Among the
Nations.

§ 01One Work Among the Nations.

Thailand and India are where this work has already taken root, through national pastors and the partner ministries they serve with. Rural America is where we are now seeking to begin it, much as a missionary is sent both abroad and at home. The places differ. The pattern and the convictions are the same, and so is the aim: disciples who make disciples, and churches that plant churches. ENDS has also written one draft curriculum meant to serve every place, though it has not yet been taught anywhere.

In every place the work follows one pattern: a church or a trusted ministry trains leaders and sends them, and each church they plant is a church in its own right. The pattern has three movements:

• Train. Leaders who are already serving are formed in character, Scripture, doctrine and pastoral care, in their setting and their language.
• Send. Trained leaders are released to serve their people, and they keep being resourced where they serve.
• Multiply. Leaders train others, and churches plant churches. Paul puts it in 2 Timothy 2:2: what is entrusted to faithful people is to be taught to others also.

Among the nations, partner ministries carry this pattern under their own leadership. SLMIF trains pastors, church planters and lay leaders, releases national evangelists to reach their people, and lists the planting of churches among its aims. Mission Impact India, by its own account, disciples people through biblical teaching and lists evangelism in village communities among its work. Overseas, ENDS does not plant churches itself; national pastors and partner ministries do, and ENDS helps equip them.

Here at home, ENDS hopes to plant a church in rural America that grows into a hub: a church that trains pastors, elders and groups and sends them to plant small, sustainable churches. The hub model explains that hope, and Global shows how the work in every place belongs together.

§ 02What Thailand Has Shown Us.

James Bell, who founded ENDS, serves on SLMIF's advisory board and teaches in its Servant Leadership Academy. He has learned from national pastors in Thailand, India and other settings, and in his own ministry he has helped to equip them. He tells the fuller story behind this work on the Mission page. Through these relationships ENDS has come to know a pattern of multiplication we hope to see here at home. SLMIF's Frontline Mission sums up its work in three words: Find. Train. Release. It adds a fourth commitment in its own words, to resource workers to stay. The steps below follow that pattern from Thailand to the hope it has given us here.

The Academy and the Frontline Mission are SLMIF's own programs, and SLMIF leads them. ENDS stands with them, learns from them, and reports none of their work as its own.

§ 03Why National Shepherds.

National pastors often already belong where the work is. Many speak the language of the home and the market, understand the customs that shape how a family hears the gospel, and are known by the people they serve. They usually need no visa to stay, and their ministry rests on long-standing relationships. Some cross lines of language and culture within their region, which calls for particular humility and training. A church that grows under local leadership can keep growing after every visiting teacher has gone home.

These pastors and leaders are colleagues in the gospel, and ENDS does not make its case for them on cost. National churches carry wisdom about prayer, suffering and evangelism that American churches need to hear. In the New Testament, help ran in more than one direction. Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch in Syria, where he and Saul taught the church for a whole year; Antioch sent relief to the believers in Judea (Acts 11:22–30); and before long the church in Antioch, led by the Holy Spirit, was sending Barnabas and Saul out (Acts 13:1–3).

Honoring national leadership takes nothing away from cross-cultural missionaries. The gospel has crossed borders since the book of Acts, and that work remains a gift to the church, especially where no church yet exists or where national believers ask for help. The Karen story on this site tells of both: missionaries and Karen evangelists working side by side, each doing what the other could not.

Returning through Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch, where churches had only recently been gathered, Paul and Barnabas strengthened the disciples, urged them to continue in the faith, and told them that the way into God's kingdom passes through many hardships. In every church they appointed elders, with prayer and fasting, and entrusted them to the Lord they had believed in.

Acts 14:21–23 (paraphrased)

Elders were appointed only after those churches in Asia Minor had been gathered and taught. Paul later returned to visit them (Acts 15:36; 16:1–5), yet once elders had been appointed, the shepherding of each church rested with leaders from among its people. That conviction comes from Scripture: churches are to be shepherded by qualified elders from among them, under Christ, the chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:1–4). Three things on this page are choices ENDS has made for this setting, and they can change: working through partner ministries, a proposed sponsorship level and a draft curriculum. They serve the conviction.

§ 04The Partner Ministries.

ENDS works alongside two partner ministries, each with its own leadership and programs. Except where noted, the descriptions below draw on what the partners publish on their websites, which they have allowed ENDS to use.

SLMIF oversees its own frontline workers. ENDS shows their names only where SLMIF itself publishes them and agrees, so none are listed here today.

Servant Leadership Ministry Foundation (SLMIF), Thailand

SLMIF reports that it was founded in Chiang Mai in 2019 by Rev. Dr. Yupho Mathusonsawan, after he completed doctoral studies in biblical servant leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary, and that it is based at Payap University's Mae Khaow campus. Its motto is bring leaders back to the basics, and it describes its work as equipping pastors, leaders and disciple-makers for the Great Commission in Thailand and beyond. Its homepage lists three ministries: the Servant Leadership Academy; the Frontline Mission, led by Pastor Pornsawan Mathusonsawan; and the Servant Leadership Conference, an annual gathering of pastors, leaders and partners from across the region. Read more about SLMIF.

Mission Impact India

Mission Impact India describes itself as founded in 2017 in Kaikaram, Andhra Pradesh, under the motto Serve Christ by Serving Others. By its own account, it orders its work around three movements: Rescue confronts child trafficking, poverty and illiteracy; Reveal provides a safe place to stay and nutritious food; and Restore disciples people through biblical teaching. David Livingstone leads the ministry. His name and title do not appear on its website, and ENDS is confirming his title with him.

