How Churches Are Shaping the Future of Missions
Throughout church history, the call to send missionaries has taken many forms. Today, more local churches and networks are stepping into that role with renewed ownership to mobilize, send, and support missionaries as a core part of their mission and discipleship efforts. One such example is the Acts2 Collective, a network of over 20 churches across the U.S. focused on church planting near universities and equipping graduates for long-term campus ministry. In 2024, the Acts2 Collective sent 72 missionaries overseas through a partnership with Reliant. In the conversation that follows, Timothy Rhee, who leads the Acts2 Collective’s One-Year Foreign Missions Program, joins Mike Easton, Reliant’s International Program Manager, to reflect on the church’s role in sending and how shared vision and collaboration are fueling new growth in missions.
Read MoreHow Churches Are Shaping the Future of Missions
Reliant Mission | Jun 12, 2025, 13:46 PM
Throughout church history, the call to send missionaries has taken many forms. Today, more local churches and networks are stepping into that role with renewed ownership to mobilize, send, and support missionaries as a core part of their mission and discipleship efforts. One such example is the Acts2 Collective, a network of over 20 churches across the U.S. focused on church planting near universities and equipping graduates for long-term campus ministry. In 2024, the Acts2 Collective sent 72 missionaries overseas through a partnership with Reliant. In the conversation that follows, Timothy Rhee, who leads the Acts2 Collective’s One-Year Foreign Missions Program, joins Mike Easton, Reliant’s International Program Manager, to reflect on the church’s role in sending and how shared vision and collaboration are fueling new growth in missions.
INTERVIEW WITH TIMOTHY RHEE - ACTS2
Hosted by Mike Easton
Mike: Timothy, it has been awesome to partner with your network. You all are a great example of how the church community can be on mission together. This is evidenced in the everyday life of your church, but was also most recently expressed in the sending out of over 80 missionaries for a 1-year opportunity in Asia this past year. Why did your church decide to take on the role of raising up and sending out missionary teams yourselves? Can you share the story behind that decision and what inspired it?
Timothy: Interestingly enough, this wasn’t an initiative that we started as a leadership team. It was actually some of our younger co-vocational ministers who approached us with the idea of a 1-year overseas mission opportunity. They had done short-term trips to these locations and wanted to go back and serve at these locations while they were still young in their professions. As we prayed and explored the opportunity, we invited members to apply, and we had 200 of our 1,600 co-vocational ministers in our church network apply for the opportunity. Seeing this kind of response, we felt that this was something that God was leading us to.
So, over the course of the 2023 to early 2024 school year, we formed 8 teams to 7 countries with 84 adults and 21 kids. These were all countries that we had sent short-term trips to and were interested in exploring how we could further partner with missionaries and ministries overseas.
Mike: How did you all decide who would go?
Timothy: It began with selecting who the team leaders would be. Then we placed team members according to their location preferences and who we thought would complement each other well on the same team.
Mike: How did you all fund this opportunity?
Timothy: Each year, we collect a special offering for planting new ministries and for larger-scale endeavors across our network. Through the generosity of our members, we were able to cover the costs of each of the missionary team members for a year.
Mike: Your church has already been, what we would consider, a sending church through your efforts locally and through your church planting efforts. Now with the added element of sending globally, how has extending your sending to the globe impacted your churches and network? How has it even helped the mission you all are trying to do in the college cities you are in?
Timothy: It definitely made everyone more aware of what God is doing around the world. You know, when you hear about the vast harvest field of the unreached, it’s hard to know what to do with that. But when it's one of your friends is on the frontlines sharing the gospel with someone who has never heard, then the Great Commission becomes more real and personal.
To our members, we shared weekly updates of the prayer requests of the Foreign Missionary teams, and we utilized internal communication networks to show pictures of our people around those they were ministering to. We have clearly seen a greater sense of ownership in the Great Commission amongst our members. The world became smaller because of the Foreign Missionaries.
In our second year of receiving applications for the Foreign Missions 1-year opportunity, our applications jumped from 200 to 300 people per year.
Mike: That’s a pretty clear sign of the impact that it made on the leaders in your network. I love that the Great Commission became more real for your people through this experience. As your missionaries are finishing up their year overseas, what do you think they have learned in this past year, and how will that impact how they do ministry in the church when they come back?
Timothy: Especially for this first year of doing this mission opportunity, this group had to be creative in how they approached ministry. Going from having a full-time job to focusing full-time on ministry efforts, as well as being in a new context, meant they had time and necessity for creativity.
As we surveyed the foreign missionaries about where they wanted to go when they came back over 90% of them said that they wanted to go to one of our new church plants happening this year, or join an existing church in our network with a need, rather than simply going back home to serve in the same way. They learned to try new things as missionaries and wanted to apply those lessons as they came back to stateside.
Mike: Whether it’s a short-term trip or a mid-term opportunity, that’s definitely what we want to see in people coming back to the US: A greater initiative, creativity, and tenacity for ministry in their local context.
I’m sure a question some church leaders reading this article are asking is, ‘How in the world did you get that many people to leave their jobs, their homes, and their families for a year?’
Timothy: Many of our people put on their applications that they felt like they were “too comfortable” in life and needed something like this to keep their relationship with God sharp and fresh.
We also have a culture of church planting in North America where it is natural for people to move to help start something new. Some of these people had already moved to be a part of a church plant, so they had had experience with this already.
Mike: It is pretty clear to me that you all didn’t just put on a program and happen upon the success that you had. A program like this is only successful with years of creating a culture that values godliness over comfort and a willingness to be sent. With that, how was it helpful to have the teams composed of just Acts2 members? As well, how was it helpful to go to locations that you have already sent to short-term?
Timothy: Each of our teams was comprised of members from different churches in our network, but since we are a network of churches, the values and DNA that are shared amongst our churches gave the team members a lot of common ground to foster unity. We try to teach our people how to live out what the church should be according to Acts chapter 2 in our daily lives. This helped forge relationships within each team pretty quickly.
It was helpful to go to places that we had sent to short-term because some of the team members had some experience in those locations. In many of the locations, it confirmed ongoing partnership, and in a few, it helped us find other partners to work with.
Mike: Are there any challenges that have come from doing this initiative for your church?
Timothy: When this initiative took off, when we saw that it was fruitful in the field, and when we saw the interest from 300 new members for the 2025-26 class of foreign missionaries, we certainly wondered to ourselves, “What have we started?!?!” We are going to have to figure out as a church how to continue foreign missions work going forward and how we can put more long-term people on the ground in these locations.
But these are good problems to have, and we’re excited to see how God will lead us.
Mike: What were some of the outcomes on the mission field from the efforts of these 84?
Timothy: One of our values, as a network, is for evangelism and discipleship to happen amongst the community of believers. In this way, they see the body of Christ in action, are drawn to it, and when they become believers, are connected to a whole body, not just one person.
Wherever we were out there abroad, we wanted to continue living out this value and strategy. So, while some of our partners advised us to spread out on multiple campuses in the locations to cover more ground, we felt it was important to stay together. As we saw fruit in this strategy, I think our overseas partners were encouraged and challenged by how God used the witness of the community.
And even though many of these countries’ cultures we would consider to be “collective,” the way that we do relationship with one another proved to be very inviting to people. They were seeing something different than they had ever experienced before in relationships and were drawn to that.
Mike: Timothy, it’s amazing to see what God has done through your church and church network. The Acts 2-like culture that you have set has set your people up well for the mission that God entrusted to you all. I look forward to seeing what God continues to do through your church and how he raises up more laborers for the harvest field worldwide.
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