The Mission Commission is led by an Executive Committee of a wider Steering Committee. These leaders are complimented by a group of experienced leaders with specialty in various missions issues. This wider group of Mission Commission representatives are known as Synergists.
MC Steering Committee leaders may also serve as Synergists. Some Synergists are not necessarily organisational leaders or experts in the field they are responsible for, but they are actively and widely involved in networks focused on those things. They carry responsibility to represent the MC as they participate in those issues, and will keep the MC informed of latest developments.
The use of “Synergist” as a term in the Mission Commission comes from the Biblical use of the Greek: “συνεργός/συνεργέω” (synergos/synergeō). It is used by the Apostle Paul to refer to those who co-labour with him in the gospel as fellow workers, including women. The strong inference is that the Synergist assists in partnership by adding their capacity (time, experience, influence, gifts, talents, connections etc.) to help achieve the work that needs to be done. Synergists are mentioned, for example, in Romans 16:3, 9, Philippians 2:25, 1 Thessalonians 3:2, Colossians 4:10-11 and Philemon 1:1, 24. When a Synergist is mentioned it is with collegial respect and familial affection. There is no hierarchy in the relationship, simply acknowledgement of faithful service alongside one another. The Synergists introduced below are exactly that: faithful servants co-labouring with the Mission Commission.
Select your current of interest here to see the Synergist responsible for that focus or issue within the Mission Commission.
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Younoussa Djao
(Côte d’Ivoire)
This current is one of several within the Mission Commission that will help ensure that we do not forget missions practitioners who are speakers of languages other than English (or the dominant language of the missions community in their region). Regional Synergists will be MC point-people, representing the MC to those language communities, assisting the MC to communicate well with them, as well as helping to represent their concerns and missions thinking to the wider missions communication.
Younoussa serves with SIM and is Francophone Africa Coordinator for numerous organisations, including New Generations and Global Trust Partners, and is Chairman of Africa Transformation Initiatives. He is a long-time Associate of the Mission Commission and continues to strongly believe in the vision and mission of the MC and the help its can be for the Body of Christ and God’s mission. Younoussa’s history, both with the MC and with missions in Francophone Africa will help maintain good connections with the wider missions community. Younoussa also has a desire to encourage younger leaders in missions from Francophone Africa to develop relationships with the MC.
Barbosa Oliveira Jnr
(Brazil/South Africa)
This current is one of several within the Mission Commission that will help ensure that we do not forget missions practitioners who are speakers of languages other than English (or the dominant language of the missions community in their region). Regional Synergists will be MC point-people, representing the MC to those language communities, assisting the MC to communicate well with them, as well as helping to represent their concerns and missions thinking to the wider missions communication.
Barbosa has been a missionary with One Challenge (OC International) for more than 30 years. He is a mentor of young leaders, helping many to be developed from Africa, Brazil, and the US. He has helped many organizations to better understand the African continent and start their ministries in African countries. He says that the networks among Portuguese speaking nations in Africa is extensive and in different ways fruit has been seen through those efforts and networks. However, he still has a big dream: to see a concerted missionary effort coming out of those particular countries toward the evangelization of unengaged people groups of Africa and beyond.
Sarah Scott-Webb
(New Zealand)
This current includes any missions related focus on anti-trafficking and anti-exploitation justice-oriented issues, as well as tracking conversations in humanitarian, non-governmental and governmental networks focused on these issues.
Sarah provides strategic guidance, training, resources and support to SIM workers, local churches and partner ministries around the world; helping them prevent human trafficking and exploitation in the communities in which they serve. In this role, she is involved in several global anti-trafficking networks, including the European Freedom Network and Micah Network. Prior to SIM, Sarah was an Anti-Trafficking speaker for TEAR Fund NZ, an Advocacy Campaign Officer for World Vision NZ, and served with Hagar in Cambodia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Ruslan Maliuta
(Ukraine)
This current engages with missions activities specifically focused on reaching, protecting and developing families, particularly where the gospel is least available.
Ruslan serves primarily with One Hope, a global ministry that helps children engage with God’s story, supporting several networks, including the 4/14 Movement and the World Evangelical Alliance. He is a co-founder and formerly served as International Facilitator of the World Without Orphans movement. He is passionate about advocating for children and families, by catalyzing and supporting collaborative initiatives.
Darcy Caires Jnr
(Brazil, USA)
This current focuses on local congregations’ participation in the mission of God. It includes sending church missions networks but has a broader scope. It will engage with all explorations related to how local churches engage in both local and global/cross-cultural missions.
