Global Missions

Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. The cognitive scientist says, “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days.” And he’s still bad at finding his way around.

The world is full of people like Uttal—and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists sometimes measure navigational ability by asking someone to point toward an out-of-sight location and it’s immediately obvious that some people are better at it than others.

Cognitive psychologist Nora Newcombe says, “People are never perfect, but they can be as accurate as single-digit degrees off, which is incredibly accurate.” But others, when asked to indicate the target’s direction, seem to point at random. “They have literally no idea where it is.”

Several cultural factors were associated with wayfinding skills. Country folk did better, on average, than people from cities. And among city-dwellers, those from cities with more chaotic street networks did better than those from cities like Chicago, where the streets form a regular grid. This is perhaps because residents of grid cities don’t need to build such complex mental maps.

Results like these suggest that an individual’s life experience may be one of the biggest determinants of how well they navigate. Support for the notion that people might improve with practice also comes from studies of what happens when people stop using their navigation skills. Researchers recruited 50 young adults and questioned them about their lifetime experience of driving with GPS. Then they tested the volunteers in a virtual world that required them to navigate without GPS. The heaviest GPS users did worse, they found. This strongly suggests that GPS reliance causes diminished skills, rather than poor skills leading to greater GPS use.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Guidance; Lostness - Some people are better at staying on course than others. However, in the spiritual realm, we are all hopelessly lost until Jesus came to our rescue (Isa. 53:6; Luke 19:10); 2) Believers; Direction; Sin, consequences of – Believers sometimes wander away from the truth and need the rod and the staff of the shepherd (Ps. 23:4; Ps. 119:176; Jam. 5:19).

Britain's so-called "loneliest sheep," which was stuck at the foot of a remote cliff in Scotland for at least two years, has been rescued. Cammy Wilson, who led the rescue mission, said it was a risky one. That's why, despite past attempts by others, the sheep had been stuck for so long.

The sheep was first discovered in 2021, on the shore of the cliff in Brora by kayaker Jillian Turner. Photos show the sheep at the base of the cliff surrounded by steep rock on one side and water on the other.

In October of 2023 Turner said she has spotted the sheep several times since and the sheep hasn't been able to move off her spot on the base of the cliff. Turner said, “It is heart-rending. We honestly thought she might make her way back up that first year.”

Wilson, runs a Facebook page called "The Sheep Game" that chronicles his life as a farmer. After another farmer brought the sheep to his attention, he named the sheep Fiona and continued to give updates about her on Facebook.

Wilson then had an exciting update for followers. He and four others used a winch, a mechanical device that can act like a pulley, to get to Fiona. One person stayed at the top of the cliff, while the others traveled about 820 feet down the cliff to get to her.

In a statement, the Scottish SPCA said the group was notified of the rescue. Scottish SPCA said, "Our Inspector checked over the sheep and found her to be in good bodily condition, although needing sheared. The ownership of the sheep then was handed over to Dalscone Farm, a tourist attraction in Edinburgh with activities for children.

You can view pictures of the sheep and the cliff here.

When a tornado hit Lamar County, Texas, Dakota Hudson and Lauren Patterson feared they would not survive. Hudson said, “We could feel the house start lifting up around us. We could hear the creaking and breaking.”

When the couple emerged from their bathroom, everything around them was destroyed, including their home, a family member’s house next door, and all their neighbors' homes. Hudson said, “God had his hand over our entire community. Looking at this destruction it’s hard to fathom how anyone could survive it.”

As the couple began checking on neighbors and learned everyone was physically OK, Hudson realized the engagement ring he’d just purchased to surprise Patterson was lost in the debris. He said, “Needle in a haystack doesn’t come close to what we were looking for.”

That is until the Paris Junior College softball team stopped by the property to offer help cleaning up. Once the team heard about the missing ring, they got to work. Outfielder Kate Rainey said, “I basically made my mind up. I was going to find the ring.” Rainey and her teammates searched for hours until she spotted a little miracle buried in the mud.

