From the Coordinator: Advancing the Great Commission Through the 1% Challenge
Our vision is the gospel of the kingdom advancing throughout the world. Our mission is making disciples among the nations. Both of these are shaped by our values: the Church, grace, Reformed and covenantal theology, and mercy, justice, and the love of God.
What is the key metric in determining the scope of our disciple-making ministry? It is the number of disciple-makers. In other words, the more qualified longer-term missionaries we have, the more disciples are made, the more churches planted, the more communities are impacted with the gospel. The opposite would also be true. The fewer longer-term missionaries we have, the less impact we will make for the kingdom.
In 2012 we came to the realization that unless we added 150 new missionaries in two years, our mission force would radically decrease—primarily because of the anticipated number of retiring missionaries. So we prayed for 150. We asked you to pray for 150. What happened? After two years we had added about 150 new missionaries. God had heard our prayers. We then asked, “Why did we only pray for 150?” Our vision isn’t just maintaining what we have, it’s the gospel of the kingdom advancing through the world.
So we asked, “What would a kingdom-advancing prayer look like?” The idea of tithing came up—not tithing money, but people for missions. We wanted to challenge the church to offer up their best evangelists, disciple-makers, and leaders to go and serve in missions. After much prayer and reflection, we decided to ask the church to begin to pray for 1 percent. If every PCA church gave 1 percent of its members for longer-term missions service in the next 10 years, that would result in over 2,800 new missionaries. Think of what God can do, will do, with 2,800 new missionaries!
Jesus tells His disciples in His Word to “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt 9:38). Would you pray boldly with us for 1 percent?
Pray with us us that God would send out laborers into His harvest! Go to mtw.org/pray and sign up for our Pray 9:38 quarterly email.
Lloyd Kim
Lloyd Kim is coordinator of Mission to the World. He is a former PCA pastor and a former missionary with MTW in the Philippines and Cambodia. He holds an M.Div. from Westminster Seminary in California and a Ph.D. in New Testament studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. Lloyd and his wife, Eda, are the parents of Kaelyn, Christian, and Katy.
