GROUND-BREAKING FIND Coalition MEETS
They arrived from everywhere … local, national, and international … to attend the first FIND Coalition held at the Church of God International Offices in Cleveland, Tennessee. The conference coincided with the World Missions Board quarterly meeting, and provided added impetus to the occasion. World Missions Director Dr. Tim Hill delivered a powerful speech at its opening session.
The vision of the FIND Coalition is to locate and engage a minimum of 250 Unreached People Groups before 2020, to establish a self-supported church planting movement in each of those groups by 2025, and to build a leadership coalition which will accompany appointed leaders and missionaries in the task of finishing the Great Commission in this generation.
The FIND Coalition came from the burdened heart of Ken Anderson, former Asia/Pacific Field Director and now serving as Representative of Unreached People Groups. Reaching this element of those needing evangelization is a monumental task. Thousands of unreached people groups exist across the globe. The FIND Coalition is an extension of the World Missions FINISH Challenge, and desires to connect globally in sharing the gospel with those who have never heard.
Representative Anderson gave a three-point focus of the FIND Coalition:
- Increased communication
- Increased coordination
- Increased mobilization
First, a model must be built. Former World Missions Director Roland Vaughan inspired the group of approximately 80 to 90 impassioned individuals on “Why Need a Model?” Vaughan stated we can only reach the world, the unreached, with a strategy. He also avowed that you will pay a price for preparation, and it requires working as a team. An example of such team work is when NASA put men on the moon—much attention was given to those men, but occasionally, you saw in the coverage the entire room of technicians who were involved with them—people they could not do without. Among Vaughan’s closing statements were: “Get God’s heart! It’s not what you do, it’s what you are!”
An impressive fact is that $100,000 has been donated from Church of God congregations in some of the poorest countries in Central America to fund evangelizing UPGs. They have been stirred to action. A great deal of what is being done is driven by the Law of Relationship…a pyramid effect, like the impact of a situation in India where a Sunday school class is held on top of a temple. It formed a Kids Club, which in turn provides tutoring and sharing the message of Christ. When parents face crisis, they know the missionary teacher prays to the Living God, and they turn to the missionary for prayer. Miracles happen, and their eyes are opened. The Kids Club becomes a prayer center, and then ultimately a house church. In another area of India, many children are being raised to participate in the sex trade, and one of our outreaches is teaching the children English in order to combat this trend, and win an unreached people group in the process.
Can you possibly imagine the feeling of being part of taking the message of Hope and the experiencing of God’s presence for the first time to someone who has never had the knowledge of either? The FIND Coalition will find a way!
—Janet Price, COG World Missions
