Lausanne Movement North America
Global Missions Leaders Alliance
A Lausanne North America Strategy Group
The Global Missions Leaders Alliance of North America exists to equip, resources, and network churches, pastors, and leaders engaged in global missions for more healthy, effective, and strategic engagement in the Great Commission among the unreached worldwide.
Equipping
though higher education and ongoing learning opportunities for pastors and leaders
Resourcing
providing pastors and churches with tools for more effective leadership and ministry
Networking
Connecting churches, pastors, and leaders both nationally and internationally for strategic partnerships and collaboration in global missions.
The Global Missions Leaders Alliance of North America is supported by Wheaton College Litfin School of Mission, Ministry, and Leadership, Lausanne North America, and Wheaton College Billy Graham Center.
About
The way by which the evangelical church in the United States participates in global missions has undergone subtle, but significant shifts over the last few decades. The rise of the megachurch in the last several decades has meant that many local churches, because of their size, capacity, and funding, have become their own agency for global missions with the missions pastor as the leader. Large churches are developing their own people to send, funding global workers at much higher levels, and developing their own international connections, partners, and projects. Large churches want to engage in global missions on their own terms and work together with mission agencies to support and partner with their workers and projects.
This shift to large church independence in missions work, has uniquely contributed to the shift from the missions agency as the driver, innovator, and leader in global missions to the local church.
There are some deleterious effects from this change. There is increased potential to lose the missiological sophistication that established agencies bring to global missions and cause unintentional damage by ignoring economic and cultural differences that we do not understand, creating systems of dependency that agencies and denominations have fought hard to avoid over the years. Agencies and denominations alike have functioned as a reservoir of knowledge and experience due to a century of mistakes and learning throughout the missionary movement of the 1900s and have functioned as a key broker of information between missiologists in academia and boots on the ground ministry. Agencies and denominations can provide treasure trove of history, expertise, and training.
As local church missions pastors and leaders are playing crucial roles in this new paradigm of church-led mission, there is an immediate need in American evangelical churches for training, resourcing, and networking.
The Global Missions Leaders Alliance hopes to provide these resources to churches, pastors, and leaders engaged in global missions for more healthy, effective, and strategic engagement in the Great Commission among the unreached worldwide.
