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Why Native Missions?
We believe that a partnership of mutual servanthood between those to whom God has entrusted resources (financial, training, materials) and those to whom God has granted opportunities (indigenous Christian workers worldwide) is the most effective and efficient way to reach the world’s unreached people and serve a world in need.
While Christians from North America ought to always consider if God is calling them to relocate to another land for the sake of the Good News, we cannot rely solely on this as a strategy to reach the world. Clearly, a reevaluation of missionary practices and the implementation of new strategies with easily approachable inroads are needed to reach the goal of preaching the good news to “all creation” in our changing world.
Much work is still needed in order to fulfill Jesus Christ’s last command to “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” As of the year 2000, according to World Christian Encyclopedia, over 1.6 billion people (about 27% of the world’s population) have never had the chance to hear the gospel message in a culturally relevant way.
| WorldLink provides a solution to this world-wide need by promoting the good news of Jesus Christ through expanding, equipping, and encouraging the world’s indigenous missionary workforce. |
WorldLink has experienced the current effectiveness of the native missionary as unparalleled on today’s mission field. Native missionaries are often more effective than their foreign counterparts for several reasons. First, native missionaries have no language, culture, travel or lifestyle barriers to navigate, nor do they need to leave the mission field for long periods of rest or fundraising of because of the need for Western-style healthcare, for their children’s education, or because of hostilities toward foreigners.
Support of native missionaries is cost-effective as well. While a Western missionary costs an average of over $45,000 a year to support, a native missionary can be fully supported for as little as $300 to $3,000 per year. Unfortunately, many of these missionaries live in economically underdeveloped or religiously restricted countries of the Majority World, and as a result, the local church does not have the ability or the required finances to support missionary activity.
Christians and churches in the Western world have been richly blessed with finances and other resources. Historically however, they have lacked an effective means with which to use their resources in partnership with national workers on the mission fields of the world. WorldLink links together Christians and their resources with native missionaries.
| “Simply put, we link those with opportunity without resources and those with resources without opportunity.”—Jack Nelson, President, WorldLink International Ministries |
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