Mission Support

At St Johns and St Marks we want to be a part of God's mission to the world. We partner with individuals and organisations locally, nationally and globally. We aim to:

* Grow in mission awareness: understanding God's mission to all nations  and our commission to be part of it.

* Be active in mission mobilisation: motivating, equipping and sending new mission partners for both short and long-term mission work.

* Be generous in mission support: providing prayer, financial and pastoral support for those with whom we are linked as well as supporting other organisations and projects around the world.

Each month there is a short focus on world events in our morning services to bring mission news to the church family. 

We pray continually for our missionaries and projects and particularly each Friday evening 5-5.30 pm in St. John’s Church. 

Our mission partners and organisations are:

Hannah’s work takes her into 3 local schools, Great Clacton Juniors (our church school), Cann Hall Primary and Clacton Coastal Academy, the Secondary School in our parish.  

Her schools’ work in Great Clacton and Cann Hall involves teaching weekly RE lessons and taking regular assemblies based on the Bible.  Both schools have regular services at St John’s church at key times during the year.  She also welcomes different year groups to church for visits that look at the history of St John’s as well as how it is used today.

In the Secondary School Hannah assists with termly projects when the YLG (Youth Leadership Group) want some Christian input.  She is currently involved with the Shoebox Project, a Christmas Fayre, Easter lessons including a visit to St John’s and a Pentecost lesson.  Hannah is occasionally asked to go in and support other one-off events too.

Within church, Hannah is involved in the weekly term time clubs as well as our Holiday Clubs.  She is responsible for our Secondary school-aged group most Sunday mornings and alternate Sunday evenings.  She organises family events each term and is about to oversee the running of a new after school club.

We continue to thank God for the many opportunities He provides us with and pray that we make the most of each one, to His glory.

Catherine Porter, a missionary with WEC International, arrived in Japan to begin her missionary service, shortly after the tsunami of March 2011 and after language study became fully involved in tsunami relief work. Although the nature of that work has now changed, it is still part of Catherine’s ministry. She was part of a church planting team in Miyako, Northern Japan but now lives in Sendai, serving in her local church as well as travelling all over Japan playing her harp and sharing her testimony at outreach concerts.

Betel UK, a ministry of WEC International, is a group of caring, not-for-profit Christian communities, throughout the UK dedicated to restoring lives broken through addictions, homelessness and long -term unemployment. 

They train men and women in a range of life and employment skills in a drug and alcohol free environment, totally free of charge. They offer this opportunity of restoration to all persons who seek their help.

As well as having communities in the UK, betel also works in 100 cities throughout the world. You can learn more about the work of Betel by clicking on this link - http://www.betel.uk/

As a church we support Mark & Ruth Cuthbert, who serve Betel in Birmingham.

Wycliffe Bible Translators believes that people understand best in their heart language, the language they use every day. It aims to have a Bible translation started in every language still needing one by 2025.  To find out more visit https://www.wycliffe.org.uk/.  You can also watch a short video about Wycliffe at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVsPf5jdpUs. 

As a church family we have supported Aristarchus Gesa and the Lunyole translation project which in January 2017 saw the dedication of the New Testament translated into Lunyole the heart language of the Banyole people in South-Eastern Uganda. Members of our church family went to Uganda to be part of the dedication ceremony. The story of the Lunyole Bible translation is on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsPjXcFsN8k
 

When the New Testament was completed the team realised there was a need to have the whole Bible translated. Aristarchus has been trained as a consultant and the team is now under the leadership of Mathias Mahabala working on the Old Testament. Members of the translation team need to hold down jobs to support their families. 

Our Church supports Wycliffe missionaries Gift and Kathryn Asiku, who live and work in Entebbe, Uganda.  The office in Entebbe acts as a hub, providing translation, linguistic & finance services, computer support to the translation projects in Uganda, as well as supervision of those projects.  Five of those projects have completed the New Testament and are starting work on the Old Testament.  The remaining four are in the initial stages of translation.  To find out more about the languages in Uganda, 

see https://www.ethnologue.com/country/UG.  

