The CIS Mission Board of Directors has approved Colin Campbell, chaplain with the “War on Cancer” in Charlottesville, as a special ministry project. The decision was ratified at a regular board meeting in October, 2008. [read more]

For over 30 years Dr. Bray has used the YWAM Prayer and Planning Diary as a way to stay on track with his personal piety and as a prayer guide for the whole team. "Next to the Bible, this is the most life-changing devotional book I have ever used," says Dr. Bray. "It takes you right into the heart of Jesus for the lost world-it is like walking with God. Plus it helps you plan your daily apostolic action." [read more]

THE volunteers who serve at the CIS Mission Book Table Ministry are offering two free gift books this season as part of their 2008 holiday ministry to needy students, supporters and the whole body of Christ. [read more]

By Dr. Bill Bray

IN 1973 my dear brother in Christ and friend K. P. Yohannan asked me to collaborate with him on a little book that soon became a missionary classic, The Coming Revolution in World Missions. It heralded publicly the rise of the indigenous mission’s movement, a phenomenon which was then only beginning to dominate global missions.

Now, I think it may be time to write a sequel.

Last month, Ivy and I saw unfolding before our eyes what I hope and pray could be the next revolution in world missions—an era of global partnerships. There are already successful models in place on a small scale. Dare we call upon God’s Holy Spirit and ask for it to happen on the scale needed to finish the task in the next generation? Modern Christian missions ended one phase and started another in the last 100 years, could it already be on the cusp of a third?

I think so, and it is not surprising that global missions follows and acts in the context of political and economic revolutions. We minister in a changing world, and globalization is a fact of modern life now. Now to minister within it, is to miss the first open door of this century.

The first phase of modern missions began with the Portuguese and Spanish colonialism of India and the New World in the fifteenth century. It was eventually dominated by the great protestant missionary movements of England and the United States in the nineteen century. However, with the end of colonialism and the rise of nationalism after WWII, we saw the birth of the indigenous mission’s movement. Funded and staffed almost entirely in the developing world, it is now leading the global church in evangelism and church planting.

At the 12th annual conference of COSIM last month in Chicago, we could barely contain ourselves with surging hope as the presenters painted a new picture of the globalization now taking place in missions. The voices being heard at the Coalition on the Support of Indigenous Missions (COSIM) this year were not the traditional mission sending agencies or even the “upstart” indigenous support agencies like Advancing Native Missions, Christian Aid, Gospel for Asia, Mission One, Partners International and the other 55 partner agencies that have mostly started up in the last 40 years.

Instead we listened to native leaders and academics talk about the power of networking with local churches, advances in technology, short-term missions, and the need for cross-cultural communications skills. It was clear to us that God is on the move again and something new is underway—but we’re not exactly sure what it is yet! It is surely bigger than any of us have the capacity to imagine or cope with alone.

One thing was clear to me as a communications professional – we need to master cross-cultural communication skills and technologies in this new environment. Nothing happens without communications, and that’s why we exist. I hope that the COSIM message we heard last month forms the basis of the next Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization scheduled for 2010 in Capetown, South Africa.

If we can find a way to bottle the COSIM formula for unity and deliver it to every church here and overseas, I think the world will indeed know we’re Christians by our love. The Great Commission task is not going to be accomplished by indigenous leaders alone—and certainly never by initiatives from the effete churches of the developed nations.

We have got to work together or we will fail. We have got to work together or we deserve to fail.

My greatest fear for us here in the USA and Europe is that we won’t have the doctrinal and moral purity to rise to this occasion. We need to humble ourselves, repent of our sins, and mobilize another generation of radical folks like the Operation Mobilization and YWAM crowd did back in the 1960’s. There is already a new generation of Bakht Singh’s and Watchman Nee’s waiting to partner with us in the unreached nations if we will only humble ourselves and act on the truth.

We are profoundly grateful to God for using Ron George and World In Need to sponsor our participation on behalf of the Muslim-world indigenous missions at COSIM this year…and we hope to participate in a series of these conferences over the next 10 years or so through prayer and as a channel of support.