The Local Church and World Mission.

The New Testament is clear about local churches having the primary responsibility for selecting and sending workers to serve in other cultures. The Good Shepherd Mission has been committed for many years to making Jesus known in culturally sensitive ways within the rich diversity of people here in Tower Hamlets. This setting has also provided a good training ground for those considering working in other parts of the world in obedience to Christ’s command to ...’go and make disciples of all nations’…(Matthew 28:19). The church here has thus become a sending church in its own right, and this carries with it important responsibilities for supporting those we send.

It is a great privilege to play a part in God’s world-wide plans, and our vision is for every member of the church to have an active concern for world mission. We need God’s wisdom to discern our unique contribution, and we can only do this as a partner with others—including the workers concerned, the mission agencies they go with, and the organizations and churches in which they serve at home or overseas.

The Cross-Cultural Mission Group.

The Mission has an agreed written policy for this important area. Under the policy responsibility for coordinating this area of work, promoting the church’s involvement in it and reviewing the policy is given to a small ‘Cross-Cultural Mission Group’.

For clarity over the nature of support to be provided by the Mission, those involved in cross-cultural work outside of Tower Hamlets are placed in one of the following groups:

Mission Partners: those whose call to cross-cultural service has arisen within the church and who have been commissioned by the church.

Mission partners currently include:

A  consultant with Interserve, working holistically in developing maternity services at a rural hospital in Bangladesh;

A linguist involved in multi-education work in Bangladesh

A long-term worker in Cambodia involved in local church work and supporting new team members adapt to Cambodian life during their first term of service www.omf.org

Associate Mission Partners: those church members who have embarked on cross-cultural work on their own initiative without the prior involvement and support of the church leadership. They may have joined the Mission after embarking on cross-cultural work.

Our associate mission partners at present are a family living in Lima, Peru and involved in medical work in shanty towns and a craft employment project as well as individual discipleship www.latinlink.org

Church Members Working Abroad: those church members who are serving abroad in their normal work capacity or one related to it.

Link Missionaries: those workers who are not members of the church but who have links with church members.

This currently includes a Welsh-speaking family involved in running a Christian residential youth work centre in North Wales.