Well

The U.S. Center for World Mission has a long-standing reputation as a “missions think tank.”[7] Our focus on missions is different from what is generally associated with the term “think tank.” Generally speaking, think tanks have a focus on helping political representatives evaluate and develop political policy.[8] Since our focus is not just on missions but specifically on the frontiers of mission, we have put aside the think tank label and call this part of the Launch Lab a research institute.

The narrower focus on the frontiers in mission gets more specific. We hope to develop functional models and workable theories of mission that offer solutions to the problems and gaps in ministries at the frontiers. Once a solution is found we will champion it, influence for it through mentoring and educational programs, and/or lead change around it.

We are delighted to announce the start of the RDW Launch Lab. Please pray with us that it will be used by God to bear significant fruit for kingdom breakthrough in the coming years.

[1] Keller, T. (2012). Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (8.9.2012 edition.). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, Kindle loc. 95.

[2] Ibid. Kindle loc. 231

[3] Allen, J. (2013). As A Man Thinketh. Sublime Books. 37.

[4] Business Incubator Definition | Small Business Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved January 7, 2015, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/business-incubator

[5]  “New Niche Incubators To Help Your Startup Grow”. (n.d.). Retrieved January 7, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/caroltice/2013/03/21/7-new-niche-incubators-to-help-your-startup-grow/

[6] By this we do not mean social gospel.

[7] Mission Frontiers - “Building Momentum: Report from the Global Network of Centers for World Mission”. (n.d.). Retrieved January 7, 2015, from http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/building-momentum

[8] Enrique Mendizabal from the website OnThinkTanks.org says that a specific definition of a think tank is difficult to do but he links them clearly to the policy world. He says, “I continue to find the definition of think tanks a futile endeavour (I am borrowing from Medvetz who borrowed from Simon James). Think tanks can be described by what they do (think tanks are like the bicycle chain that links the policy world with the research world, applying academic rigour to contemporary policy problems, maybe) and this should be understood within the boundaries of the context  in which they exist and that account for their vast differences” Mendizabal, E. (n.d.). on the definition of think tanks | on think tanks. Retrieved January 8, 2015, from http://onthinktanks.org/2010/10/18/on-the-definition-of-think-tanks/

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PRIME

by Christopher Lucey

Today, we have an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration within the body of Christ to help accelerate breakthroughs in our cities and around the world among the remaining 7,000+ unreached people groups. We believe God is preparing the way to accelerate the work he wants to do in the world through us, his people. His desire is to work through his whole body, not just through believers in a handful of nations or from one or two denominations. We now live in a time where the desire of many in his body to collaborate is widespread and palpable.

What we need is a paradigm for collaboration that provides the what and the how of collaboration for believers from all backgrounds, professions, and generations. We need a paradigm that moves us from the desire for collaboration to the reality of collaboration on a broader level.

God has been birthing such a paradigm here over the last year, which we are calling PRIME. PRIME stands for Prayer, Research, Innovation, Media and Engagement. It’s the idea that anyone can contribute in one (or more) of these areas to help support ministry to the unreached, and that each area is better together than alone. Media ministry is better when it’s vitally connected to prayer ministry and research. PRIME is the

idea that interdisciplinary teams can be formed to support efforts to reach the unreached, that these teams can be more effective than field-trained workers alone because they can help bring the focus and integration of key aspects of ministry to bear—and also help engage the rest of the body of Christ, helping to bridge the gap between what is often seen as the “professionals” and the rest of the church.

Each PRIME area addresses a key barrier to breakthrough in ministry to the unreached. God has given us Prayer, to tear down spiritual strongholds and raise up laborers; Research, to fill knowledge gaps and help fuel prayer; Innovation, to bring creative and non-traditional solutions to practical problems in mission; Media, to mobilize passion, prayer and participation, as well as facilitate new forms of outreach; and Engagement, to help tie all the areas together with a strategic focus on fostering church planting movements.

There are people and ministries already praying, researching, doing new things, utilizing media, and coordinating strategic efforts for the sake of the unreached. What is needed is to bring these efforts together and make them a core part of the DNA of what we do in mission. When we think about reaching the unreached—whatever our part might be personally—we need to begin with this paradigm, with these basic ingredients.

But PRIME isn’t just about the skill and effort behind these activities. It’s about a spirit of creativity and a framework that can help release Holy Spirit-inspired strategies for carrying the gospel to those who need it. PRIME is about unleashing the God-given creativity and potential of the Church while creating just enough of a framework to bring focus and greater effectiveness.

PRIME is about timing. We live in an age where technology, globalization, and the awesome work of the Holy Spirit are converging to create new opportunities in mission, to venture beyond our current perceived limitations and to break out of the ministry status quo that each church, organization and believer faces. We must be wise enough to discern the times in which we live in order to steward well the opportunities before us.

Our prayer is to see PRIME teams formed around every one of the remaining 7,000+ unreached people groups, with extra focus on the 250 largest unreached people groups. We will be working with mission agencies, churches, houses of prayer and other groups to see PRIME teams formed and launched. The PRIME paradigm is something we believe anyone can pick up and run with—and we pray many will. There are many groups in the frontier mission movement, and all of us are better together, connected and integrated in our efforts to follow the spirit of God and his desire to catalyze and accelerate movements of his kingdom all around the world.

We want to see PRIME owned by the whole frontier mission movement and served by a diverse mix of individuals from multiple organizations. One group we are already partnering with is Transform World, which has adopted PRIME as its strategy for Christ’s Missional Challenge. I am currently serving as the North American Facilitator for Transform World, and Frontier Ventures is facilitating Christ’s Missional Challenge. We will be covering more of what Transform World is doing in the next issue of Mission Frontiers.

For those of us leading ministries, PRIME is a challenge to broaden our paradigms about what is involved in ministry in the 21st century beyond traditional ministry models and yet keep the priorities God has given each one. As change continues to accelerate and remake our world, we have the opportunity to take advantage of it for the glory of God, to develop interdisciplinary efforts that tap into the resources God has given us: the extraordinary gifts, passions and expertise of the body of Christ. We have a great opportunity before us to foster the creativity and collaboration that will be needed to fulfill the Great Commission.

I’d love to connect with you and hear your thoughts.

About The Author

christopher.lucey@frontierventures.org

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New Generation

Engaging Each New Generation in the Frontier Mission Movement

by John Lambert

There is a generation of North Americans who have not yet been discipled as global hearted/minded Christians. They do not understand the narratives related to the mission of God, the biblical mandate for cross-cultural missions, the end vision of God’s glory among all peoples or nations, or their unique part in the plan of God for their generation. Many local churches have abandoned their global missions giving in favor of more of a focus at home; something Pastor Rick Warren recently referred to as “localism.”

At a gathering of over 2,000 church leaders, Warren called pastors to repent of localism and gain a “bi-focal vision,” one that maintains both a strong local and global ministry focus. When he asked rhetorically, “When should I have a global vision?” Warren answered, “Before you plant the church!” He called pastors to join him in adopting the final 3,000 plus unreached/unengaged people groups, those whom he said have “no Bible, no believers, and no body of Christ.” It is unfortunate that we don’t hear more pastors saying the same thing.

The number of cross-cultural missionaries on the field has been decreasing. Older missionaries are aging out and the needed replacements are not coming to fill their spots or to stand on their foundations to venture to regions beyond. Though there has been a rise in cross-cultural sending from the Global South to unreached people groups, there are many who are going out and making many of the same mistakes of their Global North predecessors. There is still so much opportunity for North Americans and other nations to send workers cross culturally to any one of the over 7,000 unreached people groups, those living with little to no access to the gospel.

