VITAL ROLE: Students at a Bible College in Myanmar are trained and sent into the remote hill country to plant churches among villages that seldom have contact with the outside world, not even their own countrymen.
Working with the local church is more effective in evangelism and discipleship.
National workers with a vision for reaching their own nations for Christ are the most fruitful, according to Mission Outreach NZ.
“It is through them that the church experiences its greatest amount of growth,” says the organisation, which does not have any fulltime missionaries, but instead puts its resources into supporting national churches.
“We also try to avoid picking up projects and initiatives that other mission agencies are already resourcing, and in which they have a greater level of expertise. We are aware that there are already many excellent missionary training and sending organisations working out of New Zealand and feel that there is little to be gained by duplicating their fine work.
“We believe that foreign missionaries play a vital role in building the church in these nations, however the partnerships between national workers and foreign missionaries appear to be the most effective in both evangelism and discipleship when the vision is carried by the national church.”
Within New Zealand, Mission Outreach’s main focus is on providing opportunities for partnership between New Zealand churches and the opportunities that exist to resource the harvest in Asia.
The organisation believes that there is a strong focus on poverty relief within the New Zealand churches, which although important, should not take precedence over the Great Commission — the only task Jesus left the Church.
Mission Outreach says the church is surging ahead in Asia, with many being added to its numbers daily despite persecution and adversity.
Mission Outreach is concerned that New Zealand programmes and teams, which are focused on providing practical assistance, are often better supported than those that require teaching, preaching or praying.
“Sadly, this is because many New Zealand Christians don’t feel that they have anything spiritual to contribute. This does not demonstrate that all parts of the body of Christ in New Zealand are being equipped for ‘works of service’ (Ephesians 4:12), or that the New Zealand Church is currently well mobilised as we enter the 21st century.”
Mission Outreach was established in 1976 by Eddie and Betty Cairns. Mr Cairns had attended a Voice of the Martyrs meeting, at which the founder of Voice of the Martyrs Richard Wurmbrand spoke, and felt the Lord’s call to start New Zealand’s own mission to the suffering church. The mission originally focused on the suffering church behind the iron curtain in Eastern Europe, but shifted in the 1980s to those behind the bamboo curtain in Asia. At that time, Mission Outreach’s efforts were primarily focused on the delivery of Bibles and the encouragement of struggling groups of believers.
The activities of the ministry took a significant change in direction in the 1990s with the formation of a partnership with Ethnos Asia Ministries (EAM). Although the geographical emphasis remained the same, (the access-restricted nations of Asia) the primary goal of supporting the churches with literature and encouragement changed to that of ‘empowering’ the national Church for a national harvest.