As a pastor of a local church and leader of a Portuguese-speaking church network, Darcy’s heart is firmly in the local church, and his passion is to see the local church in dialogue with the global Church and God’s mission locally and globally.
Dave Coles
(USA)
This current encompasses the emerging interest in indigenous church planting and disciple making movements in traditional missions fields, especially among people with least access to the gospel. This does not extend to church multiplication from existing denominations in areas where the gospel is well represented.
Dave is a participant of four global networks related to Church Planting & Movements: 24:14; Motus Dei, Bridging the Divide, and Vision 5:9. Each of these provides a unique window into current activities and issues in the world of church planting and movements among unreached peoples. Dave’s passion is to see the gospel proclaimed as quickly and effectively as possible among all peoples; he delights to do whatever he reasonably can toward that end.
Jo Herbert-James
(UK)
This current will ensure that theological issues concerning our environments and habitats are not eclipsed as core to our participation in God’s mission. It will connect with related Creation Care and Sustainability initiatives within WEA and Lausanne, TEAR Fund, and Micah Global as well as other likeminded groups who are faith based.
Jo also serves as a Deputy Leader in the MC. She has a passion for a robust biblical approach to Creation Care. Jo has worked in environmental justice with TEAR Fund UK as Theology and Networks Manager, and ran the Justice Conferences in the UK and is involved with Just Love UK. She is a PhD candate at the University of Wales Trinity St David in Cardiff, researching environmental theology.
Jill Ford
(UK)
This current embraces all manner of creative expressions in the pursuit of God’s mission. Alongside ethnodoxology (contextualised worship), this focus bridges relationships with existing arts, worship and ethnodoxology networks and connects with the many ways art is used to witness to God’s Kingdom and bring healing to a hurting world.
Jill is the Arts Programme Leader and lecturer at All Nations Christian College. She is actively training and mentoring international students in creative cross-cultural ministry and mission. She works alongside a global network of arts trainers to deliver specialist training courses (i.e. Arts for a Better Future, Arts and Trauma Healing, Intercultural Worship) and is currently very involved in the Arts Plus Europe Network, sitting on the Exec Committee seeking increased collaboration as they connect those with creative gifts in the areas of Church, Missions, Academy and Marketplace.
Heather Pubols
(USA)
This current connects with the missions communications networks around the world, arguably the largest of which is the EMDC. The current’s scope would cover all manner of media related communications related to missions, including missions promotion, mobilisation, reporting, reaching, proclamation, story-telling, journalism, journal creation and other publishing.
Heather is an experienced nonprofit communications leader proficient in directing content strategies on a global scale and managing diverse creative teams and projects. She is a storyteller, efficient systems creator and adept collaborator. Her passion is working with lean teams to produce storytelling content that inspires involvement in worthy causes on a platform of visual journalism. Her ongoing involvement with missions includes the EMDC globally and Editorial Director for the Evangelical Missions Quarterly (with Missio Nexus USA).
Claire Chong
(Singapore)
This current formalises a role that has existed in the Mission Commission since 2006 as the MC sought to strengthen relationships with the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. Since that time, relationships between the WCC’s CWME and WEA’s Mission Commission have strengthened, as have the relationships between the WCC and WEA. The Mission Commission is committed to working together in God’s mission with other expressions of the faith.
Claire and her husband served as missionaries in Cambodia for 15 years, establishing self-sustaining churches and businesses. She is a research and training associate with the Singapore Center for Global Missions, an innovation catalyst with “Christ in Theravada Worlds lab” of Frontier Ventures, and serves as part of the leadership team of the International Society of Frontier Missiology.
Samuel Chiang
(Taiwan/USA)
This current connects the Mission Commission with international evangelism associations, movements and initiatives. The WEA Global Evangelism Network is the primary point of contact for organisations and networks focused on large scale world evangelisation, and this current bridges the Mission Commission’s relationship with the Global Evangelism Network.
Samuel was born in Taiwan, educated in Canada, lived in Hong Kong and has travelled and ministered in 88 countries so far. He is the Executive Director of the WEA Global Evangelism Network since July 2021 and is director of Karam Labs and the Avodah group of companies. He was previously President & CEO of the Seed Company, a Bible Translation organisation, and Executive Director of the International Orality Network.
Adriaan Adams
(South Africa)
This current is aimed at helping the Mission Commission strategise well for the inclusion of younger leaders and nurturing integenerational relationships within the MC community. It includes remaining aware of the latest thinking in intergenerational relations in the marketplace, the missions community and wider ministry good practice. We anticipate this current will influence wider intergenerational development throughout the global missions community.
