African Sending Timothy Olonade

Timothy Olonade is the executive secretary/CEO of Nigeria Evangelical Missions Association. He is a missions mobilizer, publisher, and conference speaker. A member of Ethne Global Steering Committee and the Lausanne Leadership Development Working Group, he has authored several books on discipleship, missions, evangelism, human resources, and missions strategy.

When Europeans came to Africa in the mid-1800s, some wanted the economic value their newly acquired territory could generate, while others wanted the souls of Africans for God’s kingdom. Passionate mission fervor characterized the missionaries who brought the gospel to Africa. But sadly, that mission passion was not passed on to the churches that emerged out of their efforts.

Beginning in the 1950s, major national initiatives crystallized which were aimed at birthing new churches that were authentically African. In the 1960s, most African countries gained independence from colonial powers. Political change inspired a corresponding change in the church with a major surge toward indigenous leadership. The new sense of ownership sparked revivals in many places and saturation evangelism movements in Zaire and Nigeria.

The 1970s were characterized by full-blown national initiatives to mobilize Africans for missions, particularly in Nigeria and Ghana. The first indigenous African interdenominational mission-sending agency was formed in Nigeria in 1975. The Ghana Evangelism Committee spearheaded the nationwide survey that led to the birth of more than eight thousand churches within a decade. The wind of missions spread over the continent, with national mission associations springing up in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya before the turn of the century.

Nigeria illustrates the transfer of mission vision in a dramatic way. Nearly ten thousand foreign missionaries were serving in Nigeria in 1986. That same year, there were just slightly over five hundred indigenous missionaries from Nigerian churches. In just twenty years, the figures virtually reversed. The number of foreign missionaries shrunk to some 860 by 2006, and missionaries sent by Nigerian churches increased to over 5,200. Cross-cultural missionaries from Nigeria alone have served in sixty-five countries around the globe.

The Movement for African National Initiatives (MANI) now exists to establish mission movements in every country around the continent. The Anglican Communion in Africa is giving leadership beyond the continent, leading renewal and the restoration of godly values into the global Anglican family.

The gospel has found fertile soil in Africa. And Africans are now doing their part to take its life-giving message around the world with characteristic zest and passion. African missionaries are found as far east as China and Japan and as far south and west as Brazil and Bolivia. The presence of African flavor in global evangelism can also be seen in Europe, where the five largest churches are led by Africans.

Korean Sending Chul Ho Han

Chul Ho Han formerly worked for Korea IVF, IFES East Asia region, and Mission Korea. He has served Mission Partners Korea as director since 2010. He is a Perspectives Asia director and member of the Korea Lausanne committee.

The Korean church has played a remarkable role in global missions, having sent over twenty thousand missionaries as a result of significant church growth in recent decades. However, the growth of the church and the sending of missionaries have encountered challenges in recent years. The rapid secularization of Korean society, coupled with a declining population and an aging demographic, has contributed to a slowdown in church growth and missionary mobilization. Moreover, societal pressure on the pursuit of material security impacts the delay of marriage among young people and poses difficulties in mobilizing them for missions work.

Nevertheless, amidst these challenges, there are opportunities. Although large-scale mission conferences like Mission Korea, which used to bring together five thousand young people every two years, are experiencing a decline, there is a thriving trend in ongoing missions mobilization through education. Programs like Perspectives have witnessed substantial growth, currently engaging over three thousand individuals annually. This marks a shift from youth and college student-centered missions mobilization to the involvement of an entire generation in missions. The concept of success in Korean missions is evolving from measuring the number of missionaries sent to engaging every member of the Korean church in various missionary endeavors. However, further efforts are needed to ignite interest and active participation in missions among the younger generations.