With the advent of new technology and communication, emerging generations are receiving information in different forms than the previous generations. There is a critical gap that has formed between those who have the knowledge and experience and those who have not been exposed to it. Those leading frontier focused mission agencies have a lot of catching up to do. Even as a Gen Xer, I was not born into a native digital culture. Email was just becoming a thing when I was graduating high school in 1994, the same year Yahoo was founded! I had to catch up, too.

Even though the U.S. Center for World Mission has been a leader in missions publishing over the past four decades, it too has had to do a lot of catching up in regards to new media and technology. Our own

International Journal of Frontier Missiology started by being published in the name of the International Student Leaders Coalition for Frontier Missions, a fellowship of younger leaders committed to the purposes of the twin consultations of Edinburgh 1980: The World Consultation on Frontier Missions and the International Student Consultation on Frontier Missions. But 1980 was thirty-five years ago. These “younger leaders” are now grandfathers!

If leadership is influence, as John Maxwell says, then how are we doing at influencing in the places where the emerging generations are receiving their information? It’s past time to retool existing channels of communication as well as develop new ones that connect with, mobilize, and equip a whole new generation into the mission of God, and specifically towards the last remaining frontiers of that mission.

We Gen Xers, those in the middle between the Boomers and the Millennials, have been largely absent from the world of longer-term career missions. Gen Xers have been sunk by college debts, pornography, addictions, and offenses caused by continual church leadership scandals.  Therefore very few who have made it through and risen into the places of frontier mission leadership.

However some Gen Xers such as David Platt of the IMB and Dave Datema of Frontier Ventures are just beginning to take the reigns of large frontier mission focused legacies once led by the Builder and Boomer generations. What are other organizations doing to recognize their own emerging leaders? Do they have succession plans in place? Are they working to create some space for new rising leaders to emerge and take their place in leadership? Some are, but they may have swung the pendulum too far and gone all the way to putting all of their focus on the Millennials while overlooking the rising Gen Xers in their midst.

It is critical for the mission movement to work to bridge this large gap between their boomer veterans and these zealous but inexperienced young people. From my vantage point, most North American Millennial followers of Jesus are emerging with a zeal for justice, but very little awareness of the remaining task of world evangelization.

The Gen X mission leaders are the bridges. Though they are fewer in number within the mission enterprise, they are standing in the critical gap between the previous generation and the emerging one. Many are the organizational interpreters and contextualizers between the two groups. If they have paid their dues and are ready to take their leadership to the next level, who is actively making a way for them?

On a final note, as a Gen-Xer myself, I believe that both the themes of justice and the remaining task of world evangelization can and should co-exist. We need to tap into what I believe is a God-given impulse and cry for justice in the Millennial generation. The greatest injustice on earth is the fact that someone could live and die without as much as a taste of the gospel, when there are millions in the Earth who feast on the grace and goodness of God every day. Yet, God has blessed us…not for ourselves, but in order to be a blessing to all nations (ethne).

Now that is a message to which all generations need to respond!

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Twitter: @JohnLambert

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God Desires His House of Prayer

by Ben Zobrist

My Background

I am a son of the US Center for World Mission legacy. I was born and raised in Pasadena, CA and grew up with the Pasadena Campus in my backyard (my childhood home is situated just south of Mott Auditorium).  My parents, Bill and Jill Zobrist, served on staff with the FMF (Frontier Mission Fellowship) in the 80s and 90s. God’s heart for the nations became a reality to me from a young age. In elementary school I went on my first cross-cultural mission trip to serve the poor in Mexico.  During middle school I travelled to Ghana (West Africa) in the summer and then to Uruguay (South America) in the winter. In high school I travelled to Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, and Benin.  By sixteen years of age I had graduated from high school and traveled to over a half dozen nations.

The Millennial Generation

Though my early experience of international travel and mission work might be rare to some, modern technology has provided the millennial generation (Gen Y) with international exposure surpassing every previous generation. Whether it was chatting on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) in the late 90s or texting today on iMessage or WhatsApp this generation is able to access the majority of people from every nation of the earth. Thousands of young people have crossed borders on short- term mission experiences. In addition to international exposure, the millennial generation is commonly known by our interest in social justice.  Consider this millennial Jewish Rabbi’s perspective:

“We are a generation overwhelmingly dedicated to social justice. Where there is injustice, we want to respond, whether in-person, online, or through power of the purse— even when it is that of a teenager who gives what little he can. This impulse can be religiously motivated, much as it has been for me. Yet for many, it is rooted in a fundamental belief in the goodness of people.” [1] (Editors Note: Belief in the inherent goodness of people comes from a Marxist, or secular humanist perspective, not the Bible.)

I am grateful for my generation’s access to the nations and our dedication to justice. However, is the international exposure and interest in social justice drawing my generation into the heart of God to make Jesus Christ known and loved by every tribe, tongue, nation, and people? It is my conviction that international exposure is not enough. The millennial commitment to justice is not sufficient because social justice does not equate to biblical justice— proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom with the works of the kingdom.  In this article I will present my reflections on frontier mission work from a Gen Y perspective.

Understanding God’s Desire for this Generation

Even with my extensive travel and mission exposure I was convinced I would not serve overseas as a missionary. I loved mission work, but I felt it wasn’t for me. There are many Christian millennials like me who had experienced short-term mission work and yet had not committed to the work of world mission. What is needed to captivate the heart of the millennial generation to know God’s purpose for the nations? I learned that loving God leads to loving nations. It is a passionate pursuit of God that will result in a passionate love and commitment to the unreached peoples of the earth.

In the last decade the Global Church has experienced great increase in prayer—the rumblings of intercession and the fragrance of worship. God has been reminding his people of the ancient name he gave us, his House of Prayer (Isaiah 56:7). The Church has been and will always be the House of Prayer. When Jesus entered the temple in Jerusalem He prophesied the eternal identity of God’s people: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’?” (Mark 11:17). This was not a new revelation that Jesus gave in the first century and this is not a new revelation that the Holy Spirit is giving to our generation today. The Apostle Peter put it this way, “You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5). Our highest calling in life is to be a priest— living a life of prayer before God.

The primary desire of God’s heart is for true worshippers in spirit and truth (John 4:23). Every movement (mission, prayer, church planting, disciple making, etc) finds its origin in the heart of God. God desires the hearts of people. God desires worship among the nations. God desires his House of Prayer.

I am convinced that the primary reason God is raising up the House of Prayer movement across the earth is to finish the task of world evangelization. One might ask, “What does the prayer movement have to do with the mission movement?” Everything!  Every unreached/unengaged people group is living in a culture of prayer and devotion: Hinduism, Buddhism, and the most obvious— Islam. Each of these socio-religious

cultures is rooted in prayer and devotion to a deity. I believe that the Holy Spirit is equipping the Church with a vibrant culture of prayer.  God desires that his House of Prayer would be established among every unreached people group and nation.

The House of Prayer movement is God’s divine contextualization strategy. I believe God’s desire for this generation is to raise up worship and prayer in every place of the earth among all peoples and nations (Psalm 57). It is the prayer movement of adoration and devotion to Jesus that will impact all other prayer movements on the earth— those of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

The final frontier of mission work among unreached peoples will not be accomplished without a lifestyle of prayer—fragrant worship and interceding with insight and authority. The Millennial Generation has been given a divine invitation to prepare the earth for the return of Jesus.  In every place where the gospel is being proclaimed there will be a movement of lavish worship and devotion to Jesus Christ.

