Thinking of taking your family on a short-term trip overseas? Good for you!! A short-term trip needs prayer, thought…and a lot more!!

As a mother of four, a missionary who served the Lord in four countries with those four and a passionate Christ-follower myself, it’s good to hear of families that want to “go there” with the fam.

One who “follows and spreads the teaching of another,” is called a disciple. Matthew 4:19 would suggest that a disciple is someone who is following Jesus, being changed by Jesus, and is committed to the mission of Jesus.

I remember hearing years ago that Benjamin Franklin, one of the foremost of our Founding Fathers, learned to leave his money pouch at home when listening to the great Colonial evangelist, George Whitefield. Because if not, as he had experienced, he would be moved to “give it all” through Whitefield’s persuasive oratory and appeal.

It was a great year to “Come Together” for our annual, regional, free, event…no snow, clear skies, keynote speakers all present and accounted for – and attendees coming with a desire to take this opportunity to “Go Further” in their personal or church life!

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.

Randy Remington, has been a pastor with the Foursquare Church for many years and will be our keynote speaker at MissionConnexion Northwest this January 17-18. He was chosen to succeed Ron Mehl at Beaverton Foursquare Church, by Ron himself, years before his passing in 2003. Randy then led “Beaverton 4” until 2020, when he became the President of the Foursquare Church in the United States.

Patrice Tsague will open our MissionConnexion Northwest event this January 17-18, 2025. He founded The Nehemiah Project in 1999 with his wife Gina Tsague in Washington D.C. Patrice and Gina both arrived in the United States in 1983, with Patrice coming from Cameroon, Central Africa and Gina from Haiti.

MissionConnexion Northwest welcomes our keynote speaker, Matthew Ellison, the President/Missions Coach for 16:15 Outfitters, which coaches churches to help them actively participate in the mission of God.

This month, The Fourth Lausanne Congress will be gathering in Seoul-Incheon, South Korea and aims to be catalytic in advancing the Movement’s fourfold vision—the gospel for every person, disciple-making churches for every people and place, Christ-like leaders for every church and sector, and kingdom impact in every sphere of society. They recently published a 500-page report on the Current + Future State of the Great Commission.

Perspectives on the World Christian Movement is a 15-week awe-inspiring comprehensive study course that is rooted in the Scriptures. It’s a multi-faceted learning experience that has profoundly impacted over 250,000 alumni. It dramatically transformed my life and worldview when I took it as a newly minted missions pastor and I have been teaching classes since 1996.

Have you ever wondered about fasting for an extended period of time? Jesus, after all, fasted for 40 days in the Judean wilderness. I wrote a short introduction to what the Bible teaches about fasting a few years ago for those new to fasting, since I have found fasting to be a helpful discipline at various times in my life.

But since I have no experience with prolonged fasting, I reached out to my friend, Bill MacLeod, to ask him questions about it.

We continue this month with Part II of my interview with Randy McAlister, co-director of Crisis Consultation International (CCI) which, since 1985, has been the premier provider of security and crisis management services to the international Christian community.

Are you considering leading or participating in a short-term missions trip this summer? Have short-term missions become too dangerous? Is the risk / reward proposition now becoming such that the risk far outweighs the reward, internationally, and even domestically?

Are you thinking about becoming a content-creator, or using social media to raise awareness for your or your ministry’s impact / influence? What questions do you have about how to proceed? What if you have already begun, but still have questions?

We will also be welcoming some other special guests to our “To Every Generation and Nation!” emphasis at MissionConnexion Northwest. Rev. Dr. Sameh Maurice, Senior Pastor of Kasr el Dobara Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt – the largest church in the Middle East – will be sharing with us some of the exciting things they see happening in that region.

We will also be welcoming some other special guests to our “To Every Generation and Nation!” emphasis at MissionConnexion Northwest. Rev. Dr. Sameh Maurice, Senior Pastor of Kasr el Dobara Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt – the largest church in the Middle East – will be sharing with us some of the exciting things they see happening in that region.

We will also be welcoming some other special guests to our “To Every Generation and Nation!” emphasis at MissionConnexion Northwest. Rev. Dr. Sameh Maurice, Senior Pastor of Kasr el Dobara Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt – the largest church in the Middle East – will be sharing with us some of the exciting things they see happening in that region.

MissionConnexion is privileged to welcome Robert Levy to the Northwest this January! Robert is a Christian businessman from Jamaica and the father of Wendy Palau. 

