Doing Missions in a Digital Age

MoveIn is a small missions organization that finds and then places young people to live in and do missions work in highly populated urban communities of immense need in North America.

With little overhead, the group has become a good example of the kind of effective outreach work being done in today's world that is defined by YouTube and other types of social media, says Steve Moore, president of Missio Nexus, the largest evangelical missions network in North America.

"MoveIn participants agree to get a job, to love and help people in their neighborhoods and to pray together for 20 hours per week,” Moore told Christian Reformed World Missions personnel in a breakfast meeting this week.

"They are now working in several cities and have 300 people incarnating the gospel in these neighborhoods that are filled with people who are living there from all over the world. And they have done this without having to raise a nickel.”

In his visit to the CRC's office in Grand Rapid, Mich., Moore touched on trends and approaches as individuals, churches, groups and denominations are working to carry out Christ’s Great Commission to bring the gospel to all people. He made it clear that much of the future for missions lies in nimble, creatively functioning groups such as MoveIn.

MoveIn arose as a grassroots missions movement, inspired by a sense of what might work in encouraging young people to bring Christ's message to urban settings.

On its website, MoveIn says, “We are encouraging all young Christians to ask themselves to move where they move on purpose and to challenge their default motivations.

“Sadly, it seems to have become the norm for Christians to move into a neighborhood not because of the need or because of a calling to reach it, but because it is convenient. Furthermore, neighborhoods that are inconvenient or unsafe are avoided.”

MoveIn has a business model that is lean, biblically rich and focused, and that is the way in which successful missions work will need to be done in the 21st Century, said Moore.

"We are seeing a big wholesale change in how missions organizations do their work," he said.

Larger organizations — and not just smaller ones such as MoveIn — also have a role to play in seeking the best methods for sharing the unchangeable gospel.

In his visit to Grand Rapids, Moore gave some advice.

"Organizational agility is important. What we are seeing is the need for the balance between flexibility and control... We are seeing a move from closed systems to open systems.”

Missio Nexus is the result of the merger last year of two dominant mission associations in North America — CrossGlobal Link and The Mission Exchange. It currently  represents 35,000 evangelical missionaries deployed by more than 200 agencies and churches.

But the organization does much more than represent the missionaries. It is, above all, said Moore, a network offering information about how to address various issues in missionary work.

"The body of knowledge is significant, but not always accessible. We see ourselves as one major point of interface for the North American missions community,” he said.

"We believe we have the responsibility to steward the body of knowledge about what God is doing around the world and what might be coming."

They do this in different ways, including by helping organizations to discern the best ways to do missions.

"We help catalyze new ideas that are at the fringes, since new ideas are always at the fringes.

“We help cast a vision and our network encourages more voices to join. The Great Commission is too big for any organization to do alone and too important not to try to do together."