Caring for Our Afghan Neighbors – Here and Abroad | the Reach August 2021

by | Oct 12, 2021 | Biblical/Missional, Church Partnership

Dear friends,

For many, these days are full of sleepless nights with anxious hearts. Whether it is the constant threat of a virus which much of the world is unprotected from, a disastrous earthquake in Haiti,  wild fires that are unceasing, or the fall of a government and the rise of another,  we recognize that we are experiencing a broken world. At the root of all of the calamities there is also the Christian hope that one day we have One who is making all things right. However, that redeemed Kingdom is not only far off, but also very ever present in the here and now. We are promised that the LORD who does not slumber, who made all of creation and is recreating it in the image of His son, will bend His ear to His people. If you missed it earlier this week, please watch this link for a call to prayer from Dean and Gabriel.  

Additionally, World Outreach wanted to give specific ways for our people to be praying for the situation in Afghanistan. You’ll see those prayer points below from one of our workers who is intimately involved in that region and among those people. We also ask you to join us next week for a zoom meeting to help answer how we respond as followers of Jesus to Afghanistan’s needs and particularly the refugees coming to the US. If you’d like to connect with your Muslim neighbors (including Afghan refugees in your community), we invite you to also join our workshop taking place in September. 

Let us lift our eyes and our mouths to the LORD, for it is in Him that our help comes.

  1. Peace of heart. Too many people are crowding the airport and making rash decisions, including believers albeit they have reason for concern. God is in control and has higher authority than Taliban. 
  2. Relief to internally displaced people. Thousands of Afghans fled their homes to flock to Kabul only to get caught there now but they are without much food, water or money. No one is there to help them that we know about. 
  3. Civil government. God ordains rulers and kings. The new rulers have the task of running a civil government and society that is stable and peaceful. Even if it is along lines we do not prefer, such laws have not stopped the Church in the past nor will it now. 
  4. Protection from fear and boldness of believers. Evacuation is not the best route for every believer nor all Afghans. Looking to the West has become an idol. God is able to protect them and make the Good News to those around them now and protect them even unto death. 
  5. Opportunity for Christian workers to Afghanistan. Once there is order there will be a huge need for humanitarian/Christian aid organizations to return. We worked under them before and will likely do so again.  
  6. God’s Kingdom to come to Afghanistan. There are no human solutions. Not armies, nor money nor training, etc. have been able to change their hearts, the real root of the problem. Only God can do that through Jesus.

Afghanistan: Crisis and Opportunity – How Your Church Can Repond

by | Oct 12, 2021 | Biblical/Missional, Church Partnership

Dear friends,

Last week, we were able to host a webinar around the current situation in Afghanistan and how we can respond as followers of Jesus. A big thank you to everyone who was able to register and attend. We’re so grateful for the care and concern shown for our Afghan neighbors, here and abroad, and appreciate your desire to help – both in action and in showing the love of Christ. We have heard from many of you who weren’t able to attend asking about ways to help and pray. To that end, we wanted to make both the webinar and the resources discussed available to our broader World Outreach family. To request the webinar, simply click below to email us. 

Email World Outreach

Psalm 121 reminds us that our God is in control and calls the church to respond in love. Below are resources listing different ways to serve, learn, pray, and give to aid those most impacted by the crisis. We encourage you to prayerfully consider the ways in which you can respond in love.

Resettlement Agencies – There are nine national resettlement agencies and additional local ones. Look up the resettlement agencies in your town or state at the following link. Here is a wonderful video that helps show the power of being part of the Welcome Team that welcomes new refugees. Remember that using google translate can be helpful once serving among new neighbors or using the tarjimly app. 

World Relief Sacramento Area Host Homes –  If you live in Sacramento, you have the valuable opportunity to become a host home and offer a safe place for newly arrived refugees. Click here for more information and to apply.

Advocacy – Advocate for refugees and asylum-seekers, including vulnerable Afghans, by getting in touch with your elected officials. Document Templates are available here! 

WO Connecting with Your Muslim Neighbor Workshop – WO offers a 6-week course for individuals interested in learning how to foster and create meaningful, ongoing relationships with Muslims in your communities or in nearby communities. To learn more about this workshop, and how to register online, click here. 

Seminary Course – A 15-week class titled Perceiving God in Islam and Christianity. The course will be offered online through the Lillias Trotter Center and Wesley Biblical Seminary. We will be considering how vital God’s relational (Trinitarian) nature is to every aspect of our faith. We’ll also compare that with the Islamic view of Allah as a mono-personal god. Please join us in prayer that we will be strengthened and encouraged to share Christ’s gospel with Muslims more effectively.

View and share World Relief’s slides from the webinar. If you have more questions, please feel free to email Heather, with World Relief.

Read Loving Your Muslim Neighbor, a book by EPC WO global workers on how to become compassionate and courageous witnesses to Muslims in your community.

Care for our Afghan neighbors financially by giving to these funds: 

Use the 7 Areas of Prayer for Afghanistan pdf, detailing the many ways we can be praying for our Afghan neighbors, global workers, and the country as a whole, in this time of immense conflict. We encourage you to use this in your individual prayers, with your family, and in your congregations.