Korea is rapidly transitioning into a multicultural society, characterized by a declining population and an influx of foreign workers, international students, and migrants in recent years. The number of foreigners residing in the country now exceeds 2.5 million people and is projected to reach five million in the near future. Many of these individuals come from diverse religious backgrounds such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, presenting a substantial opportunity for evangelism. Furthermore, as visa restrictions for fulltime missionaries from Korea become more stringent, there is a notable rise in the number of lay missionaries and workers who can easily obtain visas. These changes signify a departure from the traditional approach of relying solely on fulltime missionaries and ushering in an era of active involvement of all church members in missions.

The rapid growth of the Korean church and its missions, while remarkable, has not been without its challenges and missteps. Moving forward, Korean missions face the task of shifting from mere numerical growth to maturity, which will require a revival of the Korean church characterized by healthy spirituality.

The countries in Asia, Africa, and South America that have received Korean missionaries have undergone significant growth and are now changing from being mission fields to becoming mission forces themselves. Korean missions are now actively working towards collaborative partnerships with these countries. By embracing humility and fostering genuine friendship, Korean missions strive to achieve global evangelization in partnership with the global church.

Latin American Sending Carlos Scott

Carlos Scott and his wife, Alicia, facilitate the Mision GloCal initiative and teach about the mission of the church in different organizations and churches. Carlos was president of COMIBAM International. He has served in the Open Door Church for 25 years and has been president of the World Mission Network in Argentina. Carlos and Alicia have two children and three grandchildren, who are involved in the church’s mission and new church-planting movements in the Basque Country. Carlos and Alicia live in Argentina.

It the 1910 missionary conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1,200 delegates gathered from North America and Europe to discuss what remained to be done in world evangelization. Latin America was completely overlooked in their discussions because of its strong Catholic presence. In 1916, a group of mostly North American Protestant missionaries met in Panama City to consider how to reach this forgotten continent. This is often seen as the beginning of the Latin American evangelical movement, which grew slowly at first and then dramatically in the latter half of the twentieth century.

By the 1980s, key leaders felt it was time to channel the passionate flames of this dynamic movement of Latin American involvement into world mission. The first COMIBAM (Ibero-American Missions Cooperation) Congress was held in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1987. Participants came from most of the countries of Latin and Central America, as well as Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, thus the word “Ibero-American.” At that time, the Ibero-American missions movement consisted of about sixty organizations with about 1,600 cross-cultural missionaries.

By the end of that historic assembly, the delegates declared their commitment to be “a light for the Gentiles” to “bring salvation to the ends of the earth” (Acts 13:47 NIV). The delegates were motivated by two key ideas. The first idea was that Ibero-America was shifting “from a mission field to a mission force.” This meant not only taking responsibility for the evangelization of Ibero-America but also for bringing the gospel to the unreached peoples in the rest of the world. The second idea was from a paraphrase of Zechariah 4:6, “‘Neither by dollars nor computers, but with my Spirit,’ said the Lord.” This was a bold declaration that a lack of resources would not be used as an excuse for not participating in the task God had given to His entire church.

By the second COMIBAM Congress in Mexico in 1997, just ten years later, it was estimated that there were as many as three hundred Ibero-American sending organizations with more than four thousand cross-cultural missionaries.

By 2006, the estimated number of missionaries had once again more than doubled to ten thousand cross-cultural missionaries sent out from four hundred sending organizations. By 2017, some twenty-four thousand missionaries from six hundred sending organizations had been sent out, again more than doubling the number of missionaries.

Latin leaders feel that they are still far from reaching the full potential of the Latin churches to bless all the nations. The increasing number of Ibero-American evangelicals (over 140 million) could be sending out many more missionaries. We are looking not only to increase the number of cross-cultural missionaries, but we are also working together to strengthen the training, support, and pastoral care of those we send.

The Uniqueness of the Chinese Mission Movement Mary Ho and Rudolf Mak

Past, Present, and Future

Mary Ho (Doctor of Strategic Leadership, Regent University) is the international executive leader of All Nations. She is passionate about raising up global leaders and finishing the Great Commission in this generation by sharing the love of God among every people group.

Rudolf Mak was the director of Chinese ministries at Frontier Ventures. Over the years, he pioneered key strategic initiatives in the Chinese-speaking world, including the Chinese HUB and the CHAMP partnership.

