We have three new strategies for engaging Jesus’ mission in International. Each strategy represents communities transformed by the Gospel, new churches planted, and unreached people encountering Jesus. These three strategies bring alignment and clarity to our work as we partner in our shared global mission: Church Development, Relief & Development, and Marketplace.
We will go, as we always have, to the hard places in the world—the untilled soil—where Jesus isn’t yet known. The strategies might have shifted over the years, but the core is unchanged: we are God’s agents of light amidst darkness, hope amidst despair, and healing amidst brokenness. We are the very presence of Jesus in places that need him most. I am deeply thankful for God’s continued provision and guidance as we engage God’s mission of multiplying disciples in the “hard and dark” places of the world.
International Strategies Summary We want our ministry to be as effective as possible. Rather than defining our workers by geographic region alone, we’re building alignment around expertise and skillsets. Marshalling our work with an eye toward the following strategies will allow for more cross-pollination, innovation, and expertise between international workers in different regions, as we labour together to make Jesus known.
Church Development
Church Development exists for places and people groups among whom there are no believers and the “church” has not yet emerged—or where there are very few believers, and the church is just beginning to emerge. We establish faith communities among least-reached people groups because a viable church can effectively and intentionally reach people with the Gospel.
We facilitate gatherings to bring about the birth, development, growth, and multiplication of viable churches where few have ever heard the name of Jesus. We aim to establish self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting communities that can effectively and intentionally reach their own people and beyond. International churches are an important part of this strategy, as they catalyze global mission mobilization through discipleship of transnational migrants in the global diaspora.
Relief & Development
Across the world, vulnerable communities are battered by man-made and natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, drought and war. The Alliance Canada is committed to enter these spaces as emissaries of the good news, providing relief and support in the name of Jesus. Through the Relief & Development strategy, we demonstrate the Gospel by responding to both short-term crises and long-term needs, especially among the poor and vulnerable. In partnership with The Alliance World Fellowship (AWF), churches, non-government organizations, and others, we engage in relief efforts for the victims of disasters. Our goal is not to do development ‘to’ people but ‘with’ people. As such, we work in concert with local partners in project preparation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
Community Development is a key factor in serving vulnerable communities, within and beyond the scope of a short-term crisis. As such, we seek to develop relationships with partners in line with our integral mission principles.
The Marketplace strategy engages Christians who are not professional ministers, whether they go as professionals or entrepreneurs starting businesses.
We mobilize Marketplace international workers as ambassadors of Christ to enter cross-cultural contexts through their profession. They carry the Gospel wherever they go, making disciples among the least-reached and the global diaspora.
Among their local and international co-workers, and in the neighbourhoods where they live, Marketplace international workers will make disciples who become disciple-makers, mobilizing them to carry the Gospel to other countries. The seeds will be scattered as they repatriate, or continue their work in new places.
Business for Transformation (B4T) is an important partnership of entrepreneurs and investors within the Marketplace strategy. Business For Transformation maximizes social, economic, environmental, and spiritual transformations in communities through sustainable, kingdom-impact businesses, especially within vulnerable sectors. To begin or become involved with a Business For Transformation venture, entrepreneurial business start-ups will fall somewhere on a continuum. Some projects lean toward community development, while others are more clearly oriented to be for-profit businesses. That being the case, we will bring clarity to where on the continuum a venture lands, and then articulate the implications of that clarity.
Mobilization and partnership undergirds everything we do; in each of these strategic drivers we will collaborate and partner with like-minded ministries, organizations, and the global Church to mobilize local believers, faith communities, and national churches to make Jesus known in the hardest and darkest places.
To the regions beyond
A.B Simpson paraphrased Romans 15:20 when he said: “[Our] movement stands for a commitment to reach the most-neglected field…to avoid the beaten tracks of other labourers…to press on to the regions beyond…to preach the Gospel where Christ has not been named.”
We will, as we always have, multiply disciples everywhere as we fulfill The Great Commission.
Rev. Dr. Damien Siew Hing Lee is passionate about developing and empowering leaders of diverse backgrounds who are committed to advancing the Kingdom in the hardest and darkest regions of the world.