School of Missions Trip 2026
An update from Leo Parris (US Global Missions Coordinator for Sovereign Grace Churches, and Pastor at Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) who recently took a team from his church to visit a Sovereign Grace pastor serving cross-culturally in a strategic city. For security reasons, some details have been omitted or generalised, including the removal of names…
Every other year, I take a group of people interested in learning more about global missions through a year-long course on global missions in my church called the School of Missions. At the end of the course, we take a trip to partner with a SG missionary to experience ministry on the frontlines of gospel advancement. We hope to identify the missionaries that the Spirit is raising up in our church through this course and to help train key leaders to facilitate our global mission as a church. This year we chose to partner with SG missionaries in an unreached Muslim city in the Mediterranean, in the second week of July.
They have been laboring for the gospel in this city for 6 years and hope to plant a Sovereign Grace church there in 2028. ‘M’ helped our team see the need for gospel advancement in this area. Every 56 seconds, another person passes into eternity. And a fraction of a percentage of these people will have ever truly heard the gospel. We headed out to outreach with our hearts freshly burdened and an eagerness to see what God had planned for us.
Our plan was to establish ourselves in typical touristy places where many local people hangout to seek to have conversations with strangers and turn them in a spiritual direction. Given that proselytizing is frowned upon in this particular city, we had to be more careful than back in the States, not mentioning the words “missions” or “evangelism” and not handing out tracks.
When you add these limiting factors to the fact that many of these people do not speak English, I honestly expected to only have a few meaningful conversations in our week of ministry, but God blew the doors off those expectations! Over the week we had 53 meaningful conversations with strangers. Most of these people were locals, and many of the conversations included a full gospel presentation.
God used social games to create the relational bridge needed to develop connections. One of the first days we outreached, a group of ladies from our team set up a popular game called Okey to play in a coffee shop. As they puzzled over the rules, they asked a couple of ladies in the shop for help on how to play. Two hours later, they were friends! These ladies invited some of our team members to a yoga class. A couple of days later they came to the class, and spent over an hour and a half deepening their connection afterwards. A few of us were able to share the gospel with multiple people in great length and clarity. More than that, two of the ladies came with our team to church on Sunday!
If space allowed, I could tell you about how silly dancing and google translate allowed for the gospel to go forth. I could tell you about how a free day trip to visit ruins turned into an hour-long gospel conversation with a Chinese woman. I could tell of the exiled Polish man who heard the hope of the gospel. I could tell you of the man who we swapped Bible verses for Qu’ran verses with. I could tell you of the baristas and random strangers that came to church with us.
All this was God, using coffee shops and games, beaches and volleyball, and technology like Instagram and WhatsApp to allow for connections and gospel conversations.
All this was possible because he opened doors for us. We were very aware, throughout the whole trip of the unmerited favor and power that guided us. We were filled with the joy of the Spirit, again and again, as we felt the privilege of sharing the good news with these people. People who only know Christ as a prophet, who might know of the Bible in theory, and who had never met a Christian.
But what gives me even more excitement is the fact that ‘M’ and ‘B’ are still there! They are faithfully engaging in the irreplaceable long-term discipleship needed in the Great Commission. We are praying that God provides the co-laborer missionaries needed to plant a SG church. It is quite clear that God has already prepared a harvest for this mission. I can’t wait to see who God raises up to join them there.
Our first School of Missions helped identify a missionary couple, Mikey and Katie Roman who are currently moving towards joining Pat Tedeschi in London. I’m praying that God identifies more people from the 12 individuals that came on the trip to join the gospel advancement in this unreached Mediterranean city and other places that will not hear the good news unless someone is sent.
It’s my hope that God would continue to help us in Sovereign Grace Churches to earnestly seek those he is raising to be sent to the nations for the sake of the gospel.
