|
Ministries
| | | |
What We Do To Fulfill Our Mission
Overview
Mission to Unreached Peoples is an interdenominational and international agency striving to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who have not heard. We champion the potential of the entire body of Christ in missions and help train, place, and support vocational workers, often in countries closed to traditional missionaries. At the same time we highly value and place those with specialized ministry training. With headquarters in Seattle and over 250 missionaries in over 20 countries in Asia and Eastern Europe, Mission to Unreached Peoples seeks to obey the Great Commission of Jesus Christ by investing our lives, gifts, resources, and vocational skills in God's work. Typically, our missionaries serve as vocational workers, evangelists, church planters, Bible teachers, or in the field of education (teaching English or other arena). We seek to model a life and ministry that integrates both spiritual and physical ministry.
Bible Schools | Children's Ministries | Church Planting | ESL | Member Care | Medical | Relief & Development | Tentmaking | University | Youth | Other
Bible Schools and Training Centers
Several Mission to Unreached Peoples missionaries are actively teaching in Bible Schools and other Bible training centers. For example, Mission to Unreached Peoples works in partnership with Ministry to Educate and Equip focused on training church leaders in Central and Eastern Europe. We are also involved in a Biblical training center in Albania. Two programs in the Philippines focus on Bible training, including a national training center for the Aeta people and a second outreach in the Northern Philippines training pastors for rural churches. Workers in several countries are involved in both formal and informal Bible and discipleship training in various forums. Training centers are in place or at start-up stages in India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Training programs in Indonesia focus on missions training for national workers and mobilizing and training Indonesian Christian college students. Several training programs in Asia focus on training local pastors.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Children's Ministries
It is impossible to be involved in reaching the unreached without a consistent ministry to the children of the world. Many of our missionary families are involved daily in children's classes and Sunday school outreaches. In Russia, a team is involved in ministry to children in local churches and orphanages. Outreaches in Cambodia, China, Hungary, Nepal, Thailand and elsewhere specifically address the needs of abused and neglected children. We are serving in various settings such as hospitals, orphanages, refugee camps, and various children's homes. Evangelistic outreaches in Taiwan are focused on elementary and secondary schools. Several of our members teach in or direct pre-school and primary school ministries. A ministry in the Philippines led by nationals provides a home and a school for children of the Aeta people group.
Several of our workers are involved in facilitating Christian foster care. Opportunities to teach children, including English classes, are widespread.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Church Planting/Evangelism
The mission of Mission to Unreached Peoples is to obey the great commission and model Christ so that unreached people will come to know Him. To that end, we focus on evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. We concentrate our activities in Asia and Europe, and much of our work is in the 10/40 window. An increasing emphasis of many of our workers is the oral communication of Bible through audio and video "story" presentations.
Our mission is to make disciples among unreached peoples by strategically placing mission-motivated Christians to live and work among them. This involves pioneer church planting outreaches utilizing friendship evangelism and discipleship and providing support to existing local churches as needed in areas such as teaching.
In Cambodia, after many years of war, the relative freedom of the past few years has resulted in significant church growth. Mission to Unreached Peoples workers are strengthening national church workers for the spread of the Gospel. There are opportunities for ministry personnel in many areas including church planting, urban ministry, children at risk, youth work, discipleship, music, and evangelism. Specific church planting efforts are underway in both urban and rural settings including an outreach to an unreached group in Northern Cambodia. Radio programs are produced in Khmer and a current project is publishing Bible commentaries.
In southwest China and Southeast Asia, several people groups are learning about the Gospel for the first time from our workers who are pioneering new areas and developing cultural and language appropriate Bible study and training materials. These are people groups with little or no known Christians. Elsewhere in China, often from a platform of English language centers or University or TESOL teaching, effective evangelism is going forward. This is frequently in cooperation with the existing Chinese church. Outreaches from northern Thailand are targeting previously unreached tribal peoples in Laos and Myanmar and throughout the Mekong river basin.
