How I became the European missionary of the One Circle worship gospel platform. It all started when I was called by God, the same year that I graduated from university. I joined the East European short term mission team which was organized by my church and the COCM in August. I visited Germany and Czech as a pioneer aiming at spreading the gospel among the Chinese community. After I finished my theological education, I joined the Hong Kong Chinese Church of Christ, Lek Yuen. I never forgot my initial intention to spread the gospel and I dreamt of retiring early with my wife so that I could become a substitute for missionaries who had temporarily returned to Hong Kong to report on their work or to take a long vacation. Unexpectedly, God led us to start our missionary road more than ten years earlier than I had planned.
Missio Dei
The term “Missio Dei” is a Latin theological term. Dei is God and Missio means “sending forth/mission”. Mission arises from the fundamental nature of God and can only come from God. Through His church, all people are blessed. Mission is not established because of the existence of the church, but because God allows the church to participate in a sacred mission, one that is greater than an individual church. “Mission” should not be regarded as an internal activity of a church, once it has the expanded and prospered, rather it is the essence of a church and a higher mission from God. A church should not just consider its own existence, its prosperity is only a representation of the its compliance with God’s mission. It should not be regarded as its ultimate purpose.
“Mission” is the commission of the church. In recent years, there have been many innovative missionary models and theories, such as “urban mission”, “business as mission” and so on. In the past, mission was established in the dominant models of a triangular relationships between “missionaries”, “sending churches” and “missionary agencies”. Nowadays, more diversified collaborating models have evolved to enrich missionary work. These new models involve “missionaries”, “sending churches”, “missionary agencies”, “service platforms” and “local churches”. I am thankful that One Circle is able to collaborate with MAC in promoting missionary work.
Our strategies
We must continue to build a missionary network to allow more believers and churches to participate in God’s Great Commission. Therefore, the church needs to develop more missionary talent and help equip, and support believers to preach the gospel everywhere. We need to explore how to develop European short-term missionary teams to provide believers the opportunity to experience cross-cultural service and God’s work among different people. We need to build more missionary churches so that every church may share this vision and responsibility to contribute to the kingdom of God. We also need to develop missionary fields so that missionaries can build relationships and influence locally and lead people to the Lord. These are the strategies we need to take on the missionary road. May God bless our efforts so that all nations may receive His grace!
Your participation
How can you connect with missionary work? You can actively participate in mission courses, discipleship training, short-term missions, visiting missionaries, etc. organized by your church. If you are interested, you can talk to me so as to understand what mission God may have given you. I firmly believe that God will lead us to take part in the Great Commission.
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Revelations 7:9-10)
Rev Alex Yip