GFA Hopes Missionary Conference Will Spark Outreach Revolution
by Allie Martin
June 2, 2005
(AgapePress) - Later this month Gospel for Asia is sponsoring a conference aimed at increasing the effectiveness of churches' mission programs and outreaches. This year's "Renewing Your Passion Missions Conference" takes place June 27-29 at GFA's international headquarters in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas.The 2005 "Renewing Your Passion" conference will feature church planting experts and other Christian ministry specialists from across the U.S., who will work with church pastors and leaders to help them learn to function more efficiently and productively when it comes to missions outreach programs. Dr. K.P. Yohannan, founder of GFA, says those attending the event will gain a better understanding of what makes missions work effective.
Yohannan is buoyant about the upcoming conference, and all that it has to offer the Christian leaders who participate. He says, "This is a time I really believe that they will go away [from] not with a lot of emotional challenges -- although that is important -- but with real, genuine, practical [information on] how to do missions in terms of partnering with the body of Christ in many nations and also getting their own people involved."
Conference workshops will cover topics such as short-term mission trips, developing missions leadership in the local church, renewing people's passion for Christ and the unchurched, and disaster relief. Yohannan believes these and other training sessions offered at the conference will help participants expand their evangelical outreach, especially since, he contends, most churches do not have a biblical conception of missions.
"The local pastors really have so little understanding," the GFA founder says. "Nor are they getting involved in seeing the lost come to Christ, seeing them baptized and [led to] be part of the church in many of these nations."
And that, Yohannan contends, is where one of the main problems is, that "missions have become today a lot of information, pictures and maps, rather than a 'Book of Acts' type of actually making a difference among the people who need to know the Lord Jesus Christ." But the GFA spokesman believes the 2005 Renewing Your Passion Missions Conference will address that problem and help missionaries get to the heart of outreach. In so doing, the Carrollton event has the potential to be "one of the most revolutionary conferences of this kind," he says.
Gospel for Asia trains and deploys native missionaries into the most unreached areas of Asia. Currently there are more than 14,000 GFA native missionaries planting churches throughout the Asian continent.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
