Connecting with Another International Church Network

In early October I had the opportunity to meet with the leadership team of the Missional International Church Network (MICN) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. MICN (www.micn.org) is a network of multicultural, multinational churches in locations all over the globe. MICN seeks to support, encourage, and resource these churches. They are a great group of people doing important international ministry, and they invited me to come to their annual leadership meeting, so we could all get to know each other better and see how the Lord might lead us to work together in the future.

To give you a little background, they were a moving force behind the Global Church for a Global World (www.gcgw.org) Conference in Hong Kong back in April. This conference was the first attempt to bring all evangelical international churches together in one place. I attended along with the men’s ministry leader from my church, Kurt Gilje. (For more information on this conference see the article “Global Church for a Global World.”)

MICN is doing some great work around the world, and they are a growing network. This weekend meeting was a time for them to vision about the future. We spent time defining the purpose and goals of MICN, followed by discussing their priorities and plans as they dream about the future. I was able to contribute information that I had learned from the IBC’s Strategic Planning team that I had worked on for the past three years.

Their mission is to “Strengthen the International Church Movement for Missional Impact”, and they plan to do this through a three pronged strategy:

• Formation: To challenge and equip international church leaders to effectively engage with God in his global kingdom restoration movement. We will trust God to contribute biblical theological formation to the IC movement.
• Collaboration: To network, serve and equip international churches to leverage the unprecedented waves of people on the move into the mission of God.
• Innovation: To research, reflect, design and provide thought leadership for international churches.

Through this meeting I was able to learn more about the inner workings of the network, their vision for the future, and how we might collaborate for Kingdom impact. Although they have been around for a number of years, they are getting serious this year and  are beginning to look at how to carry out their vision and strategy.  Since I have recently helped lead the IBC through a similar process, I was able to help them see things from angles they had not considered.  Many of the questions they need to ask going forward are the same as the IBC, but the answers they get are different.  I have enjoyed contributing to their journey and also learning from them how to do things in other ways than just how we do it as IBC churches.

Following this meeting in Kuala Lumpur, MICN invited me to join their leadership team, and I have agreed.  I see this as a great opportunity for FMI’s ministry to grow as God is now giving us the opportunity to impact international churches around the world through my serving in executive leadership roles with the IBC and MICN.  I believe strengthening international church pastors and ministry leaders, just as we do with indigenous church leaders, has the potential to yield great results for the Kingdom, as I am a firm believer in the potential of international churches to have a very real impact both in the lives of those who attend them as well as the communities (and even beyond) where they are located.