We are privileged to welcome Wendy Palau to MissionConnexion Northwest this year with our emphasis “To Every Generation and Nation”. She grew up in Jamaica as the daughter of Robert and Judy Levy and became the wife of Andrew Palau as a result of their meeting at a Palau Festival Luis did there.

As a child I remember holding up a mirror to a larger wall mirror and the reflection made it seem as if I was looking down a corridor of mirrors that was infinite, without end.

In Exodus 20 God lays out the Ten Commandments for Moses but rather than them being a set of “rules”, He is underscoring the special, personal relationship He yearns to have with them. In verse 6 he makes an unusual statement when he says…

MissionConnexion Northwest 2024 will welcome Sean McDowell as one of our Keynote speakers this January! Additionally, Sean will also be directing our Leadership Connexion event, along with Mark Mittelberg, and his son Matthew Mittelberg.

Dr. Sean McDowell is the son of Josh and Dottie McDowell and a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church, and in particular young people, to make the case for the Christian faith.

MissionConnexion Northwest 2024 will welcome Mark Mittelberg as one of our Keynote speakers this January! Mark and his wife Heidi live near Denver, Colorado, and are the parents of Emma Jean and Matthew, both of whom serve in ministry roles.

Mark will also be opening our Leadership Connexion event, accompanied by his apologist son Matthew Mittelberg, and Sean McDowell!

In the fall of my second year of college, I had a weekend job from 12:00 AM (midnight) to 8:00 AM sitting behind a desk and buzzing people in the front door of a high-rise apartment building in downtown Philadelphia. With this late-night working shift, I was able to get a lot of reading assignments done. One weekend I had to read the entire book of Genesis and as I was coming to the end of both chapter 50 and my shift, I could not get the country of Scotland out of my mind.

In his bestselling book, The Treasure Principle, Randy Alcorn shares six keys that he and his wife Nanci learned when everything was taken away from them, including his ability to earn a living, due to a public stand he took for righteousness. As a result, over the course of three decades-plus, the Lord has multiplied his life, resources, and giving exponentially. Those keys include…

MissionConnexion Southwest welcomes Nathan, who will be our opening keynote speaker in 2023. Nathan comes to us with 25 years of experience as a lead pastor of a local church in the Phoenix area and many years training, discipling and equipping people for the cross-cultural ministry. He has a fervent passion for Jesus that is hard to rival along with a passion for His Kingdom.

We are incredibly honored to have Al Fadi speak at MissionConnexion Southwest 2023.

Al Fadi originally came to the USA as an international student from Saudi Arabia. One of his original goals as a Muslim international student was to convert Americans to Islam. He was befriended by a Christian family that showed the love of Jesus to him through kindness and hospitality.

Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher from the city of Ephesus was famous for saying “The Only Constant in Life Is Change.”

There is no doubt that we have all been through change over the last 3 years, so I was recently very encouraged reviewing some data on the state of the church since significant change took place.

A church leader in the African American community was invited to a MissionConnexion event with other mission leaders for the first time. She was not sure what to expect and knew very little about MissionConnexion.

At the close of this luncheon, while everyone’s heads were bowed for the closing prayer, another leader representing a mission organization that places workers into Central Asia felt the Holy Spirit saying quite clearly that they should approach and ask for help in mobilizing African Americans into Central Asia. Neither one knew the other, though they had shaken hands just before the lunch.

Recently I was asked if I thought MissionConnexion operated “with excellence”, i.e… “The fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence. An excellent quality or feature”. My first thought was to make a list of what things I thought we were striving to do with excellence. The kinds of things I listed included:
• being above reproach
• making Christ the lens through which we motivate our people

Have you ever thought about the spiritual heritage of the area where you currently live? For example, who was the first person to come to your city (or state) and share the Gospel? Or which church was the first one to get started?
While I was at church the missions pastor said something to the effect of, “we all can trace our spiritual lineage to a missionary who was willing to share the Gospel by crossing their own particular culture to a different context.”

While growing up in Ramsey, New Jersey, he attended church, but did not come to follow Christ until he attended a Billy Graham meeting in New York City on March 3, 1955.

On April 14th, George Verwer, the self-deprecating, visionary-missionary who founded Operation Mobilization (OM), launched four ships dispensing Christian literature around the world, authored 20 books of which millions of copies have been distributed worldwide, went home to be with the Lord after a two-month battle with cancer.

While growing up in Ramsey, New Jersey, he attended church, but did not come to follow Christ until he attended a Billy Graham meeting in New York City on March 3, 1955.

