Mission Resources
Fellowship International has some of their resources available. For more information contact us at: international@fellowship.ca.
Choosing a Future for U.S. Missions
by Paul McKaughan, Dellanna O’Brien, William O’Brien
Which future will you choose? Many mission organizations are at a crossroads. Methods that worked well in the past may lead to stagnation. Choosing a new path through visionary planning and innovative operation can lead to progress. Most mission leaders agree that change must come to their organization, but few know how to embrace it.
Choosing a Future for U.S. Missions takes a hard look at current mission realities and offers you promising new possibilities for the future. Dialogue between church leaders and mission agency leaders highlights some current dilemmas:
· Mission has become budget-driven.
· Command structures and guilt trips evoke no response from today’s generation.
· Mission headquarters are afraid to decentralize.
· U.S. church is compassion-depleted.
This volume also introduces you to an innovative technique to help you create a new vision for your organization’s future: “horizon mission methodology.” This process is adapted from NASA to help project your agency into the future to identify new areas of concern in the present. You can expect startling results!
Families on the Way · Preparing yourself and your children Send Me! Your Journey to the Nations
Eternal Impact
Eternal Impact is a customizable and interactive 10-week study that takes you and your small group or Sunday school class beyond just knowing that God wants to use you and your church.
Throughout the course you will explore biblical and modern-day examples of ordinary people who chose to align their lives with God’s purpose.
Through six strategic roles, Eternal Impact teaches ordinary Christians how to connect in dynamic ministry across the street and around the world.
Eternal Impact is a catalyst that celebrates Acts 1:8 in everyday life—discovering God’s sovereign plan and purpose for individual Christians and the entire Church body.
by Marion Knell
More and more families raise their children abroad. Business people, military personnel, diplomats, missionaries: we live in a highly mobile world. Such children grow up with divided loyalties: an allegiance to their parents’ culture, but with friends and outlook far closer to the host culture. They are TCKs – Third Culture Kids. You know you are a TCK when you want to throw a party and your friends live on three different continents….
The author’s sane, practical approach will prove invaluable for:
· Building bridges with ‘home’
· Living in non-Western cultures
· Making the right educational choices
Foreign to Familiar
Foreign to Familiar is a splendidly written, well-researched work on cultures. Anyone traveling abroad should not leave home without this valuable resource! I highly recommend it as required reading for cross-cultural workers. Sarah Lanier's love and sensitivity for people of all nations will touch your heart. This book creates within us a greater appreciation for our extended families around the world and an increased desire to better serve them.
—Dr. Kingsley A. Fletcher, President, Hope for Africa, Inc. North Carolina
Fresh Encounters
by Daniel Henderson with Margaret Saylar
The early New Testament Church was birthed in prayer. It was sustained by prayer. The importance of this
church praying together is evident throughout Acts. But today, in most churches, corporate prayer isn’t even
thought about, let alone practiced. If we want to see a fresh out-pouring of God’s Spirit in our churches, it’s time to bring the corporate prayer meeting back in vogue! But not like it was years ago. No, we need something fresh and powerful. This book presents a different model for praying together. It is a relatively new model that has seen results in churches all across this country. Put it in practice and your church will experience the transforming power of Jesus Christ as you seek Him through united, worship-based prayer.
How to be a World Class Christian
by Paul Borthwick
You can be a part of God’s global action—from your own neighbourhood to the “ends of the earth.” As you read and study you will learn
· What it means to be a world-class Christian
· How you can be a missionary no matter where you live
· Where to get information about worldwide needs and opportunities
· How God is calling you to action now.
While this book is intended for the reader’s personal enjoyment and profit, it is also designed for group study. A leader’s guide with reproducible Response Sheets is included inside this book.
Let the Nations Be Glad!
by John Piper
“If I had to choose only one book on missions, Let the Nations Be Glad! would be it. Don’t read it unless you’re willing to have your eyes reopened to the highest possible motive for being about the business of reaching the world for Christ.” —Duane Litfin, President, Wheaton College.
“No one has done a better job of turning our faces and hearts toward the true and living God than John Piper. He provides here a biblically insightful nudge that confronts the smallness of our worldview with the global greatness of God’s passion for the lost. Please read this book”.
—Joseph M. Stowell, President, Moody Bible Institute
“The most important book on missions for this generation. John Piper places missions where it belongs: at the heart of God’s desire to be glorified among the nations.”
—R. Albert Mohler Jr., President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Ministering Cross-Culturally
by Sherwood G. Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers
Ministering Cross-Culturally examines the significance of the incarnation for effective cross-cultural ministry. The authors demonstrate that Jesus needed to learn and understand the culture in which he lived before he could undertake his public ministry. The ideas in this book have proven to be successful for thousands of ministers, and the book is destined to be a resource of choice for years to come.
