Articles
Persecution is indeed ramping up unlike any time in recent history. Hardly a day goes by here in East Asia that we don’t hear of another local church, pastor, or foreign missionary running into difficulty with local authorities. Yet at the same time, CMM’s mobilization footprint is rapidly expanding in this great nation of 100 million believers. In spite of everything the enemy is using to hinder the spread of the Good News throughout the region, it is the local churches, pastors, and everyday believers who are being mobilized for God’s mission and making the most significant impacts like never before.
Lima, Peru has has become a city with great mission influence throughout Latin America. We are seeing mission momentum build through partnerships established in Lima that are now multiplying across the continent. God has opened doors for us to mobilize Christians into God’s mission in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, and Cuba. We recently saw the eyes of many believers opened in Santiago, Chili, through an Xplore study hosted by a CMM partner described below.
It was Weave’s very first BIG Story Training in East Asia. We were escorted into a private building, where participants would stay for four days. If anyone left, it could put the entire group in danger. Despite the circumstances, the room of participants was not full of fear, but rather full of anticipation.
Buddy’s vision was even bigger, and he began dreaming of a coalition of mobilizers all united around the common purpose of mobilizing the Filipino church to the unreached.
“I’ve never read the Bible like this before!” Though my friend Nina had heard the 1 Samuel 17 story of David and Goliath countless times, she was blown away to learn the deeper truths of this particular passage for the first time. We were in the middle of our weekly Xplore study when it all seemed to click in Nina’s mind.
Last semester, I sat among a group of believers who shared stories of how God had awakened their hearts to His immeasurable love for the nations. Some explained how they had began praying for the nations regularly, and others explained that they began sharing their faith with their Muslim coworkers.
“Why am I so adamant to talk to everyone around me for the sake of a scavenger hunt but not for the sake of Jesus?” This was a question raised by college student, Ashlee, during a CMM vision trip to our mobilization team in Germany. Ashlee and six other individuals joined our CMM team in Frankfurt for two weeks of experience in frontier missions and mobilization through a “boots on the ground” approach. There they had front row seats and actively participated in the work our Germany team is involved in day in and day out.
As they read the location, dress, customs, and statistics of the Ming people, Jordan’s eyes widened. She had seen these people, but always assumed they were just a part of her own people – she didn’t realize they were a people group all their own. “These people are right next door to me, and I never knew,” she shared. “We are learning about the unreached, but maybe they are not as far away as they seem.”
“Through this training, I now understand that support raising is a means of how God provides for us. I believe this method will really help us as Chinese missionaries to serve more steadily for the long haul."
It all started during the lesson on prayer. “That’s how I will get involved,” Levi thought to himself. “I will pray for more laborers. This takes the least amount of work, and I’m still doing something.” As Levi began to pray faithfully, God began to change his heart.
Elizabeth has always known that God had a role for her to play in reaching the unreached, but did not feel called to be a cross-cultural goer in the conventional sense. How could she get actively involved in reaching those who have not heard of Jesus?
A new season of building relationships began for the CMM team in Germany as mobilizers, Shana and Brandi, sat in the candle-lit home of a young German woman named Mira. Mira told them stories of refugees whom she was helping out of abusive relationships, sharing the gospel with, and spending hours investing and pouring into. Mira was clearly living a lifestyle that models Christ’s mandate to make disciples of all nations.
"I've never led a Bible study. I've never been on a mission trip. I've never been baptized. I've never been a member of a church, and I've never approached an unreached person with the intent of sharing my faith. I've never talked with a stranger about God; I've never joined a worship team, and I've never joined a Christian organization outside of church—that is, until now."
When we first arrived in Kenya and got settled as a mobilization field team, Thomas Omenta became one of our first friends. When I think of Thomas’s story and his missional journey, I am reminded of when Jesus began His ministry and called some of His first disciples.
“You’ve got this franchised, right?” The director of a prominent mission school in Southeast Asia was holding copies of Xplore and Go Mobilize and wondering if he could afford to use these CMM discipleship tools with his students.
Nearly 40 parents and pastors gathered together in a back room, on the top floor of a factory office building. Everyone removed SIM cards from and gave up their cell phones for the duration of the training. They were sleeping on mats on the floor throughout the building; there was no heat and the temperatures were near freezing.
“I have to tell you what happened yesterday!” my teacher said as I sat down for our weekly Chinese class. Thursday was quickly becoming one of my favorite days, as I knew the moment I walked in the door she would have a story.
She sat across the room from us, a short girl with a strong presence. We had never seen her at one of our monthly meetings of mission mobilizers in Peru before. The pointedness of the questions she asked immediately caught my attention.
“Interacting with an unreached people was very edifying for me,” said Jerome after being led through Xplore and visiting an unreached tribe. “It gave me confidence and courage to serve the Lord. I no longer lament insignificant treasures, because now I see that there are those who are suffering more than me.”
In Kenya, it is easy for a student to get stuck in the “cycle of life." As young adults, Kenyans are expected to get good grades in school so that they can go to a good university, make good grades, get a good job, make a lot of money and provide for their family. Their children are then expected to repeat this cycle, and so on. These very same expectations were upon Alice Kalunda.