The Bible is full of references to feet and the role they play when it comes to the spread of the good news both in the Old Testament as well as the New. In fact, when the familiar verse Romans 10:15 talks about “beautiful feet” it is referring to Isaiah 52:7 “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” 

But who cares for those beautiful feet?

Tory Ruark serves as the Chief Operations Officer of MissionWorks, the Director of MissionExcellence,
and leads our annual Short-Term Mission Connexion, event, which was February 24-25, 2023. For the first time ever, it was held in Seattle, Washington, and took on the theme “Journey Together.”

Tory said: “Short-term mission trips shouldn’t be one sided or one directional. Mission trips are the expression of partners journeying together for a common purpose–God’s glory! By learning to live and work together as one church, we can learn to plan mission trips that honor God, honor our hosts, and honor those we’re serving!”

Our “Here I am…What’s Next?” themed conference last month was very well received both by those looking to serve and those leading others to serve.

We had a couple of firsts in our 21 years of doing this conference. It was the first time we have ever had a plenary speaker cancel due to unexpected circumstances two weeks before the event. It was also the first time that we brought back a plenary speaker (Adrian Reeves of NAAMC) for the second year in a row.

Steve Richardson may live in the USA, but his heart and passion extends worldwide for those yet to be reached with the Good News of Jesus. He grew up in Indonesia where his parents took the gospel to a jungle people called the Sawi, a story documented in his father’s missionary classic, Peace Child.

William Franklin Graham IV (Will) is the third generation of Grahams to proclaim the Gospel under the banner of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The grandson of Billy Graham and the oldest son of Franklin Graham, Will has shared the hope of Jesus with more than one million people across six continents since beginning his evangelistic ministry in 2006.

You may remember 26-year-old missionary, John Chau who went to take the gospel to the people of North Sentinel Island but was killed by them in his effort to do so November 2018. His life epitomizes the theme for our Mission ConneXion Northwest January event: “Here I am…What’s Next?”

You may remember 26-year-old missionary, John Chau who went to take the gospel to the people of North Sentinel Island but was killed by them in his effort to do so November 2018. His life epitomizes the theme for our Mission ConneXion Northwest January event: “Here I am…What’s Next?”

In December 1952, Ted was a 21-year-old soldier on the front lines of the Korean War. Billy Graham was a 34-year-old evangelist on an eleven-day visit to Korea, and this was the only time he would be speaking to Marines on the front lines. While he had been raised in a Christian home, it was not until he faced life and death decisions that Ted gave his life to Christ at the invitation two days before Christmas there on the front lines in Korea. From that day forward everything changed.

Memorial Day exists to help us remember those who fought and died for our great country and our freedom. There was one who fought but did not die for our country, but who became a missionary to those who had made him a prisoner of war – so they might know the life and freedom Jesus Christ offers. 

When our oldest went to college in SoCal, his roommate was the son of a pastor in the area, so he began attending that church his freshman year. As our other kids began attending the same college, they joined their brother for services each Sunday. My wife and I always looked forward to connecting with this pastor and his wife when we worshipped with our kids there, and we became close friends as they looked out for our kids, and so many other college students who called this church their home away from home. Not surprisingly, they affectionately dubbed him “Papa Straws”.

Everyone loves a David and Goliath story. What has been unfolding in Ukraine since the end of February is both horrific and miraculous. Russia taking aggressive action against a sovereign, unsuspecting nation (the Number One Missionary-sending country to Europe and Central Asia by the way); includes the deliberate killing of ordinary civilians, over 4 million refugees fleeing to neighboring countries; hundreds of thousands Ukrainian citizens remaining to defend their country, all led by a President who is Jewish with a family history of resisting tyranny while he himself had previously been a career actor and comedian.

As Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border last weekend making their way toward the capital of Kyiv, the world watched in amazement at the resolve of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and indeed the citizens themselves who took up arms to defend their country. Additionally, not only is Ukraine second in size only to Russia, but it is also the main missionary-sending country for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

With an urgency to both meet and engage with others eager to take the gospel ‘across the street and around the world’…our 2022 “it’s time.” Conference resonated in and through every aspect of this year’s 20th anniversary event! We were so very grateful for Village Church hosting us and allowing us to be “in person” for the first time in two years! 

Ten days from now Mission ConneXion Northwest (MCNW 2022) launches at Village Church Beaverton, and there could not be a more appropriate theme for January 21-22, 2022, than “It’s Time.”