“For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; In every place incense shall be offered to My name, and a pure offering; For My name shall be great among the nations,” Says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 1:11).

Photo by  David Baxindale

[1] Stanton, Rabbi Joshua. Rabbi Joshua Stanton to Huffington Post newsgroup, “Social Justice in the Millennial Generation,” February 17, 2013. Accessed December 26, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-stanton/social-justice-in-the-mil_b_2708224.html
.

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Feature

Is Our Misinterpretation of the Great Commandment Ruining Our Application of the Great Commission?

by Prudence Dancy

Unfortunately, today’s followers of Christ are not being criticized for loving too much. Rather, we are often observed as being critical, harsh and judgmental in the way we operate. Transmitting our Western ways along with our gospel message is not our only challenge in missions today.

Either being glossed over or just flat out taught incorrectly, it seems the right order of the Great Commandment is easily being ignored in ministry and missions alike. Before you disagree, let’s closely re-examine the facts some of us have taken for granted for decades.

The Great Commandment reads:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength And your neighbor as yourself.

The way most Christians read, teach and act out this text:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength And your neighbor, making sure to put yourself last.

In fact, in Sunday school I learned a song as a little girl called JOY – Jesus, Others and You. This seemed to reinforce the idea that I was last on my list of things that required my love.

Very seldom do we hear anyone say, “If you do not love yourself, your neighbor is in trouble,” or, “If you do not love yourself, you do not know God.”  While these statements may seem strange, they are fundamentally true.

I have worked for 47 years with Christian evangelical ministries in churches, parachurch organizations and here at Frontier Ventures, formerly known as the U.S. Center for World Mission. In my early days here, as I worked side by side with Dr. Ralph Winter, our main goal was to get the word out about the Unreached Peoples – those who did not have access to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The task was of primary importance and rightfully so.

Dr. Winter and his generation were called Builders. This peer group of Christians diligently demonstrated their love for God out of great sacrifice and personal integrity. As a consequence, being personally exhausted or “spent” was often the norm. The Builder’s children, called Boomers, went on to become defined by their work, not particularly their character as were their parents. Family life took second place to their pursuit of career and as a result the Boomer generation has produced the highest divorce and second marriage rate in history. This fragmentation of the family began to produce children who are now called Gen X and Gen Y who had to take care of themselves early on in their development, often creating not only super independence but also cynicism about life. Their abandonment and rejection wounds impacted their ability to function well within relationships. In the absence of the framework of unconditional love and strong family with community ties, a different kind of need has arisen withinChristian workers.

Statistics show that missionaries usually return from the field because they are unable to get along with other missionaries or they have burned out from overwork. In many cases this can come as a result of unresolved personal issues and an overall lack of self-care. It has only been recently that we at Frontier Ventures have sensed the sacred responsibility to help our staff develop self-awareness to endure for the long haul and help them bring personal authenticity to their ministries. Yes, The Great Commission is still our utmost objective. But our journey for getting there is currently being defined differently. We have begun by developing a curriculum for our staff training called Being, Living, Doing, concentrating on allowing our doing to come from the flow of our being and living relationally with God, our self and others.

It is true that we should love God for God’s sake and be involved in his cause. But when Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of the four degrees of love, the highest degree of love he mentioned was to love self for God’s sake. This seems somehow contradictory to what we have been taught.

We must understand that the link between loving God and loving ourselves is intricately connected. Loving yourself must come along with loving God and others. Augustine said, “How can we draw close to God when we are far from our self?  He prayed, “God, grant that I may know myself that I may know You.” After all, if we are made in God’s image, shouldn’t this love of self be a part of our journey to love him?

Sometimes our inability to love God comes from our misconceptions about God. These misunderstandings often stem from our childhood upbringing (relationships including our parents and important events in our life.) Research shows that what a person believes about their earthly father impacts their belief about God no matter what they have been taught. It is one thing to believe and give mental assent to God’s love, for instance, but quite another to internalize and experience with one’s own heart that same fact.

In order to love God we must understand we have been created for an intimate relationship with him. The first time I realized that God was pursuing a relationship with me and wants my heart more than he wants my efforts, it rocked my world.  The kingdom reality of this universe is that the Father, Son, and the Spirit are all conspiring to be with me – to live in me, dwell with me, love me and work through me. It’s the divine conspiracy!  This understanding takes away my performance orientation to try, after receiving my salvation by grace, to add works to the mix to make sure that I am worthy of the gift. But it is through this

understanding and expression of love, coming from the inside out, that substantial works can be made for the kingdom. Good and remaining works should follow our relationship with God just as good fruit can only be produced when connected to the vine, not before. (John 15)

The command to go into all the world and make disciples should be based on a love relationship with the Holy Trinity. This love relationship shows us our own value and worth, gifts and talents and our place in finishing his task. This agape love relationship also allows us to accept our weakness and pronenesses, producing a relationship with God that begins a journey of becoming like his—uniquely us but like him. This process doesn’t ask us to hide or pretend, but rather leads us to become authentic and transparent. It is this that would be translated to the world as the gospel of Jesus Christ. Developing a relationship with God and self takes work and time just as any relationship does. It requires time to care for one’s body, soul and spirit and times of silence and reflection— stepping back and being an audience to our own reactions and values.

This necessary order of loving self and others is always so clearly illustrated to me when I travel. When I fly on an airplane I am always instructed that in the case of losing cabin pressure I must first put on my own oxygen mask before I attempt to assist others. The reason for this clearly illustrates the order of the commandment—I will only be able to truly help others when I have first taken care of myself. Otherwise I run the risk of running out of oxygen before I am able to be of any help. Let’s make sure we do not get the excitement of doing the commission ahead of being and living within the commandment.  Don’t forget that the commandment can inform us how well we will be able to give our utmost for his highest in fulfilling his commission.

About The Author

http://www.renewedliving.org

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Perspectives

Mobilizing Into the Future

by James Mason

The longevity and impact of the Perspectives Course is nothing short of miraculous. Who knew that a mobilization movement would still be going strong 40 years after Ralph Winter gathered a small number of Urbana Mission Conference students at Wheaton College in 1974? Today that movement continues to grow and thrive with over 180,000 Perspectives alumni in the US and over 40,000 in other countries. Our research shows that perhaps as many as 34,000 have begun to serve cross culturally and outside the US as a direct result of taking the Perspectives course. Many more have been awakened to pray and give to the work of God’s mission. Others have adjusted their lifestyles to welcome and reach out to internationals at home. In short, God’s people have been called forward. God, through the Perspectives course, has created a vast “fertile soil” from which he draws his people to join the work he is accomplishing among all peoples.

It’s surprising that Perspectives is still growing and thriving today. Most ministries or education programs don’t have such enduring value. In the early days, Perspectives wasn’t laid out with a careful ministry development plan. It emerged out of Ralph Winter’s passion to see young adults well oriented to live out and carry on God’s mission. Good mission thinking and ideas were cobbled together in a collection of selected articles and book chapters. Over time, dedicated and compelling thinkers, most notably Steve Hawthorne, adjusted and tuned the curriculum. Eventually a powerful and timeless narrative emerged—a story that reveals that ultimately God must and will be glorified in all the Earth with God’s people as key participants. Along the way, with a growing national staff, the delivery of the course was shaped into a sustainable mobilization movement, complete with a system of local class coordinators, class teams, instructors, area teams, and regional leaders.

