Becoming a Missionary & Minister’s ‘One Mile Missions’

An individual interested in going with the International Mission Board missionary candidate doesn’t have to be ready to go to the field tomorrow. But through a new missionary pipeline, the IMB is working to prepare candidates – spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, financially – to go to the nations. An IMB representative and their local church are with them to guide them through the entire process. None of it is done in isolation.

After someone feels called to go, they’re directed to fill out a missionary interest form through the IMB https://www.imb.org/go/. When a missionary candidate is ready to take the next step, a three-part process begins.

The heart behind this process is to send healthy missionaries onto the field to give the nations greater Gospel access.

Scott Ray, IMB’s director of assessment and deployment, defines a missionary as “a disciple of Jesus who crosses geographic, linguistic or cultural barriers to make disciples for Jesus where Jesus is not yet known.”

With that definition in mind, Zane Pratt, IMB’s vice president for global training explained, “When a missionary goes to the field, they’re walking into a situation that’s unlike what they’re used to. The enemy can attack from any number of directions.

IMB leaders are hoping the pipeline will help them add 500 missionaries on the field by 2025.

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Heritage Baptist Church in Montgomery made a historic step toward reaching their neighbors — they called Frederick L. Harris Sr. to be their minister of one mile missions.

“We want to become a church that looks more like our neighborhood, and we want to become a church that looks more like heaven,” Pastor Teman Knight told the congregation during the Sunday morning service. “To do that, there are people around us who need to be reached with the gospel. We have an opportunity today to make a statement about how serious we are about doing that.”

A while back, Heritage Baptist declared the one-mile radius around it their missions field. They reached out to the schools and the businesses. But they hadn’t made contact house to house yet.

That was a goal for Knight — he and the church wanted the one-mile area to know the church loves them. They also wanted their church — which is predominantly white — to reflect their neighborhood, which is home to many African American families.

Harris said ministry is his passion, and he did a lot of research as he considered the call to come to Heritage.