Mission Network News

New Zealand (MNN/ANS) ― The fields are, as always, ripe for the harvest and New Zealanders and New Zealand-trained missionaries are hearing the call. Several mission agencies reported an increase last year. They're also expecting increases this year. 

Pioneers New Zealand national director Jamie Wood is excited about the trend after preparing 12 long-term missionaries for the field last year, eight of whom have left for six different countries.  He says, "This is a 55 per cent jump for us," he said. "It's a sign of a momentum upswing." Pioneers has 1550 workers worldwide.

"In the past it was mostly childless couples sent out from New Zealand," he says. "Now it's anything from young singles to retirees with the majority being young families with a median age of 28. The common factor in them all is a passion to reach the least-accessed people in the world."

Wood expects Pioneers to be training and sending another 10 to 12 missionaries this year.

OMF International national director Warren Payne says their organization was seeing an increase in firm applications for long-term mission, most of them young families.

"It comes down to concentrated prayer," he says.

Internationally OMF is setting a goal of finding 900 new workers for the mission field -- 700 missionaries and 200 support workers -- over the next five years. Over the previous five years 600 new workers were sent. Despite this OMF has more than 700 opportunities not yet filled throughout the world.

WEC International is also expecting a boom year with 14 trainees in its first course and another course yet to be held. It hasn't seen numbers like this in the past five years.

Unlike IMF and Pioneers, WEC is now a training and sending base for missionaries from other countries, especially Korea, which now provides the third largest group after Americans and British, going into the mission field.

But the need for New Zealanders isn't diminishing, says Jamie Wood.

"The world needs New Zealanders. I have just come back from visiting Africa and the national workers in Africa and Asia are crying out for New Zealand people to work beside them."

Mr Wood says New Zealanders have a unique perspective on the world, different from missionaries from the United States or Britain.

"The national workers find New Zealanders and Australians easier to work with. They haven't got that 'superpower' thing. It's from underdog to underdog."

Partnership between the national worker and the missionary and between Pioneers and the sending church are the key, he says.