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.
