“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”   John 20:21

God has a mission to reconcile all of creation through the reign of Jesus Christ. Just as God sent Jesus Christ into the world as the center of that mission, Jesus sends His church into the world to continue that mission. Thus, “[i]t is not so much that the church has a mission, but that God’s mission has a church.”(Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church).

So, when it comes to missions at New Direction Baptist, we want to be asking “God questions:”

• What is God doing in our neighborhoods, our city, our region, and our world? What does God want to do? 
• How can we discern where God is already working and joyfully participate?

When the church discerns and acts in step with the Spirit, it becomes “a sign, a foretaste, and instrument of the in-breaking reign of God.” (Leslie Newbigin, A Word in Season: Perspectives on Christian World Mission, 94).

Come join us as we do what Jesus is doing in our world.

Niger Mission Trip July/ August 2023

Six members of New Direction Baptist were part of a 29-member mission team that served in Niger in July 2023. We worked with aIndianapolis-based, Christian non-profit that has been working and serving in Niger for almost 20 years. They have supported the building and operation of numerous orphanages, schools, and a hospital, and they are directly responsible for feeding over 2,000 children every single day – and we had the opportunity to serve kids and adults in all those places. In addition, we served and fed street children, did trash pick-up and a children’s program at a local church, planted trees at one of the schools, and so much more.

This trip was different from anything else that we ever experienced. We saw breathtaking, unimaginable poverty. But the kids at these orphanages, and the kids and their parents at the children’s hospital and in the neighborhoods, were so welcoming to us … so full of joyful hospitality as we came into their space to play with them, color with them, and dance with them. It was humbling. At just about every location we visited, we put on a little skit about Noah’s ark. Through the skit, we had a chance to share the Gospel, and explain how the ark was a picture of Christ Jesus – the vessel of God’s salvation and God’s great love.

It is difficult to communicate how present and tangible the Holy Spirit was to us every day, making a way to connect us to complete strangers who did not speak our language. As we served children food, or did arts and crafts with adults and kids, or played soccer with teenagers, or sang and danced, the love and presence of God was thick around all of us. We all felt that they gave us more than we gave them.

Yes, there was a coup d’état in Niger during our mission trip that held us over for a few days. No, we never felt unsafe. Yes, we were evacuated by the French Air Force to a French Air Force base in Chad through some very unlikely circumstances. Those things were a providential addition to our amazing week of ministry because we got to experience the reality that the same God who watches over those orphans is the same God who is still in the business of delivering his servants. And yes, we would all go back again, in a heartbeat, because we experienced the love and presence and power of Christ in Niger.

Jesus Christ has invited us to join him on the mission field – the field in Indianapolisand the field on the other side of the world, and doing so is always an adventure! Follow him there … wherever “there” is for you … you wouldn’t want to miss out on doing what Jesus is doing in our world