What is Christian Aid Mission’s ultimate goal?
To establish a witness for Christ in every nation.
What is your ministry strategy?
Assisting indigenous ministries in eight regions of the world to share the gospel of Christ with unreached people groups in places of poverty, persecution, where foreign missionaries cannot go.
How many people groups remain unreached?
How do you define unreached people group?
A distinct ethnic group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize the people group without outside assistance.
Why are unreached people still unreached?
It has been estimated that 99.7% of global mission resources goes to where the church already exists. Only 0.3% goes to where no church exists. The churches of America spend over a billion dollars each year sending workers to places where there are already thousands of churches and millions of evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, indigenous missionaries are working in places where no church exists. They are doing 90 percent of pioneer missionary work with only a tiny fraction of mission resources. That is why Christian Aid Mission exists—to help indigenous missionaries finish the Great Commission task our Lord gave to us by establishing a witness for Christ in every nation.
Do you send out foreign missionaries?
No. We exclusively assist ministries that are indigenous, or local, to their own lands by making their needs known to believers in developed nations who supply them with prayer and financial support.
What about people groups with no Christians? Don’t foreigners initially have to reach them?
At times, indigenous missionaries must build upon a cultural overlap with a “culturally near” tribe or people group, such as learning variations of a native dialect to communicate with them. We believe that the fewer barriers one must cross in sharing the gospel and in teaching the Bible, the more effective he or she will be. An unreached tribe, for instance, is more likely to receive the gospel as presented by another “culturally near” people group, than by a foreigner with a completely different culture.
Do you hire indigenous missionaries?
No. The indigenous ministries we assist are fully independent and not affiliates of Christian Aid Mission. They are led by evangelical Christians who live and work inside of their own countries. We neither hire nor direct local missionaries. We help them fulfill their God-given visions to reach their own people with the gospel in their own culturally appropriate ways.
How do you maintain financial integrity?
We evaluate every indigenous ministry we assist to verify that they are biblically sound, financially accountable, evangelistic in practice, and of good reputation in their country. Each ministry is checked to ensure that it is truly indigenous. In addition, we do not send funds directly to individuals, but to an indigenous ministry’s mission board which oversees the distribution of support to the missionaries. We also require reports of all funds received and how they were disbursed.
Don’t we first need to train indigenous missionaries before they are sent out?
Thousands of indigenous ministries operate Bible institutes and missionary training schools that provide practical field experience with focused classroom teaching. Christian Aid Mission has provided assistance toward the establishment of more than 150 Bible institutes in China, for example, that have trained and sent out tens of thousands of native Chinese missionaries. Many indigenous missionaries have also opted to study abroad at evangelical colleges and seminaries.
Why can’t indigenous ministries provide support for their own workers?
Indigenous ministries are working in the most destitute countries on earth, where the majority of the remaining unreached people groups live and where local believers comprise only a tiny minority of the overall population. These local believers typically give sacrificially to the work of Christ—offering gifts of eggs, rice, or vegetables from their gardens—but are too poor to sustain and grow the work of indigenous ministries. That is where Christian Aid Mission steps in to help indigenous ministries expand their outreach.