Anglican Frontier Missions, DOMA Churches, and the Global Missions Initiative: A Profile of Partnership
By The Rev. Dr. Chris Royer
John Piper has famously remarked, “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” At the consummation, the sending and receiving of missionaries will be no longer be necessary since “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Rev 7:9), will be standing around the throne, worshipping the Lamb. Until that day, however, Jesus has commissioned his church to go and make disciples from among each of the earth’s 17,428 ethnolinguistic nations.[1]
Missiologists inform us that 4,977 different ethnolinguistic nations (with an aggregate population of 2 billion people) have 0.01% Christian adherents or fewer.[2] Missiologists call these ethnolinguistic nations, with less than 0.01% Christian adherents, frontier unreached people groups.
After World War II, Protestant mission organizations began proliferating with the unfortunate side effect of nestling the locus of global missions to frontier unreached people groups away from the congregation and into the hands of “mission professionals.” Another trend in post-World War II missions was the de-emphasis (and in most cases, the downright ignoring) of sacrament, liturgy, and the Great Tradition. Anglican Frontier Missions’ (AFM) conviction is that the local church is the originator and sustainer of missions and that the mission agency should assist the local church in her God-ordained role to reach unreached peoples. Further, AFM’s conviction is that many of the distinctives we Anglicans hold near and dear, like sacraments, liturgy, and the BCP, are not accessories to the Great Commission but integral and trans-cultural components of catechesis, or making disciples (Mt. 28:19).
I thank God for the great big missional heart among DOMA churches, not only in the form of serving and supporting the established church in the Global South, but also through sending missionaries to ethnolinguistic nations where a viable, visible, and self-sustaining church is not yet present.
Eleven DOMA churches are partnering with Anglican Frontier Missions (AFM) in providing prayer, logistics, and financial resources, to send missionaries, disciple indigenous believers, and catalyze church planting movements among frontier unreached people groups. Restoration Arlington has even raised up a their very own missionary family who lives and shares Christ in a 99.99% Islamic nation. In addition, "Miranda," not her real name, is an AFM missionary in Nepal thanks to the support of Light of Christ in Heathsville, VA.
Anglican Frontier Missions is grateful to be a missional partner of DOMA Churches and of the ACNA’s newly launched Global Mission Initiative (GMI). So, whether you are interested in giving, going, serving, praying, advocating, or partnering to support cross-cultural missions, AFM’s here to serve you and your church as you reach out to peoples and places still lacking a viable, visible, and self-sustaining church.
[1] https://joshuaproject.net/
[2] https://joshuaproject.net/frontier
The Rev. Christopher Royer, PhD, is the Executive Director of Anglican Frontier Missions.
Original article found: https://www.anglicandoma.org/messenger-articles/global-ministries
