from May 16, 2010 prayer email

ACMC is a 35 year old missions mobilization organization. We were an independent organization until three years ago when we came under Pioneers umbrella. This reflection is part 2 in an effort to better familiarize you with Pioneers.


Our mission statement reads “Pioneers mobilizes teams to glorify God among unreached peoples by initiating church planting movements in partnership with local churches.”

In my last reflections, I listed Pioneers eight core values. Today I will focus in on the first two: passion for God and unreached peoples.

PASSION FOR GOD. This should be the foundation for all Christian service. Sadly, I regularly meet good people who have a passion for ministry, but lack a passion for God. Unfortunately, this was my personal experience for many years. These individuals’ service is sincere, but self energized, hollow, and lacking power. It is only as the life of Jesus Christ is lived out through us that we are supernaturally empowered to truly serve His Church and the lost of this world. As consumed as the apostle Paul was with his missionary work, he had a greater passion. That passion was to know Christ. “I consider everything a lost compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ … I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.” (Philippians 3:8, 10). I seek to keep this as the consuming passion of my life as well.

UNREACHED PEOPLES. Missiologists define an unreached people group as a people group that is less than 2% evangelical Christian (in many cases a fraction of 1%). Years of missionary work have repeatedly demonstrated this to be a threshold that must be broken through before the Church of Jesus Christ within that people group has the capacity to complete the job of evangelizing the rest of the group without dependence on outside missionary involvement. This is the work of frontier missions. The apostle Paul was deeply committed to missionary work among unreached peoples. “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.” (Romans 20:15). 97% of the world’s unreached people groups lie within a geographic area called the 10-40 window (north Africa, Middle East, central / south / east Asia). Joshua project has identified 639 unreached people groups of 100,000 plus people. From a strategic vantage point, these people groups should be the top priority of our missionary efforts today.