Where have we been and why do we do this?
Eleven years ago at LifeWay Church, we began dedicating one week of the year to a Global Impact Celebration, or GIC. It is a week on our calendar, but if that is all the annual GIC is for you, then you’ve totally missed the entire point. Let me explain.
Why did we start this, and what’s the history of GIC?
To be honest, most churches, when they are involved in missions, treat it as a program. There might be a missionary or two that are supported financially and highlighted on some kind of a map in the lobby of their church building. Maybe once a year there’s a dedicated financial offering, when a missionary comes to town and is given 5 minutes to share and put some brochures on the back table. This is not meant as an insult to churches that follow this pattern, but it really is an indictment of God’s Church for trivializing God’s global mandate and treating it as trite and optional, something to buy into as we would purchase souvenirs and trinkets—instead of God’s global plan being a mission to join into, it is just a sideshow to what we consider important.
The heart of the Global Impact Celebration at Lifeway emerged 15 years ago from a period of crisis in our congregation. Many of us in leadership were trying to answer some big questions:
Why does this church really exist anyway?
What is the point of our being here?
Why did we build this building?
Why do we take an offering?
Why do we disciple people to help them grow in God’s Word?
As of 2000, we had begun engaging in ministry in Russia, and that ministry was growing. That same year we’d felt the calling to dedicate LifeWay to pray for and focus on the Bee people, an Unreached People Group (UPG) in an area of Southeast Asia where there was no known gospel presence. Our trips to Southeast Asia and to Russia, coupled with a soul-searching look at why we existed, opened our hearts, and God allowed us to meet someone who had been helping churches with their missions and global engagement. Don Turner, then a senior pastor at LifeWay, had been doing a great deal of personal soul-searching when came across this man and invited him and his organization (Global Focus) to LifeWay to help us. Global Focus walked us through a global training over the course of a few weeks.
In 2012, we launched our very first Global Impact Celebration. Without exception, every year—including the COVID-19 lockdown year—we have dedicated the annual GIC week to hosting missionary global workers, rubbing shoulders with them, and hearing about what God is doing in the world. As a result of this dedicated time every year, we have been challenged individually and congregationally in our commitment to what God has called us to. GIC week has truly become the best week, and the most essential week, of the year for our church.
Where have guest missionaries helped us focus over these last 10 years? Look at this list…
Local & Regional
- Union Gospel Mission — addiction recovery program
- Healing Hearts
- University of Washington — campus ministry
- Des Moines, WA — church planting
- North Seattle — church planting
- Sedro-Woolley, WA — “Cowboy church” planting
- Regional Puget Sound area — church planting
National
- Brooklyn & Manhattan, NYC — student outreach ministry
- Queens, NYC — church planting
- Vancouver, British Columbia — church planting
- Victoria, British Columbia — evangelism
- Kotzebue, Alaska – Arctic village and North Slope church planting
- Kenai Peninsula, Alaska — evangelism missions
- Missoula, Montana — university church planting
- Arizona — Open Table outreach to homeless people
- Chicago, Illinois — church planting and children’s evangelism
- Central Texas — church planting
- Honolulu, Hawaii — church planting and college ministry
- U.S. military base outreach
Cross-Cultural
- Regional international student ministry
- King County — refugee outreach via World Relief
- Vancouver, British Columbia — Portuguese church planting
- Manhattan, NYC — Russian-speaking church planting
- Oklahoma and beyond — Native American church planting
- Detroit, Michigan — refugee church planting
International
- Central & Western Europe:
- France — church planting
- Austria — refugee outreach and evangelism
- Portugal — church planting
- Eastern Europe & Russian Asia
- East Russia — church planting
- West Russia (Bryansk) — church planting (multiple years and multiple guests), children’s ministry, and homeless outreach
- Poland — church planting
- Eastern Europe — women’s outreach and discipleship
- Middle East
- Turkey
- Jordan
- Asia
- Indonesia: Java, eastern islands, Bee-land (multiple years)
- Vietnam
- Malaysia
- Other East Asia locations
- South India — medical missions
- Bangladesh
- Africa
- East Africa
- Tanzania — Maasai tribe focus
- Buliisa, Uganda
- South Africa — student discipleship and outreach
- North Africa
- Libya
- Cairo, Egypt
- West Africa
- Ghana
- East Africa
- South America
- Venezuela — orphanage outreach
- Mexico & Central America
- Guatemala — family crisis outreach
- Baja, Mexico — children and family outreach
- Mexico / Texas border — church planting and refugee outreach
- Representatives from these significant mission organizations:
- World Relief
- TEL International
- The Timothy Initiative
- Global Focus
- World Vision
- International Mission Board
It is inspiring to look back at all these wonderful guests who have become our friends over the last 10 years. Over this past decade, by my rough calculation, LifeWay has given between 1.4 and 1.5 million dollars to mission outreach outside the walls of this church, specifically funding outreach both locally and all the way to the farthest places on the planet. We have dedicated a paid staff position to missions focus over this last decade. We have sent approximately 120 people over the last decade on short-term trips, both nationally and internationally. We have built a team that focuses on local, national, cross-cultural and international missions. We hold a prayer meeting on Zoom every Wednesday to pray over the global responsibilities God has given us at LifeWay. Six people from LifeWay Church currently live and serve Christ in places around the world.
Our church body has been enriched and engaged in a way that would have never happened if not for the tool of the GIC. I personally have had my life altered due to the yearly influence of this incredible GIC week.
But pay attention! We now have this year’s GIC right in front of us this week! This is God’s way of meeting us—meeting you—right here, right now, and offering us a way to join our GLOBAL GOD in his GLOBAL MANDATE.
Do NOT miss this golden opportunity that God has laid out for you. See you all week during our GIC small groups and Saturday events, and Sunday morning for our GIC Commitment Service at 10 a.m.