Though it wasn’t the proposal he had planned, Hudson decided there was no better moment to pop the question. Covered in mud, he dropped to one knee, surrounded by debris and with a team of softball players cheering him on. “We’re safe. We’re here. Everybody’s alright. It’s a miracle the ring was found. What better time to do it?” Hudson said. Patterson said “yes” immediately. “This was the light in a very dark moment. And it is still a dark moment, but this has given us reason to breathe and smile a little.”

The couple stayed in a hotel until they determined their next steps. They hope to rebuild on the same property and say they are extremely grateful for the love and support they’ve received from the community during this challenging time.

When people at Onecho Bible Church talk about “the mission field,” they mean the many places around the world where Christians are sharing the love of Jesus. But sometimes, they’re also talking about a literal field in Eastern Washington, where the congregation grows crops to support the people proclaiming the gospel around the world.

The 74-member church, smack-dab in the middle of a vast expanse of wheat fields, has donated $1.4 million to missions since 1965. They’ve funded wells, campgrounds, and Christian colleges. This year, they want to provide food and shelter to asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. Brian Largent, Onecho’s volunteer farm manager said, “Being as isolated as we are, it’s our missionaries and this mission field that keeps us very focused worldwide. This church is a very mission-oriented church—always has been.”

The church started with Mennonite migrants in the 1890s and Methodist farmers 20 years before that. But the unique fundraising program started in the 1960s. One of the church elders passed away at age 65 and bequeathed 180 acres to the church. He supported missionary work his whole life and considered that his legacy. He asked Onecho to use his land to continue the work of spreading the gospel.

The church decided it wouldn’t sell the field but would farm it with volunteers. The proceeds from the harvest would fund various missions. The first year, the harvest yielded $5,500. Revenue fluctuates, based on the success of the harvest. In 2021, the field earned $39,000. Last year, it was $178,000. “We just put the seed in the ground,” Largent said. “Then . . . it’s all up to the weather and what God’s going to do to produce the money.”

Sociologist Robert Woodberry has identified a robust statistical correlation between “conversionary Protestant” missionary activity and the democratization of a country. His conclusion: Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in non-governmental associations.

This was not a popular finding. Even the head of Woodberry’s dissertation committee warned him of the inevitable backlash: “To suggest that the missionary movement had this strong, positive influence on liberal democratization, you couldn’t think of a more unbelievable and offensive story to tell a lot of secular academics.”

But after years of extensive research, Woodberry nevertheless concluded, “Want a blossoming democracy today? The solution is simple—if you have a time machine: Send a 19th-century missionary.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

While Jesus didn’t tell us to go into all the world and make people literate, rich, and democratic, Woodberry’s findings illustrate the overwhelmingly positive influence of missionaries.

When Aaron Köhler tries to talk to people in Cottbus, Germany, about Jesus, church, and faith, he can’t assume they know what he’s talking about. Many in the city near the Polish border don’t know anything about Christianity. Köhler has had people ask him whether Christmas and Easter are Christian holidays, and if so, what they’re about. One time, he talked to someone at a local market who wasn’t familiar with the name Jesus. The person had never even heard it, that they could recall.

“That was crazy for me. In the ‘land of the Reformation,’ in a supposedly ‘Christian country,’ these people don’t even know the basic basics,” said Köhler, who co-pastors a church plant.

According to the most recent data, more than 60 percent of Germans identify as Christian. A little more than a quarter say they have no religion. Zoom in a little closer, though, and stark regional differences emerge. In the western part of the country—which includes Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Frankfurt—three-quarters of the population identify as Christian. But in the east, the region that was a Soviet Union satellite state from 1949 to 1990, only a quarter of Germans are Christian, with nearly 70 percent identifying themselves as “nonbelievers.”

Christianity is declining in much of formerly Protestant Europe. But eastern Germany stands out, even compared with other rapidly secularizing nations. Here, large swaths of the population have had no serious contact with Christianity for three generations. Köhler said, “For decades, there was no prayer, no Bible at home, no church attendance. After all these years, people don’t know what they don’t know.”

