For 22 years Senders has helped AG missionaries shorten their itineration by contributing to their cash budget at the front end of their fundraising. In recent years, itineration time has dropped on average from 17.6 months to 14.6 months. Senders helps make that possible.`

The highest priority of our mission is not projects. It is people. The heart of our outreach is the missionary with a life calling—who leaves home, family and friends to live in a foreign land, learn a language and culture, identify with and love the people, share the good news of Jesus, and help establish a church that will endure. Even with all the technological resources and innovative ministries and programs available today, the divinely called missionary is and always will be the heart of our mission.

Because God’s servants are people, His callings are personal. For some, the call is dramatic and unforgettable. For others, it is the steadily growing realization that they have no alternative but to spend their lives taking the gospel to those who need to hear.

What compels a person to leave the comforts and security of home, family and friends to serve Christ in a foreign land? The call.

It is a privilege, responsibility and sacred trust of the World Missions Executive Committee to interview new missionary candidates. They are sacred moments. As we sit across the table from these people, we hear a wonderful progression of testimonies of how God has called each personally.

We continue to rejoice at the increasing numbers of new candidate missionaries coming to us with a divine call upon their lives to serve the Lord in the harvest field.

We wish you could sit with the committee for just a few of the interviews. This process never becomes old. As each prospective candidate shares the story of his or her divine calling, we marvel at the Lord of the Harvest’s strategic placement in a world where the lost are waiting to hear the message of Jesus.

More new missionaries than ever are coming to us with the Holy Spirit’s call upon their lives. We must send them. Their faces reflect their joyful anticipation of the ministry to which the Lord has called them.

Twice each year new missionaries begin Candidate training school at our annual Missionary Training. It is critical that we help them early in their itineration.

That is why our single most vital project is Senders Fund. When this fund was instituted, missionaries needed an average of 22 months to raise their budget and reach the field. Since the introduction of Senders Fund, the average itineration time has decreased from 22 months to just 13. That’s nine months on the field rather than itinerating! More months with missionaries preaching the gospel, planting churches, training national ministers, and serving people with the compassion of Christ.

The missionary-apostle Paul declared, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:13–15, NIV).

Our Lord calls laborers into His harvest field. They respond in obedience. But the mission is not complete until the called are sent. And we must send them. If our Lord’s command is to all of us…He requires that each does something to take the good news of God’s saving grace to our lost world. We must all take the Great Commission to heart because it involves the whole church, those who go…and those who send.

The highest priority for our missions dollars is to rush these divinely called missionaries to the harvest field where the lost are waiting!