Today, Perspectives continues with great strength. We’re now averaging over 8,000 new students in the US each year and are anticipating many more as we mobilize new generations as well as new cultural and geographic niches. The Perspectives team is now working to lay a foundation for another great 40 years! In the spirit of our parent organization, Frontier Ventures, we will press beyond our boundaries and the boundaries of frontier mission mobilization. Just as we didn’t understand in 1974 what Perspectives would become, we anticipate that God will surprise us with where he will lead us in the future. We anticipate the future in three ways:

The Course

The curriculum and delivery of the Perspectives course continues to be developed and adjusted. Current developments in Perspectives USA include:

Online class

As online learning becomes more mainstream in our culture, we have developed a team of workers to the growth and improvement of the online delivery of the Perspectives course. With a growing number of students now taking the course online each year (currently about 500 per year), our goals include accommodating many more students while providing the quality and personalized “class” experience we value so much in Perspectives.

New set of teaching videos

We are working on a well produced, high quality set of new videos to deliver the 15 different Perspectives lessons for use in the online class. We believe the videos will also help us develop a smaller live class format for more remote, rural locations where it would be difficult to bring in 15 different live instructors. The video will also be used for ministry promotion, general mobilization, and to help other countries launch initial Perspectives teams started that will in turn launch new movements.

Kindle version

We’ve now produced a combined electronic version of the both the Perspectives Reader and the Study Guide. Due to our complex referencing system in these resources, this took some creativity and innovation on the part of our partner and publisher, William Carey Library Publishers. We’re happy to provide this practical tool which has been in such
high demand.

Live class improvements

The live class experience is the bread and butter of the Perspectives Course. We are recruiting and allocating more staff who can give attention to a variety of improvements. For example, we are moving to improve how we develop and resource our course instructors. Our instructor development team will provide training through online resources and live events as well as improve the way we communicate with and encourage our indispensable pool of instructors. Other developments for our live class include providing lesson plans for coordinators, online grading devices, prayer tools and resources for the blind and hearing impaired.  We want all of our team members to be well resourced so we can continue to insure the quality we expect from the Perspectives experience.

Continue the narrative

A key goal is to continue stewardship of the core Perspectives content or “story.” To do this we must mentor and empower new young thinkers to carry us into the future. Additionally, we’re constantly working to tell this story well and to utilize fresh voices in each new edition of our Reader and Study Guide. We’re regularly invited to add new material to address the latest activities and ideas in mission. Rather than make changes to what we believe is simply a timeless and biblical narrative, we can encourage and partner with other ministries and “new wineskin” type classes that address and mobilize for these important trends.

The Ministry

Perspectives isn’t just a class experience, it’s a community of passionate workers. A few workers are paid, more raise their personal financial and prayer support, and many more are dedicated volunteers. Here are some of the ways this community continues to grow and improve together so that the ministry and movement move forward:

Growing staff and local leaders

Perspectives staff and volunteers are by far our most important resource. Currently in Perspectives USA we have 20 national staff workers, 14 regional directors, dozens of area mobilizers, and many hundreds of class coordinators, graders, and other class team members. We believe we need to multiply these workers to accommodate growth. We are adding national staff, especially in the areas of IT and Communications.

We are also focused on growing regional teams. When these teams, under the leadership of Regional Directors, combine people with administrative skills with people who are gifted networkers and promoters, the result is an increase in the quality of Perspectives and an increase in mission mobilization.

Home office remodel

Frontier Ventures, together with Perspectives USA, invested in a significant remodel of the Perspectives staff offices. We are already feeling the positive effects of a professional and welcoming headquarters. Now as the Venture Center surges forward with a new vibrancy and posture in the missions community, the Perspectives home office is well situated to benefit from and add to this experience. Please come by for a visit.

A national conference

We are excited to announce a Perspectives USA National Conference to be held in Baltimore in July, 2016. This conference will host and gather our national staff, regional directors, and key volunteers (class coordinators, instructors, mobilizers, etc.) who are part of the US Perspectives movement. We will be casting vision, celebrating God’s work through this ministry, giving updates, encouraging the base, and providing practical training.

More specifically, we are also a group of national movements. We are experiencing and looking forward to the growth of Perspectives in many new places and among many new groups.

New audiences

The future of Perspectives, even in the US, must and will include more participation from communities other than our traditional English language and “white” communities. We are dependent on and look to local leaders to lead in mobilization among African American, Native American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, and other cultural communities. Our staff and teams are working to build bridges and serve these communities. We’re also learning to be sensitive to why the different Christian communities may not have been truly co-laboring in mobilization work in the past. Going forward we will innovate both relationally and structurally to see Perspectives become a staple of mobilization in all communities where Christ is followed and his global purposes can be lived out. Our awareness and strategies are also being directed towards other “niche” groups such as the military and college students, as well as various “streams” of evangelicalism like Charismatic/Pentecostal and various denominations or church networks.

More agency partnerships

Perspectives is a movement but even more significantly it is a part of a much bigger movement. We, like our parent organization, Frontier Ventures, realize that in many ways our place has been to serve and partner with the many agencies and mission structures that labor to see the gospel established and expanded among all people groups. We are studying the best ways for Perspectives to partner with other agencies and give our alumni the needed opportunities to connect with the best opportunities to live out their newly discovered world-Christian commitments. In one current example, Perspectives USA is now involved in a strategic partnership with Urbana to see as many of the Urbana ‘15 attendees move right into a Perspectives class after the conference. Both Perspectives and Urbana are investing significant resources and energy to see this happen. Our faith goal is that 1000 Urbana students take Perspectives in 2016.

Perspectives Global

Perspectives USA is just one national program in a collection of movements.  Currently there are established programs in eight other countries. There are emerging programs in nearly a dozen other countries like Costa Rica, Indonesia, Ethiopia, China, Mexico, Peru, and Kenya.  It’s exciting to see Perspectives content now in several different languages—Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. A new project is underway to translate the Perspectives materials into French. Imagine the millions of faithful French speaking Christians in Europe, and especially in West Africa, who could be mobilized by this material. Perspectives’ leaders throughout the world have the challenge and responsibility of helping culturally relevant mobilization emerge and thrive as God calls forth participation in his global movement. We’ve come to believe strongly in “mobilization through education.” Now it’s time to see the innovation and creativity of God’s people as we train many new leaders and multiply the frontier mission movement. The nations aren’t fully discipled until they are mobilized! To this end, we are excited to see our USA staff, Regional Directors, and other veteran team members come alongside the Global team to help with teaching and training events as Perspectives emerges in other countries and contexts.

Hudson Taylor once wrote that “grace can make a few feeble instruments the means of accomplishing great things—things greater than we can conceive.” The Perspectives movement, and the world evangelizing results that have come from this movement, must be solidly attributed to God’s grace, alive and on display in his workers. Our success in mobilization is no different than how God works throughout all aspects of his great mission. Donald McGavran said that people movements to Christ among the unreached “are the outcome of the mysterious movement of the Spirit of God.” Likewise, mobilization movements which awaken God’s people to live for the eternal purposes of God are an outcome of his mysterious activity of grace. Praise God that we who labor in Perspectives are both recipients and agents of that grace.