Adapted from International Bulletin of Mission research 46, no. 1 (2022): 60–67

China’s mission movement began in the early 1900s with the establishment of the first Chinese mission-sending organization, the Chinese Foreign Mission Union. This group primarily sent missionaries to Southeast Asian countries. At that time Chinese people often migrated in large numbers to places of economic opportunity and planted Chinese churches, some of which are still flourishing in Southeast Asia to this day. However, China did not witness the explosion of mission societies at that time, primarily because of a war with Japan (1937–45) and the Japanese occupation of China.

Another important development in Chinese missions began about 1946, when several mission bands in different parts of China all heard the call to take the gospel westward from China to Jerusalem. Soon thereafter, many of these groups set out westward from eastern and central China, evangelizing along the way. This became known as the “Back to Jerusalem” movement. However, none of the missionaries from these groups was able to leave China because of a Chinese civil war (1945–49) and the Communist rule that soon followed. Many of these early missionaries were jailed and many died. Nonetheless, we celebrate the vision and courage of these pioneers who sacrificed to take the gospel westward.

By the 1950s, China’s doors were closed to the outside world, not to reopen for the next thirty years. Many people thought that the Chinese church might die out during the severe persecution called the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). But the opposite was true. The Chinese church was resilient and creative. Despite government attempts to destroy the church, the gospel continued to spread across China like wildfire.

In the 1970s, persecution began to lessen in China. This enabled movements like the Wenzhou Christian churches on the east coast of China to send out missionaries who were businessmen, migrant workers, marketplace professionals, and traveling pastors. Christian merchants established businesses in other regions, planting churches as they went. They became fervent mission tentmakers. Today, about seventy-five thousand Wenzhou believers are proclaiming Christ in about one hundred countries and planting Chinese churches from Europe to Africa.

Today, Chinese mission has set its sights beyond Jerusalem and has a clear missiology for world evangelization. For example, a recent initiative called Mission China 2030 (MC2030) was launched by Chinese urban churches to send twenty thousand missionaries to other countries by the year 2030. However, MC2030 is only one of several independent mission movements from China today. To increase momentum in sending missionaries, the entire Chinese church needs to continue experiencing revival and spiritual renewal.

Brazilian Sending Alisson Gomes de Medeiros, Felipe Fulanetto, Ademir Menezes, and Estevão Muller

A New Momentum

Alisson Gomes de Medeiros is research department coordinator for the Brazilian Association of Cross-Cultural Missions (AMTB) and board member of JUVEP Mission. Felipe Fulanetto is a Nazarene church pastor and missionary researcher for AMTB. Ademir Menezes is a pastor of a multiethnic indigenous Presbyterian Church, director of Amanajé Project (WEC Brasil), and missionary researcher for AMTB. Estevão Muller is president of Perspectivas Brasil and Mobilization Coordinator for Frontiers Brasil.

The gospel grew steadily in Brazil during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, largely because of the great faith and sacrifice of European and North American missionaries. In 1890, the Brazilian church organized the first cross-cultural mission-sending structure. Other initiatives, primarily denominational, emerged in the twentieth century. These early mission efforts were focused on Portugal, some South American countries, and a few indigenous tribes of Brazil.

In the 1970s, the Brazilian church’s missionary sending accelerated. They began directing their efforts on reaching the peoples of the world. The number of cross-cultural missionaries increased from 595 in 1972 to 4,754 in 2000.¹ Some key factors for this rapid increase of missionaries included the emergence of interdenominational mission structures and the arrival of international agencies that recruited people for cross-cultural missions. The surge of leaders with a vision for missions led to the creation of several nationally led Brazilian mission agencies.