Adriaan is the longest serving operational leader in the Mission Commission and currently serves as a Deputy Leader. Adriaan also leads GenerationIndex.com, which helps organisations incorporate young people into their workforce, develop them well and integrate them into their organisations as positive influencers. The organisation is motivated by this theory: “by identifying the common behavioural trends between generations, and creating intentional focus within the workspace to address them, a more healthier environment of collaboration will be developed”.
Francina de Pater
(Netherlands)
This current embraces ministries and thinking concerning the ministry to and welfare of students who leave their homelands to study overseas. It includes a close relationship with the Lausanne Movement’s Worldwide International Student Ministry Network (WIN) and international student ministries globally.
Francina de Pater is the Lausanne Catalyst for International Student Ministry, national director of the international student ministry department of IFES Netherlands, and the international student ministry coordinator for the regional team of IFES Europe. She also has her own coaching and counselling practice, and enjoys being involved in her local church leading a ministry that reaches out to the many tourists that visit their church each year. She and her husband also helped plant an international church in Gouda, Netherlands, through which they have connected to many refugees and other internationals from around the world.
Harry Hoffmann
(Germany)
This current has long been associated with the Mission Commission, and produced the largest network in MC history. That network is more than able to exist independently of the MC, but still closely connected with the MC within the WEA Global Witness Department.
Harry has been the Co-ordinator of the Global Member Care Network (GMCN) since 2006. His personal mission is to connect the Member Care needs with Member Care resources around the world. The GMCN is a network with close to 6,000 members around the world closely connected with national mission movements and regional member care networks, contributing towards the health
and sustainability of their global workers.
Mark Hedinger & Kate Wiseman
(USA & UK)
This current will continue to ensure that the ministry of the International Missionary Training Network (IMTN) will remain in strong relationship with the Mission Commission, within the WEA Global Witness Department. The IMTN developed out of MC task forces and projects and has since become a network independent of MC oversight but still closely related to the MC.
Mark’s vision and purpose for his life and work, confirmed again and again by the Lord, is to equip God’s people for effective service in a culture and language different than their own. That purpose is at the core of the organization that Mark leads (CultureBound). Mark has previously served cross-culturally in Latin America (with Crossworld/UFM) and since 2008 has been training people for cross-cultural ministry.
Kate serves as Head of Learning Services for All Nations Christian College, the largest missionary training institution in the UK. Her passion is to provide and
facilitate others to provide accessible, effective cross-cultural mission training. Kate also has expertise as a librarian and musician.
Jamie Matenga
(Aotearoa New Zealand)
This current connects the Mission Commission with the national associations of missions organisations around the world, also sometimes called national missions movements. The MC aims to continue as a point of interconnection for all national and regional missions alliances, who are considered key stakeholders in the MC. In most nations, these associations or alliances exist independently of National Evangelical Alliances and it is the MC’s desire to foster closer relationships between the missions and church alliances within nations where they exist, similarly between regional missions and church alliances.
Jamie also serves the WEA as Co-Leader of the Mission Commission, which sits within the WEA’s Global Ministry Engagement Department.
Chris Maynard
(UK)
This current seeks to keep the Mission Commission (a community of reflective practitioners in God’s mission) anchored to robust, verified and validated research so we can better understand what God is doing in the world through the collection of appropriate data and well analysed interpretation of that data.
Chris feels God has sent him into the spheres of Global Church Information which includes, but is not limited to, what is usually described as research. As Synergist, Chris’ responsibility will be to keep the MC well connected with the community of missions information workers and other missions researchers around the world. He is a founder-member of the Community of Mission Information Workers (CMIW), and an ongoing member of the facilitation team. His other key roles/relationships include “Registrar of the Harvest Information Standards”, a neutral body maintaining data standards for the missions community and “Associate of the Global Research Team of OC International”, one of the largest cohesive teams of mission researchers in the world.
Ryan Emis
(USA/Malaysia)
This current will track the main missions mobilization movements around the world and keep the Mission Commission apprised of the latest thinking in the area of missions promotion, missions education, and missions recruitment, as
well as the theology being developed to encourage the global Church to engage in
global missions.
Ryan is well known in mission mobilization circles and serves primarily with the Center for Mission Mobilization (USA) as Director of Global Partnerships from his family’s home base in Malaysia. He also serves as Associate Director of Global Development for the World Evangelical Alliance and Director of Global Consultations for the Lausanne Movement. Previously Ryan held responsibilities on the leadership team of the Global Mobilization Network, as Director of Ministry Advancement for Perspectives, and Area Director for Young Life in Stockholm.
