Our third goal in Reimagine is to give away $30 million to global missions by 2050. We want everywhere in the world to have a Christ-centered witness. While we love sending teams on short-term mission trips, we also know that sometimes the best method is to support teams that are already making it happen.
Here are three reasons to go all-in with global missions:
1. What We Have
In God’s providence, two things are true about CCC.
First, we are part of the 2,000-year unbroken chain of evangelism from the Great Commission in Matthew 28. This means that Christians who came before us dreamed, prayed, and significantly gave to see the gospel flourish in our community. Today, we can reimagine life because of Jesus because of generous giving in the past.
Second, we have a unique role to play in the grand scheme of the church globally. We are grateful that CCC has so obviously been blessed with an abundance of financial resources. Concerning our abundance of resources, our church body is in the top percentage of churches. When you consider the amount of people and the average income in our church today, we are in a completely unique financial category. There is a certain responsibility that comes with that amount of financial resources, and we desire to use those resources to further God’s Kingdom.
2. What They Need
People need Jesus. It can be hard to fully see, but many groups of people simply do not have opportunities to hear about Jesus. Often this happens because no one who speaks a people group’s language has access to the Bible or an understanding of the gospel.
For example, there is a group of people mainly in Pakistan who we will call the Pearl people. They are an overwhelming Islamic people group that number over 33 million worldwide. To this date, there is not one known Christian church and only several hundred scattered Christians who identify as Pearl people. In a similar way, in the country of India there over 2,000 distinct people groups who are considered an unreached people group with no impactful Christ-centered witnesses. In short, people – lots of people – around the world desperately need Jesus.
3. What God Promised
In the last book of the Bible, we get a picture of how the story ends. In Revelation 5 and 7, there is a clear picture of people from every single nation, tribe, and tongue worshipping Jesus together.
Revelation 7:9-10 puts it this way: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb . . . and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” In heaven, there will be Pearl people, Indian people, Ohio people, Roman people, and on and on. More than a hope, it is a certain reality that God has promised to rescue people from every place in the world. We give with confidence not in ourselves, but in the true and proven faithfulness of our God.