The regional differences are easily traced to the division of the country after its defeat in World War II. The French, British, and American-controlled sectors in the west merged into the German Federal Republic in 1949. The Soviet-controlled East formed the German Democratic Republic, a socialist state with totalitarian leaders who suppressed religion. The Christian population in East Germany fell from about 90 percent in 1949 to only 30 percent in 1990.

Evangelicalism is now the largest religious demographic in Central America, according to a poll of about 4,000 people in five countries. More than a third of people from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica told researchers that they are evangelical, while another 29 percent said they are “nondenominational believers.”

Only about a third of people in the region said they were Catholic—down from about 60 percent in the 1970s. Some scholars have attributed the shift to internal Catholic conflict and the long fallout from the church’s political affiliations on the extreme right and left, along with the disruptions of urbanization.

Evangelical theologian Samuel Escobar, noting the trend in an interview in 2006, said Catholics who moved to Central American cities found empowerment in their evangelical conversion. He said, “Their decision to accept Christ meant a change in patterns of behavior which helped people to reorient their lives.”

Tim Keller said he would never forget the story about one of his mentors, a college professor named Dr. Addison Leach.

Two young women at the college were both bright and their respective parents wanted them to get Master’s Degrees and go on to careers. But, instead, they both became Christians. Both decided that they were going to become missionaries. Their parents had a fit. One of the mothers called Dr. Leach, thinking that Dr. Leach was one of the reasons that the girls had become (in the mother’s words) “religious fanatics, rather than pursuing the course they had hoped, getting a career and having security. Instead, they were going to go wildly off into the blue.”

This mother said, “We wanted our daughter to get a master’s degree, start a career, and get something in the bank, so she could have some security. Dr. Leach responded:

Please just let me remind you of something. We’re all on a little ball of rock called earth, and we’re spinning along through space at zillions of miles per hour. Even if we don’t run in to anything, eventually we’re all going to die. Which means that under every single one of us there’s a trap door that’s going to open one day and we’re all going to fall off this ball of rock. And underneath will either be the everlasting arms of God or absolutely nothing. So maybe we can get a master’s degree to get some security.

But the biggest savings account in the world cannot stop cancer. It can’t stop traffic accidents. It cannot stop broken hearts. It can’t give you anything … any of the things that only God can give you. He’s the only significance you can have. He’s the only love that you can get and can’t lose.

The pandemic has forced some locally owned businesses to close their doors. For one North Texas restaurant owner, he’s finding ways to overcome these challenges and continues to serve free meals to those who need them. Owner Ram Mehta says, “I get to meet a lot of amazing people. It’s all like a big extended family.”

Before customers order at the counter, they’re greeted with a sign on the door:

If you are Hungry, Homeless or Can’t afford a meal.

Please honor us by stopping by during business hours

for a couple of slices of Hot Pizza & Fountain Drink at No Charge.

If any employee here doesn’t treat you with same respect as a paying customer.

Please Call Ram directly at (number given). No questions no judgement.

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to serve you. God Bless You.

Ram says, “At one point in my life I was homeless, and my mom basically told me ‘Never forget where you came from.’” These are words he took to heart. So, he posted this sign to his restaurants' front doors as a reminder. It honors his mother, Lata Mehta who passed away three years ago.

This kind gesture called “Everyone Eatz” bloomed into a movement bigger than Ram ever imagined. He started holding events throughout Texas and has provided more than a half a million free meals and more. He says, “We started giving out cars to single moms, we started paying for rent for a few people, we started giving backpacks, toys for Christmas. So, it’s just about helping your neighbor.”

He hopes this example will inspire others to pay it forward. It’s already working. He says restaurants in Wisconsin and Florida have reached out asking to adopt the movement and help people in their communities.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Believers are to show the same love and care to those in need (1 Jn. 3:17-18; Heb 13:16). This reflects our greater mission of inviting people to “’Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).

You can get a cellphone signal on the highest mountain in Colorado. If you get lost hiking that mountain, you should probably answer your phone — even if you don't recognize the caller's number.