These mission structures were assisted and united by the emergence of a national association, the Brazilian Association of Cross-Cultural Missions (AMTB). The international events of Lausanne (1974) and the Ibero-American Missions Congress (1987) led to ongoing networking events and connections such as the Iberoamerican Missionary Cooperative (COMIBAM) and Congress of Brazilian Missions (CBM), which continue to meet every few years. Around 2010, a new momentum burst forth, with many Brazilians going to the nations. Early in the decade, some national mobilization initiatives were launched, like the Perspectives movement and VOCARE, or Movimento Vocare, which is a movement initiated by the AMTB to mobilize and connect Christian youth to God’s global mission. Along with growing prayer movements and strategic alliances, many local churches have become engaged in missions. By 2022, this work of God resulted in nineteen thousand cross-cultural missionaries being sent to more than 111 countries by more than three hundred Brazilian agencies,² positioning Brazil as one of the largest missionary forces in the world.

Many Brazilian cross-cultural mission efforts are focused on isolated groups of people within Brazil, such as indigenous tribes, riverside communities (ribeirinhos), backcountry communities (sertanejos), or African groups (quilombolas). Some churches among indigenous tribes have increasingly taken responsibility for reaching out to other indigenous peoples. By 2017, the number of Brazilian missionaries that work outside of Brazil among Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists increased to 32 percent of the Brazilian missionary force.³ In 2023, the AMTB, which has more than one hundred affiliated organizations, launched an initiative to encourage the prioritization of mission among Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and tribal peoples.

Leaders of the Brazilian church are confident that God wants to use them to reach many of the peoples of the world. Many Brazilian leaders see that God has given good missionary potential to their people, as they are relational, welcoming, innovative, and in many cases, culturally close to peoples without the gospel. The church in Brazil is currently experiencing a phase of growth, missionary expansion, and spiritual, missiological, and social maturation. They are praying that God will sustain the momentum of mission mobilization with love for others and hope for God’s glory.

Indian Sending K. Rajendran

K. Rajendran was with Operation Mobilization for over 25 years as a pioneer and a missionary trainer. He was the chairman of the World Evangelical Alliance Missions Commission (WEA-MC) and the vice-chair of the Great Commission Round Table (GCR). He also served as the general secretary of the India Missions Association to address the evangelistic and social needs of India.

Following India’s independence in 1947, Western mission agencies began to withdraw from India for political reasons. The Protestant church was unclear on which direction missions work would take, yet with the revival and reorganization of the Indian church in the 1960s, an indigenous Indian mission movement was born. New indigenous Indian missions with charismatic leaders have emerged such as the Indian Evangelical Mission, the Friends Missionary Prayer Band, the Maranatha Ministries, and many others.

Western agencies continued to train Indian young people for indigenous work until the Indian missions could train their own people. Some early Indian missionaries were itinerant preachers. Others were church planters.

During this period, mission groups and churches from many denominations, theologies, and traditions within the country found a surprising unity around a common understanding of the Great Commission as a mandate from Christ. The India Missions Association (IMA) was founded in 1977. From five founding member organizations, IMA has grown into the largest missions association in the world with more than 296 organizations sending out nearly fifty thousand Indian workers.

Initially, most Indian mission groups followed the pattern of Western Protestant missions. Their main focus was proclaiming the gospel among remote tribal groups, the downtrodden, and the poor. Few went to the majority peoples. Eventually, Indian mission agencies became involved in community development and began to work among other segments of society as well, such as India’s youth, the educated middle class, the rich, the influencers, the diaspora Indians, and foreigners in Indian cities.

India’s great diversity means that Indian missions today still primarily send missionaries cross-culturally within India itself. However, the Indian church is starting to lift her eyes to the rest of the world. World evangelization is drawing her beyond her borders as new leaders gain global awareness.

IMA has deliberately worked to gather member organizations that could reach the whole nation of India with the gospel under its umbrella. Working with these members has helped IMA to network, create synergy between the mission agencies and workers, and build unity among Indians from different regions. Worldwide evangelization has been enhanced as IMA’s atmosphere has encouraged India and its global partners to work together in discipling all peoples.

GO TO THE BEGINNING OF LESSON 8: Pioneers of the World Christian Movement