The Church has always sent missionaries into unreached parts of the world for the sake of spreading the gospel. However, in the 2020s, the traditional model of Christian missions is facing new challenges.
Traditional missions work requires significant infrastructure and resources—sending staff, forming oversight and development committees, partnering with missions agencies, and supporting missionaries. These are necessary for traditional missions.
Yet in God’s providence, the center of Christianity has massively shifted in the last 100 years. Nearly 70% of Christians live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And almost half of all full-time missionaries are sent by non-Western countries.
We need a fundamentally new missions paradigm to come alongside the traditional model - one that propels the expansion of God's people on earth by creating partnerships with indigenous leaders—developing leaders, networks, and resources to support the spread of the gospel.
LEADING CHANGE IN GLOBAL MISSIONS
Recognizing this global shift, Neopolis is focused on helping the traditional church grow and flourish under a new missions paradigm. We come alongside churches and leaders to build partnerships to plant new churches, strengthen and renew existing churches, and encourage and equip pastors and leaders in their local communities.
We’re invested in training and mentoring in three areas:
PREACHING
Providing leaders with resources to preach with faithfulness and integrity, for the glory of God and the hope of the church.
PASTORING
Equipping leaders to be examples of love and compassion, shepherding their people in the way of the Good Shepherd.
PLANTING
Partnering with leaders to plant and revitalize churches that are alive and effective in spreading the Good News.
-
The Mission of Neopolis is simple: We spread the growth of the gospel in cities by building leaders and churches. We believe that the calling of the local church to make disciples of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18-20) should be done in and from cities of the world – radiating to the ends of the earth, for his glory.
-
To see cities and the world transformed by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
-
We use a three-prong strategy:
Developing LEADERS (leadership pipelines)
Developing NETWORKS (regional and city networks)
Developing RESOURCES (literature and funding)
-
Preaching to the glory of God
Pastoring to the glory of God
Planting to the glory of God
The story of neopolis
A Foundation of friendship
Neopolis began in friendship and with a shared vision for ministry and the world. Five friends gathered in 2017 at the 500th-anniversary celebration of the Protestant Reformation at The Gospel Coalition in Indianapolis and pledged to launch a new mission initiative to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.
Around a table, they discussed their deep devotion to Christ and his word and lamented their dissatisfaction with the status quo of missions. They recounted the histories and streams of global missions that had centralized Western ambition and left local indigenous churches and leaders by the wayside. They acknowledged that few mission models seemed to take into account the tremendous shift of Christianity to the Global South. They recognized the growing need for global partnerships that crossed ethnic, geographic, and linguistic barriers.
The question in front of them was, “Given the wealth of resources, what role does the Western church play in world missions today?” The directive was clear: to children in the slums of Nairobi, to impoverished Cubans in Havana, to the unreached in secularized Europe, throughout the massive continent of Asia, to where gospel resources are needed most. On that April spring day, Jay Thomas, Arthur Jackson, Jon Nielson, Oscar Leiva, and Jon Dennis began a mission to renew and reform the work of global gospel partnership—the work of Neopolis had begun.