Jenny Oliphant
(UK)
This current will not only ensure that the Mission Commission remains fully centred on God in our pursuit of God’s mission but it will also keep us well connected with the global prayer networks that already exist to pray for nations, unreached people groups, specific sectors of our societies, and other issues of concern to missions and ministry of the global Church.
Jenny is well connected in missions and global prayer networks. She coordinates two global prayer networks: 1) the Ethne Prayer Team, which focusses on mobilizing prayer to see all unreached peoples have access to hear and understand the Gospel, and 2) a newer global coalition called 24:14 (from Matthew 24:14), with the vision to see Kingdom movement engagement in all unreached people and places by 2025. In addition, she serves on the global prayer team for the Go Movement, a world evangelisation initiative; she’s a leader in the International Prayer Council’s focus group for unreached peoples; she is Board Member for Global Connections UK; and she is a member of International Partnering Associates.
JP Arceno
(Philippines/USA)
This current delves into the depths of emerging ‘cyber-contexts’, exploring the rich potential for missions that remains somewhat hidden from traditional missions strategies. Great masses of mainly young people are ‘native’ to massive online environments, making digital/virtual space a new context for missions that require new contextualised theologies.
JP is a Filipino based now in New Jersey where he pastors a culturally diverse congregation. His MA thesis explored the validity of “Digital Baptism”, which gained some interest in 2020 as COVID-19 forced churches online. JP is actively conversant in digital theology discussions in social media and is involved with major Evangelical networks exploring digital/virtual evangelism and missions. His vision is to see churches, ministries and missions all around the world aware of, actively participating in, and making a serious response when it comes to reaching out to non-Christians who live and relate inside virtual/digital worlds. It is said, 61% of the world’s population is now online, so we need (digital) missionaries to “go and make disciples” where the people are in these new cyber-contexts.
Ann Borquist
(USA/New Zealand)
This current intersects with all manner of theological education providers to grass-roots church leaders, indigenous movement leaders, and followers of Jesus who wish to increase their knowledge of the love of God in their contexts from an authentic biblical basis, with a particular emphasis on theological education related to missions activities.
Ann has served as a cross-cultural missions leader for over 30 years in the Philippines, Brazil, New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific region and in the headquarters of International Ministries (the mission arm of the American Baptist Churches USA). From her home base with Bruce in Aotearoa New Zealand, Ann is currently a Global Consultant of
International Ministries-ABCUSA working alongside Baptist partners in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe in the areas of “Mission From Everywhere to Everyone,” Contextualised Theological Education, Holistic Economic & Community Development, and Short Term Missions Engagement. She also contributes as a member of the TEE (Training to Empower & Equip, formerly Theological Education by Extension) team in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Bruce Borquist
(USA/New Zealand)
This current covers a broad scope of missions activities wherever the gospel is shared and developed in a place of economic activity, so it represents a vast number of quite diverse sub-currents with their respective terminologies. This includes faith based enterprise and entrepreneurship, cooperative economic initiatives, expatriate roles in host communities (e.g. “tentmaker” roles), professions (whether local or expatriate), and business development with a view to participating in God’s mission.
Bruce has been immersed in the issues of faith-based entrepreneurship throughout his 34 years serving as a Global Servant through International Ministries (IM). IM recognised his expertise in this field by appointing him a Global Consultant for Holistic Community and Economic Development in 2019. Doctoral research into faith-based social entrepreneurship through Massey University (New Zealand) deepened and broadened his knowledge and experience as a “reflective practitioner” regarding these issues. From his homebase in Aotearoa New Zealand with Ann, Bruce trains and consults in social entrepreneurship, servant leadership and cross-cultural worker training.
Evi Rodemann
(Germany)
This current will keep the Mission Commission focused on issues of succession in missions and it will enhance our commitment to welcoming newcomers into the MC community. It connects with a wide variety of leadership and younger-leader development initiatives, bringing that expertise into the MC to help us better strengthen our intergenerational relationships and younger leader development, while also representing the MC in other networks to help them model better younger leadership development as well.
Evi is the founding Director of LeadNow, which she started in 2021 to support the development of younger leaders, particularly in Europe. She also serves as a Deputy Leader for the Mission Commission and as a leader on the Lausanne Movement’s Younger Leaders Generation (YLG) team, among other youth and young leader oriented network involvements. Her personal calling is to engage with the young generation across Germany, Europe and beyond. She loves to see each person develop their God given potential and live a missional lifestyle wherever God places them. In this regard she has invested her life since being a teenager with being engaged with young people as well as taking young people onto mission trips.