Fulfilling the Great Commission Together
This blog post was originally published in the Spring 2024 edition of The ACNA’s The Apostle magazine and is reposted with permission.
“If Anglicans don’t support Anglican missions, who will?”
Archbishop Foley Beach’s 2024 World Mission Sunday letter stated, “We in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) are the indirect beneficiaries of the 19th- and early 20th-century Anglican missionaries who left their families and homelands, crossed cultures, made disciples, and planted churches in the Global South. When we needed rescue from the revisionist leadership of the Episcopal Church, it was the spiritual great-grandchildren of Anglican missionaries who threw us a lifeline.”
Much of our global mission work continues to be interconnected with these on-going relationships with our friends in the Global South, as well as the network of the Anglican Global Mission Partners (AGMP), and the Global Mission Initiative (GMI) Advocates team made up of representatives from every ACNA diocese.
The GMI grows stronger every year as GMI Advocates serve as connectors to both relationships and resources among our vast global community, centered on fulfilling the Great Commission.
This year, the energy around World Mission Sunday during the season of Epiphany has resulted in new mission training curricula. Anglican Frontier Missions has recently published a 4-week global mission course for adults and one for teens focused on the least-reached peoples of the earth. In addition, new children’s mission curricula have been curated for the youngest among us. Links to all of these courses and more can be found at newwineskins.org/worldmissionsunday. The GMI is also excited to announce that a new 6-week curriculum called Anglican Introduction to Missions (AIM) will be launched at ACNA’s Assembly this June in time for fall program planning.
Another major development is an opportunity for young adults to explore a missionary call by participating in a 9-month international apprenticeship called Role Call. Apprentices would come together for training in August, serve with one of our global partners overseas for 9- months with cohort and coaching support, and then come back together for debriefing stateside. This new program is a collaborative initiative of the AGMP, and anyone interested in applying can contact agmp@newwineskins.org for more information.
We serve a global God with a boundless heart for each of the 17,000 people groups on the globe. Through awareness, networking, training and resources, the Global Mission Initiative is here to help you find your place in God’s global mission until all have heard!
Here are some next steps that you can take:
Find your GMI Advocate at newwineskins.org/gmi
Connect with an AGMP partner at newwineskins.org/agmp
Find mission curricula, prayer litanies and more at newwineskins.org/worldmissionsunday
Jenny Noyes is the Executive Director of New Wineskins Missionary Network. She is a passionate speaker, networker, and evangelist. You can contact Jenny here.