Perspectives rests firmly in the concrete of mission giants like Ralph Winter. We’ve moved beyond this foundation to build a sturdy framework of both people and program. We continue to be encouraged and supported by an enduring sodality now called Frontier Ventures.  We have top notch thinkers and leaders rebuilding and retooling our movement.  As we move into the future, we innovate on the edges. That is, we trust thousands of passionate mobilizers to pray for their local church and local community to join God in his global mission. We trust them to gather God’s people in life changing class experiences and expose them to God’s great Story. They will do this with quality, with passion, with sacrifice, and with the love and passion of Christ burning in their hearts. And, if God allows his people another 40 years of ministry, the hope and anticipation of the arrival of the kingdom, in its fullness, will keep us in the game.

About The Author

USA National Director,
Perspectives Study Program

http://www.perspectives.org

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Perspectives Global

The Power of Partnership

by Bruce Koch

The Perspectives Global network has grown steadily over the last twelve years. Today there are well-established autonomous national study programs on every continent, in eleven countries. There are ten more countries in various stages of development. Dozens of other countries are eager to start. Translations of Perspectives on the World Christian Movement exist in Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and Spanish. Arabic, Indonesian, and French translations are in process. Our last global gathering brought together over 130 partners, collaborators and interested parties from 24 different countries. But it was not always so.

In the fall of 2001, a survey had been done by a summer intern on the global impact of Perspectives. The concepts had spread far and wide, touching roughly 30 countries through those whose lives had been changed by the course. Alumni brought the teaching with them as they went to other nations, occasionally utilizing the standard curriculum but more often one of the many derivative courses. Of those initiatives, New Zealand, Australia, and India and the UK offered Perspectives in English, more than a dozen countries offered a major derivative in Spanish and as of 2000, Perspectives Korea was just getting started.

The survey had made it clear that the demand for the course went far beyond North America and that we had been remiss in our stewardship of the course. Perspectives was our most effective “mobilization through education” tool and yet when inquiries came from abroad there was not one person in the organization responsible for answering them or supporting the initiative of others. A handful of us decided that needed to change. It had been 27 years since Dr. Ralph Winter had convinced David Howard to allow him to organize the first class as a follow-up for the card signers at Urbana 1973. We had recently completed the major revision of the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement curriculum in 1999 (the 3rd Edition). We knew we had an opportunity and a responsibility to speak into the mobilization movement we had helped to create. We met regularly to agree on how we would respond to the growing desire of leaders in many countries to start their own study programs even though it was not a part of anyone’s official assignment until 2009.

In many ways the greatest asset of Perspectives Global has been our lack of personnel and financial resources.  It has forced us to work through others and invite others to join us simply because they share the same passion for what they know God can do through the course. We have never had the capacity to be an international organization with a hierarchy governed by policies, procedures and purse strings. We were forced to organize ourselves as a distributed multi-organizational team committed to serving a growing peer-to-peer network of partner programs. We choose to lead through servant leadership, teaching and articulating guiding principles. Whatever we have to offer in the way of standardized resources we have only offered as a starting point knowing that if national leaders are entrusted with ownership they will make better choices than we could ever hope to as outsiders.

An obvious part of the legacy of Ralph Winter was his belief in influencing others through publication and education. What may not be as obvious to the outsider is how much he also valued collaboration. Although he was not involved personally in developing Perspectives Global, our whole approach was a natural progression from what we had learned from him. The genius of his method was to attempt great things by seeking first and foremost to influence and work through others rather than attempting to do things directly. It is not surprising that virtually everything we are accomplishing in Perspectives Global is done through partnership and collaboration. Three quarters of those we rely on to serve new movements are not members of our organization. We only have one member serving in another country.  We recently counted 27 formal and informal partnerships.

With the completion of the Spanish and Chinese translations this past year, the emerging demand from over twenty countries is far beyond our current capacity to respond. Things will only get more challenging

when the French translation is completed, another global language of education that will open up even more countries, especially in Africa.

The last few years we have been coming to a greater realization that we cannot continue to add new programs one country at a time. We need to be thinking and planning at all times for multiplication. This means standardizing training, resources and events. It also means working even more through partnerships and empowering others to do the work of supporting emerging programs.

We have run events at a rapid pace this past year with teaching and training events in Mexico, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Cuba and Kenya. What is most thrilling to me is that I only participated in two of those events and was able to entrust the leadership of the rest to others. I am also thrilled that our Costa Rican and Mexican directors are already forging plans to help launch programs in neighboring Central American countries. The Nigerians are asking us to train them to help launch programs in neighboring countries like Ghana. We now have a regional director over Asia who has irons in the fire in Mongolia, Myanmar, Viet Nam and Thailand. Our Spanish support team will meet with key leaders in Costa Rica in January primarily to address the question of how to most effectively equip and empower new leadership from Latin America to meet the growing demand there.

In his classic article, “Four Men, Three Eras, and Two Transitions,” written in the early 80s Dr Winter predicted that the final push to establish a following for Christ within the remaining unreached groups would be largely the work of the Church in Non-Western world. Today we are seeing that prediction become a reality. It is a joy and a privilege to serve that movement.

The Perspectives Global Service Office exists to see Perspectives used as a catalyst to unite the Church in any country around his purpose for his people within history. If God continues to bless our efforts, as he has in the past, we will very likely see the presence of Perspectives study programs increase from the current 21 countries to over 50 countries in the next ten years.

About The Author

Bruce Koch

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Joshua Project

Bringing Definition to the Great Commission

by Dan Scribner

It has been said that a problem well defined is a problem half-solved.  At the 1974 Lausanne Conference, Ralph Winter began to define the Great Commission problem that many of the world’s ethnic people groups remained hidden or unreached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. For the Church to fulfill the Great Commission there needed to be a well-defined target.

During the early years of the U.S. Center for World Mission, Dr. Winter was wisely hesitant to promote a specific people group list. Rounded guestimates were used when referring to people group counts.  With the dramatic changes in technology, interconnectivity and data gathering capabilities, that reality has changed. Joshua Project seeks to fill that need for a specific, accurate and comprehensive people group list to support Dr. Winter’s 1974 Lausanne focus. Joshua Project exists to answer the following questions:

- Who are the ethnic people groups of the world?

- Which people groups are still considered least-reached and in need of a Church-Planting Movement in their midst?

- What ministry resources are available to help outreach among the least-reached?

Joshua Project focuses on catalyzing pioneer evangelism and church planting and identifying those people groups with few Christian believers and with little history of exposure or response to the gospel message.

Since 1995 Joshua Project has compiled and refined a list of the world’s ethnic people groups. The list has been reviewed, critiqued and updated by hundreds of on-site workers, national researchers, denominational leaders and mission strategists. Today this database lists 16,700 distinct people groups of which approximately 7,000 are considered unreached, meaning they have very few disciples of Jesus.  Over 40% of the world’s population lives in these 7,000 unreached groups.  In other words, four out of ten people in the world today live in a people group that has very limited, if any, exposure to the gospel.

As the U.S. Center for World Mission transitions to Frontier Ventures, the Lord has positioned Joshua Project well in this Internet and mobile age. All Joshua Project information is in electronic form, easily downloadable and without cost to those who use it. Thousands of visitors each day interact with unreached people statistics, profiles, photos, maps and more through the Joshua Project website (http://www.joshuaproject.net). Dozens of downloads per day are occurring of Joshua Project raw data files, which is an indication that people are interested in and are finding uses for unreached peoples information. All Joshua Project data uses standard coding, which allows easy integration with other missions datasets.

Joshua Project also now provides an API (Application Programming Interface), which allows users access to the live Joshua Project database as though the data was resident on their own websites and apps.  Joshua Project does the data maintenance and updating; API users develop creative content presentations.

