In these days, with the global village growing ever smaller and ever better connected, with just six degrees of separation between us and every human being on the planet, and increasing awareness that the actions of one country can have inadvertent knock-on effects on countries on the other side of the planet, it is somewhat surprising that many UK churches are turning inwards like never before.

Preoccupied with keeping the church going, finding new volunteers to run an increasing array of services for its members while many volunteers are already too busy, and daunted by the amazing quantity of mission opportunities right on their own doorstep, many churches choose to ignore the divine mandate to

Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.

(Matthew 28:19)

Going into all the world?

As if to assuage our consciences we rightly point out that in the original Greek “Go” is not an imperative, and it should more accurately be translated ‘as you are going’.  Some argue that we don’t need to go because we can start making disciples on our own doorstep.  But we still need to do the “all nations” bit, and while many people from around the world come to our country as refugees, students or economic migrants, there are still billions waiting at home for us to go to them.

Local Church, Global Mission is a new initiative aimed at helping local churches facilitate global mission by identifying, training, sending and supporting mission workers to complete this unfinished task.  On 7th June in Nottingham they are having their first conference and this is an excellent opportunity for churches to find out more about sending people into global mission, whether they are already active or contemplating doing it for the first time.  You can find out more about the conference on their website.

Syzygy is supporting this event by having an exhibition stand there, helping to present a seminar on supporting singles in mission, and selling our book Single Mission.  We encourage you to come along and join us.

Jesus said:

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

In other words, the sooner we get the job done, the sooner we can all go home.