In India, Mission to Unreached Peoples is targeting upper caste Hindu peoples as well as the untouchables and other backward castes.
An outreach of Mission to Unreached Peoples in Japan is specifically committed to long-term church planting and discipleship work among the Japanese and church planting efforts, including one using a cell church model, are underway in several locations. An outreach of Mission to Unreached Peoples in the Philippines is planting churches in rural areas and training national pastors. A growing field is the Turkic Muslim world, including Central Asia. The block of Muslim Turkic peoples, although they are each distinct from one another, consist of various peoples and societies both culturally and linguistically related to one another. Short-term outreaches take place each summer, and a long-term team with a church planting focus is in place in Turkey. Teams also are developing elsewhere in Central Asia.
The focus of Mission to Unreached Peoples ministry in Vietnam is to unreached tribal groups. In recent years there has been a significant growth of activity aimed at brining the gospel to these remote rural tribal groups who previously had no contact with Christianity.
Return to the Top Of This Page
ESL Teaching
Teaching English is a primary door for work and ministry in much of the world, including teachers at public and private schools and language centers. University teaching placements, typically partly paid tentmaking positions, are important platforms for ministry. Mission to Unreached Peoples personnel are involved in ESL teaching in most of the over 20 countries where we work, some with graduate TESOL degrees. Mission to Unreached Peoples does provide an intensive TESOL training unit in its training program for cross-cultural ministry. A Mission to Unreached Peoples private language center targets young professions in China and is modeling similar platforms for other locations. Another language center is currently under development in a newly developing area.
There are many opportunities to serve in English ministry outreaches of local churches, both in the major cities and in the villages. Teaching English at college universities and private schools provide another platform for ministry.
In His sovereign will God has orchestrated an intense hunger to learn English around the world, opening up huge opportunities for ministry and outreach. Many Mission to Unreached Peoples workers are part of this outreach.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Member Care
Mission to Unreached Peoples takes the responsibility to care for the missionaries we send, our "members" very seriously. Pastoral member care is a focus and distinctive of the mission, and we continue to develop an excellent "member care" department with field-based and itinerant home-based pastors and counselors to visit and care for workers on the field and upon their return home.
A significant portion of our member care ministry staff work together as a team out of a city in Asia, traveling from there to neighboring countries to visit Mission to Unreached Peoples staff and other missionaries. We are continuing to build a network of member care providers, now including personnel in Europe and the Philippines. We take missionary member care seriously and are actively seeking out and working out ways to better serve our members in this area.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Medical and Health Related Ministries
Mission to Unreached Peoples workers are involved in medical health care in several locations. Specifically, in Nepal, Mission to Unreached Peoples medical workers presently include a pharmacist and others working with local hospitals and rural and church outreaches. In China, we participate in several medical and rehabilitation ministries, including a leprosy clinic.
In India, one of our projects targets neglected youth in cooperation with JAF Ministries (Joni and Friends). Workers provide therapy services and vocational training along with evangelistic outreach. This ministry is equipping India's disabled with the tools necessary for a miraculous transformation into a life of independence and advancement resulting in testimony to whole villages and communities in India of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
In various ministries, our missionaries are involved in AIDS education, intervention and health care.
Other medical ministries include a community-based outreach of nursing and orphanage work in Russia, placements in mission hospitals in India, and a Thailand ministry providing medical care to the poor, including AIDS victims.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Relief & Development Projects
Mission to Unreached Peoples is using community development and other innovative means to meet the needs of the people and to help communicate the gospel.
We strive to meet people at their point of need regardless of their response to the Gospel. We respond to both physical and spiritual needs. We believe that meeting physical needs is an integral part of the Gospel, Our partnership with the Polish church, for example, includes an outreach to the local poor.
In Russia, our team is involved in evangelism and discipleship through a local church and a national evangelism team in their city. In cooperation with the church, workers have several ongoing relief projects assisting the poor, malnourished children and orphanages.