Joshua Project is eager to support prayer for unreached peoples. Some of the ways we do this are with the Unreached People Group of the Day web widget, daily email and mobile phone apps. Each day tens of thousands of people are focused on and praying for the same unreached people group utilizing these resources. Also, prayer cards (available in eight languages) are accessed on the Joshua Project website over 70 times per day. People can download various sets and print them on their own printer.

Fifty-five percent of visits to the Joshua Project website are from outside North America. We are eager to serve indigenous workers in the developing world, and hope to find better ways of achieving this in the future. Some Joshua Project information is available in non-English languages, including prayer cards and non-English web pages. We look forward to the Lord raising up translators to put more unreached peoples content into  other languages.

One example of Joshua Project information being used to catalyze church planting among unreached people groups involves the ministry of ANM, Advancing Native Missions. Workers in a particular country are called together for a conference and given the Joshua Project list of unreached people groups in that country. Individuals are challenged to commit to outreach among one or more specific people groups. This

systematic approach lessens the likelihood of people groups falling through the cracks. Other indigenous focused ministries such as Asia Harvest ministry also use Joshua Project data in a similar fashion. Asia Harvest helps facilitate the work of more than 1,000 indigenous evangelists and church planters many of whom are serving among unreached people groups.

Another example of Joshua Project data being used involves MANI, Movement for African National Initiatives. This continent-wide network of indigenous agencies, churches, and workers has made a copy of the Joshua Project list of people groups for Africa. They reviewed the data country-by-country and are using it for their outreach strategies.

Joshua Project seeks to adapt and serve as we look forward to the future and see realities such as:

- The peoples of the world are in motion, migrating and scattering to different countries.

- Mobile phones have become ubiquitous, widely used even in the developing world. Increasingly, these mobile devices can connect to the Internet, present ministry resources in various formats and even gather information.

- The gospel message is rapidly becoming available in electronic form in the majority of the world’s languages. This availability coupled with widespread Internet access means the gospel can readily flow to people groups that have been cut off from access in the past.

- Indigenous Christian workers are increasingly carrying the load insofar as reaching the people groups in their own countries.

- The people group focus continues to be pertinent to world evangelization and this is being increasingly recognized.

No previous generation has had the clarity, resources and manpower that exist in the global missions movement today. The “problem” of the Great Commission is becoming increasingly well defined through many missions research efforts. Joshua Project is eager to serve Frontier Ventures and the worldwide missions movement in the days ahead.

About The Author

Director, Joshua Project

http://www.joshuaproject.net

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WCIU

Bringing Distance Learning Close to Those Who Need it Most

by Beth Snodderly

Three months after Ralph and Roberta Winter founded the USCWM they established the William Carey International University (WCIU), which is a part of the larger Frontier Ventures family of ministries. The Winters had been involved in Theological Education by Extension and WCIU was—in many ways—an extension of that idea.

WCIU was designed as a “distance” university, long before the Internet and the varied dispersed training available now. Ralph Winter had seen the need for men and women around the world to have acceptable credentials in order to gain respect—especially outside church circles. Ultimately, WCIU’s PhD program was planned so that non-Western leaders could establish their own universities and begin to grant their own

degrees—lowering dependence on the West for education and credentialing. WCIU would also offer degrees that the world could understand, like the MA and PhD, and the subject matter of study would include the full range of God, his Word, and the world. Thus, today, WCIU’s purpose is to prepare men and women to discover and address the roots of human problems around the world. Toward this end, we envision:

- Global leaders empowered to lead their communities to wholeness and human flourishing.

- Communities of scholars researching and advancing the practice of International Development from a kingdom perspective (see Luke 4 and Matthew 5).

- Scholar-activists who are identifying and fighting against evil in all forms, addressing macro-level problems of societies.

- Partnerships and networks with agencies worldwide that are committed to societal transformation.

We are able to assist agencies in offering specialized graduate programs, helping them raise up leaders in areas where they are strong. We have worked with the former LAM (Latin America Mission, now part of UWM—United World Mission) to develop a transformational leadership/internship MA program, and with a Bible translation organization focused on the Muslim world to develop an MA program to train translation consultants. The Center for Health in Mission is currently working with us to develop an MA in global and wholistic health.

The knowledge gained and status conferred by academic degrees is essential for both Western and Majority World leaders who seek to be influential agents of culture change toward human flourishing, addressing problems and fighting evils through their vocations in all spheres of society. WCIU is addressing the asymmetrical balance of power in education between Majority World leaders and their Western counterparts in cross-cultural NGOs by offering affordable and portable graduate degrees in International Development that integrate biblical, historical, and cultural perspectives. These educational opportunities will empower influential, educated leaders to bring the next generation of leaders up to higher levels of education and influence without disrupting the ministry responsibilities of either the mentor or student.

About The Author

President, William Carey International University

http://www.wciu.edu

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INSIGHT

Equipping the Next Generation to Catalyze Kingdom Breakthrough

by Todd Pokrifka

What a privilege it is for me to serve the INSIGHT program as its new National Director during this pivotal transitional season in the history of Frontier Ventures. INSIGHT is a college-level study program that prepares a new generation of world Christian leaders by means of a distinctive interdisciplinary curriculum.  INSIGHT is an acronym standing for INtensive Study of Interdisciplinary Global History and Theology. INSIGHT students can receive a year’s worth of college credit at an affordable cost. INSIGHT’s discussion-based, Socratic approach forms creative problem-solvers who can seek and find God’s truth rather than waiting for someone to spoon-feed it to them.

By learning from God’s work in history, INSIGHT unlocks student participation in the missional purposes of God in the present and the future. What better way to mobilize kingdom workers than by enabling young people to discover how their story fits into God’s great story and by conveying how this story is infinitely more meaningful than the empty, counter-story of the American Dream? As INSIGHT students grapple with some of the deepest and most fundamental barriers to the advance of the gospel, they are propelled to seek solutions that catalyze kingdom breakthrough among the least reached.

Here is a glimpse into the unique contribution INSIGHT can make within the great story of God’s global purpose: A few months ago, a recent INSIGHT alum named Megan was a part of a team that was spending time in Lebanon to refresh missionaries and to reach out to Syrian refugees. On one of their visits to a makeshift refugee camp, she joined a couple of missionaries to meet with a group of women. While the missionaries were trying to describe the kingdom of God, Megan noticed one refugee woman interspersing the English words “Plato” and “perfect forms” among her use of Arabic. Megan soon realized she was

talking about Plato’s theory of the forms—the unchanging, eternal core of reality. This was something she had studied in INSIGHT a couple of years before. The refugee woman, a former English literature instructor in Syria, was asking about whether the kingdom of God was like Plato’s forms. Megan was able to convey through a translator the difference between biblical theology and Plato’s philosophy, helping this educated woman towards a clearer understanding of God’s revealed truth. You see, mere activism was not enough in this situation. Rather, Megan’s training in worldview analysis, history, theology, and philosophy through INSIGHT was needed for this promising refugee to receive a greater grasp of God’s ways.

This story captures one of the many ways that God could use INSIGHT to prepare the next generation to be kingdom-minded, reflective activists.

About The Author

National Director, INSIGHT

http://www.yearofsinsight.org
info@yearofinsight.org
626-398-2472

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Global Prayer Digest

Fill the Bowls of Incense with Buckets, Not Thimbles!

by

“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9-10)

When the Global Prayer Digest started in 1982, no one anticipated the opportunities that could come our way. The goal then and now is to fill up the bowls of incense (see Rev. 5:8-10) for the unreached people groups (UPGs). In the years to come we have the opportunity to fill the bowls much faster than ever before.