2 Corinthians 5:14 reminds us that the love of Christ compels us – in all things – and most assuredly in the care and support we show to our Afghan neighbors. Watch this video to see a loving testament to that call, and consider the ways in which you can show the love of Christ to Afghan refugees through the resources listed above. 

EduNations | the Reach June 2021

by | Jul 27, 2021 | Church Partnership, Field Story

Dear friends,

Some of you may be familiar with the work of EduNations – we ignite hope by providing free, quality education to children in remote communities of Sierra Leone. In addition to building schools, EduNations works to ignite lasting, eternal hope by partnering with the Sierra Leone EPC to reach and raise up believers in Christ.

Many first-generation believers have been born out of students attending our schools and being introduced to the gospel for the first time. This past year, EduNations took a big step forward in igniting hope for students physically, mentally and spiritually. In January 2021, we opened our first senior secondary boarding school in one of the remote communities. Roughly 130 students are receiving a free, quality high school education while living in dormitories on campus and receiving three meals each day. Prior to this, EduNations students who had passed the national Basic Certificate Exams after junior secondary school (middle school) simply had nowhere to go to further their education. Now, students from all villages will have the chance to complete an undergraduate education in a safe, Christian environment. We have an invaluable and timely opportunity to make an impact on students’ lives, as all of them are entering an age where they can really make their faith their own.

This fall, we will be adding another class to our high school, which will effectively double our number of boarding students. Many of these students are waiting with great anticipation to finally be able to attend the Senior Secondary Boarding School. The school’s reputation precedes it, as students have heard many good things about it from older siblings and friends. Over this past year, some of the most common things that our boarding students have been excited about include eating 3 meals each day and having a bed of their very own (two luxuries that most students did not have prior to attending the boarding school). One of our boarding students exclaimed, “This is my first time of sleeping on a bed alone! Oh, what a joy!” Another said, “This is the best food I have EVER eaten! I will not go for vacation again.”

We are so blessed with the opportunity to experience the joy of these students as they experience these “luxuries” for the first time. Even more so, we look forward to seeing how these students, who are for the first time in their lives distanced from the direct Islamic influence of their parents, will be impacted spiritually as they are introduced to the gospel and discipled in their young and growing faith.

As we prepare this summer for bringing on another 140 boarding students this fall, would you consider giving so that each of our new students will be supplied with a mattress to sleep on and three hot meals each day? To give, click here and select “Donate to our most pressing need”. You can also consider sponsoring a student, which provides you with the opportunity to support and connect with a specific child.

To learn more about our work in Sierra Leone, sign up for our monthly e-newsletter. And most importantly, please commit to praying for each of our senior secondary school students, that they would feel the love of Christ and come to know him as their personal Lord and Savior.

Thank you!

Written by Samuel Sesay, President of EduNations

Community Life

Be a Healthy Missions Partner

This article by Andy Johnson will not only suggest six principles for you and your church to consider, as you partner with global workers, but give practical application to put these principles into action.

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Support EduNations

EduNations creates self-supporting schools in Sierra Leone, caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional health of their students. If you feel led to aid them in this goal, please consider giving to their most pressing needs, or sponsoring a student. 

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EduNations Annual Report

Read the EduNations 2020 Annual Report to learn more about EduNations, the fantastic work they do, and how they’ve persevered through COVID.

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EPC WO Director’s Reflection on Ministry | the Reach May 2021

by | Jul 27, 2021 | Biblical/Missional, Church Partnership, Field Story

Dear friends,

In one month, I will step down after seven years as Director of World Outreach. I want to reflect here on four developments I’ve seen in our work during that time.
 
Internationalized Church-planting Teams. The EPC World Outreach global workers we send out from North America almost always end up teaming with spiritual brothers and sisters sent out from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. These relationships are rarely orchestrated from denominational or mission agency headquarters, but rather are organic partnerships that grow as disciple-makers from very different cultures discover each other working on the same task directed by the same Spirit.
 
Second Generation EPC WO Global Workers. By Presbyterian standards EPC World Outreach is relatively young, having sent out its first workers in 1985. But in recent years we have seen adult children (Jackie, Peter, and Josh) from three different EPC WO families return with the EPC into full-cycle church-planting among people with least access to the gospel. With these folks we build on the foundation of decades of the very best preparation for cross-cultural ministry.
 
Repatriated Immigrant Global Workers. The dream of escape to America, the Land of Opportunity, is still very much alive throughout much of the world. Few who have achieved that dream give it up and return to the lands of their birth, but we in EPC World Outreach have several families where at least one spouse fits that description. These families have unusual credibility with neighbors who recognize they are animated by a power greater than material success. Coupling that credibility with a deep understanding of local culture to share the gospel has had a major impact in many cases.
 
