Church in El Salvador raises over $73,000.00 and 20 surrender to be full time missionaries.

As soon as you walked on to the property the smell of cotton candy and other carnaval foods filled the air, tents, streamers, bands playing, hundreds of people walking from tent to tent going to different booths. No, this was not the church carnaval, or even their version of a fall festival, this was their church's Global Celebration. Under each tent was represented the booths of nearly 30 different missional projects that Oasis de Gracia (Oasis of Grace Church - part of the Sovereign Grace movement) has developed in their local area of Santa Ana, in El Salvador, in Latin America, and around the world.

They had come together to celebrate what God has done over the last year in their church in missions, and to project where God wants to lead them..

The Wednesday pm service began with over 600 people present (the church averages 500 on Sunday AM) and you could feel the excitement in the air as they were praising God in song, they were ready to receive all of their missionaries. It was my honor to speak on the subject of "A church that joins in with what God is doing around the world". During the rest of the week, many home fellowships were done so that the people could spend time personally with their missionaries, and learn how they could pray for them, and how they could get involved personally with them.

Then we had special meetings where men got to spend time and hear personally from the missionaries, and the woman had a "missionary tea" time with all of the lady missionaries. Their international banquet is done very professionally with foods from 24 different countries, and almost everyone came dressed in clothing from other countries. Then they had traditional dances from Morocco and Germany done by the young people of the church. I wish you could have been part of this experience, it was so obvious that the people were extremely engaged in all of the activities.

What happened on Sunday was not just the results of the missions personalization done that week, but the result of a church that now every week prays for missions and missionaries and every ministry is aligned to the missional declaration of their church. Missions is no longer a once a year event, but now is the focus of every Sunday service: When we gave the challenge was give to renew their Faith Promise Commitment they exceeded their faith promise from last year substantially by committing to over $73,000.00 to missions! (To put things in context, in El Salvador most professionals make less than $1,000.00 a month, people without a degree would make even less than half of that).

On Sunday evening in our "Life Commitment Service" we ask people to make specific life desicions as to their personal involvement in missions. For example to individually pray for specific missionaries, to go on their first missions trip, but what was amazing was that we had 20 individuals expressed that God had called them to devote the rest of their lives to full time cross cultural missions!

What is different at Oasis of Grace now? Now missions is no longer a department of the church, it is their primary purpose for existence as the church of Jesus Christ. Missions is no longer a committee of a few dedicated people, but something that almost the entire church is involved in either locally or globally. Missions is no longer a once a year focus, but now is the weekly focus in every one of the public services, and in all of their small groups.

They have implemented a structure of Global Teams that seeks to involve the church in missional projects either in their own Jerusalem or all the way to Ends of the Earth. Some might look at that and think,"that is very innovative". When in all actuality it is not just innovate, in reality it is "intentional". Most churches are like people, after time we grow more self absorbed and self interested. If it where not for intencional voices that challenge us to break our own selfish tendencies and live intentionally the life of Jesus which is a life dedicated to others. The same is true in the life of a church, after time we focus on our own selves, within our own 4 walls. Many times it takes an outside voice to come along side us and intentionally teach us how to make His Mission - Our Mission. That is what Global Focus is all about, and we are now seeing it lived out daily within churches all over Latin America.


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Our mission is to engage churches churches all over the world, especially in Latin America and U.S. to embrace God's heart for the nations.

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