Last year, NAB missionaries in Brazil teamed up with two area missionaries to come alongside church planters in their region to create a support network. For decades, southern Brazil has been a hard soil in which to plant churches. Coupled with a lack of resources and support, this creates an environment ripe for pastoral burnout rather than flourishing new churches.
The initial meeting included more than twenty church planters interested in such a network.
Since then, NAB missionaries Lyndell Campbell Réquia and Brandon and Marci Jones have helped support the pastors in this new network by offering mentoring, pastoral care, retreats, continuing education, equipping series, pulpit supply, and connections with groups that visit from North America.
For a number of years now, the NAB has been guided by Four Ends, directives we believe God has called us to as a conference. These directives state that NAB churches will be:
- trained for missional ministries
- seek opportunities to engage cross-culturally
- develop spiritual leaders
- send and support international missionaries.
Looking at this new church planter network in Brazil, we see the hallmarks of each of these Resource Fund, you are, in part, helping us to resource missionaries, local churches, and leaders so we can seek these Ends together as a conference of churches.
The type of ministry that reflects the Four Ends isn’t just taking place internationally; we see it happening every day in and through churches across North America. This past year, C. J. Tubig, a pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Calgary, Alberta, took part in the Year of Equipping, a cohort of younger leaders learning what it means to be a missional people in our communities. He said he “found a community that looks to God with awe and seeks to love those around them—walking with others not perfectly but with faithfulness and grace.” . . .
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Join Wayne Stapleton and Parry Stelter on November 9, 3:30–4:30 (Pacific), as they explore the intersection of Indigenous experience, grief, Christian faith, and reconciliation. The hour-long conversation will begin with Parry’s personal and family story as an Indigenous Christian, including the intergenerational impact of residential schools, broken family relationships, cultural loss, racism, and the enduring grief these experiences have produced within Indigenous communities.
From there, the dialogue will broaden to consider grief as a shared human experience, including the ways both Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals carry loss, broken relationships, misunderstanding, and mistrust. The conversation will then explore how the Gospel speaks into grief – through a Jesus who weeps, enters human sorrow, invites the weary to come to him, and promises that suffering will not have the final word.
Finally, Wayne and Parry will consider what faithful Christian reconciliation can look like today: telling the truth about history, listening before attempting to lead, developing genuine relationships rather than simply creating programs, confronting racism and paternalism, distinguishing the Gospel from cultural colonization, and recognizing that God may already be at work in people and communities before Christians arrive.
Drawing particularly from Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10, the conversation will invite Christians to approach cross-cultural ministry with humility – prepared not only to share Christ but also to listen, learn, build relationships, and allow God to transform them through the encounter.
The next NAB Gateway FUSE trip is happening next summer, July 27–August 10 in the Philippines.
For decades, Gateway has led short-term mission teams that consisted of people from multiple churches brought together on a single team, which is why we call them FUSE Teams. These teams typically have have members from across North America and beyond (we’ve had FUSE Team members come from as far and wide as South Korea and Singapore).
This FUSE trip will be partnering with the Bicol Center for Christian leadership, led by NAB missionaries Claire and Tim Marker. Find out more about the various ministries they lead at BCCL.
If you will be age 17 to mid-20s by July 2027 and interested in learning firsthand what international mission work is all about, we invite you to apply for this FUSE trip. Applications are due November 30.