NW Welcomes Michelle Atwell
With Bill MacLeod, Director, MissionConnexion
Michelle Atwell is our closing speaker on Saturday night and the perfect choice to help us visualize our theme: “Come Together, Go Further” since she is used to helping people take action – herself included!
Michelle accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior at an InterVarsity camp when she was a college freshman. “That weekend blossomed into a whole new life for me” she says. This whole new life has also included a summer sharing her faith with college students in Russia and leading several teams from her local church to Chernobyl, Ukraine, for short-term, church-planting activities in remote villages. She has been the CEO for SEND US since June 2017. We recently caught up with her to ask her to respond to our four leading questions…
How did you hear and respond to the call of Christ in your life, and was there someone who influenced you to submit your life to Him?
Growing up I had a childhood friend who loved Jesus. She and her family would take me to church, invite me to bible studies hosted in their home, and modeled a vibrant and active faith. I’m pretty sure I said the Sinner’s Prayer about a dozen times between the ages of 9-12 years old as my childhood friend wanted to make sure I was going to heaven.
However, it wasn’t until my freshman year at Central Michigan University when I finally submitted to the Lordship of Jesus. It was through an invitation to join a weekend retreat hosted by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship where the message of Jesus’ love for me was made real and those gospel seeds planted at a young age finally took root.
What kind of changes in your thinking and life did you go through to “come together” with God’s people and follow Jesus?
My parents were divorced when I was very young resulting in a tumultuous and difficult upbringing that forced me to grow up quickly and only depend on myself. When I gave my life to Christ, I had to learn to come together in God’s family, the Church, and learn how to be in relationship with others in new ways—serving, forgiving, bearing one another’s burdens, loving others, and, the most difficult, submitting to the wisdom and authority of God’s people who were lovingly placed in my life as leaders and mentors.
As I lived this out locally within my Church, the Lord graciously provided opportunities and experiences for me to ‘come together’ in ministry with brothers and sisters in Russia and Ukraine. This helped me to understand that I was part of a much larger spiritual family, made up of brothers and sisters from different countries, speaking different languages, and worshiping in different contexts. It enlarged my perspective and helped me to understand the concept of the global church and the responsibility of all believers to share in God’s mission of spreading the gospel among all nations.
How do you see your ministry working with the local church to “go further” with the Gospel in the harvest field you’ve been called to labor in?
It’s hard to imagine that, in our age of global connectivity, over 3 billion people still have no access to the gospel, no local church, and may not even know a Christian who can tell them about Jesus. As the US Director for SEND International, my role is to inspire the local church with a renewed vision for reaching the unreached. We partner with churches, bringing our expertise in cross-cultural ministry and church planting to support and complement their missions strategy, helping them to go further in sharing the gospel where it has yet to be heard.
What do you hope people attending MCNW 2025 will take away in light of the “Come Together, Go Further” theme?
That the global challenge of access to the gospel would compel us to commit ourselves to humble partnership, unity, and collaboration for collective impact among the unreached. That the North American church is still needed at the table alongside our brothers and sisters from the majority world. We need each other and it’s a better reflection of the kingdom when we do this work together.
We welcome Michelle and her heart for introducing humanity to Jesus and hope many will want to commit their life path to doing just that!