Missions in the Third Millennium
by Stan Guthrie
Christianity is the world’s most global faith. Evangelical Christianity, meanwhile, is the world’s fastest growing major religion in terms of conversion growth. And yet, at the dawn of the third millennium, the church’s primary task (“go and make disciples of all nations”) remains undone. Missions in the Third Millennium charts 21 trends—both positive and negative – with continuing significance for the Great Commission community in the 21st century. This volume, written by a keen observer of the global missions movement, offers insights to help students, churches, missionaries, agencies, and Christians from outside the West grasp the big picture and take practical steps for more effective involvement. Notes, suggestions for further reading and discussion questions are included.
Operation World
by Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk
The definitive prayer guide to the nations, peoples, and cities of the world.
· Completely updated and revised—the first time for eight years
· Key background information for every country
· Major prayer challenges gathered direct from hundreds of on-site Christian workers across all denominations
· Answers to prayer carefully logged (new for this edition)
· Complete with all-new maps, cross-references, addresses, and indexes
· The most comprehensive, up-to-date, and wide-ranging compilation of prayer information ever produced.
In your hands, a book to change the world.
Re-Entry: Making the Transition from Missions To Life At Home
by Peter Jordan
“As I read the Re-Entry manuscript, I kept thinking ‘if only Re-Entry had been written by William Carey two hundred years ago, thousands of missionaries would have been spared the shock and the difficulties of reentry…”
—Dick Hillis, Founder, O.C. International
“Peter Jordan’s Re-Entry…is must reading for returning missionaries, missions committees and church members, so the often painful transition can be eased for these servants of the Lord.”
—Kevin Dyer, Chairman, International Teams
“This is essential reading by everyone with a heart for missions; those who send, those who are sent and especially those on the welcome committee when they return!”
—Graham Kerr, Formerly the Galloping Gourmet, then an eight-year missionary with YWAM; now hosting TV cooking shows and writing cookbooks.
by Steve Hoke and Bill Taylor
“What could be more electrifying than keen guidance about the maximum role God has for you? Two outstanding authors lift this book above all others on this issue."
—Ralph Winter, US Center for World Mission
“We want the world to know Jesus, but how? Here’s a book to show the way. It sparkles, it encourages, it informs, and it makes the steps to get there not so impossible to take. You can make the difference, and this book can be a pivotal part!” —Patrick Johnstone, WEC International, Author, Operation World
Serving as SENDERSby Neal Pirolo
As an ordinary human being interested in missions yet called to stay at home, how can I get involved in the Great Commission of world evangelization? You can serve as a sender!
Those who go and those who serve as senders are like two units on the same cross-cultural outreach team. Both are equally important. Both are dynamically integrated. Both are moving toward the same goal of the fulfillment of the Great Commission. And both are assured success, for those in God’s work are on the winning team!
Starting Reproducing Congregations: A Guidebook for Contextual New Church Developmentby Dr. Daniel R. Sanchez, Dr. Ebbie C. Smith, Dr. Curt Watke
The 21st Century Church is poised to make the greatest church starting impact in the history of Christianity. This is due primarily to two significant factors: a worldwide profound sense of spiritual hunger and an unprecedented commitment to church starting.
A convergence of religious and socio-political transitions in the dusk of the 20th Century has contributed toward a deep sense of spiritual hunger in the dawn of the 21st Century in both the western and non-western areas of the world. The astonishing collapse of communism, the dramatic decline to atheism, and the significant transition from a secular to a postmodern worldview have led key church leaders to conclude that a “new Apostolic Age” has emerged.
In response to the marvelous challenge of this new Apostolic Age, this book, Starting Reproducing Congregations: a Guidebook for Contextual New Church Development, presents biblically sound principles, logically developed procedures, and innovative, practical methodologies that will enable the church starter to design contemporary, culturally contextualized strategies to start and multiply churches at home and around the world.
The Church is Bigger Than You Thinkby Patrick Johnstone
“The growth of the church today is on a scale that is unique in the history of the world.” That is the thesis of The Church is Bigger Than You Think. Comprehensive in scope and contemporary in accent, this volume is rich in missiological insights.
Anchored in the eternal perspective of Biblical truth, this book guides the reader through the historical development of the Christian Mission before launching into a practical discussion of the structures and strategies needed. Practical suggestions for breaking down the barriers among local churches, training institutions and mission agencies abound. Graphs, charts and diagrams facilitate understanding and a sprinkling of appropriate personal illustrations adds to the vitality of the book.
