“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)
Leaving your home, family, and friends, to live among strangers in an unknown land is daunting. So too is asking others to give financially so that you can go. But these are exactly the tasks God has impressed upon us. Answering His call to be strong and courageous, members of Anglican Frontier Missions’ Board of Directors gathered in Richmond last month to map out an ambitious goal over the next year: “25 by 25.”
The first part of this vision is for AFM to have 25 full-time CCWs, either on the mission field or “in the pipeline” preparing to go to the mission field, by the time we begin celebrations for our 25th anniversary on Sept. 15, 2018. (At present, when including affiliates and partners, AFM has 26 CCWs but only 16 of these are full-time.) So we are praying in faith for nine additional CCWs to go to new regions and come alongside existing ministry teams that need more support. Our vision is bold, as God-given visions often are, and we’re looking to the Lord of the Harvest to complete it.
The second and equally-important part of this vision is to raise up new donors in order to fund the growth of the new CCWs we’re trusting God to send. By our 25th anniversary AFM hopes to have 25 new donors giving $100/month and 25 new donors giving $200/month. This would provide the needed $7,500 additional monthly funding to support AFM’s continued growth.
The “25 by 25” vision that God has given us is big. But as The Rev. Canon Tad de Bordenave, founder of AFM, so often reminds us, missions to unreached peoples cannot fail because reaching them is indelibly imprinted on the Father’s heart. God loves all peoples! On Friday evening before our Saturday board meeting, our Directors hosted a donor appreciation dinner which included testimonies from staff, board members, and CCWs alike about the amazing things God has been doing through AFM CCWs.
What a joy it was to participate in the Richmond dinner with our sending mission’s agency and greet people who have been supporting our work for almost 20 years,” reported two AFM CCWs to Asia. “In fact, as we’ve been traveling to churches that have been supporting us for so many years, it’s been a joy to greet these mission partners and share how indigenous people are coming to Christ and how God has been sending us more CCWs as well. There is still much to do, but we can see great progress!” they added, “Mission knows no age!” In fact, they were recently joined by another retirement-age couple who are teaching English to the indigenous people as means of building friendship, meeting practical needs, and sharing the Gospel.
AFM will begin celebrations of its 25-year anniversary in Richmond Virginia (Sept. 15, 2018) and culminate its 25th Anniversary Celebration (Sept. 24-26, 2019), just before the triennial New Wineskins Mission Conference (September 26-29, 2019) in Ridgecrest, North Carolina.
We invite all our AFM family (past and present) to join us in prayer, thanksgiving, and even in person at these events as we give thanks to God for His goodness to AFM and his love for unreached peoples.
