GFM Director’s Blog

I’m going to post an email that I sent out to a bunch of people that we met at Urbana as it best shows what has been on my heart lately.

We got your name from Urbana and may have contacted you before concerning our short-term trips, summer internships, and missionary training school.  Now, we are writing because the Lord has given us an URGENT vision for the least-reached peoples in the 10/40 Window–one that is going to require many new laborers to go to the frontlines.  2000 years ago, Christ told us to make disciples of all nations (ta ethne – people groups).  Starting in 1974 at the Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization, Christians worldwide rallied around a vision to see a church planted among every people group on earth by the year 2000.  Yet, here we are in 2007, with 6425 unreached people groups remaining in our midst, 9 out of 10 foreign missionaries still going to the parts of the world that are reached with the Gospel, and only 12,000 pioneer missionaries (those going to people groups that have never heard the name of Jesus) serving overseas.  That’s not very many ambassadors to represent Christ and bring the Father glory!  “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”  Mt. 24:14

We at Global Frontier Missions have just launched our THUMBs Up Expansion Vision focused on getting bases started among each of the world’s major religious groups (Tribals, Hindus, Unreligious/Chinese, Muslims, Buddhists).  These “frontier centers” will focus on mobilizing, training, and sending long-term workers to the 6425 unreached people groups.  All of our laborers will work towards seeing a Church Planting Movement (CPM), which is a rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches planting other churches within a given people group or population segment.  We want our missions organization, GFM, to be a model for the indigenous churches that we are planting by being very organic (simple and focused on obedience to Christ), holistic (ministering to the whole person), and quickly reproducing/multiplying (a kingdom principle found throughout Scripture).  Want to be a part of this grassroots revolution and see God exalted among the nations? 

In the next several years we will be deploying teams to start new GFM bases, so we need short-term mission trip leaders, missionary training school teachers, English teachers/community development workers, and church planters, as well as administrative staff for each base to pull off the vision.  We are looking for people that would be willing to die to self and the dreams they have, follow Christ fully and chase His dreams, be broken for the lost, learn language/culture while living like the people to whom they minister, and who are willing to work hard and suffer for our Lord.  We need people to come get trained at our missionary training school in Oaxaca, Mexico and then form a team that will go start a new base in the 10/40 window.  We hope to be in India/Nepal (Hindu world), SE Asia (Buddhist world), and the Muslim world in the next few years, but we need a huge influx of laborers in our training program to make that happen.  One of the perks of our school is an associate’s degree in Biblical studies, which could come in handy if you were to end up serving in an organization other than ours.  It’s time to get off the bench and start truly seeking first the Kingdom! Maybe you are thinking that you are “called” to something else, but can I ask you to step back for just a moment and look at the big picture of God’s plan throughout history?  

From Genesis to Revelation, God has always been focused on blessing a special people (Israel in the OT, the Church in the NT) in order for those people to be a blessing to all nations, and this still hasn’t fully happened yet.  Do you think the 1.6 billion people who have never heard the name of Jesus feel “called” to spend eternity outside of God’s presence?  “Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  But how can they call on the one of whom they have not believed.  And how can they believe unless someone goes to them” (Rom. 10:13,14).  We all got “called” to frontier missions 2000 years ago when Christ said “go!”  I think that sometimes we put our own personal call (which seems to get strongly influenced by our own desires) above God’s big picture of seeing every tribe, tongue, people, and nation redeemed by the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 5:9).  Keith Green said, “If you stay home from going into all nations, you’d better be able to say, ‘You called me to stay home, God, I know that for a fact.’”  

Please know that my heart is not to come across as harsh, judgmental, or to undermine work that people are doing for the Lord as much as I am trying to express an URGENCY that I feel is from God.  I have a hard time trusting that we as individuals and the Church as a whole is truly discerning the Lord’s voice when it comes to His will.  I look at the Scriptures and see that it is the Lord’s will that none should perish, and yet there are still 6425 groups of people without access to Christ and no one going to them.  Something is missing in this picture, and I feel like it is our obedience.  Ezekiel 33 seems to hint that we are God’s watchmen and responsible for sounding the trumpet to this generation of souls all over the earth.  Let’s be about the Father’s business of seeking and saving lost souls until Christ comes to take us home.  God deserves the glory of all peoples being satisfied in Him! 

Until all have heard,

Grant Haynes
www.globalfrontiermissions.com

Did you know that 6425 out of the 15874 people groups on the earth have no access to the gospel?  639 of those groups have more than 100,000 people and are completely unengaged (have not a single Christian bringing the gospel to them).  What are you going to do about it?