Top 5 Ways to Support Overseas Mission

10 Jun 2010

Pentecost offers us a time to reflect on the whole world’s need for the good news – locally and globally. Bob Henderson, chairman of our council for world mission, shares five ways to connect our own communities with cross-cultural mission.

1. Befriend an Immigrant Community Arrange a competition to gather information about people groups in your church's area that you could reach out to. It’s like overseas mission in your back yard! Your “mission secret agents” can get information from people they know or from places like the Refugee Services. This is a great way to raise awareness of other cultures in your area, and will hopefully lead to a people group being adopted by your parish and new friendships being formed with them.

2. Send a Mission Ambassador Overseas Like most things in life, you just can’t beat being there. Have someone from your church visit, work and live for a brief time with a mission partner overseas. If that’s financially out of reach, your parish could join with neighbouring parishes to raise the funds. A student may be looking for something to do in a gap year, or someone might have time between job changes, or looking for a retirement adventure. Expect loads of photos and exciting stories when they return.

3. Adopt a Mission Partner There are heaps of mission partners doing great work overseas – but choosing a specific team for your faith community to support helps focus your energy. Ways of showing your support are only limited to your creativity, too. Arrange a Skype interview via the internet with your partner one Sunday morning, hold a fundraising dinner or debate, and help them feel at home when they come back to New Zealand for a break. CMS might be a good place to start: www.nzcms.org.nz.

4. Create a Mission Experience Work together with one or more mission agencies to set up a hands-on display where your parish can experience a simulated mission reality. The idea is to allow your church to “walk through” the life conditions that some people overseas live with every day. These displays can be as simple or convoluted as you like, and challenge people to “keep on walking” after the experience by supporting an overseas project or getting more involved in global issues.

5. Plan a Mission Strategy It can be hard to know where to start when writing down a plan. But overseas mission happens because our relationship is with God, so our plan begins with our relationships. In your parish, pull together a group to ask the big questions: “Where are we now? What are we doing now? Where are we going? How do we want to get there? Who will we participate with?” Your shared answers will clarify the challenges ahead and will help you plan to meet your mission goals.

WORDS: Bob Henderson