In 1982 there were an estimated 17,000 UPGs. Since that time, there has been a tremendous amount of research done by groups like the IMB that have revealed a much clearer picture of the situation. Gone are the days when we have to rely on estimates. During the last 20 years experts and field missionaries scrutinized lists of unreached people groups and developed much more accurate information than we ever thought possible. Their information has been collected by the Joshua Project (See page 35) and made available on the Internet (see JoshuaProject.net). The results include statistics, locations, maps, and (usually) written profiles. The beginning of the Joshua Project brought GPD’s first accurate litmus test for whether or not we were praying for a group that is actually unreached. No more guesswork! We will continue to use Joshua Project’s website as our litmus test, and their information will continue to grow more accurate.

As essential as new information has been, there are other changes that are affecting the worldwide prayer movement. The advent of the digital age has made it possible to get information to people without the constraints of paper and the time it takes for printing. Social media allows people to distribute information in an instant. There are bound to be more changes as the Information Highway goes into overdrive. Such changes have made it possible for GPD materials to become available to small prayer groups in Africa and large prayer movements in the Chinese-speaking world. Prayer materials can go viral, and there is no one who can stop it from happening.

Expanding the Worldwide Prayer Movement

Who uses GPD prayer materials? To the surprise of many, myself included, only about four percent of GPD readers are native English speakers. About 5,000 of the 115,000 intercessors are using printed, email, or web-based materials. The Spanish-speaking world is about 10,000, the Korean intercessors are at 40,000, and Chinese is at 60,000. In the near future, GPD hopes to get prayer materials from these intercessors to share with GPD readers all over the world.

GPD looks forward to accelerating these worldwide movements by adding other languages and cultures to the chorus of prayer for the nations. Africans often begin their church services on Saturday night and pray all night. Could we exchange prayer materials with these amazing intercessors? India is the country with by far the highest number of UPGs. Will they partner with us by providing prayer material for their work, and by directing us as to what we should pray for?

International is our key word, and it fits the direction God has been taking us since the GPD was first translated into Spanish and Portuguese in 1988. We have had a close partnership with Ethne to Ethne since 2006. They have close ties with key international mission networks like MANI in Africa, SEANET in Southeast Asia, COMIBAM in Latin America, and others. These are among the best contacts we can ever hope for! Will there be other mission networks that provide us with prayer fuel in the future? We hope so.

Because of these networks, we are able to get prayer materials directly from field missionaries. They are able to tell us which UPGs need prayer and which ones are most urgent. In some cases they write some or all of the prayer entries. In other cases we rely on the fine materials posted on Joshua Project and other websites to collect information on the UPGs they suggest. When a GPD edition is ready, it can go to the international and domestic prayer networks. I look forward to developing our relationships with these networks in the future so we can have all of our prayer materials determined by
field workers.

Here at Home

In the 28 years I have worked with the GPD, I have never seen a generation like the one I am seeing emerge today! At long last there is a new generation in America that is eager to fill the bowls of incense for the unreached nations. Their zeal has led them to fill up Mott Auditorium on our campus with worship and prayer 20 hours a day, six days a week. These young intercessors are eager for knowledge about the

unreached nations. That’s where the tools we have at Frontier Ventures provide exactly what they need. They could easily join the international prayer movements that use GPD materials to pray for unreached people groups on a daily basis.

The Houses of Prayer Movement will continue to accelerate as they have since their inception in 1999. With this acceleration will come the need for accurate prayer materials for the UPGs. I look forward to the day when members of various Houses of Prayer will join their brethren in China, South Korea, Bolivia, El Salvador, and other places in praying for the completion of the
Great Commission.

When will the bowls of incense be filled for the various UPGs? God only knows. But when we pray for workers, and for hearts to be open to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit among various UPGs, we are bringing the Great Commission another step closer to being completed. That is what Ralph Winter wanted to see happen when he

About The Author

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The Roberta Winter Institute

Destroying the Works of the Devil to Make His Glory Known

by Brian Lowther

Birth of an Institute

The Roberta Winter Institute (RWI) sprouted in the latter months of 2001. Just as the world was reeling from the 9-11 tragedy, Ralph D. Winter was reeling from a tragedy of his own: watching Roberta—his wife and companion of 50 years—slowly fade out of this world due to terminal cancer. In her honor—and because he came to view disease eradication as a crucial new way to glorify God—Winter officially established the RWI shortly after her death.

Ironically and shockingly, not long after establishing the Roberta Winter Institute, Winter was diagnosed with the same type of cancer that took Roberta’s life (multiple myeloma). Over the next eight years he laid the groundwork for all that he hoped the RWI would accomplish, even as his health continually declined. What he left behind was a collection of some of the most interesting and far-sighted ideas of his career.

Passing the Torch

Though its founder passed away in 2009, the work of the Roberta Winter Institute continues on with fresh conviction and vision. That vision is to ignite in the body of Christ a theological shift regarding disease and its eradication. Below are five points that summarize the theological shift we aim to kindle.

1. That disease is not from God, but a work of the devil to be destroyed (1 John 3:8) as part of the larger context of the cosmic war between God and Satan.

2. That disease eradication is not only an effective way to address human suffering, but also a marvelous way to empower missions, validate the gospel message, and demonstrate God’s character.

3. That more diseases than we realize can actually be permanently snuffed out on a global scale, i.e., eradicated.

4. That pennies on the dollar of all health research funds go toward researching the origins of our diseases.

5. That the body of Christ could be vitally helpful and should be actively involved in the cause.

What We Do

To ignite this theological shift, we’re working hard to drive new thinking through our events and resources, and we’re fostering new research and initiatives aimed at conquering the roots of disease. Below are some endeavors we’d like to see into existence. Following that is a list of the firstfruits of our efforts, projects that are just getting off the ground.

Initiatives We’d Like to Catalyze

1. Awareness Campaigns

A good example of an awareness campaign we’d like to inspire is Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. Perspectives is perhaps the most effective and widely used mission mobilization tool of the last forty years. This 15-week study program has inspired and directed countless souls into their most strategic role in world missions. Can a similar program be developed for the cause of disease eradication?

2. Funding Campaigns

A little known fact is that Rotarians have been at the forefront of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative since it began in 1988. In that time the number of polio cases worldwide has decreased by more than 99%.[1] Recently the Rotary Foundation raised $200 million in three years[2] to help tackle the last 1% of polio cases worldwide. They did this by challenging each of their 34,000 clubs to raise $2,000 per year, for three years. For comparison sake, if each of the roughly 314,000 Protestant churches in the United States[3] followed the Rotarian pattern, over $1.8 billion would be generated in three years.

3. Prayer Movements

Prayer has always been a crucial element to missions. No one questions Samuel Zwemer’s assertion that “the history of missions is the history of answered prayer.” In the future, we expect the same will be said of diseases that become eradicated.

4. Special Purpose Organizations

Obviously a whole host of additional organizations will be necessary, everything from scientific research to public health education and policy to vaccine delivery efforts and more. Organizations like the Carter Center provide patterns to follow. However, we see great wisdom in starting small, “for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” (Zec 4:10)

Firstfruits

Thankfully God has already connected us with a handful of people who desire to partner with likeminded souls and experiment on the peripheries with solutions that more established institutions can’t or won’t consider.