That's the message being spread by Lake County Search and Rescue, which tried to help a lost hiker on Mount Elbert by sending out search teams and repeatedly calling the hiker's phone. All to no avail. The hiker spent the night on the side of the mountain before finally reaching safety. "One notable take-away is that the subject ignored repeated phone calls from us because they didn't recognize the number.”

The hiker set out at 9 a.m. on a route that normally takes about seven hours to complete, round-trip. A caller alerted search and rescue teams around 8 p.m., and a five-person team stayed in the field looking for the hiker until 3 a.m., when the team suspended the search. More searchers hit the mountain the next morning, but then the hiker appeared, having finally made it back to their car. The hiker had gotten disoriented in an ordeal that lasted about 24 hours.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sadly, it is sometimes the habit of people to avoid those who are trying to rescue them. God went looking for Adam in the Garden when he was hiding in fear (Gen. 3:9). Jesus came to earth to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10), and he repeatedly called the lost to come to him for salvation, but they refused to respond (Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34).

Braulia Ribeiro shares how God taught a first-time missionary group to depend on him:

In 1983, I was part of a first-time team of Brazilian young people going to plant a mission station among the Paumarí. I was chosen because I had some training in the Paumari language with the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

We traveled on a small boat to reach Lábrea. From there to a small river where the Paumarí were, there were no transport boats available. We would have to hire a private boat to take us there. We would be the first missionaries to reach this particular village.

The only money our little team had left was a few hundred dollars we put aside to buy supplies and food to stay in the jungle for three months. “What do we do, Lord? Should we just stay here waiting?” I felt that I had received Matthew 13:46 from God. It said, “he went away and sold everything he had.” Is God saying that we have to use all our money to pay for the boat ride?

And that was exactly how things went. We hired the owner of the smallest boat we could find. The price he charged amounted to the exact figure we’d saved. We set out with food for only the short trip, no kerosene, or other supplies. After five-day trip we found a man with a large canoe that was available to take us the rest of the way to Maniçoã Lake.

We got out of the canoe in front of the first hut. I shouted from the land in my broken Paumarí, “Ivaniti?” – “Is that you?” An old woman answered me from the top, “Ha’ã hovani!” – “Yes, it’s me!” She did not seem to find it strange to hear me speaking her language.

We all climbed up to the hut and sat ceremoniously on the floor. After a good hour of conversation about the trip, she asked what we were there to do. I said, “We are missionaries. We want to help you to know Jesus, the Son of God.” The lady looked at me with a puzzled expression and started shouting for her grandson, Danilo. “Come over, Danilo. The missionaries have arrived. Take them to their home.”

“Our home?” I asked. She pointed to an empty tall hut nearby. “Danilo and I built this hut two summers ago, preparing for your arrival. We heard in the radio about the Creator God, and how his Son, Jesus, wants to help us. I said, ‘If that is true, he will send us his people.’ So we built the hut for you.”

We were placed in our “home,” and from that day on, we were fed with abundant fish, manioc flour, and jungle fruits. For the whole six months we stayed with the Paumarí we were well taken care of, never needing a cent of the money we applied to renting the boat. We had nothing to offer them except ourselves, and that was all they needed.

A farmer's sheep and pig had escaped. Together they had found a weak rail in the fence and had pressed upon it until it broke under their weight. Seeing their opportunity, they quickly bolted from the field and began to explore their new and unfamiliar surroundings.

It did not take long for the farmer to notice that two of his animals were missing and to set out to find them. But the animals had wandered far and had not left much of a trail behind them. Day soon turned to night and after resting fitfully, he resumed his search in the morning. The animals had now been gone for more than 24 hours and he began to wonder what could possibly have happened to them.

It was in the afternoon of the second day that he began to hear a distant bleating, the sound of his sheep crying out. He then began to follow the sound as it led toward a nearby bog. And it was there that he found his missing sheep and his missing pig. Both had fallen into a deep ditch, both had become coated in muck, both were unable to scramble out. But where the pig had been content to wallow in the mud, the sheep had known to bleat pathetically until the farmer had come to rescue it, to lift it out, and to cleanse it.

Then, said the farmer,

If you are ever deceived into a sin and overtaken by a weakness, don’t lose heart. Go at once to your compassionate Savior. Tell Him in the simplest words the story of your fall and the sorrow you feel. Ask Him to wash you at once and to restore your soul. For if a sheep and a sow fall into a ditch, the sow wallows in it, but the sheep bleats pathetically until she is cleansed by her master. Be the sheep, my friend, and not the pig.

Did you know there were two boats that responded to the Titanic when it was sinking? One boat, the Californian, was about 20 miles away. They turned off their radio about ten minutes before the Titanic hit the iceberg. They saw rockets and flares shoot off in the distance. They couldn’t figure out why another boat was shooting rockets and flares, but they didn’t turn on their radio, and they didn’t investigate. They saw the boat’s light turn off, but thought it was just turning its light off for the night. The crew of the Californian were so in maintenance-mode with what they were already doing, they couldn’t imagine the Titanic sinking. For the rest of their lives the crew members of the Californian had to wrestle with why they didn’t go.

But there was another ship, the Carpathia. It was 58 miles away. But its radio was on, and when it got the call that the Titanic was sinking it powered up all its engines and headed straight for the Titanic, navigating around icebergs in the night. It ran full-power ahead for 3.5 hours. When the crew showed up at the scene of the disaster, many had already perished, but they saved 705 lives from the life boats.

Possible Preaching Angle

The Carpathia was in mission mode. The Californian was in maintenance mode. Which would we rather be? The Californian ? Or the Carpathia ? A church just trying to get by? Or a church on a mission, saving lives?

Three years ago, Debra Mejeur and her husband Steven took Lola on a trip to Elk Grove, a suburb of Chicago, to visit friends. Then they received a call from neighbors that Lola was running down the street after escaping from the chain link fence and commenced what would turn into a lengthy search for her.

For two months, Debra and her husband drove three hours to Elk Grove every weekend to look for Lola, but the trips became costly and the trips slowed down. It was emotionally and physically exhausting. Debra said, “It was just devastating. I hated leaving Elk Grove because it just felt like I was abandoning her.”

Debra held out hope for finding Lola. She joined every Elk Grove neighborhood group she could find and would post every year on the anniversary she went missing asking if anyone had seen her. She even sought advice from a professional dog rescuer. She hoped that if someone out there had taken Lola in that they would care for her as much as she did.

Debra’s wish was granted and a couple in Glendale Heights did look after Lola. They noticed her in the woods and set out food and water for her for a year. Finally, they gained her trust enough to put a leash on her and take her to the DuPage County Animal Services. Debra received a text saying her pet Lola’s microchip had been detected and to contact Animal Services in Illinois. Debra said, “They are amazing people who did a very selfless act.”

In the yard in front of the animal shelter Lola was timid at first and hid behind the vet. She then gave Debra a few sniffs and a big lick on the forehead before her tail started wagging wildly and she burrowed into Debra for a hug. When she noticed Debra’s husband, Lola bounded over to him knocking him to the ground with excitement.

Lola was in good health with no noticeable signs of injury or trauma, although she had lost 10 pounds. Debra said, “I wish she could talk because I would probably give her a little lecture, too. ‘You’re not supposed to run away. Don’t do it again.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Identity in Christ; Security in Christ – Debra’s missing dog was found because it was marked with a microchip. Believers can never be lost because we are marked with God’s seal of ownership (Eph. 1:13). 2) Lost; Lostness - We have also wandered away from God, but he never stops searching for us. (Luke 19:10)

The 2010s were a tipping point for global Christianity. Now, in 2020, more than half the world’s Christians live in Africa and Latin America, according to a new report from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. The portion of Christians in Europe has also fallen below 25% for the first time since the Middle Ages.

The change was predicted by historian Philip Jenkins, among others. Jenkins wrote in 2007, “We are living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide, as the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably . . . southward.” The demographic trends are expected to continue into this decade.

