Brad Bailey

Board of Missions Chair

The Board of Missions recently approved and is in the process of installing a missions wall in one corner of the Narthex. The missions wall will be an interactive station where you can discover the people and organizations serving to further the gospel around the world, grow in your knowledge of the people and organizations and how they serve, and learn how you can impact world missions through prayer, service and giving. Once completed, we encourage each of you to utilize this great tool designed for the congregation.

Discover

Discover that in 2019-20 College Church supported the following to help spread the gospel message around the world:

• 95 career missionary units

• 15 mid-term missionary units

• 10 short-term missionary units

• 13 national schools and seminaries

• 9 local ministries

Grow

Grow in the knowledge that the “units” listed above often represent families with schoolage children who also help spread the gospel. Represented in the 120 units are 321 individuals serving our Lord on a full-time basis. Learn from the information at the missions wall about the 60 countries in which the 321 individuals serve in. Grow in understanding of how each individual or family serves in their respective countries, whether through planting churches, street evangelism, university student outreach, leadership training, caring for the needs of other missionaries, biblically based counseling and many other ministries.

Grow in the knowledge of the support of national schools and seminaries that educate local leaders in sound biblical theology to equip them to effectively and accurately preach and teach the gospel in their home countries. This training of leaders has the result of exponentially multiplying the number of people reached with the good news. Supported schools and seminaries are in Bolivia, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan and other countries. Visit the missions wall to discover the locations of our 13 partner schools and seminaries.

Grow in your understanding of how the missions department is reaching the local community through equipping immigrants to live and thrive in the U.S.; providing necessities to those in need, serving the local Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and other communities; teaching English to refugees and immigrants and providing housing to missionaries on home assignment.

The breadth of service for God’s kingdom around the world and in the U.S. and made possible through your support is exciting and encouraging, and I urge you to grow in your knowledge of how College Church promotes these endeavors.

Impact

Utilizing the missions wall, discover how you can personally impact the missions program of College Church.

• Find out how to pray for our missionaries. They all desperately need and covet our prayer support. Pray for physical protection, for ministry effectiveness, for health, for encouragement from our Lord, for their own relationship with Christ and for the people they are trying to reach. The list of missionaries is long, and it would be understandably overwhelming to pray for all of them, so pick one or two as a family or small group, and pray for them for a week, a month or a year and then visit the missions wall to choose again. Diligent prayer is one of the most impactful ways to serve our missionaries.

• Discover how you can serve our missionaries. Join a STAMP trip to serve alongside them for a week, volunteer with one of the local ministries we support or grab coffee with a missionary on home assignment. Open your home or loan a car to a missionary who has unexpectantly come to the area for a short time. Volunteer to help with the annual Missions Festival. The impact you can have on the missions of College Church through service is plentiful and will enrich you as well as those you serve.

• Through your generous giving to College Church, you are having a tremendous impact on the spreading of the gospel here and around the world. College Church only partially supports each of its missionaries and organizations, and they all depend on other sources of giving to make their ministries possible. You may consider contributing to these individuals and/or organizations directly, above and beyond your tithe to College Church. Much like serving, the impact of your giving will be a blessing to you as well as those you contribute to.

Visit the missions wall (coming soon) to discover all that College Church is doing through its missions programs, grow in your knowledge of the people and organizations supported and learn how you can further impact the programs through prayer, service and giving—all in the service to, and for the glory of our Savior, Jesus Christ.