Indigenous missions agencies, which assist non-Western missionaries working in or sent from their homeland, are considering coordination of their efforts through a new fellowship.
The growth in U.S.-based organizations specializing in indigenous missions has grown dramatically in the past ten years. When Chuck Bennett, president of Partners International in San Jose, California, began compiling names for the first consultation of these organizations, he expected to find only about two-dozen groups primarily concerned with supporting non-Western missionaries. But by the time he finished, he had 125 organizations on the list.
“This is something even we didn’t know was this big,” Bennett says. “If we didn’t know it, American Christians definitely are not aware of it. A lot of them still tend to think of missionaries as white guys in pith helmets.”
Now many of the 113 ministries that participated in an October conference in Wheaton, Illinois, are calling for a formal umbrella organization, tentatively called the Fellowship of Indigenous Missions Agencies. Participants will meet again next October to determine whether to unify officially. Bennett says the organization could function as an accountability system as well as help groups avoid duplicating their efforts.
So far, larger missions organizations such as the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association have not been included in discussions.
“These are associations primarily concerned with sending out Americans as missionaries,” Bennett says. “They were deliberately not invited because we didn’t want to muddy the waters.”
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