A local church with a global mission.

Justin Schell, Lead Mentor of our Learning Community in Tulsa, OK, shares how his church are responding to Gospel needs across the world.

When Mercyview Church in Tulsa, OK began hosting a Union Learning Community, it was simply because of local needs. 

We were excited to have robust theological education available locally for gospel ministers, pastors, and church planters.  We didn’t realize that a relationship with Union offered anything more than that.  But then we started to meet other churches hosting learning communities.  We started to hear about the Gospel needs in their cities, and we started to imagine what Gospel friendship AND partnership might look like with these like-minded, like-hearted churches.

At the same time, Mercyview Church’s leadership was already praying about and considering how the Lord might have us involved in global mission.  We knew that there were whole ethnicities, people groups, with little to no access to the Gospel.  We knew that many of these people groups were being displaced in unprecedented ways.  We knew Acts 17:26-27 claims that it is God Himself who determines when and where they are.  He does this, according to Paul, so that they might reach out for Him and find Him.

“We started to imagine what Gospel friendship and partnership might look like with these like-minded, like-hearted churches.”

The Lord is taking the 10/40 Window, turning it upside down and shaking it out over places like the UK.  We began, therefore, to have conversations with churches in the UK that we knew through Union.  We found that many of them were surrounded by unreached populations from the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia especially.  Thousands of men and women who had no access to the Gospel back home, but have fled to places where Christ’s Church can reach them.

Enter Jim and Laura Campbell, members of Mercyview.  As Laura puts it, “Our hearts had already been enlarged for unreached peoples and refugee populations after living cross-culturally for 10 years in SE Asia. Mercyview’s relationship with Union provided us contact with local churches in the UK that had outreach among these populations. This led us to conversations with Oldham Bethel, a church in the greater Manchester area with a ministry to Persian and Pakistani men and women.  They were asking for workers to come. We were seeking to go.”

“They were asking for workers to come. We were seeking to go.”

After visiting the church and the community, Jim and Laura hope to join the work in Oldham among the unreached.  Mercyview hopes they are just the first of many who will be sent out to partner in similar ways with churches in the UK reaching the nations.

But, that’s not the only partnership made possible through Union relationships.  The Campbells are being sent through AT3 - Alliance for Transatlantic Theological Training, another Union partner.  As the name suggests, they are eager to help facilitate partnerships between like-minded churches in the US and the UK.   

Laura Campbell, reflecting on the journey so far, shares further, “Those open doors mean we hope to land in the UK in January of 2021. The Father’s heart for the nations to know Him, the means of accomplishing this through the local church, and the hope that others who see us go will follow along, that energizes us. May He continue to refine His desires in us.”

Find out how Union supports and resources churches around the world here: