Anchored in the Past

Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM) is the world missions arm of the U.S. Assemblies of God. Its formation parallels that of the General Council, and in fact, many of our church leaders and historians believe missions was the primary reason the General Council was formed.

General Superintendent George O. Wood cites missions as one of five core values for our Fellowship. John W. Welch, general superintendent from 1915-19 and 1923-25, said, “The General Council of the Assemblies of God was never meant to be an institution; it is just a missionary agency.” We are fulfilling our mandate to the General Council by obeying the command of Jesus to “go into all the world and preach the gospel.”

With God’s help, we have stayed on mission over these past 103 years, and the results are astounding. The World Assemblies of God Fellowship (WAGF) today has nearly 370,000 churches and over 68 million adherents. The latest WAGF statistics state that every 37 seconds somewhere in the world a person comes to Christ, and every 63 minutes a church is planted.

But this is no reason to reduce our commitment. As former AGWM Executive Director Loren Triplett famously quoted, “We dare not measure our success against anything but the unfinished task.”

Pointed toward the Future

Our history provides a platform to proactively and positively move forward into the future and aggressively establish the Church where it is not found. To accomplish this, we passionately pursue implementing all the elements of our mission: reach the lost, plant churches, train lay and vocational ministers, and serve the poor and suffering. Every missional task aims to establish the Church among lost and unreached peoples — regardless of geographical boundaries, political entities, or religious beliefs.

Our mission and efforts are focused on the following structural points:

1. Leveraging our worldwide network of partners to establish and plant the Church. To date, 94 General Councils around the world are sending nearly 5,000 missionaries — in addition to 2,756 world missionaries sent from our U.S. Church. We are only beginning to see the strength of multinational teams focused on church planting.

2. Ministering with compassion to those in need. In addition to responding to natural crises, a vast and fertile harvest field now exists among refugees and internally displaced people in Europe, Africa, and Middle East. We continue to see amazing conversions — some from among the most difficult and adversarial religions in the world. In Europe alone, our personnel and partner churches have seen over 12,000 converts to Christ and many communities of faith established.

We continue to pray that God would send workers into the world’s abundant fields of harvest.

3. Increasing attention on unreached people groups (UPGs). Over the last 15 years, we have been motivated to fine-tune our strategic initiatives to plant the Church where it is not found. Presently, we have church-planting teams working among or focusing on 345 UPGs, and we feel led by the Spirit to increase our efforts to reach an additional 25 UPGs over the next few years.

Updated Resources

We continue to pray that God would send workers into the world’s abundant fields of harvest (Matthew 9:37-38). To accomplish an aggressive move into the future, we are also updating resources and infrastructure:

• Our auxiliary programs (Speed the Light, Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge, Light for the Lost, and Women’s Ministries) have ramped up missions efforts. They not only raise money — for which we are deeply grateful — but also challenge their constituencies to listen to the Spirit’s direction regarding personal involvement in world missions.
• In partnership with Chi Alpha, we host a World Missions Summit for thousands of college and university students. The fourth summit, held this past January in Houston, resulted in approximately 2,000 students giving a year and praying about a lifetime of missions service.
• We created an information pipeline for prospective World Missions candidates. The pipeline helps them understand and navigate the steps to short-term or long-term ministry on the missions field.
• We revamped missionary training. Specifically, we want to help this generation gain a biblical, missiological understanding of our mission.
• We are sending more church planting teams than ever. Examples include Live Dead initiatives in Africa, the Arab world, and India; Priority 31 in Northern Asia; and other efforts in Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Europe.
• We expanded our leadership base. In addition to area directors, we rely on ministry directors and strategic leaders in all our regions and International Ministries.
• We meet annually with district leadership. This helps us connect with our grassroots constituency and ensure we responsibly steward missionary personnel from across our Fellowship.
• We created a Business as Mission (BAM) initiative. This limited liability corporation will help us facilitate missionary callings and establish the Church in difficult places.

A Timeless Mission

Despite changing values in our country, unstable political regimes in other countries, difficulty obtaining resident visas, spiritual attacks, economic uncertainties, and a changing cultural environment in some local churches — our commitment to obey the command of our Lord Jesus Christ to go into all the world and make disciples is not diminished.

We move forward in confidence because our mission is solidly founded on obedience to our biblical commission, supported by our Fellowship’s mandate, and echoed repeatedly among our personnel, who individually sense the Holy Spirit’s calling and empowerment. We recognize that to move into an unknown future means to be guided by the Spirit.

As Winston Churchill said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

We continue to change, develop, and grow in order to plant and establish the Church where it is not.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2017 issue of Called to Serve, the Assemblies of God ministers letter.