August 2, 2024

Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,

As has been reported to you, the recent General Assembly took this action:

The 90th General Assembly determines to call for a day of prayer and fasting on Saturday, August 17, 2024, that the whole church may pray as one people, and call upon the Lord with one voice, that we might lament our distress and unworthiness before the Lord, confess our sin, and commit ourselves anew to the work of the Great Commission in the faithful service of the Lord our God; that we would humble ourselves, seeking the Lord’s guidance and provision for the spreading of His kingdom to the ends of the earth; that we humbly implore God to raise up missionary evangelists for our foreign fields.

We are extremely thankful for this action of the General Assembly, and we want to assist you in your times of prayer by making you aware of our church’s critical need for foreign missionaries.

We immediately need a minimum of four missionary evangelists (ministers) to fill current vacancies on the field. If we were able to send someone to Haiti now, there would be a fifth vacancy. By the end of 2024, the Jacksons will be off the field in Mbale, Uganda, and we would then need a sixth missionary-evangelist. One family hasn’t yet decided if they will serve another term beyond 2025—if not, we will need a seventh. And we would like two additional regional foreign missionaries for Asia and South America! Currently, there are two men toward the end of the application/interview process but, as with a congregation’s pastoral search, we do not know where this will go.

We need men who are willing to go wherever it pleases Christ, through His church, to send them to serve. We need men who are experienced pastors and presbyters, able to mentor those who have little exposure to functioning sessions and presbyteries, setting before such men the character of a godly pastor, who is humble, wise, and loves the sheep as Jesus loves them. Please pray that our Lord would provide such men.

Our church was born out of a desire to be faithful to Jesus Christ in proclaiming the Gospel of God’s Word, the only Word by which men may be saved, to the ends of the earth. Let us humbly persevere and pray that He will preserve that very same desire in us until we see Jesus’ return, so that we might hear those words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

We are providing you with the following materials for this Day of Prayer and Fasting.

  1. Scripture passages that might be used for meditation and prayer (Matthew 28:16–20, Luke 9:23–26, Luke 9:57–62, Luke 10:1–12, John 4:31–38, Isaiah 66:18–23).
  2. A list of prayer requests from your current missionaries for this occasion.
  3. A brief reflection on fasting for those to whom it might be a help.

We pray that in His mercy, our wonderful God and Savior Jesus Christ, will hear our cry, see our broken hearts, and answer our prayers.

In our Lord’s service with you,

Douglas B. Clawson
General Secretary

P.S. During this last week, Ben Hopp sent these great quotes:

“‘To have missionaries and no money would be no trouble to me,’ Hudson said; ‘for the Lord is bound to take care of His own: He does not want me to assume His responsibility. But to have money and no missionaries is very serious indeed. And I do not think it will be kind of you dear friends in America to put this burden upon us, and not to send some from among yourselves to use the money. We have the dollars, but where are the people?’” (Cromarty, Jim. 2014. It Is Not Death to Die: A New Biography of Hudson Taylor. Christian Focus Publications. Kindle.)

“Now since we know that the mission of God is ultimately the redemption of his whole creation and the extension of the knowledge of his glory to the ends of the earth, the fact that God chooses human agents to send and to use in accomplishing that mission is of great significance. The mission of God’s people must include providing a reservoir of those whom God can send in support of that overarching objective. To belong to God’s people is, therefore, at the very least to be available to be sent.” (Wright, Christopher J. H. 2010. The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life). Zondervan Academic. Kindle.)

-Douglas B. Clawson, General Secretary   douglas.clawson@opc.org   215/935–1012 -