Those folks whose membership in Cherry Log brings them to the Disciples from other faith traditions, and also lifelong Disciples can be excused if they ask, “Do Disciples have missionaries?”

The answer is “yes, but…” That “but” requires an expanded way of thinking about missionaries for most of us. Missionaries still go out and spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, and they discover, as missionaries always have, that this involves much more than preaching and teaching. Nowadays missionaries find themselves working with indigenous pastors, helping established congregations begin new churches, and combining forces with local organizations for health care, education, human rights, refugee and disaster responses, and ministries to children. Coordination is key to the work of today’s missionaries.

We learn from the website: www.disciples.org, clicking on General Ministries, that we have a Division of Overseas Ministries (DOM). We pursue this further to find that we work in 50 countries in five missions areas: Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and Europe, and Southern Asia. Other clicks and we get reports on what is happening in those areas, and even the names and contact data on who is serving there.

We discover that we are in a full Global Ministries ecumenical partnership with the United Church of Christ, and have been since 1989. We have jointly commissioned all our missionaries since 1993. Two of the missionaries are assigned to each Disciple Region and each UCC Conference, to spend time when they are at home helping us know about their work. Once happily called “Living Link Missionaries,” this is now called “Missionary Relationships!” Xuyen Dangers, Vietnam/Laos, and Phyllis Byrd, from Kenya are ours. Ms. Byrd is visiting churches in Georgia this Spring.

DOM reported to the Portland General Assembly that its highest priority is what they call ‘Critical Presence,” for the church to BE THERE, “to be timely and appropriately meeting God’s people and creation at their point of deepest need.” This is an enormous commitment, but one which we at Cherry Log Christian Church share here in North Georgia, and with Global Ministries around the world.

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