By Chris Koiner We are all familiar with the account in the Gospels where Jesus feeds the 5,000, but I would like to focus on the insignificance of the two fish and five loaves Jesus used in order to describe our call to the mission field. Many of you are aware that Julie and I were officially approved in September as missionaries with Mission to the World (MTW) and are just beginning the fund raising process in order to join the church-planting team in Monterrey, Mexico. It is our prayer that God would use our story to encourage others to get involved in missions and, maybe for some of you, to answer God’s call to the mission field.
Our journey began about three years ago when God sparked a small flame in me after hearing a missionary give their story during the Sunday school hour at Heritage Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City. Julie and I discussed the possibility of missions and agreed to contact MTW. Providentially, God brought several MTW missionary families that Heritage supports through town over the next few years. We had a wonderful opportunity to share a meal and discuss their experiences on the field and how they discerned their call to missions.
We decided to start the MTW “process” by completing the application paperwork and going through a phone interview. I refer to the steps required for an MTW missionary to get on to the field as a process, because it is designed to help you discern and confirm your call over a period of several years. One can move through this process as quickly as two and a half years, but for our family, it could take as long as five years from the time we completed our initial applications in 2006. Julie and I, and our immediate families, have come to appreciate the time and care MTW commits to their missionaries, from the application and selection process, to the readiness evaluation and pre-field training. MTW thinks and plans long-term so their missionaries have the best chance of success once they are on the field.
We have just begun the support-raising phase of the MTW process, which usually takes about a year and a half, but, in our situation, could take longer than two years. MTW requires their missionaries, by design, to raise their own support through partnering with churches and individuals. The amount we are required to raise in monthly and one-time support is daunting, but we know that God will use this process to build our faith and confirm our call to Monterrey.
Our family, God willing, will join the church planting team in Monterrey and assist in the areas of finance/administration, evangelism and mercy ministries, short-term team support, training church leaders on financial stewardship, and women’s ministry. We will also, through God’s grace, join the other families on the team in being a light in the darkness and an example of a Christ-centered covenant family.
What can an accountant, homemaker, and five children do to help build God’s kingdom in northern Mexico? How can two fish and five loaves feed well over 5,000 hungry people? Inadequate, hopeless, impossible, yes, all the words I would use to describe the two fish and five loaves in man’s hands, but in our Savior’s hands they become satisfying, an over abundance, and a testimony to His lordship over all things. Our family is nothing special, we have the same struggle with sin and doubt that all of you have, which is why His name will be all the more praised by using us to build His kingdom.
So, we are asking you to partner with us prayerfully and financially, but we also encourage you to consider getting directly involved with missions work, whether through a week long trip, a short-term commitment, or as a career missionary. If God can use us, then He, certainly, can use anybody!
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