We continue to develop agricultural and other village development programs in both northern and southern Thailand with the goal of training and equipping village and tribal peoples. This includes efforts to improve the standard of living especially of local pastors and Christians. Several of our workers are reaching out to unreached villages and people with a Community Health Evangelism (CHE) model, and we are training others in the CHE and other development models.
Outreaches in Thailand and China are focused on ministering to those engaged in prostitution, seeking to provide vocational training in the food service or other industries, so as to enable women to find a new way of life. Various micro lending projects in both Asia and Europe are giving people hope for an improved standard of living, as well as provided providing opportunities for sharing the hope people can have in Jesus. An outreach in Hungary works with refugees. Other community development projects are underway in Mongolia in partnership with Joint Christian Services.
Mission to Unreached Peoples is working with young churches, orphanages, hospitals, children's homes and schools in Russia in order to minister to the needs of the Russian people and to communicate the gospel in practical ways. Political and economic changes have created many new opportunities to meet the needs of people in the community and a deep spiritual hunger.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Tentmaking
We are specialists in "tentmaking", helping believers use their vocational skills to serve and gain access to the unreached and then minister in Christ's name. We also start businesses and community development projects as holistic and entry strategies into developing countries, including the support of national workers with small-scale business opportunities among unreached people groups.
Tentmaking (using vocational skills to work and minister cross-culturally) provides a platform for ministry in the 10/40 window and each of the countries where we serve. Despite working in countries closed to traditional missionary work, Mission to Unreached Peoples finds that almost any type of work is possible for trained tentmakers and professionals throughout the world. Mission to Unreached Peoples missionaries are working as computer programmers and consultants, publishing editors and consultants, and a growing number of business ventures including a "café" in a developing country. A "vocational affiliate" program seeks to provide field-based connections, support, and accountability for intentional tentmakers.
The largest opportunity for tentmaking continues to be jobs as English teachers, often in private schools or private business settings.
Return to the Top Of This Page
University Placement
Mission to Unreached Peoples personnel fill positions as university teachers in several fields. Our ministry in China includes teaching the student and business elite of China in several different Chinese universities. An "American" business college in Central Asia provides ministry opportunities to the future business and government leaders of that country.
In Taiwan, Mission to Unreached Peoples personnel are involved in both administrative and teaching roles, including teaching various languages in addition to English and other specialty classes.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Youth Ministry
Opportunities for youth ministry exist in all our fields, both within and outside of the church. Many of our workers have contacts with students in universities or schools, either as teachers or as fellow students. Several are involved in national church youth outreach, including activities such as English camps, music outreach, and other youth-directed ministry. Some reach international students at international schools
Our efforts in Poland focus on a youth ministry involving evangelism and discipleship camps, discipleship, internships, and strengthening the local church in this historically Catholic nation. Many of those we work with are both young in age and young in the Lord, so discipleship training is a vital component of the ministry.
Mission to Unreached Peoples is actively working with the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia Youth Commission. The youth work involves youth camps, regular Bible studies, and other outreaches in cooperation with the Khmer church. Another ministry in Cambodia trains youth leaders in the local churches. One of our India ministries focuses on handicapped and neglected youth. The Philippines children's home and school especially targets the Aeta children for education and evangelism.
Much of the outreach of our Luke 10 interns (18-30 year olds placed with experienced missionaries) touches students and youth their ages and younger. This has included a sports ministry in Thailand, teaching at missionary schools, and much student contact.
Return to the Top Of This Page
Other
Other ministries and services of Mission to Unreached Peoples include outreaches in general general education in both teaching and administrative roles in International schools and schools for children of missionaries. Additional services include an Educational Consultant for our families, Project Coordinator and development, an outreach to the US military, home ministries including people advocates and non-resident missionaries, literature ministry, field administration for both Mission to Unreached Peoples and partner agencies, and DVD production. An intern program, targeting young adults 18-30 modeled after the sending of disciples in Luke 10, is placing interns in teams of two with experienced missionaries in several of the countries that we serve.
Return to the Top Of This Page
|
