Global Missions Areas to Serve

Here are some ideas of where you can serve in connection with Thornapple Global Missions:

Missionaries:

1.  Missionary Care Program: contact life group leaders and match missionaries with a life group. This program was initially introduced at the fall kick-off brunch for life group leaders; all the life group leaders received profiles for our Thornapple missionaries. We have a coordinator for this program and need 1-2 people to help with implementing the program and updating profiles.

2.  Missionary Highlight on Sunday mornings: Walt has faithfully written weekly prayer needs which are included in the bulletin for our Thornapple missionaries; we would like to make this more obvious by having a slide projected on to the screen representing the missionary for the week; we need someone to work with Walt and Eric Sattler (Eric puts together the slides for Sundays) to make sure this happens each week.

3.  Missionary Goodbyes: When we have missionaries leaving for the field we like to have a special event including a time of prayer and blessing for the missionaries; in 2010 Thornapple will be saying goodbye to the Hirts, Norens and most likely the Ziegelbaurs; we need a team of people who will plan these events; perhaps the events can be done in coordination with the life group who is sponsoring the missionary.

4.  Missionary Welcome Team: We need a team who help returning missionaries integrate into the Thornapple community; Sarah and Gaurav M are returning in May 2010; the team would help welcome the missionaries and assist in practical needs as well as inform the congregation and plan an event for the missionary to share about their ministry and prayer needs.

5.  Missionary Prayer Updates: Thornapple receives letters and emails giving prayer updates from our missionaries; we need to develop a system for dispersing this information to our Thornapple people; we have investigated the idea of including prayer updates on our all church email newsletters, but have learned that this is not wise due to security risks with having missionary information available on a public domain.

6.  Promiseland Missionary Focus: during the spring of 2009 we had 3 individuals give monthly presentations to the children attending Promiseland. Each presentation highlighted a part of the missionary vision and practical work that has been done in the DR. During the 2009-10 school year, Patti Raisch has worked with 5 high school students to present about the vision and needs of Mexico. We are looking toward the 2010-11 school year and would like to develop a plan for Promiseland to continue to share about a place in the world where Thornapple has a connection. We would like to focus on our missionaries who live in Turkey. We need a team to organize this and make presentations to the children each month.

Events:

1.  There has been interest in having a “Women at Risk” event at Thornapple; Tarah Armbrester (niece of Don and Stacy Armbrester) works for Women at Risk and is willing to be contact person for planning this event; we need someone to coordinate this event, we already have a couple of people who have agreed to help. Tarah’s contact info: tar04@aol.com.

2.  Human Trafficking Event: we have discussed the idea of having a movie night to increase awareness or special book club dedicated to social justice issues; we need someone to coordinate either of these options.

3.  In November 2009 when Sean Litton was here from IJM we were challenged to host “At the End of Slavery” home events; there is a video and information from IJM about how to organize this event; we need someone to coordinate this and make contact with groups.

4.  Quarterly Prayer Events (Concerts of Prayer) to focus on the needs around the world beyond the scope of Thornapple’s missionaries; perhaps this could be a Sunday evening or Saturday brunch event done quarterly with a specific format that gives focus to praying for different parts of the world; we need a team to coordinate these events.

Global Mission Ministry Team:

1.  We need a team of individuals who meet to interview candidates who are requesting to be identified as Thornapple missionaries, both short and long term; this team would also meet to debrief missionaries after returning from the field; it would also be helpful to review the current process of adding new missionaries.

2.  We need an administrative team to discuss long range planning, yearly budgets, meet with the Thornapple staff liaison; this would most likely be a quarterly meeting.