Short-term Mission can give us long-term effects

Operation Mobilization (OM) is a Christian Mission organization that was founded by George Verwer with the intention to mobilise young people to share the Gospel of Jesus with other people. To this date has 1 billion people been reached with the Gospel through the work of Operation Mobilization.

Last friday had George Verwer a seminar at the Swedish Alliance Missions Annual Conference in Gullbranna outside Halmstad. George Verwer talked about the 7 megatrends that he had seen in Christianity during his 60 years of service. The first and most important of the megatrends is to reach the unreached. George pointed out 40 countries in the world were christians are more or less subjected to persecution for their faith, and he talked about the importance to spread the Gospel of Christ to them.

He also spoke about the great opportunity that we have to reach the unreached in our own countries and he said this to the audience:
- You need to see the refugees that are coming to Sweden as an opportunity to obey God's Great Commission and reach the unreached in your own country.

The other 6 megatrends that George talked about was: 2) The Carismatic movement in Christianity that has affected more than a billion people worldwide. 3) God uses music and art to bring out the Gospel. 4) Business is Mission, businessmen have always been key individuals tanks to their financial support to the Mission. 5) Make use of technology like Radio, TV and social Media to reach the unreached. 

6) The churches is growing rapidly in China, India, Africa and South America. Almost 50% of the people living in Africa are Christian today. 7) Short-term Mission can give us long-term effects! George told us that when OM started it's mission they were almost alone in having short-term missionaries. And that they were often subjected to criticism by other organizations. But today have most missionary organizations short-term missionaries.

Text and Photo: Mikael Good