The Future Beckons for Fellowship International

Fellowship International gives new meaning to the term “grandfathering.” Put aside your preconceived ideas of what that word means and picture a Fellowship Baptist Church collaborating with a Fellowship International missionary engaged in training his replacement as he plants a new church. And that is what is happening in places like Medellín, Colombia where Revelstoke Baptist Church in British Columbia works jointly with Diego Cardona in establishing a new El Redil (The Sheepfold) congregation. But Diego, as mentor and coach, is also working alongside the man who will replace him once the church is planted. Someday this new Redil will plant another church. Like every healthy family, one generation builds into the next.

This is what makes Fellowship International unique. The heart of its uniqueness lies in its relationship with Fellowship churches across Canada as congregation and mission work together to establish churches crossculturally and to empower indigenous leaders.

This is why we exist and what we do:

Fellowship International exists to establish healthy reproducing churches in cross-cultural strategic populations through partnerships with our churches.

To establish healthy reproducing churches reflects our historic and ongoing commitment to church planting and to seeing churches mature and grow strong. Cross-Cultural means we reach across cultural and geographic boundaries. Strategic populations refer to populations where less than 2% of the people are evangelical.

Fellowship International partners with our sending churches in order to initiate and facilitate healthy cross-cultural church multiplication through disciplemaking, leadership development and holistic ministry.

When we refer to partnering with our churches, we mean the historic and strategic relationship we enjoy with our family of Fellowship Churches across Canada. It is our desire to collaborate increasingly with our churches as they:

Support existing Fellowship International Initiatives;
Share responsibility for existing initiatives;
Create new cross-cultural ministry initiatives with Fellowship International.

To initiate and facilitate healthy cross-cultural church multiplication means that it is the task of missionaries to empower indigenous believers to carry out their own Godgiven mission and vision. Ministry responsibility is turned over and missionaries move on as soon as indigenous leaders are trained.

Morningstar Baptist Church in Toronto is another example of the relationship Fellowship International would like to develop with all of our Fellowship family of churches as we join hands around the world. Morningstar works closely with Jack Chen who is presently serving at the historic Carey Baptist Church in Kolkata, India. Jack, through Fellowship International’s LeadersFor program, uses gifted Canadian pastors who donate short periods of time in India to train Indian pastors for more effective ministry.

As you can see the principle of the cord of three strands, found in Ecclesiastes 4:12, works in planting churches cross-culturally. Fellowship Church plus mission and missionary plus indigenous empowered leadership is a cord not easily broken.