Although encouraging, Johnstone is also sobering as he identifies the challenges—geographical, urban, cultural, sociological, ideological and spiritual—to be met in order to accomplish the goal of “a church of every people and the gospel for every person. An incredibly rich source of recent statistics, this book is also a devotional masterpiece.
This book is one of a kind. It is an indispensable companion to Operation World. It provides the framework to understand what God is doing in our world, why He is doing it and how you can be part of the action."
The Effective Missionary Communicatorby Paul Goring
What kinds of persons become effective long-term missionaries? How are they different from those not so effective? Painful cross-cultural adjustments during the earliest period of his 29 years of varied missionary service with Christian Missions in Many Lands in Colombia, South America, created in Dr. Paul Goring a long-standing and vital interest in the formation of persevering, successful missionaries.
In an extensive mail survey of nearly 200 missionaries in Africa and Latin America, Paul Goring explores factors such as personality type, dogmatism, acculturation, and language learning and how these factors relate to a productive long-term missionary career. Mission agency and missionary training institution executives, local church mission committees, and those considering future missionary service are just a few of the groups who can profit from a study of this volume.
The Present Future
by Reggie McNeal
“Reggie McNeal throws a lifeline to church leaders who are struggling with consumer-oriented congregations wanting church for themselves. The Present Future will recharge your passion.”
—Rev. Robert R. Cushman, senior pastor, Princeton Alliance Church, Plainsboro, New Jersey
“The momentum of God that allows visionary ministries to experience exponential growth stalls for the lack of great management (having the right systems and people in place to move to the next level). This is a must read for the young entrepreneur at the beginning of ministry or the seasoned pioneer!”
—Mike Slaughter, senior pastor, Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, Tipp City, Ohio
“I would highly recommend this book to any person interested in the current state of the Church in North America and the future of that Church. It is time that we pay attention to the realities of our ministry context and like David’s ‘Men of Issachar,’ discern the right path into the future.”
—Rick E. Morrow, pastoral care coordinator, U.S. Army Special Op. Command, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina
Today’s ALL-STAR Missions Churchesby Tom Telford with Lois Shaw
This unique resource highlights churches throughout the country that have developed excellent missions programs using the particular gifts and abilities of their members. Through their examples and Tom Telford’s practical suggestions for implementation, your church will discover a variety of unique ideas for enhancing your missions program, improving the support of current missionaries, and working effectively with missions agencies.
Treasure in Clay Jarsby Lois Y. Barrett, Darrell L. Guder, Walter C. Hobbs, George R. Hunsberger, Linford L. Stutzman, Jeff VanKooten, Dale A. Ziemer
If you saw a missional church, what would it look like? What patterns of behaviour and practice would you find there? Building on the ground laid by the book Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Darrell Guder et al. 1998), Treasure in Clay Jars centers on case studies of nine missional congregations from across North America that are diverse in their denominational affiliations, worship styles, political stances, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The book explores eight concrete “patterns” common to these churches. Although the patterns may be different in each setting, they can be recognized in any congregation seeking to participate in God’s mission in the world.
The team that authored this book believes that “missional” says something not so much about the activities of the church as its character: “The church does not exist for itself, but for participation in God’s mission of reconciliation….Mission is the character of the church in whatever context it exists”. The congregations studied here are “clay jars,” but each carries in its witness a remarkable treasure that points to God’s power and purposes.
Vision for the Nations
Great things happen for the Kingdom when people see the different tasks in which to participate. Vision for the Nations clearly identifies what remains to be done to reach all nations for Christ and how the Church can strategically participate! Get involved, see God’s big picture and find out how you can fit into His plan!
"Already, thousands of Sunday Schools and small groups around the world have been impacted by this study. With this updated version for the new millennium, we are looking forward to an even greater number of churches discovering and fulfilling their vital role in world evangelization!" (Dave Imboden, Editor, Vision for the Nations)
Conflict or Connection
by Levi Keidel
Keidel, speaking from a lifetime of experience, connects with readers as he takes on the topics of missions from a practical and personal perspective. Gripping stories pull the reader into current mission debates. Anyone considering missions should read this book as a starter. Field workers seeking to build and maintain relationships with family members, supporting churches, team members, and nationals will find Keidel’s openness and frankness both challenging and refreshing.
—Tom Steffen, School of Intercultural Studies, Biola University, La Mirada, California
“Keidel takes on the “I love the world, it’s people I can’t stand” syndrome and underlines the conventional wisdom of ministry success at home and aboard: 95 percent of Christian ministry is getting along with others. His book reflects a both-feet-on-the-ground wisdom desperately needed in a high tech/low touch world.
—Grant McClung, coordinator of education, Church of God World Missions, Cleveland, Tennessee