My Church | Our Mission
GBM Annual Mission Day 2019
GBM is a church-based mission, and our Annual Mission Day this year focussed on the
role of the local church in world mission. It was as always our biggest event of
the year, and people joined us from churches across the UK and the Isle of Man, from
as far afield as Broadstairs and Bury, Netley and North Preston. We estimate that
over 600 people were with us for some or all of the day at Friends House in Euston,
London.
The focus of the delegates meeting was the Great Commission, that all authority has
been given to Christ, and therefore we go, while the promise of Christ is that he
will build his church and the gates of hell will not overcome his work. An increased
number of delegates and several new member churches approved the budget for the coming
year and elected new members of GBM Council.
Annual Mission Day is a buzz of breakout meetings. This time we had presentations
from Keith Charlton of OneHundredFold and our partners at Pastor Training International
and Christian Books Worldwide. James Hammond reported on a year’s work in the new
church-plant in Bordeaux, while Andrzej Kempczyński described the long haul of establishing
a church in Poland. Jason and Andrea Murfitt are currently based in the UK and described
their plans as they prepare to move to Madeira to start a new church. Theo and Sonja
Donner gave an interview session where they talked about Colombia and Theo explained
the purpose behind his new book, The history of exegesis. Jean Ellis reflected on
the Lord’s goodness to her through seventy years of life and nearly forty years of
missionary service. Daniel and Ellie Caballero came over from Ireland to explain
how the Lord has led them there and given them new opportunities for the gospel.
Others talked about Bible translation or work among Asians in Britain. Picking which
session to go to is a challenge, and so often the conversation on the train home
is ‘So what did you get to go to?’ as people swap notes. We intend Annual Mission
Day to be busy, and we like it that way.
The multi-media session in the main hall went back to our roots in the Victorian
era. 125 years ago this year a group of churches met to pray for a whole day, and
as a result sent out our first missionaries to serve in India. This led into a range
of different people and projects where local churches are getting involved in sending,
both short- and long-term, through GBM Envision, and initiatives such as Proclamation
Zambia. What if your church has no one to send? David and Mairi Campbell described
how their church learnt the ‘power of littles’ in its giving, and how they started
to reach Asian women in their community. GBM Radio has a reach that stretches to
thousands of rural African churches, equipping pastors through radio programmes to
handle God’s word better. Finally, churches send people to plant churches that plant
churches. James Hammond explained the thinking that had led to the start of Eglise
Bordeaux Chartrons, and then a video of Hanson Manova described new things happening
among the Tamil Baptist churches of South India.
In the final session of the day we said farewell to Jean Ellis on her retirement
in Austria, and we also said goodbye to Jim and Helen Sayers as Jim moves on from
the role as GBM Communications Director to lead a new church-plant in Didcot. Theo
Donner preached with passion and power from 1 Cor. 1:17-31, focussing on the importance
of our prayers for casting ourselves in our weakness on the power of God.
We love the way that Annual Mission Day reinforces every year the partnership in
the gospel that we have as local churches working together in world mission. One
way that is expressed is in the offering on the day which this year totalled £20,553
(including Gift Aid), for which we thank God.
Next year’s Annual Mission Day will be in Solihull on Saturday 24 October.