National Church Missional Leaders. As World Outreach Director, I receive several requests each week from Christians around the world, asking for “partnership”. Of course, partnership may have many different meanings, but usually these appeals are for funds to carry out ministry in their communities. As important as these ministries are, I routinely turn down such requests to focus our resources and energies on a different kind of partnership. World Outreach has developed close relationships with church leaders in Asia and Africa whose eyes are always on the frontiers of their communities. They look beyond where their churches are, to the neighborhoods, villages, and towns where no churches are. They pray for those places; they go to those places; they train and send people to those places; and EPC WO comes alongside to help them. Our efforts here become magnified and multiplied for a hundred-fold effect.
 
One final note – these developments in World Outreach have been gifts from God through the labors of people other than me. It has been the labors of loving missionary parents which have borne sweet fruit in the lives of our World Outreach MKsa. It has been the faithful service of elders in our presbyteries who nurtured relationships with national church missional leaders in places like Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Albania, and Russia. It has been EPC pastors who welcomed and befriended immigrant Christians in their congregations, and then encouraged and guided them to be sent back by EPC World Outreach. And it has been our WO global workers who have recognized “God’s team” in the faces of El Salvadoran, Brazilian, Singaporean, Indonesian, Albanian, etc. brothers and sisters and reached out hands to work together.  To all of you, I say thank you for your service to Christ, and for making my work as WO Director a joy.
 
Grace and peace,
Phil Linton, World Outreach Director

Community Life

Annual Report

Click here to read EPC WO’s Annual Report for 2020 for more information on what we were up to this past year: stories from the field, WO by the Numbers, and information on the communities we’re serving overseas. 

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WO Workshop

If you’re interested in learning how to foster meaningful relationships with Muslims in your community, we encourage you to take part in EPC WO’s six-week Connecting with Your Muslim Neighbors workshop. Visit our website for more information!

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The Reach | Exec. Director Announcement

by | Jul 27, 2021 | Biblical/Missional, Church Partnership

Dear friends,

On behalf of the World Outreach Executive Director Search Committee, I am pleased to introduce Gabriel de Guia to you as the new Executive Director of EPC World Outreach. Following much prayer and discussion, our nine-member committee unanimously believes Gabriel is who God would have lead World Outreach into the second quarter of this century as its Executive Director.

I hope you will take a few minutes to read the official announcement on the EPC’s news and information channel, www.EPConnection.org. The announcement includes comments from Gabriel and his wife, Rachel, as well as several members of the search committee.

Gabriel comes to World Outreach from Cru, where he has served for the past 26 years. His most recent role was Senior Aid of Development to the Executive Director for the Jesus Film Project, which he has held since 2012. In addition to a variety of other responsibilities at Cru’s headquarters, he served in campus ministry at both Indiana University and Indiana State University from 1996-2002.

As you may know, Cru—formerly Campus Crusade for Christ—is an international ministry founded by Bill and Vonette Bright in 1951 and based in Orlando, where Gabriel and his family are members of the EPC’s First Presbyterian Church of Orlando.

As you have opportunity in the coming weeks and months, please welcome Gabriel to EPC World Outreach. He will be at our 41st General Assembly in June and is excited to meet those of you who will be in Memphis.

Please pray for Gabriel and Rachel as they make the transition to World Outreach in the coming weeks and months!

Rob Liddon
Chairman, World Outreach Executive Director Search Committee
Ruling Elder, Second Presbyterian Church (Memphis, Tennessee)
Moderator, 30th EPC General Assembly

EPC WO Annual Report for 2020 | the Reach April 2021

by | Jul 27, 2021 | Church Partnership

Dear friends,

We were surprised in 2020. Covid surprised us, and our plans mostly fell apart. But God also surprised us and, in the midst of loss, we saw some amazing things come together. For example, a WO worker in Asia and the Middle East whose mobility was curtailed and couldn’t carry out home medical visits, rejoiced to find young Christian brothers and sisters willing and able to jump in make deliveries. WO theological trainers who had to cancel plans to teach in a Southeast Asian country, retooled the course to teach remotely and saw students immediately pass on what they learned to other leaders. And WO workers in another Asian country who were forced to move their small group Bible studies to Zoom, were thrilled to see participation increase and members who were previously timid blossom.

Covid distancing forced many of our workers into more solitude, more quiet reflection, and more fun family time. It wasn’t what they were aiming for in their goals, but God aimed them there anyway, and we thank him for how deeply it fed their souls. Our thanks also go out to you – the financial supporters of our global workers. At the beginning of the pandemic many predicted that mission agencies’ contribution income would drop by 25%. That was not our experience, as contributions remained steady.

In this Annual Report, you’ll see our attempts to measure what God did in and through World Outreach in 2020. One of the numbers in the report that brings me most joy is the number for Total Weekly Witness you’ll find on page 3. It represents the average number of times each week that the members of our church planting teams brought Jesus into their conversations with not-yet-believers in a way that would invite further spiritual interaction. In the places where many of our people work, this is challenging under normal circumstances. With the distancing and isolation that Covid brought, I expected the number to go down from last year. Instead, it increased – from 242 to 267 times per week!

Most of what we planned for 2020 fell apart but, praise God, everything he planned came together beautifully. I hope this report will help you praise our surprising God.

Grace and peace,

Phil Linton
EPC WO Director