Lancaster Missionary Fellowship

By Robert Reese Glenn Schwartz, founder and director of World Mission Associates, saw the need to bring together church and mission leaders in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to discuss mission issues. This led to the birth of Lancaster Missionary Fellowship (LMF) in 1989. When Glenn and his wife Verna moved to England in 1991, LMF unfortunately stopped functioning. Later the Schwartzs returned to live in Lancaster County and when they opened the World Mission Resource Center in 2005, they finally had a facility that could host regular LMF meetings. The first renewed meetings of LMF began in the winter of 2006, and LMF became a regular monthly meeting with a break in the summer. Each meeting consists of a lunch prepared by the staff of the World Mission Resource Center followed by a half-hour presentation by a mission expert. The final part of the meeting is discussion time where the participants grapple with the ideas presented. Since Lancaster County has a deep reservoir of mission talent, finding speakers to challenge and stretch the mission imagination has not been a problem. World Mission Associates organizes the gatherings and selects the speakers, who generally have expertise in some innovative or current issue of mission interest. This keeps the LMF group up to date with mission thinking and practice. In fact, the group is not always the same. It consists of a unique blend of missionaries, retired or active, representatives of mission agencies, local church mission committee members, pastors, seminary professors, and mission-minded individuals. Most of the larger local churches in the county that are active in missions are represented as well as some smaller churches. Since many who attend are also active in world missions, the group changes, as some will be on distant assignments while new people hear about the meetings and decide to attend. There is no budget for the LMF, as those who attend pay for their meal, and speakers receive no compensation. As a result, there is also no budget for advertising and word about the LMF spreads through individuals. World Mission Associates posts the list of speakers and topics on its website (www.wmausa.org) with the schedule for the presentations. Topics have so far ranged from specific case studies to mission theory or mission trends. Memorable case studies have been the impact of the East African revivals on churches even in Lancaster County, Christian and Muslim dialogue in places like Iran, and one local Lancaster County church’s engagement in partnership with a mission agency to impact Cambodia for Christ. Mission trends presented have included “Postmodernism and Missions,” “Globalization and Missions,” “Why the Free Market Matters to Missions,” and “Local Church and Mission Agency Cooperation.” Mission theory has included “Examining the Way that Christianity Spreads,” “Bands and Bonds in 21st Century Missions,” and “Overcoming Dependency in Mission-Established Churches.” The net result of the LMF gatherings has been the cross-fertilization process that takes place as different groups share their understanding of modern mission and engage each