Missions Catalyst

1. Challenge: Eat Like a Refugee for Five Days
2. Data: The Number of Unreached People Groups Is…
3. Invitation: The Personal Retreat, One Day a Month
4. Books: How Kingdom Movements Are Multiplying
5. Events: Conferences, Classes, and More in March

Source: Jeannie Marie

Ready for a preposterous global challenge (that you can do right at home?)

Imagine experiencing what refugees eat every day—not just thinking about it, but actually living it. I’m inviting you to try something radical: eat like a refugee for five days.

Just oatmeal, rice, beans, and flour. That’s it. Whether you do this with your family, small group, or entire church, one thing’s certain: this experience will change you.

Why? Because when we step into someone else’s reality—even for a few days—it transforms our perspective forever.

Can’t travel overseas for a short-term trip right now? Perfect timing to bring this global experience home.

Get directions to do your own Eat Refugee Rations Global Challenge with your family, small group, or your whole church. A project for Lent? Jeannie shares lots of fun ideas for how you can make this work.

Source: Joshua Project

Mobilizers, prone to simplify things, like to weave statements like this into mission presentations: “According to Joshua Project, there are 7,190 unreached people groups.” But you don’t have to delve too deeply to see that the number of unreached people groups—or people groups in generals—is more complicated than it appears.

One layer of complication comes from this question: Do we count a group like the Bambara, who live in 12 West African countries, as 12 groups or one?

• Taking the first approach produces a list of 17,280 people groups, 7,190 of them considered unreached.
• The second approach leads to a list of 10,296 people groups, 4,422 considered unreached.

Joshua Project plans to start using the second set of numbers alongside the first. Learn more about the benefits and challenges of making this distinction. You might also want to read a short article from Joshua Project Executive Director Chris Clayman, People Groups: A Missional Priority or a Problematic Paradigm?

Interested in how many languages are spoken in the world today? The new edition of the Ethnologue, released February 21, lists a total of 7,159 living languages worldwide—a net decrease of five languages since the previous update a year before. 

Source: Personal Retreat Days

Aren’t you tired of the 24/7 hustle culture? We’ve bought into society’s lie that says if we aren’t getting the results we want, we just need to work harder. But pushing yourself too hard is counterproductive and leads to burnout.

The Personal Retreat Day Method is a better path to a fulfilling life: Invest 12 days over the next 12 months to design a life filled with purpose, intention, and well-being.

Simply schedule one day a month to rest deeply, reflect on the past, and reorient towards a purposeful future.

Learn more. I found this website when adding items to our Missions Catalyst events calendar. Missio Nexus will be offering a webinar on this topic on March 20.

You might also appreciate (as I did) the 2020 book, Try Softer. Great title, no? It was recommended to me by a counselor who specializes in trauma-informed therapy and helps missionaries with mental health challenges.

Sources: Various

Forests in the Seed: How Kingdom Movements Are Multiplying Across the Unreached World, by William J. Dubois, Stan Parks, and Justin Long. Patmos Education Group, 2024. 269 pages.

Forests in the Seed tells how God is working in amazing ways to bring the gospel to people everywhere through multiplying disciples and churches in the most challenging places in the world.

I appreciate how it blends story and strategy, graciously but helpfully addresses common objections to movements, and briefly compares what we see today with previous movements like Methodism, the Naga revival, or, going back further, the Celtic and Slavic mission movements.

The book also illustrates how God has used “families” of related movements to start new movements and reach other groups in their regions. One family of 90 movements in Southeast Asia has impacted more than 130 unreached groups. Another movement family in South Asia has spread to more than 400 people groups in 12 years, reaching not only Hindus but engaging with Muslims, Sikhs, animists, and others.

“We are thrilled to see over 2,000 movements,” say the authors, “but we realize we probably need 50 times as many.”

Learn more or buy the book for US$11.95 to $16.95. Looks like you can only get it through Amazon, which is too bad, but the authors have scheduled several free days for the Kindle edition, including February 28 (tomorrow, if you’re keeping up with email!)

See also another new book about movements, this one focused on Africa. Living Fire: Advancing God’s Kingdom in Challenging Places describes 22 factors that enable these movements to ignite, accelerate, and sustain the advance of the gospel among unreached groups, illustrated with powerful stories from the messengers leading the ministries.

Source: Missions Catalyst Calendar

March 3 to July 6, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (online). New online classes begin regularly.

March 4-6, Standards of Excellence introductory workshop (online). Provided regularly to help short-term mission leaders and mobilizers make their mission trips better. Also offered April 29 to May 1.

March 4-6, Frontier Filmmaking Seminar (online). Learn to make cross-cultural evangelistic films with Create International.

March 9, Call to Prayer (online). Monthly virtual prayer gathering for members of Missio Nexus.

March 10-14, Refugee Highway Partnership Roundtable (Malaga, Spain). An annual gathering.

March 17 to April 12, COMPASS (Palmer Lake, CO, USA). Language and culture acquisition provided regularly by Missionary Training International.

March 18, Contend: Monthly Day of Prayer For Mission Mobilization (global). Coordinated by GMMI and held on the third Tuesday of each month.

March 20, Rest, Reflect, Reorient with Personal Retreat Days (online). Webinar from Missio Nexus.

March 26, From Collaborative Giving to Collective Impact – A CEO Thought Leader Briefing (online). Virtual event from Missio Nexus.

March 27-28, Support Raising Bootcamp (Cincinnati, OH, USA). Provided by Via, formerly Support Raising Solutions. More classes held around the world throughout the year.

March 27-29, Ralph D. Winter Memorial Lectureship (Wilmore, Kentucky and online). Theme: Dusty Feet Among the Twice Dispossessed: Incarnation and Land in Mission Among the Urban Poor.

View the complete calendar. Submissions welcome.