VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS 5/13/14)—Churches, individuals and partners are being invited by International Ministries (IM) to help discern the direction God is calling IM into the future. This discernment process, entitled Responding to the Call, focuses on the following questions:

How should IM respond to God’s call to be “a light to the nations” so that his salvation may reach to the ends of the earth? What does IM look like when it’s at its best? What should IM continue doing, and what new things is God calling IM to do in the future?

Over the next few months, hundreds of IM missionaries, churches, donors, friends and staff from the U.S., Puerto Rico and around the world are being asked to participate in several different ways. Responses will be tabulated, prayed over and thoroughly discussed. The outcome will be a fresh and clearly articulated vision of how IM will serve the mission of Jesus Christ in 2015–2020.

In order to gather the immense amount of data needed to distill to clear direction, IM has begun to hold interviews, group interviews and workshops are currently being held, and there are a number of ways that you can participate!

• Contact Discernment@internationalministries.org to set up an individual interview.
• Pray for the will of God to be evident in the Responding to the Call process.
• Participate in a group interview session through your local church, regional gathering and/or annual mission conference.
• Attend the Responding to the Call summit during the World Mission Conference (July 21–26 in Green Lake, Wisconsin).
• Complete the Responding to the Call electronic survey (available through September 1, 2014). Please click here to enter the survey.
• Join the Responding to the Call prayer team, which will commit to regular, focused prayer for this initiative between now and June 2015. Contact Courtny.DavisOlds@internationalministries.org to sign up.

Participants can expect that Spirit-led envisioning and planning will yield Spirit-led fruit. Remember that God is the one “who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20)

American Baptist International Ministries is celebrating 200 years of ministry in 2014. Organized in 1814 as the first Baptist international mission agency in America, it began its pioneer mission work in Burma and today works in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas serving more than 1,800 long-term and short-term missionaries. Its central mission is to help people come to faith in Jesus, grow in their relationship with God, and change their worlds through the power of the Spirit. It works with respected partners in over 70 countries in ministries that meet human need.

American Baptist Churches is one of the most diverse Christian denominations today, with over 5,200 local congregations comprised of 1.3 million members, across the United States and Puerto Rico, all engaged in God’s mission around the world.