Percentage of the world’s Christians 2010 compared to 2020:

USA & Canada: Down from 12% to 9%

Europe: Down from 25% to 23%

Asia: Up from 15% to 16%

Latin America: Up from 24% to 25%

Africa: Up from 22% to 26%

More and more, we can’t help but live in a globalized world. Almost every aspect of our everyday life relies on global supply chains. If you have an iPhone, you’re using a product made with hundreds of parts from 43 countries. If you use a Samsung phone, chances are it was assembled in Vietnam or India with a similarly complex supply chain process. The ever-reliable Toyota Corolla has 30,000 parts from a far-flung supply chain stretching the globe. BMW works with 12,000 suppliers in 70 countries. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine includes 280 different components, manufactured in 86 different sites across 19 countries, driven partly by the research of a son and daughter of Turkish migrants to Germany.

But the commercial airplane has been called the “mother of all global supply chains.” A single Boeing airplane is made of more than three million parts, which means the company’s supply chain is a massive, global operation. More than 150,000 people are employed in more than 65 countries, not to mention the hundreds of thousands more working for Boeing suppliers across the globe.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) The church is also called to be a global movement, including men and women from every tribe and nation and tongue. (2) Global missions—God loves the whole world and desires to draw all men and women to himself through believers working together although scattered around the world.

In a YouTube video, a young boy comes across a small sheep stuck headfirst in a long narrow trench which has been dug beside a road. The boy uses his hands and a belt around the leg of the sheep to rescue the trapped sheep.

Immediately on being set free, the sheep takes a few stumbling steps, and then a couple of joyful leaps … only to land headfirst back in the same trench further along the road. The audio then records then sheep baaing helplessly after finding itself right back in the same condition.

Some of the comments that accompany the video make the application very easy:

Duarte Santo – “The story of my life”

Browill9 – “That’s why Jesus called us sheep”

Tim Walker – “Me and Jesus on a regular basis!”

victor carjan – “Jesus said in John 5:14 … Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”

Keefe Ulmschneider – “This is a great representation of what believers do after Christ Jesus drags us out of the ditch, we fall/ jump right back in and need to be saved again. Wretched sinners we are ...”

You can watch the 29 second video here.

More than 5,000 people groups are without an indigenous Christian church, according to recent data from Joshua Project. Nearly 2 billion people—more than a quarter of the world’s population—live in a group without a “self-sustaining gospel movement.” The ten largest unreached people groups are located in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Algeria.

Missiologists say cross-cultural missions are more effective than near-neighbor evangelism to share the gospel with people who have never heard it, but only about 4 percent of global missionaries are going to places where there are no existing churches.

Justin Kimball had not even worked a year in health care when he invented medical insurance in 1929. A former teacher, the vice president of Baylor Hospital in Dallas watched the stock market crash and was thinking about money. His hospital was half empty and sitting on piles of unpaid bills. Kimball said, “the people who owed them had no money.”

His solution was the earliest version of modern health insurance. The hospital sold it to Dallas schoolteachers for 50 cents a month. The plan was instantly popular. Thus began the Blue Cross and Blue Shield family of insurance companies. Kimball was watching out for his employer’s bottom line, but he and the Texas Baptists who oversaw the hospital were also following in the footsteps of the early church.

When the plague struck third-century Rome, Christians organized themselves to care for the sick and the dying as both the government and their pagan neighbors looked on (helplessly). These public displays of righteousness persisted despite growing persecution of the church. They also laid the groundwork for modern Western medicine. In less than a century, church-run infirmaries and hospitals emerged as formal parts of Roman society.

Like the early-church in Rome, modern Christians have been some of the first in and the last out in responding to medical needs. They have founded some of the world’s most important medical centers. They are a key driver of short-term medical mission trips, which provide an estimated $3.7 billion worth of volunteer health care in poor countries each year. And evangelical groups operate countless small hospitals and clinics around the globe, filling prescriptions and performing major surgeries for free.

John Hopkins professor Henry Mosley, told CT back in 1986, “Traditionally, Christian missions have led the way in caring for the sick. Mission agencies can take the initiative to demonstrate compassion and caring for those who are neglected by their governments.”