MEMPHIS, Tenn. – “We go where the Church isn’t in existence and where the existing Church isn’t going,” said George Carey, introducing the theme of The Evangelical Presbyterian Church World Outreach Encounter — “Going where the Church isn’t.” Not only did he invite the 125 participants into an encounter with EPC missionaries and national WO staff, Carey invited attendees into an encounter with the God who is calling and sending His people into the world to reach the unengaged.
“Momentum” was a word often heard around the event that was punctuated with stories by those on the mission field and those preparing to be deployed to serve where other Christian missionaries are not present.
That focus on unreached people has been central to the EPC since its inception in 1981. Ralph Winter, who was considered one of the most significant missiological thinkers of the 20th century and helped formulate the mission strategy of the EPC, recommended that “as a small denomination, the EPC make as a large an impact as possible on a small target: the unreached and the unengaged,” Carey said.
Winter’s advice in 1981 had been that the EPC focus narrowly on unreached people and take the largest people blocks. That would lead the denomination to hone in on reaching Muslims both at home and abroad.
Carey said, “That continues to be our focus — 72 percent of overseas missionaries are working in Muslim contexts.” In the past five years, the number of missionaries on the field for the EPC has risen from 83 to 128. And two dozen more people are actively in the WO missionary preparation pipeline.
The impact of churches entering the EPC from the PCUSA has been significant in this area. Carey said that “17 percent of EPC World Outreach missionaries are from new churches.”
Engage 2025 is the name of the EPC’s World Outreach focus. Carey rejoiced that “all 12 of the EPC’s existing presbyteries have committed to Engage 2025,” adding that many of those presbyteries already have teams on the field.
Quoting William Carey, a missionary in the early 1800s who is considered the father of modern missions, George Carey said “we must expect great things from God as we attempt great things for God;” and that includes church planting in the United States “among diaspora people groups.”
Carey noted that not only are Muslim neighbors unreached, but new immigrant Christian brothers and sisters are also underserved. “They came from churches that Presbyterians planted around the world and here they have no church,” Carey said.
Carey noted that “once God has shown us what we need to do” — church planting at home and abroad — then, he said, “to attempt those things includes risk.” Sober stories related to people paying the ultimate price for sharing the Gospel in hostile nations were met with prayer, thanksgiving and the acknowledgment that the good work God began through those missionaries requires that others now go as well.
And at the EPC WO Encounter young couples with babies and older adults with a passion to be used up and reach the end of life running toward the tape came forward to offer themselves as living sacrifices on the mission field, ripe for harvest.
The Evangelical Presbyterian Church World Outreach Encounter was held Nov. 12-14, 2013, at Second Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tenn.