God’s Global Mission and the Local Church
I left one week after graduating from college to go to work among an unreached people group (UPG) in the foothills of the Himalayas. I left for a two year term and was allowed to extend that term for another year. In those three years my small team strategized to get the gospel message to our target UPG. We learned the language, trekked from village to village identifying needs of the people and sharing the Jesus Film. We hosted over one hundred volunteers who came to work among our people, and partnered with Asian Missionaries for meaningful follow up and discipleship. The work was stressful, exhilarating, not entirely legal, and formational beyond any other experience of my life.
The first Sunday after I returned from those life changing three years one of my pastors greeted me with enthusiasm, “We are so glad you are back! How was your trip?!” I knew what he meant, but I was still disappointed. I had been transformed. I had lived and worked in another world. I was a different person than when I had left, but to most of the people at my home church I had been on a long trip, and they had not been part of it with me.
Currently I serve with Christ the King Anglican Church (CTK) in Boone, NC. We are not a large church, but we have sent out four Cross Cultural Workers. We have sent out two families and three singles to serve cross-culturally. Their work includes scripture translation, medical mission, and relational evangelism among UPGs in restricted locations. Each worker has a support team that meets and communicates regularly with their cross-cultural worker. These church support teams are called Advocate Teams or Barnabus Teams. In addition to these teams, the entire church prays for these workers, their families, and ministries in the prayers of the people AND in a monthly missions prayer meeting after our Sunday service—lunch is provided! Our prayer ministry has created a Signal feed that features one of our workers every day with up-to-date prayer requests. Though these families are spread out and isolated, they are actively connected to our little church in the mountains of North Carolina. We need each other.
I also serve as the Global Missions Advocate for the Diocese of Christ Our Hope (DCOH). The churches of the diocese of Christ Our Hope have approximately one-hundred and sixteen connections in fifty-four countries. Around twenty of those connections are with cross-cultural workers sent out by our churches. We are in the process of forming a support network for those workers, an International Deanery, that will facilitate a strong ecclesial support network for those cross-cultural workers. The Deanery is led by Bishop Steve Breedlove along with a dean based in the field, and a small team of volunteers in the US. We are making progress to better send and support those whom God is calling to serve in places where there is little to no church.
The world is broken, and even in “Christian” contexts we can experience the difficulty of sharing the Gospel of Christ where it has been distorted, downplayed, deleted, or actively suppressed. Cross-cultural work adds the challenges of language and cultural difference, spiritual strongholds, and economic, governmental, and geographical walls. These challenges should be not confronted by solitary—though brave and committed—workers. Sending agencies pay a crucial part, but the expertise offered by parachurch organizations such as Anglican Frontier Missions, SAMS, and others does not supplant the need for spiritual and episcopal support directly from the church and her bishops.
Unreached People Groups have so few Christians that their culture will not be reached unless people from other cultures go to them. That may be a near culture or a far culture, but someone has to go, and they should be sent well. Everywhere in the world where we have many churches, there are not enough; where there are healthy clergy, they are too few; where the lost are all around us, lives and families change slowly. How much more should the church support those who are working where there is no church, where there may not be a single clergy person in a population of tens of millions of people, and where following Christ may literally mean losing home, family, and vocation.
I can personally testify that the church’s involvement in global mission is life-giving to the sending church. At CTK because of our cross-cultural worker relationships our prayer life is more vibrant, our vision is keen for the lost, and we are reminded weekly that God’s purposes are global. Regular communication, prayer, and advocacy for the unreached have changed the way we worship and the way we think about our own community. Not all are called to go, but all of us are called to participate in God’s Global Mission.
Deacon Matt Foster
Matt is a former cross-cultural worker in East Asia. He has worked with christian leaders in over thirty countries. He is currently a Deacon at Christ the King Anglican in Boone, the volunteer Global Missions Advocate for the Diocese of Christ Our Hope, Chair of the New Wineskins Anglican Partners, and an Anglican Frontier Missions board member. Matt and Alison are the proud parents of six children.
