Just about three years ago, my wife Gretchen and I were close to making the decision to join the Anglican Communion. We had learned the history of the Anglican church, studied her theology, fallen in love with the rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer and become actively involved in a local Anglican parish. But having spent nearly three decades as missionaries, we had one last hurdle to consider. Do Anglicans still do missions? If so, how?

I want to take a minute to tell you about my six-year-old nephew named Knox. His story is an inspiration to me, and I know that it will inspire you also. When Knox learned that his aunt was working with people who have albinism in Tanzania, he was curious. What does it mean to have albinism? Why do people want to hurt them? Why was Shade trying to help them?

We wanted to share with you this amazing Christmas card that we received from The Anglican Relief and Development Fund (ARDF), featuring calligraphy from ARDF staff member Emily Misner! ARDF is the official international relief and development arm of the Anglican Church in North America, partnering with local communities and churches to work about positive change in a variety of public sectors including health, food security, education, and vocational training.

In their first year of planting Rise Church in Portland, the Rev. Dan and Carrie Wolf were asking a simple question, “God, how can we bless and serve our neighbors?” The Wolfs have two young children (Coen, age 4, and Gemma, age 2), and as they met other young families in their neighborhood and at local playgrounds, their hearts were struck by the toll that the pandemic was taking on both parents and children.…

Today we need both individuals and churches praying and fasting, asking God to show them who he is calling and then bravely stepping up to commission and send them. According to Joshua Project, there are still 7,402 unreached people groups who need to hear the hope of Jesus. We need field partners that are willing to be pioneers, frontline workers for these people groups that will not be easy to reach. Has God already been speaking to you about someone? If so, in the words of Ananias, “What are you waiting for?” (Acts 22:16).

Registration is now open for our tenth triennial New Wineskins Global Mission Conference, which will take place at Ridgecrest Conference Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, September 22-25, 2022. This year’s theme is One Mission. All the conference details and the registration links are available at newwineskinsconference.org.

Why do we host these New Wineskins Global Mission Conferences? Fruit from the last conference gives us some insight…

I have not always been an Anglican, but my heartbeat has been connected to the Nations ever since I can remember. As a teenager, I made a faith pledge to God: Go anywhere, Do anything, Speak to anyone, Give anything I have to make Jesus known. God really took me up on that commitment, and my escapades for Jesus commenced.…

Ministry is not, typically, something we can do alone. We need relation­ships with partners who will come alongside us, support us, and encourage us. Jesus knew this and, "Calling the twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits” (Mark 6:7). The Rev. Bisoke Balikenga and his wife, Furaha, have gone out "two by two,” support­ing and working alongside one another. They are partners in marriage, in faith and in their service to their community in Bunia, lturi Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Feeling a tug on our hearts, we began pushing on doors to see if God was calling us to missions. One of the doors we walked through was the New Wineskins conference in Fall 2019. We went seeking to confirm God’s call.

My experience at Uncommon Grounds Cafe, a ministry of Church Army, was rewarding in an unexpected way.

The Greenhouse movement named Walk Across the Street came from an actual crossing of a street. Many of you have heard the story of how Pastor Michael Wright and I met. I literally walked from Cornerstone Oak Park Church to True Freedom’s service in the school across the street, and a friendship—and a movement—began.

My family and I are preparing to be sent overseas in the coming weeks, and as we travel around the country, sharing our calling with anyone who will listen, we are again presented with an opportunity to “remember.”

Rev. Bernard Bisoke Balikenga is the Provincial Youth Coordinator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When Bisoke traveled to the U.S. in September 2019 for the New Wineskins Global Mission Conference and again in January 2020 to attend leadership conferences, Holy Trinity Anglican Church Windermere in Charleston, SC, was fortunate to be his host.

Martha, 42 years old, had been living in the unreached area (K) of the Punjab Province in Pakistan, with her husband and two daughters. With the husband working in the brick kilns, it had been difficult for them to manage their daily lives and family, but then Martha’s life completely changed as she got the sudden news of her husband’s death in 2019.

Two things got us interested in ministry to and among Muslims. One, studying church history and learning that so many of the places that were key in the early days—Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Antioch, Carthage—are almost entirely Muslim today. Two, I took a stripped-down version of a great course, Perspectives in World Missions, and learned that a large portion of the world’s Muslims do not have access to the gospel or a local Christian community.

Antioch, a cosmopolitan city, a place to go for a great party and shady deals. Yet it is this city, where there were no moral boundaries, that the truth of Christ was shared with both Jews and Greeks. It is here that the followers of Christ were first called Christians.

Though our food distribution project is now dwindling, ministry opportunities, which emerged from it, are just beginning. Meet Speciose, age 68, who bore eight children. Only one of her children is still alive today, a daughter named Olive, age 30.

As I hopelessly sat at the conference that night feeling like everything in my life was continuing to fall apart, I exasperatingly asked God, Why did You even bring me here?

I first went to the mission field in the summer of 2013, to the same Middle Eastern country to which I hope to return in just a few months.