Dear Friends,
I’m excited to fill you in on a new opportunity that God has opened up for Mission Adelante. Our Board of Overseers has approved a 16 month pilot outreach project to another ethnic group in our neighborhood: Bhutanese refugees. While we had not envisioned attempting to reach immigrant groups beyond Hispanics, the circumstances and timing of this opportunity made it seem like a God-given opening to test the transferability of our ministry model and to serve another group of people who need the compassion of Christ and His gospel of grace.
Several factors have come together over the past three months to convince us that we should move forward with this pilot project. At the heart of these factors is a called leader/couple (David and Holly Stetler-pictured here) with a compatible ministry vision, a commitment to moving to the neighborhood, support from a sending church, the need and desire for coaching and infrastructure, and a handful of volunteers who are already engaged in ministry to the Bhutanese. We believe that Mission Adelante can offer a lot to Dave and Holly and to their heart to reach Bhutanese immigrants by providing proven ministry models, infrastructure, a relational support network in the neighborhood, and ongoing coaching. They will become full members of our missionary team.
For Mission Adelante this represents an opportunity to test the reproducibility of our ministry vision and core strategies. This fall Dave and his emerging team will focus on fundraising, team building, contact work, observing, learning, and planning, with an aim to launch pilot programs in January (God-willing). As they prepare to launch this project, the goal is to reproduce, but also to contextualize the best of Mission Adelante in order to reach a new people group.
The very nature of a pilot is experimental. In other words, we don’t know what parts of this project will succeed, or if the idea of reaching other people groups beyond Hispanics will eventually become an ongoing part of our ministry vision or not. However, we are excited to discover the answers to these questions and believe that God has given us the right context in which to explore them. I invite you to enter into this process with us through prayer this fall and over the next 16 months. I am certain that wherever God leads us will be exciting.
In His Grace,
Jarrett Meek
Executive Director, Mission Adelante, Inc.
