Stories of Mission
Explore mission themes in our quarterly magazine as workers tell stories of making disciples in the way of Christ.
Stay informed of all the latest VMMissions news.
God’s Mission Has a Church
Our church history is shaped by the legacy of Christendom: the church aligning with political power to protect and maintain our position in society. This is vastly different from understanding the church being shaped as a missionary church whose calling is to be embedded as “sent ones” in our own societies.
Read More
David Gingerich Named Director of Partner Development
David Gingerich has assumed a new leadership role as Director of Partner Development, focusing on fundraising, donor cultivation and church relations. “I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to nurture and grow relationships with our community of partners,” David writes.
Read More
Doxological Mission
God’s mission is first and foremost about the pursuit of God’s glory. It includes us, but it is not primarily about our needs, ambitions or hopes. God’s burning desire is for all of creation to know God’s glory and to give him the praise he deserves so that we might enjoy him together forever.
Read More
Bridge Builders
What if the God of the universe did not wait for us to bridge the gap between us—and I’m staking my life on the belief that it is—then we have a message that everyone deserves to hear. And they deserve to hear it in the cultural idiom that will make sense to them.
Read More
Whose Voice Are We Listening To?
Anita (name changed), serving in a slum in Indonesia, writes, “It is lovely when we have attainable rhythms and goals to keep us healthy and measure “success” clearly. But on the mission field, so often this seems impossible. Much of our energy is spent just surviving in a different culture, language, and religious context. And it can feel impossible to measure.”
Read More
Success Requires Transformation
“In my four years on the VMMissions Board of Directors, I have found that our vision statement serves as a beautiful and life-giving objective,” Paul Yoder, board chair, writes. “The verb “envisions” speaks to the “picture” that we are painting. Three scriptures have recently been helping me more fully “envision” success in God’s kingdom.
Read More
Success Can Rise Out of Failure
Anne (name changed) shares an experience that illustrates her struggle with success. “How could people in our own faith community act so vengefully and with so little consideration for their children’s faith?” she writes. “Just when I rejoice at how much fruit is resulting from my ministry, things fall apart. I could easily name ten other situations like this.”
Read More
Success Is Doing What Pleases the Lord
“My own definition of success has to run deeper than just a sense of accomplishment, or I’m not going to make it very far,” Nathan Carr writes. “Early in my ministry I fell into that trap of thinking I was the one who had to make things happen. I put everything on my own shoulders, and it wore me out. I was forced to face the reality that I could only give them so much.”
Read More
Success Is the Outflow of Abiding
Joyel writes, “We can see there’s something so special about creation being with our creator. The outflow of abiding and being with God is the fruit that we bear that not only benefits us, but those around us. We’re constantly approached with opportunities to remain distracted, in bondage, and lost. But even then, God is faithful to redirect us back to him.”
Read More
Call to Prayer: Praying Together Is Success
“My teammate and I stood soberly looking at each other—wives and mothers with parallel journeys across those seven years together,” Carol Tobin writes. “Both of us had struggled and endured, but because we struggled in vastly different ways, each was always a frustrating enigma to the other. ‘Was it worth it?’ we asked. But it wasn’t a question we were prepared to answer.”
Read More
Worker Profile: Ken Wettig
Ken serves as the initiator and director of a youth discipleship program called SLAQ (Servant Leader Quest), which seeks to raise up diverse cohorts among the next generation of serving leaders in the way of Jesus through outdoor adventures, community service, and “crucial conversations.”
Read More
Faithfulness + Patience = Fruitfulness
I confess I feel some discomfort with measuring “success” in missions. Depth of transformation is not an easy thing to quantify, nor do we often see immediate results. Perhaps the key is faithful witness combined with patient trust in the Lord of the harvest.
Read More