About
Our Vision
Our vision is to make Christ known, His name worshipped, and His Word obeyed among every nation, people, and tongue.
Our Mission
We partner with Anabaptist churches to recruit, train, send, and support teams to proclaim the Gospel and plant reproducing, mission-minded Anabaptist churches among unreached peoples.
Core Values
Servant
We are willing to suffer, die to self, and put aside our fears for Christ’s service. We are not ethnocentric. We will be hospitable and humble, giving up our comforts and immersing ourselves in the culture of those we serve. We are committed for the long haul.
Anabaptist
We are committed to faithfulness to all the commands of Scripture, accountability in brotherhood, Jesus’ ethic of love and nonresistance, and the Great Commission. We are guided by a hermeneutic of obedience—we believe the study of Scripture should produce not only a correct theology but also a transformed life. Our commitment to obedience is not just a personal matter. It’s a commitment in community to God’s Word and to each other.
Team
We are co-laborers. We are not lone rangers, individualistic, or in competition. We need each other. We celebrate each other’s wins and rely on each other’s strengths. We will be vulnerable, teachable, and flexible. We are many members yet one body in Christ.
What We Mean By:
Church Planting
Jesus’ last command was: “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” We can do a lot of good things without planting churches, but we cannot do true biblical discipleship without planting churches. Discipleship happens in the context of community. Discipleship is the task of the church; it is the task of church planting.
We prioritize church planting because Christ “loves the church and gave Himself for her that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church without spot or wrinkle” (Eph. 5:25-27). We prioritize church planting because Christ died for the church, and one day, He is coming back for His bride, the church. The church is near to the heart of Christ and it ought to be close to ours as well.
But some will ask: “Do you not care about human suffering, poverty, hunger, and human trafficking?” Yes! And we believe that the church is the answer. Poverty is not primarily about a lack of resources; at its core it’s a spiritual issue.
The deepest need of the victims of human trafficking is not legislation, it is relationship–a need that can only be met through a relationship with Jesus Christ. What the world really needs is not more programs, but the presence of Christ embodied in the church. As John Piper points out, wherever you find the true church of Jesus Christ, you will find communities of people who “care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.”
Visit our Church Planting Roadmap to learn more.
Anabaptist
By Anabaptist, we mean born again, Spirit-filled believers who are faithful to the Word of God and committed to obedience, evangelism, and discipleship. We value community. We are committed to the church and long to see it thrive and multiply.
When we say Anabaptist, we do not mean copying and pasting Mennonite culture from Lancaster County into Asia. It’s going to look different in Asia. Our goal is to plant churches that are obedient to all the commands of Scripture and appropriately adapted to the cultural context. It is our conviction that these two things are not mutually exclusive.
When we use the term “Anabaptist,” we are not thinking of a name we put on a church sign. We are thinking of a hermeneutic–a way of interpreting Scripture. The Anabaptist hermeneutic has been called one of obedience. In other words, this hermeneutic not only produces a correct theology, but also produces a transformed life. It seeks not only to understand, but also to obey everything that Christ commanded.
What makes this hermeneutic uniquely “Anabaptist” is that this commitment to obedience is not just a personal thing between me and God, but it’s a commitment within a community to God’s Word and to each other. When we talk about planting Anabaptist churches, this is what we are envisioning.
Unreached People Groups
God calls some to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, others He calls to labor in Judea, and some in Samaria. To some, like the apostle Paul, God gives the ambition to preach the Gospel where Christ has not been named lest they should build on another man’s foundation–in other words, to engage in pioneer missions. We believe this is the task God has given to DNI.
A people group is defined as: “A significantly large grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for one another because of their shared language, religion, ethnicity, occupation, class or caste, or combinations of these.” We believe Jesus was talking about these groups when He said to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). Out of an estimated 17,470 people groups worldwide, roughly 7,000 are considered unreached with the Gospel (less than 2% born-again Christian. ) This means that about 40% of the world’s population have almost no chance of hearing the Gospel, unless God’s people from other places take it to them.
Unreached People Groups live in places that are hard to reach. They are often highly resistant to the Gospel. Why not focus on easier fields? One reason is that Jesus never said, “Go where it’s easy, go where it’s safe, go where people welcome you.” He said, “I am sending you out as sheep among wolves.” Jesus also never said, “Pick the easy places and go there.” But He did say, “Go and make disciples of all the nations. And lo, I am with you always even to the very end of the age.”
