Welcome to our Mission Focus Weekend. It is so good to set aside a weekend every year where we spend more time reflecting on God’s heart for mission, and our privilege & responsibility to partnering. As we read the Scriptures, God’s heart for people from all nations to hear and respond to the gospel is so very clear:

• Gen 1:28 - ‘God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it’
• Gen 12:3 - ‘all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’
• Exodus 19:6 - ‘Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’
• Isaiah 49:6 - ‘I will make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth’
• Micah 4:2 - ‘Many nations will come and say ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob’
• John 10:16 - ‘I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd’
• Acts 10:34-35 - ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right’
• Romans 10:14-15 - ‘How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news’‘
• 1 Tim 2:3-4 - ‘God our Saviour wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth’
• Revelation 7:9 - ‘I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb’

Here at Church by the Bridge, we have the privilege of partnering with a number of mission partners - please see ‘Mission Partners’ on our website for more information.

My prayer is that during this weekend you will:

• see and understand God’s heart for mission,
• be better informed as the work of our mission partners,
• be challenged as to what it really means to be ‘partners in the gospel’,
• be encouraged to pray more for our mission partners and all other mission work, and
• be open to God’s prompting to go – short term of long term.

With love in Christ
Paul Dale (Senior Pastor)