We Went Around The World and Never Left Home

Somewhere in the last days of December 2009, I struggled with the idea of keeping a missions goal before our people, one that seemed almost impossible to meet in light of our church situation without a Senior Pastor and once again in transition.

I remember asking God "how do we do this?" Then I remembered something--the Lord had connected me with missionaries all over the world and by connecting our people to these missionaries we could celebrate all year long the work that God was doing in places that we would never know about or even go.

So, I took a calendar and the OPERATION WORLD BOOK and began to schedule each Sunday a different country to focus on, to pray for and to give connection to in our services.

This took place in many ways.  I knew that several of the missionaries would be home during the year, so I made contact with them to schedule us for a visit/interview during our services.  We did that with this missionary, and this missonary and this missionary.  Those were exciting services as we learned about their countries first hand.

We had a video from this church planter who was moving his entire family to a new culture and language for the sake of the gospel.

We did  SKYPE calls to missionaries in Serbia, Hungary and Thailand and also to a fellow minister in Egypt. (If you want to know how to do this--email me and I'll tell you how we did it)

We had testimonies from local community leaders who had gone to Uganda and Kenya.

We even prayed for people in places where we couldn't mention that they were there--you guys know who you are.

We kept the world before our people for 52 Sunday's last year.  Our goal was to raise $65,000 for missions and causes.  The result.... we raised $69,099 for this cause last year.

We went around the world in 2010 and never left home.  You can do it too and your church will never be the same.