In Revelation, we see a beautiful picture of a vast multitude of worshippers made up of people from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue (Revelation 7:9-10). Heaven is going to be wonderfully diverse! It seems that God must take more delight in–and receive more glory from–a colorful and diverse chorus of worshippers than He does from a chorus of people who all look the same!
2,000 years ago, Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all the nations, but still today, nearly two billion people in 7,000 people groups remain unreached with the Gospel. We believe God has called DNI to be part of taking the Gospel to these people.
Faith Missions
We have chosen to take the approach to finances called “faith missions” as pioneered by Hudson Taylor and George Mueller, among others. We understand that a variety of approaches exist and are not implying that other approaches are devoid of faith.
Faith missions means trusting God to provide our finances. This approach is based on Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please God; because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” In the words of Watchman Nee, “If a man can trust God, let him go and work for Him. If not, let him stay at home, for he lacks the first qualification for the work…Faith is the most important factor in God’s service, for without it there can be no truly spiritual work. Our faith requires training and strengthening, and material needs are a means used in God’s hand toward that end” (The Normal Christian Church Life, p. 98).
We believe faith missions work has some practical advantages. People give more quickly to individuals than to operational budgets. Moreover, it allows donors to give directly to the people and ministries they are most interested in. Also, fundraising consumes lots of administrative resources and energy.
We do not pay our workers—including DNI administration— a salary, nor do we ask them to raise support. Instead, we encourage them to keep their support base informed on what God is doing and pray in faith that God will provide for their daily needs. Workers are encouraged to share their financial status in their regular updates, using the DNI reporting system. We also make needs known through various mediums and methods, but we don’t ask for specific amounts or commitments.
Verbal Proclamation
It has been said, “Let your life show Jesus,” or “Actions speak louder than words”. This is true, but it can sometimes keep us from actually opening our mouths and speaking the Gospel. Romans 10:13-14 says, “For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?”
If we look at the logic of this passage it is clear that in order for people to be saved, God’s followers must open their mouths and share the message of salvation they have been given. This does not necessarily mean shouting at people on a street corner. However, we believe it does mean lovingly, thoughtfully and carefully speaking the truth in love to the lost around us, while relying on the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel is the Good News, and for news to be news it must be proclaimed.
Local Leadership
Our goal is to plant churches–in reality, to multiply churches. If churches are to multiply, the local believers must embrace the faith as their own, rather than viewing it as some foreign religion from America. That will be much harder to achieve with foreigners in leadership. If we believe in multiplication, local leadership is non-negotiable.
There are many advantages to local leadership. For instance, the language is their heart language and the culture is their home culture. They have friends, family, and other connections that foreigners do not. If whole people groups are to come to Christ—not just individuals—we must strive to see the leadership gifts God has given to the local people called out and utilized.
As foreigners, it will be easy to hold on to what we have worked so hard to plant. After all, if we turn the church over to local leaders, they may make different decisions than we would have made. We may feel unneeded or unuseful, like we are giving up something we have earned. But the church is not ours to keep; it belongs to Christ. He will build His church; we are merely His bondservants.
Sending Churches
DNI exists to assist the church in carrying out the mandate that Christ gave to the church. God has given DNI a vision to reach the unreached with the Gospel, but we cannot fulfill this work without sending churches who share that vision.
In order for the Great Commission to be accomplished, missionaries must be identified, called, equipped, sent, supported, and cared for. We view this as a shared responsibility between the sending church and DNI.
The involvement of the sending churches is essential for the ongoing emotional and spiritual health of our workers, and it is vital for the success of the mission.
We count it a privilege to be able to partner together with Anabaptist Churches and the Lord Jesus Christ in making His name known among nations. Pooling our resources enables us to accomplish much more together than we could individually. By God’s grace, we will strive to be faithful stewards of the personal resources of all sending churches.
See our Church Partnership Manual
Our Affiliation
DestiNations International is the mission branch of the Biblical Mennonite Alliance (BMA), an association of congregations who are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and to His Word. Learn more at www.biblicalmennonite.com.
DNI produces regular publications to help you stay connected to the DNI workers.
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Visit the Church Planting Roadmap page to learn what we mean by church planting.