QUESTION From: Jason Butler <76574.1545@compuserve.com> If I were going to teach an Intro to Missions class and wanted to help people understand the current status of evangelical missions, what are my best resources? Specifically, I want to know, and be able to teach, the relationship between AD 2000, JP 2000, GCOWE, Adopt-A-People, Praying Through the Window, the various databases that keep track of everything, etc. Is there any literature that helps make all the relationships clear?

ANSWER From: Mike Clinton <Mikeehc@aol.com> The relationship between GCOWE, AD2000, and the Joshua Project 2000 is quite simple. The International AD2000 & Beyond movement has as it's major thrust for the remaining 5 years the task of implementing the vision of a church for every people and the Gospel for every person by the year 2000. The Joshua Project 2000 is essentially the focus of the Intl. AD2000 office towards that task, with a wide body of cooperation and support. GCOWE '95 was the status meeting in Korea of where the world-wide church was in regards to the goal of a church for every people... by 1995. Now, since the GCOWE name has become well known, there are a number of GCOWE's being held around the world which are focusing on assessing the task and seeing it accomplished. Anyways, I submit this as a starting point for you to take or leave. I would suggest you check out their great web site which I already pointed out and even give the AD2000 office a call at (719)576-2000 if you have any more questions.

As for broader coverage of missions, I discovered a book that is a great text (the best I've yet seen) for a Bible College level "intro to missions" course (that could easily be used in a church setting where something like Perspectives may not be an option). It's worth listing as a resource. It's called "What in the World is God Doing?" by C. Gordon Olson. It's published by Global Gospel Publishers at 74 Mountain Ave., Cedar Knolls, NJ, 07927 (ph. 201-267-2511). It's a very well-done book of about 320 pages covering the essentials of global missions (OT and NT mandates, history, world religions, current status of missions, how to be involved).

ANSWER From: <NateWilson@XC.org> The whole idea behind AD2000, JP2000, AAPC, PTTW, etc, is the cooperation of Christians to evangelize every ethnic/people group in the world. AD2000 is a small organization that's making big impact as it works to rally efforts of many mission agencies throughout the world. The ultimate goal is to plant indigenous, reproducing churches among every tribe, tongue, and nation so that God will receive worship from all of the peoples He made. Much has to be done in order to reach this goal.

One step in reaching this goal is to simply define the task of finishing world evangelization. AD2000's JP2000 thrust is a challenge to identify and research all of the major unreached peoples in the world. This works hand-in-hand with Christian fellowships "adopting" particular unreached peoples, which has been a focus of the U.S.Center's Adopt-A-People Campaign and of the Adopt-a-People Clearinghouse in Colorado Springs for years. Churches and mission agencies have poured their resources into the vision as well: for instance, Bruce Camp of EV. Free Mission has written a book on adoption, and Bethany Prayer Fellowship in Lousiana is compiling prayer profiles on the 1700+ major unreached peoples.

Praying Through the Window is a similar initiative that has been "rallied" by AD2000. Caleb Project, New Life Fellowship, CBN, YWAM, and others (how could we ever know the names of everyone who helped in this effort?!!) realized that in order for Christians to reach the unreached peoples of the world, a major prayer movement needed to happen, so they wrote, marketed, produced, and printed videos and books to get the PTTW prayer movement going.

In cases like AAPC and PTTW, it was several mission agencies who rallied around the focal point that AD2000 offered to get a significant project off the ground.

As Greg Fritz, president of Caleb Project said about a week ago, "Don't try to figure out the structure of AD2000." Part of the reason that we may have a hard time understanding all the relationships between these organizations and initiatives is that AD2000 is not a Western thing, it is much more Two-Thirds World in ethos. Another part of the reason is that you can't really know all that is happening when you have hundreds of mission agencies networking with each other. I heard someone quote Luis Bush as saying, "It's out of control!" This can't be brought into the hierarchical stucture of any one agency--God alone can fully orchestrate it.

GLOBAL HARVEST MINISTRIES/AD2000 UNITED PRAYER TRACK
74114.570@compuserve.com NOT a prayer request line. It is a major networking organization mobilizing prayer globally.

AD2000 MOBILIZING NEW MISSIONARIES
From: Pari Rickard <100275.504@compuserve.com> I have been in South Africa several times in the last few years and have been working with some of the key mobilizers there, including Philip Boetha, Willy Crew, and others down there. Philip is a tremendous visionary and is well respected for his commitment to adopting unreached peoples. We, in fact, have several AD2000ers (also YWAMers) working with him in the Adopt-A-People vision there.

It is good that he wants to see the Love Southern Africa start a student missions movement that is more church based. LSA and their plans to send out 10,000 missionaries by the year 2000 certainly does need to more firmly impact the local churches of South Africa. The zeal there is very high, but it seems like structures have not yet been modified enough to get students actually on to the mission field. As result, of course, finances and prayer seems to be a crucial issue. This year alone 10,000+ students actually attended mission conferences there in South Africa and at least 2,000 of them responded to the call to go into missions. I am of the opinion that if we see 1 - 2 % of those go, under the present system, we would be doing very well. But, of course, I don't think that's how it should be.

In the Mobilizing New Missionaries network, we are identifying two key elements for missions mobilization for unreached peoples:

1) We need to see the Adopt-A-People Movement much more clearly rooted across the world in local churches and many more churches getting on board in the program. That is obviously going to be crucial to the funding and prayer support required for missionaries around the world. We put many of the overheads for adopting people groups that we designed a few years ago into Africans. They are in South Africa, being disseminated in the churches through several different systems.

2) The student interest in missions is running ahead of the churches, which obviously means a shortage of prayer and finances for the movement. I think another way to address that is to begin to clearly disseminate global opportunities for the 10/40 Window into the hands of the various AD2000, other mission organization, student movement, and general missions interested people around the world. In that, we have staff working on what we are presently calling a "Placement Guide to the 10/40 Window". This placement guide is an attempt to collect in usable and easily reproducible form actual placement opportunities in the 10/40 Window, of which many actually involve finances.

When we were in South Africa, talking to the AD2000 MNM reps down there in the Cape, it seemed to us that the clearest gap right now is the lack of actual opportunities for these many students. If many of them, who have many qualifications, could be placed in jobs across the world, then local churches sending them out would have less of a problem financially.

Of course, our lessons in Central Asia are showing us that tentmaking can be done, to the effect of actually producing churches and believers in unreached people groups, if it's done carefully and in the context of clear mission goals. As well, some of the concerns about tentmakers working too many hours with little reinforcement are also sometimes diminished when we get several people doing the same thing in the team context.

In that, then, I am seeing jobs as a crucial way to get people like these students out into the 10/40 Window. As we gather information and disseminate it to these students and our local churches, then we seem to get a marriage of both the missions commitment, prayer support, and perhaps some finances to help support the missionaries.

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