Mission Impact India reports a network of about 250 national pastors. That figure does not appear on the ministry's website, and ENDS is confirming it and its scope with the ministry. It is not a count of pastors ENDS has funded or trained. Read more about Mission Impact India.

ENDS does not run the partners' programs or direct their work. Where workers serve, what is taught in each setting and what is published about any person are decisions for the partners' leaders. ENDS prays, offers help when it is invited, and tells supporters the truth about what it is doing.

§ 05How We Plan to Train.

ENDS has written one draft curriculum for the whole work: 17 modules in four phases on a 24-month design. It was first written for pastors among the nations, and it is meant to serve three audiences. The full pathway is for pastors, to be taught alongside partner ministries overseas and, we hope, through a sending church at home. Elders would follow a proposed pathway of about 18 to 24 months on the same modules. Groups of believers would take a proposed core pathway drawn from it, so that members across the church are equipped for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11–16). Training & Curriculum sets out all three.

For pastors among the nations, the curriculum is designed to be oral-first, meaning it teaches through storytelling, memory and discussion for pastors and congregations who learn mainly by listening. It is meant to be taught in the pastor's setting and language, alongside a partner ministry, and to serve the partners' training if they find it useful.

Completing the modules does not make anyone a pastor. In the curriculum's design, a calling is examined against the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9 and affirmed by the trainee's mentor and home congregation, and each congregation, under Christ, recognizes its own leaders. The last phase prepares each pastor to train others (2 Timothy 2:2), beginning with Module 14, Training Trainers.

ENDS's own materials follow James Bell's Baptist convictions: the office of pastor, elder or overseer is held by qualified men. The partners hold convictions of their own, which ENDS describes as they state them, and the theological review will test how the curriculum handles these convictions. The training is also meant to strengthen whole congregations. Proposed elective tracks, so far only in outline, would equip women and men serving in their churches, including one in which women disciple women, and others in children's ministry, trauma care and oral Scripture.

How candidates would be assessed

Before ENDS supports any pastor's training or ministry through its curriculum or its giving, it intends to carry out an assessment together with the partner ministry: a careful look, over time and in person, at a candidate's testimony and calling, doctrine, household, finances and references. The vetting standard sets out thirteen areas and draws on the same qualifications from 1 Timothy and Titus. It is written to be carried out in the candidate's language. No one has yet been assessed under it.

§ 06The Need, Carefully Counted.

Start with Thailand, where SLMIF serves. Christians are a small minority there, and most of the peoples counted in the country are classed as unreached.

Across the world, Joshua Project estimates that about 3.6 billion people live in people groups it classes as unreached, by the same definition: more than 7,100 groups, counting a group once in each country where it lives.⁴

Access to Scripture tells a related story. By ProgressBible's count, published by Wycliffe, more than 3,200 of the world's languages have no translated book of the Bible.⁵

None of these numbers measures the worth of a people or the limits of what God is doing among them. The notes at the end of this page give the source, date and limits for each figure. They are offered as a reason to pray and to plan carefully.

§ 07Sponsorship, Plainly Stated.

Sponsorship is a proposed commitment, and giving is not yet open. When giving opens, ENDS proposes a $250 monthly commitment (about $3,000 a year) toward one national pastor's training, mentoring and ministry support through a partner ministry. Gifts given this way will be designated to the support of national pastors through the partner ministries and, as the site's Terms describe, applied to that purpose or, where that is not possible, as near to the giver's intent as practical. The figure is a planning level for churches and households. It is not the full cost of a pastor's life and ministry, and it puts no price on a person. Costs differ from place to place, and the partners have not yet supplied cost figures, so the level may change before giving opens.

The level is set with one pastor's support in mind. Whether each sponsorship goes to one named pastor or is shared among pastors through the partner has not been decided, and ENDS will say which before any gift is accepted. A pastor's name or profile would be shared only if the partner supplied it with that pastor's consent. A sponsor supports national pastors in prayer and giving through the partner ministry, and pastors remain accountable to their churches and partner ministries. How designated gifts will reach each partner is still being worked out with the partners themselves.

The proposed giving levels are set out on the homepage, and Stewardship explains how gifts are intended to be used. A church planning a commitment can write to James Bell about giving.

How support will be reported

There is nothing to report yet, because no gifts have been received and no training using the ENDS curriculum has begun. When support begins, ENDS intends to hold its reporting to these commitments, which it will confirm with the partners first:

• Reports come from the partners, in their own words and translated where needed. A partner may answer approximately, or decline to answer, where a detail would be unsafe or burdensome.
• Outcomes a partner reports are attributed to the partner and to the local believers who did the work. ENDS will say what it provided and what a partner reports, and will never claim that a particular gift produced a conversion, a baptism or a church.
• A partner may correct or withdraw anything ENDS has published about its work.
• No reporting schedule is promised until the partners have agreed to one they can sustain.

Some national workers serve where being known could put them, their families or their congregations at risk. ENDS never publishes their names, photographs or exact locations, and prayer for them does not depend on knowing those details.

§ 08Where This Stands.

§ 09Ways to Take Part.

The first steps are the oldest ones: pray, learn, and talk with someone who knows the work. Everything below is open today except vision trips.