On God’s Mission Highway
A career missionary couple testify of a lifetime dedicated to missionary service.
By Grant and Janice McClung
On Highway 41 south of Tampa, Florida is a small town called Ruskin. It was Janice’s home town after her birth in Tampa on August 11. The next day, August 12, I came into this world in a farming community called Wasco on Highway 46 in Central California. In her teenage years, Janice’s family moved across country to their new home in California where she agreed to become Mrs. Grant McClung on July 25, 1970. We’ve mapped 43 years together on God’s mission highway.
With brief stints in church planting and pastoral ministry, most of those years have been in world missions ministries. This has involved missionary training in Bible colleges and seminaries, prayerfully interviewing missionary candidates in a personnel committee, supervising and resourcing educational leaders worldwide, and giving administrative/pastoral leadership to 100+ missionaries and national leaders in Europe and the Middle East. We have seen the hand of God in missions miracles, missions modeling, missions mentoring, and a missions movement.
Missions Miracles
Consider the miracle of being born just one day apart at different ends of the country and being brought together in matrimony and ministry. Consider the divine missionary calling, through supernatural prophetic messages, the years of miraculous financial provision, the miracle of protection in missions travel in more than 60 nations, and the miraculous healing of our granddaughter (through the prayers of God’s people around the world). We believe that mission begins with and is sustained in missions miracles.
Missions Modeling
As a child at the Ruskin, Florida Church of God, Janice heard the missions appeal through the visit of missionaries Hoyle and Mildred Case and her life was set on a path that would lead to missionary service in Europe. As a teenager at a California camp meeting, Grant had a “divine appointment” with missions leader James L. Slay who encouraged the high school junior to make his first application for missionary service with Church of God World Missions. We believe in missions modeling for others as a way of “paying forward” what we received from faithful missionaries.
Missions Mentoring
David S. Bishop was our teacher at West Coast Bible College. Early every school day morning, before the beginning of classes, he faithfully led us and other members of the “Missions Club” in daily intercession for countries and missionaries. Until he and his wife Sandra went to be with the Lord (almost one year apart) they were faithful every Wednesday night at Westmore Church of God where we continue to serve together in missions intercessory prayer ministry. Dr. Bishop was the team leader on my first short-term missions experience – two weeks in Mexico – in June 1967. We believe that doors are opened for international service through missions mentoring.
A Missions Movement
We are grateful for a visionary young pastor, Robert E. Fisher, who encouraged us forward in ministry and led our congregation in Fresno, California in the act of “setting forth” into credentialed ministry in a worldwide missionary movement in a Pentecostal denomination. We believe we are called to participate in a global, interdenominational missions movement.
Who would have ever dreamed that a little girl from Central Florida and a boy from Central California would have found each other through God’s missions miracles. The kids from Highway 41 and Highway 46 responded to the missionary call through the examples of missions modeling. Exemplary mentoring put them into missionary life. The Lord of the Harvest opened a door of international service through a global, interdenominational missions movement.
Whether on the super freeways to the world’s megacities, the back roads and dirt paths leading to yet unreached people groups, or a walk across the street to our neighbors, there is an avenue of missional service for every Christ follower. God’s mission highway continues until the journey is complete and the job is finished (Matthew 24.14).
Grant and Janice McClung mobilize and train for world evangelization through Missions Resource Group (www.MissionsResourceGroup.org).
