THESE ARE THE MISSIONS WE TITHE OUR CHURCH INCOME TO SUPPORT:
European Missionary Fellowship
We support pastor Pal Borzasi and his family serving in the Hungarian Baptist churches in Translyvania. Pal also teaches New Testament exegesis at the Seminary in Oradea.
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Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) Cranford, church planting. www.fiec.org.uk Robin and Muno Asgher are leading a church (re)planting work in Cranford Baptist church near Heathrow in a largely Asian community. They have a thriving children's / young people's work.
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Wycliffe Bible Translators
We support John Severn in his leadership of a Bible translation project amongst the 'Husa' people group in South East Asia.
The Husa of South East Asia are subsistence farmers practising slash-and-burn agriculture, and were traditionally rice planters. Nowadays, the latter has declined and has been replaced by cash crops of smoked coconut, corn, cocoa and cloves, though smoked coconut has been by far the major crop. Some of the Husa farmers have to walk many miles to their fields. The soil is unusually fertile due to the effect of once-active volcanoes. Recently a disease affected virtually all their coconut trees. This, together with religious fighting left the people much poorer but their situation has improved with time. The Husa value innovation, yet seek to hold on to their traditional identity, which produces tension. A very strong part of their tradition is their language, and they are very proud of its unique sounds. However, these unique sounds provide a significant barrier to overcome in the early stages of reading. The number of schools had been much reduced because of the religious unrest but has now increased, and schools are showing an interest in both the language and the translated material. The team is beginning to have opportunities to teach about the Husa language in schools, using the translated books of Mark, Acts and Luke as examples. One member of the Husa team has been selected to develop schools’ work. He has been asked to produce a primary school curriculum for the entire area. Although all the Husa people would call themselves Christian, their understanding of biblical truth is very limited, and they have not learnt to trust God fully. The result is that they often turn to the local shaman and witchdoctors to solve their problems of hunger, poverty and sickness. Recently the language has been more widely used in church services and house group meetings, and people are finding the Scriptures much easier to understand in the Husa language. The desire of the Husa to preserve their own language means that there is widespread support for the translation project, and a growing interest in making not only the Bible available but school books as well. This is evidenced by a local translation committee that has remained faithful to the task since the early 1990s and which has grown in number and in its areas of responsibility. Progress in translation has been at considerable cost of time and energy for the committee, with months spent apart from their families. Their deep commitment has enabled the translation project to continue and overcome many obstacles. Some NT books have been published, have been well received and are being used. A number more are in the last stages of preparation. The Husa themselves have been the main distributors, and it has been exciting to see the unity achieved over the translation, with it being accepted by all the denominations in the area. The project is overseen by a translation consultant based in the UK, who travels to meet the translation team twice a year to help and encourage them.
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Brazil, Dr. David Phillips
Portuguese translation work.
David Phillips one of our elders has recently returned from Brazil where he has been training Brazilians for the mission field for some years with WEC. He is continuing to help the Brazilian churches by translating important missionary material into English and Portuguese. This material will be web-accessed.
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Other missionary interest.
In addition to the regular support we have extra quarterly freewill offerings for other Mission works. These currently include
European Christian Mission
Peter and Susie Harrison serve in a Christian bookshop outreach in Austria with European Christian Mission. www.ecmi.org
Johnson Bible College
Calvin Daly, the pastor's youngest son is at Johnson Bible college, Knoxville, USA.
Child Evangelism Fellowship
One of our elders is on the National executive.
Barnabas Fund
For Harvest Sunday we always invite a Missions society to speak about the spiritual harvest - this year, 2009, it is the
Barnabas Fund. www.barnabasfund.org
Toybox
and for Christmas we focus on a Mission with a social compassion emphasis. So for example at Christmas 2008 we collected money for
Toybox www.toyboxcharity.org.uk working with street children in Central America.
A Passion for Life aims to persuade everyone to believe the saving Gospel – that Jesus is Christ our Lord who came as King, died for our sins, rose to rule and will return to judge and renew his creation.[ Mark 1; Romans 1; I Corinthians 15; Romans 2;]
It will be great to see churches uniting together in the great task of Gospel proclamation.
Website: www.apassionforlife.org.uk