Where Will All of This Lead - Alliance Church History

Where Will All of This Lead?

The year is 1881 this is you, a 30-something pastor of a prominent Church in Manhattan.
You have five kids, a wife you cherish and your salary is equivalent to $110000 in today's dollars.
Life is good, but there's an ache in your soul.
You are witnessing thousands of immigrants flooding onto New York City's docks every day.
About half-a-million will arrive in the coming year, but they aren't being reached with the good news.
So you leave your wealthy congregation to go lead a band of self-described poor, few and weak believers, who share your passion to take the gospel to these new neighbors.
You also now have no salary, with five kids this career decision doesn't sit well with your sensible, no-nonsense wife, Maggie, who's incredible by the way.
When our founder, A. B. Simpson told his wife, Maggie, he was leaving his secure job, she asked: “where will all of this lead?”
140 some years later, we can celebrate that the question Maggie asked has led to an exponential increase in God's forever family.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Within a few years of quitting his high-powered pastorate, Simpsons started a church in New York city named The Gospel Tabernacle.
You know Times Square? the church was right here.
Simpson launched in Illustrated magazine, there were a couple issues of it.
And he founded the Missionary Training Institute or MTI, now called Nyack College, located in the heart of manhattan, It's beautiful!
He also wrote a couple books, well a lot of books.
And now today the alliance ministers throughout the United States in more than 2,000 churches, in 38 languages.
But what about outside US borders?
In 1884, Simpson commissioned the First Missionary team from MTI to take the good news to the Congo.
Over the next 37 years, 30 Alliance missionaries would sacrifice their lives in bringing the gospel to Africa.
Yet today the Alliance Churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo minister to more than 1 million Believers.
And across Africa there are now more than 2.25 million people worshipping Jesus in Alliance Churches.
In Latin America, it was a challenge to gain a foothold for the gospel due to ongoing persecution and rampant tropical disease.
On a visit to the region, Simpson nearly lost his life to illness but said: “the experience help him understand the dangers our pioneer missionaries faced.
There are now more than $379,000 Alliance Believers in 20 countries.
With pioneering efforts in the trans-jordan beginning in 1890, there are now more than 100 Alliance Churches across the Middle East.
Today, the alliance is the largest Evangelical Church in Syria.
In the late 1890s, Robert A. Jaffray left his family fortune to serve in China, French Indochina and Indonesia.
Jaffray Pioneered across the asia-pacific region to advance Christ Kingdom, but these efforts weren't met with a warm welcome.
In 1900 in China, the Boxer Rebellion resulted in the massacre of 21 Swedish C&MA missionaries and 14 children.
Their sacrifices and that of Alliance workers who persevered in Ministry in the decades following, resulted in the good news reaching the far corners of the continent.
Today there are more than 2.4 million Alliance Believers across Asia, with over 1.3 million in Vietnam alone.
In north and Central Asia, as of thirty years ago, missionary work was illegal.
And when the alliance entered Mongolia in the early 1990s, there were just three known believers.
Recently, the Alliance related network of churches celebrated its 20th anniversary.
18 additional fellowships are now part of this network.
In “gospel resistant Europe”, the alliance is seeing spiritual breakthroughs.
In Spain, Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, the UK, Ireland, Poland and Ukraine.
But that's not all.
We have Teams serving in places so dangerous we can't name them here, but we can celebrate that one minority people group now has its first church with 20 new believers.
Now, let's go back to Maggie.
Where will all of this lead?, she asked.
Was it worth it? Did it matter?
I think you can answer that question yourself.
Text:
The alliance World Fellowship consists of 6.3 million believers, worshiping in 180 languages, in 24,500 churches.