09 Sep The Emerging Storyline
Rummaging through a dust covered box in my mother’s garage I noticed my baby book, a small picture album, and other artifacts from the day I was born. That day in 1972 the headlines of the Houston Post read:
“Russia, U.S. Joint Space Program Ok’d”
I didn’t need another reminder of God’s calling in my life but this specific affirmation to continue serving the church in Russia, and the Slavic world, solidified my next steps to co-create Storyline. Storyline is about God being on mission to all people, throughout all time. The plot is filled with love, immense grace, and patience for stubborn, broken, and hurting people. Jesus is the hero of the story with his initiative love woven into the life of ordinary people around the world.
The plot twist in the storyline of God’s mission is that we are seeing unprecedented growth in the global church in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As a result of this extraordinary growth the power base of missions is no longer in the Western world. The emergence of this new missionary sending force is poised to become the largest in history.
What if the most unreached peoples in the world, where the church has no presence, can only be reached by people with specific passport access? The Western world has privileged passport access to many countries around the world, but not all. Westerners have been denied access to many of the places and people where there is no Christian church.
As the new global church emerges, with passport diversity, God will send missionaries to the least reached people in the world from these new sending locations. Storyline exists to accelerate missionary sending. We are sharing the vision of frontier mobilization, creating free resources for the global church, and training new mission’s agencies in sending structures.
The dusty box in my mom’s garage, with a yellowing frayed newspaper headline inside, affirms the work of God in my life. As the Director of Slavic Partnerships for Storyline I am praying for the next chapter God is writing through the global church located in the Slavic world. — by Kirby Holmes