What exactly do I do?
After going through a missions training school in a refugee town called Clarkston, Georgia, we learned about unreached peoples, or people who have little to no access to hearing about the Gospel of Jesus. We also learned there are over 3 billion people who are considered unreached, which represents just about 40% of the world’s population. That sure was a humbling statistic as I clung to my KitchenAid mixer, not wanting to move overseas because- how would I bake a cake?
But those statistics became faces as the Lord gave us friends in this town from the very unreached people we were learning about. We had friends from Sudan, South Sudan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, and the list goes on and on. These relationships showed us that we could no longer ignore the desperate spiritual need around the world.
Our eyes were also opened to the fact that Jesus would not come back until “this gospel of the kingdom [is] preached to the whole world, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). Well, obviously I want to see Jesus come back! We then knew we had to do something. So we began searching for where exactly God wanted us to be.
Originally we thought we would be one of those missionaries on the “front lines,” going ourselves to an unreached people group and seeking to make Jesus known and seeing churches be planted amongst the lost. However, as we were praying and seeking and laying down expectation after expectation, a friend of ours introduced us to the idea of missions mobilization.
He showed us the reality that 80% of worldwide missionaries are sent from the West, yet 80% of the Church does not reside in the West. So why not mobilize the 80% of the global Church that has the same Holy Spirit and same call to take up their places in sending out missionaries to the unreached? What kind of movement would that look like in the world?
Long story short, this led us to join the Center for Mission Mobilization and join a team in Nairobi, Kenya, where we have now been living since May of 2017. Another of the overwhelming statistics that helped direct us to this specific work was that if just 0.01% of the African evangelical Church were mobilized to go, it would be the largest missions-sending movement in the world. Wow. And Nairobi is filled with passionate believers who want to follow and obey Christ no matter the cost… most just don’t yet know of the desperate spiritual need right outside their borders (i.e. Somalia, North Africa, etc.).
So now, we are working to mobilize the Kenyan Church and university students to find and take on their strategic role in the Great Commission. We have already learned so much from our Kenyan brothers and sisters, and we can’t wait to see how the Lord will use this place and these people to make His name known to every tribe, tongue, and nation (Rev. 5:9, 7:9).
So this is the perspective that will pretty much shape everything I write about. It will also allow me to bring stories of friends here in Kenya who are also struggling through what exactly God wants of them, but are nonetheless willing to give it all up to make Him known.
And if you ever have any questions about living on mission overseas, or even living on mission exactly where you are, please reach out to me. There’s not much else I love more than talking about God’s heart for His people and for the world and how we can be a part of His great big story of redemption.
Humbly yours,
