Last Change: 07/01/2005

FCCO’S GLOBAL OUTREACH REPORT

December 31, 2010

We thank our Missionary Lord for choosing to use His church here in Ossipee to help build His church universal—here in our Lakes Region, elsewhere in the USA, and in those remote places throughout God’s world that He has prepared for us to go. We continue to ask His forgiveness for the times we fail to invest joyfully in His coming kingdom; at the same time, we marvel at the wonderful ways He has worked in and through us.

When we set out in 2005 to focus, intentionally, on being a disciple-making church we had been blessed with many talented believers, excellent facilities, and abundant financial resources. Through our carefully crafted training efforts, which quickly matched classroom learning with “in-the-harvest-field” experience, we have developed a skillful army of missionaries. Aided indispensably by the Holy Spirit, we can now celebrate the harvest that glorifies our Father:

1. FCCO has nearly doubled in size to just over 1,000 in attendance each week; of those added to our number, more than 130 are new believers; they are being assimilated effectively and efficiently into our missionary force; e.g., each of our 19 Adult Fellowship Groups meeting on Sunday has a mission leader as part of its leadership team, and this year 10 of these 19 mission leaders come from our new believer group. Mary captured well their spirit when she said at a recent GO Team seminar: “The joy I had in helping Susan come to Christ brings tears to my eyes now just trying to tell about it.”

2. In 2005, we could count no full-time missionary that we knew was raised up in FCCO; now we have 6 serving in areas FCCO, our missionary, and the mission agency have strategically chosen. Our congregation commits to providing at least the majority of the support for each of these 6 homegrown missionaries. Each of the 6 is also supported in many ways by a team of our members who have chosen to serve as senders. The total of those serving in these sender groups is 64. In addition, our 7 other full-time missionaries, funded at minimum by $8,000 each from the 20% of our operations budget, are supported by 7 sender groups with a total membership of 69.

3. During the past year, we have sent out 12 short-term teams, ranging in size from 2 to 14. This range in size has been typical for the last 5 years, except for a team of 20 in 2006 who went to Peru to distribute the newly translated Bibles with our missionaries Oscar and Janet Huarac. Two of our current year’s teams each had 8 of our youth plus 2 adult sponsors for a total of 20. Four of the teams were mixed youth and adults with a total of 43. And 6 of the teams had only adults with a total of 27. Our short-term teams have helped to build enduring, multiplying churches not only in Haiti (where we had a strong start prior to 2005), but also in the Philippines and Africa. We are exploring the possibility of extending to other countries.

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4. Our expenditures in cross cultural mission this year have been supported well by the income gleaned from 20% of our operating budget, by the $100,000 tithe from our capital campaign, and by the $85,000 special offerings of our congregation.

5. We continue to be blessed by the wisdom and dedication of our partners: four other regional churches, who share our joy in extending God’s kingdom.

6. We thank God for the ongoing assistance of International Teams, T-Net, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary as we seek to become better and better at obeying our Lord’s great commission.