Our team is traveling to Ukraine in the next month and we don’t want you to miss this wonderful opportunity to help Ukrainian soldiers still in the throes of war. These brand new U.S.-made first aid kits are crucial for the safety of the soldiers as it's been said that those who receive these kits have an increased survivability rate nearing 90% over those who do not have them.
Read MoreThe Outreach Foundation recently received a request from one of our key partners in Mexico, the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico, to join them in prayer on March 20th (6 am to 9 am CDT). The request for prayer stems from the growing violence in the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala. Large numbers of immigrants from Central and South America as well as Asia and Africa funnel through the mountainous terrain between these two countries. The Outreach Foundation partners with a church plant in the capital city of Tapachula which ministers to the large volume of immigrants that are passing through the state on their way north. A high volume of drugs also transit through this area.
Read MoreECO congregations are fueling Christ’s mission in China! The Outreach Foundation is pleased to introduce Chris Bin Wang as our China Mission Specialist. When asked about his excitement for joining our team, Chris said that “The Outreach Foundation has been a friend to Chinese Christians for decades. I’m honored to be part of this amazing legacy!” With Chris on staff, we are excited about our expanding ministry in China and for the emerging opportunities that will excite churches here in the United States. Tom Boone, Associate Director for Mission with The Outreach Foundation and Chris Bin Wang will be co-leading a visioning trip from October 11-23, 2024. Individuals and churches are invited to travel with us as we see the tremendous work of the Gospel taking place in China. What we offer in this season is to show you just how vast the harvest in China and the diaspora has become. Make their story part of your own!
Read MoreThe Outreach Foundation is excited to introduce Cindy Holman as our new Bookkeeper!
Read MoreAdhering to God’s call to be a light to the nations, First Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, GA, recently hosted its 25th consecutive World Mission Conference…
Read MoreThe Outreach Foundation is excited to announce Daniel Susenbach as our newest Associate Director for Mission…
Read MoreThe Outreach Foundation regularly includes seminarians and new pastors on trips that are led by Outreach staff to see how God is working through our global partners…
Read MoreThe Outreach Foundation is excited to announce Elizabeth Carter as our new Director of Development…
Read MoreKate Castro is the newest addition to The Outreach Foundation, joining the team this month…
Read MoreThe fire of Pentecost continues to ignite faith in Jesus throughout the African nation of Zambia…
Read MoreThe Outreach Foundation has refreshed its online look. Thanks to the hard work of our Communications Team, you might have noticed a few changes to our online presence…
Read MoreOur church has figured out a way to give away an extra $100,000 each year and have a ton of fun doing it! It happens through a special offering we take up over 8 days each May. We have taken a really good idea from NorthPoint Church (Andy Stanley), modified it to fit our context, and God has used it to bless our members and ministry partners…
Read More“Open the eyes of my heart Lord, I want to see you.” That’s how Dove-award-winning Christian singer Paul Baloche and friends helped Woodside Presbyterian Church in Yardley, PA kick off their “Welcome the Child” Christmas offering. The special benefit concert not only opened the Advent season but also launched the congregation’s support for two missions in Zambia: the Bill and Bette Bryant Crisis Nursery and the Namumu Orphanage. Woodside started its partnership with Namumu in 2001 in response to an appeal from The Outreach Foundation.
Read MoreNational Presbyterian Church (NPC) in Washington, DC, as a key part of its recent capital campaign, generously supported schools for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon run by the churches of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon (NESSL). This giving was part of a capital campaign, split between special mission partners, with the result that members’ giving deepened both local and global partnership relationships and addressed some of the world’s greatest needs while also building capacity for local outreach.
Read MoreThe Presbyterian Church of Aleppo, Syria, pastored by the Rev Ibrahim Nseir, was organized in 1853. During its history, this little flock witnessed to Christ through its schools and diaconal ministries. In 2012, the sanctuary of the church was destroyed by radical Islamist groups in two consecutive explosions.
After Aleppo was liberated and relative peace returned, a new sanctuary was constructed in another part of the city. But the church’s original site is in the historic center of the Old City and the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon resolved to revive its presence and ministry on the destroyed land with a new vision: the Aleppo Christian Center.
Read MoreThe Outreach Foundation is excited to share with you our fresh, new Identity Film. Our mission of engaging others in Christ’s work in the world is exciting and invigorating. We wanted to share a glimpse of this work with you.
You make our work possible. Thank you for being a hero in the story.
by the Rev. Dr. G. Christopher Scruggs
In order to understand the mission of Advent Presbyterian Church to Ghana, several pieces of background information are important, some beginning many years before that mission began. Before attending seminary, I was an attorney in Houston, Texas, and an elder at First Presbyterian Church of Houston, which was then pastored by John William Lancaster, a founding Trustee of The Outreach Foundation. While in seminary, I had some relationship with Outreach via Donald Marsden and Dr. Bill Long, a former Trustee who was my pastor at Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA during those years. Shortly after seminary, Kathy and I went to First Presbyterian Church of Brownsville, Tennessee, where I was the pastor. During those years I visited Russia with Don Marsden, thanks to the generosity of a member of Third Presbyterian in Richmond. In addition, Bill Bryant, who was by that time the Executive Director of The Outreach Foundation, came to speak at First Brownsville at a renewal weekend and on other occasions. Our congregation began to support Outreach.
Read MoreResults of the 2006 trip to Ghana
Following their return to the United States, several members of the 2006 Ghana trip went to work, connecting their respective churches with Ghana. The Rev. Dr. Dianne Shields, Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church, Arlington, Illinois, developed a church-church relationship between First Presbyterian and the Kaneshie Presbyterian Church in Ghana. The Rev. Gayle Walker, Associate Pastor at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, involved her congregation in a project in Ghana through Living Waters for the World, a Presbyterian mission organization that installs clean water systems. Idlewild’s Living Waters team installed a clean water system for a women’s retreat center we had visited in Ghana. Elder Don Brown began his service as a Trustee of The Outreach Foundation and developed a particular passion for God’s work in Madagascar, Egypt, and Ghana.
Read MoreChapter 4
Kwame Bediako and the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission, and Culture: Learning at the Feet of African Christians
Africa as a resource for mission and theology: We have seen in the preceding two chapters that by the middle of the 1990s African Christians had inspired American Presbyterians to a renewed engagement in mission and evangelism at home and abroad. Over the next ten years, another side of the Christian movement in Africa would begin to impact Presbyterians in America—theology. That is to say, more and more American Christians, including several of us in The Outreach Foundation, began reading works by African Christians which offered fresh understandings of the Good News of Jesus Christ for faith and practice. The impact was like seeing new facets of a diamond, the “gospel diamond.” [1]
Read MoreChapter 3
The Northern Outreach Program: Missional Renewal in Ghana That Encouraged New Evangelistic Initiatives of the PCUSA
Beginning of the Northern Outreach Program
On several of their trips to Ghana in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bill and Nancy Warlick met two dedicated young Presbyterian pastors, John Azumah and Solomon Sule-Saa. They were leaders of a specialized evangelistic outreach of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana to people from northern Ghana who had moved to southern Ghana in search of work. This initiative, the “Northern Outreach Program,” caught Bill Warlick’s attention, and he included it under the umbrella of the Project for Evangelism and Church Growth in Africa. This chapter will chronicle the history of the Northern Outreach Program and its impact on several evangelistic initiatives that were emerging within and beyond the PCUSA.
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