Small church, big impact (part 2)
Glenside Bible Church , a small church in Pennsylvania, had changed their paradigm of missions. They adopted a people group, the Krygyz, and were pouring their efforts into seeing this group reached.
But what happened to GBC’s existing missions program? Did the adoption of the Kyrgyz people and Kyrgyzstan phase out the other missionaries? Absolutely not! The majority of their long-term missionary partners were no longer working among unreached peoples, but they were still doing valuable Kingdom work. GBC did, however, make two important changes that matched their new way of thinking about mission.
Deliberate changes
First, they deliberately changed the way they talked about their missionaries. Instead of saying, “GBC supports Joe Missionary in Mexico,” they began to say, “GBC is planting the church in Puebla, Mexico, through a partnership with Joe Missionary.” They placed the focus on the people they were reaching and began to formulate their prayer information that way, even if it did not involve a specific people group. They learned to love the people they were already touching through each of their existing missionary partners.
The second thing they did was to deliberately ask God to expand their influence among unreached peoples. How? The same way they started. As opportunities came their way, they made deliberate additions to their program that increased their footprint among unreached peoples.
Extending partnerships
As older partners retired and money became available, they reinvested those budgeted funds in the direction of the unreached. For example, one of their long-term families in Irian Jaya had won almost an entire Sougb tribe of 12,000 to Christ in their 30+ years. (The Sougb are a neighboring tribe to the Sawi of “ Peace Child.”) The missionaries retired, but the Sougb tribe is now sending out missionaries of their own. GBC partners with a Sougb pastor who is reaching the Irarutu people of that same region by providing gas for his boat to travel the river.
Back in 2000, through the Kyrgyz newsletter, the church met a woman from India reaching the Kyrgyz diaspora. GBC collects and deposits her support and is in email contact with her multiple times each week as she touches this forgotten Kyrgyz group.
The most exciting new partnership that God has led GBC into is with a tiny church of 80 people in south India that has a vision to reach an entire unreached tribe called the Yenadi. Through them, since 2007, God has raised up 27 Yenadi evangelists, planted about 30 little churches, and started work among Yenadi in 80 villages. GBC helps support the evangelists so that they can afford to live in their villages without going to the city for better work. Pastor Kless prays with the pastor of the Indian church every other week and circulates an e-prayer letter for him.
Two GBC teams have gone to India. They helped to host the first-ever conference for ALL Yenadi believers in south India, and 450 people showed up! They’re almost all illiterate, so the team told them major stories from the Old Testament. What a joy to be the first to share the scripture with these unreached people!
Big impact
Today, Glenside Bible Church has 21 Western partnerships and eight partnerships with nationals or national organizations. They continue to pursue the Kyrgyz and to send out two or three short-term teams each summer to their various connections.
The church budget in 2013 was $333,000; in that year they gave $101,000 to missions. More than $30,000 of this was above their budget.
Pastor Kless says, “Our journey has led us to believe that, ‘All the nations You have made will come and worship before You, O Lord; they will bring glory to Your Name.’ ( Psalm 86:9
) We want to be part of making that happen through any opportunity God lays before us. We’re still a small church and we can’t do lots of things, but we have come to see and believe that if we make ourselves available even a small church CAN have a global impact.”
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