Gift & Kathryn are a married couple with two young sons, James and Simon Peter. Patience (a little daughter of one of Gift's cousins), who had been living with them is now back with her father.

Gift’s role at Wycliffe is Language Programmes Coordinator. It often means being away from home for several days at a time, visiting the translation projects in different parts of the country.  The roads in Uganda are dangerous and many are dirt roads, prone to flooding during the rainy season.

Kathryn works in scripture engagement and literacy, producing materials that will be used in the different language areas.

To watch a short video about Gift & Kathryn’s lives in Uganda go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljk4lefZf8c&t=7s

Tearfund is a Christian charity which was founded in 1968 and is called to follow Jesus wherever the need is greatest around the world. Tearfund helps communities overcome the worst effects of poverty and disasters – they believe that the same people who face these issues, also have the best idea as to how they can overcome them.

Tearfund works alongside local churches and other locally-based organisations in over 50 countries to help people realise their plans for a better future. Since 2006 Tearfund has helped more than 13 million people affected by disasters and over 32 million more with community development work designed to lift them out of poverty. They have worked through over 154,000 local churches around the world to achieve this.

We at St John’s and St Mark’s raise money for Tearfund every year at Harvest time and often make special donations to Tearfund in response to disaster appeals.

You can find out more about the work of Tearfund here https://www.tearfund.org/

Open Doors supports persecuted Christians in a variety of ways including: 

Distributing Bibles and Christian resources so that persecuted believers an be nourished with God's Word. Training Christians and church leaders so they can stand strong in Jesus. Supporting victims of violence and disaster so that they can live independent and fulfilled lives. Bring hope to the Middle East so that Christians in the Middle East can live with dignity and hope. Raising awareness and encouraging prayer so that persecuted Christians know they are not forgotten. 

The main ministry of Barnabas Fund is to send financial support to projects which help Christians where they suffer discrimination, oppression and persecution as a consequence of their faith. The projects aim to strengthen Christian individuals, churches and their communities by providing material and spiritual support in response to needs identified by local Christian leaders. 

They seek to encourage and facilitate prayer by providing prayer information, prayer requests and resources in many different forms and formats. 

This ministry makes known the plight of the persecuted Church, particularly in the Muslim world, by a wide variety of means, in order to educate Christians and others about the current situation and needs as well as the background and causal factors.

As a Church we are proud to support the work of CAP in our local area providing financial support for our local CAP advisor. At a time when so many are struggling financially, the work of CAP has become even more important. You can find out more about the work that CAP does here https://capuk.org/

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) is a Christian organization and for over 70 years, MAF has been flying light aircraft over jungles, mountains, swamps and deserts. They enable over 2,000 aid, development and mission organisations to bring medical care, emergency relief, long-term development and Christian hope to thousands of communities.

In today's 'connected world', the irony is that never have so many people been so isolated. Many remote communities have never heard the Gospel and are living in spiritual darkness. If a person has a medical emergency and the nearest hospital is a few days walk or an uncomfortable drive on rough roads, their prognosis is poor. When natural disasters, conflict or famine strike hard-to-reach places, an aircraft may be the only safe way to reach the affected areas. Every four minutes a MAF plane is taking off or landing somewhere in the world to help eliminate the barriers to physical and spiritual transformation. Enabling partners is at the core of what they do anAs we as a church family seek to help them make it possible.

As a church family we pray for and support MAF because they believe nothing should stop people from receiving the love of God and the essentials of life – no matter how remote they are. Their vision is to see 'isolated people physically and spiritually transformed in Christ's name.' They believe that everyone deserves a chance to experience the love of Jesus Christ. They use aviation and technology, because in many places those are the only ways to reach isolated people with Christ’s love. https://www.maf-uk.org/