1. Institute for Study of the Origins of Disease

Winter long dreamt of establishing a research organization that would conduct scientific and social research about the origins of disease. In February 2014 we convened an all-day summit to brainstorm about such an organization, including potential diseases on which to focus. The result was the launch of a postgraduate level research institute headed by biochemical geneticist Richard Gunasekera.

2. Horrifying Creation Book

Quoting C.S. Lewis, “All creatures cause pain by being born, and live by inflicting pain, and in pain they mostly die.” (The Problem of Pain) Is this the way God intended things? Or has Satan corrupted natural processes to produce things like malevolent parasites and carnivorous predators? The aim of this project is to integrate scientific evidence with the assumption that all violence in nature—especially disease—is the result of nature being corrupted by Satan and his fallen angels.

3. Database on Human Suffering

There are a number of databases that track disease, corruption, poverty and other causes of human suffering. There are also databases—such as the Joshua Project—that provide statistics about unreached people groups. Can these two types of databases be combined to determine the people groups in most need of both the light of the gospel and the alleviation of suffering? We think so. That’s why we’re fostering a feasibility study regarding this concept.

Kingdom Breakthroughs

As a joint project of William Carey International University and Frontier Ventures, the Roberta Winter Institute aspires to fill this crucial niche: to be one of many catalysts seeking kingdom breakthroughs among unreached people groups. But catalyzing kingdom breakthroughs among unreached people groups isn’t merely about planting viable, evangelizing, indigenous church movements. In the big picture, evangelism and discipleship can be viewed as the recruitment and training of “soldiers” for a war. Evangelism—or recruitment for the kingdom—is not the sole divine objective. To quote Winter again, “recruitment before battle is a priority, but merely a priority.” Once recruited, these new soldiers with their transformed lives must battle the “works of the devil,” (1 John 3:8) such as spiritual darkness, corruption, and disease. As they address the roots of these problems, their good works will then legitimize and enable further evangelism, resulting in still more recruits for the battle of the kingdom. In this perspective the mission of the Body of Christ is greatly enhanced from simply getting people into heaven, to restoring God’s reputation and making his glory known.

To find out more about the Roberta Winter Institute, visit our website: http://www.robertawinterinstitute.org

[1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Polio

[2] http://www.polioeradication.org/tabid/461/iid/189/Default.aspx

[3] http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html#largest

About The Author

Director, The Roberta Winter Institute

http://www.robertawinterinstitute.org

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Impacting the Unreached in Our Own Backyard

by Jerome Hannaman

Today we live in a world where many of the different peoples and cultures are now here in America. These people groups are known by many as the diaspora, which means “dispersed.” It used to be that frontier mission was only understood through the paradigm of people going overseas. Today many of the unreached peoples of the world have come to us.  As John Orr, of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC said, “Los Angeles is the most religiously diverse city in the world.”

The potential is best described by our own Roberta Winter, when she wrote:

“Like a master chess player, God has moved representatives from unreached people groups far from their homelands all over the world and has plunked them down in the midst of traditionally Christian populations, essentially saying, ‘You have not gone to them, so I have brought them to you. Now tell them!’”

With the peoples of the world moving to cities  like Los Angeles and mingling together, it offers the mission world both a great challenge and a great opportunity.

Ethnic L.A. is a cooperative network of researches and church planters working within the world of diaspora mission. One objective of Ethnic L.A. is to be able to know who these peoples are and where they live in the urban setting of Los Angeles so that the local churches can engage the unreached peoples in their communities. We also desire to assist missionaries who return from oversees, either for education, health, family issues or retirement, to be able to know and understand the opportunities available here so that we can connect them with their people group locally. They can continue their ministry here in the U.S. among

the diaspora and make a great impact. However, this model is contingent on supporting churches getting the vision of today’s diaspora world, the unreached peoples that are here in the U.S., and continuing to financially support these kind of missionaries.

Through our research, we have found over 300 different ethnic groups in Los Angeles. They are predominantly from Latin America and Asia. Our research also shows that there are 325 Buddhist centers, 115 Jewish centers, 113 Islamic Centers, 66 Hindu centers, 17 Sikh centers and 10 Taoist or Daoism Centers in the greater Los Angeles area, with new ones being discovered all the time.

Why has God placed Frontier Ventures here, just outside of one of the major international cities of the world?—perhaps for just such a time as this.  We believe that we have a very strategic opportunity to impact the unreached peoples, not simply “over there,” but right here in our own backyard.

We invite you to find out more about how you can join with us to make an impact through prayer, research, mobilization, and local engagement in greater Los Angeles and beyond.

About The Author

For Frontier Ventures & Ethnic L.A. Network

jerome.hannaman@frontierventures.org

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William Carey Library Publishers

Equipping Workers to Build God's Kingdom

by Jeff Minard

Our work at William Carey Library Publishers is not to just build an audience, but to engage communities around our brand and content.  Our priority is to offer books that catalyze breakthroughs among the unreached—primarily Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu worlds.  We also shed light on “frontiers” in mission thinking—like Environmental Missions or the confluence of Christian Mission and Economic Systems, subjects nobody else is tackling.  We cover the Protestant church in Vietnam and tell the story of Jesus in Thai (translated into English). Ralph Winter started doing this in 1969: direct to the community on breaking topics. Over the last 45 years, WCL has published some 300 titles and sold over one million mission-related books. One quarter-million of those are through the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement program alone.  Today, WCL carries on the vision of its founder to “publish, at reasonable cost, the best in current thinking on world mission.”  In 2008 we published six new books; last year we published 18 new mission titles.

Reputation

Recent acquisitions and shifts in Christian publishing have left WCL and IVP as the primary destinations for mission author manuscripts.  Many missionaries consider us the primary avenue through which to publish their work, and many new authors start with us.

This note came from an author recently:

“… it is the legitimating function of the book that makes me so interested in publishing with WCL...   WCL is well-respected and you do serve a gatekeeper function in the mission community, at least the mission community as I have experienced it. Publishing with WCL will say to the … missionary, ‘you belong.’”

A further advocacy of WCL’s name and reputation is in the reviews printed in IBMR, Missiology and EMQ—at least one review from a WCL book every issue—sometimes two. We are mentioned in the readings, other reviews, and  random references made throughout each issue and in the bibliographies added to each article by the authors.

We are the mission agency publisher of choice. We have done WEA books for 7 years, EMS books for 22 years and SEANET books for 11 years.  This branding ensures our quality is maintained by all levels of stakeholders, and our topics are today’s breakthroughs.

- We are the primary publisher called on by Fuller Theological Seminary School of Intercultural Stuides proffessors for unpublished classic volumes by Alan Tippett and Donald McGavran.

- We apparently are the first choice for mission patriarchs.

Coming soon are:

- First biography of J. Christy Wilson

- Revision of Fouad Accad’s Building Bridges by his grandson Martin.

- An unpublished Roland Allen manuscript.

Customer Profile from Random Sample

82%          buy our for personal reading, not for a class or assignment

81%          are evangelical

64%          male

36%          female

63%          have taken the Perspectives course

61%          read Mission Frontiers

53%          buy a book from WCL more than once a year

49%          are financial supporters of missionaries

49%          use Facebook daily

48%          have known about WCL for 6-15 years

39%          have been long-term missionaries

37%          read from a book every day

22%          have known about WCL for 5 years

3%            buy 50-100 WCL books every year!

Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. -Deu 32:3 KJV

About The Author

William Carey Library
General Manager

http://www.missionbooks.org

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