Growing up, one of my favourite events at church was when missionaries visited and shared stories from faraway places. I remember sitting in the Fellowship Hall at Grand Bay Baptist Church on Sunday evenings, watching slides projected onto a screen at the front of the room. There was almost always a map showing where these missionaries lived and served.
The map told a simple, unspoken story. We were here in Canada, and we had the gospel. Mission was something that came from us and happened over there. The arrows in my mind seemed to move in one direction, from us to the rest of the world. Without realizing it, I came to understand mission as something that travelled outward from Canada to other places.
Of course, there was truth in that story. Our history includes faithful women and men who sacrificed much to cross oceans and cultures to share the gospel and serve in Jesus’ name. Through their witness churches were planted, schools and hospitals were established, and lives were transformed. But it was never the whole story. Even then, God was at work through local churches and leaders, and this has always been something we have celebrated as CBM.
Without realizing it, I came to understand mission as something that travelled outward from Canada to other places […] Today, that old map no longer fits. The arrows have changed.”
Today, that old map no longer fits. The arrows have changed. In some places, they now move in multiple directions. In others, they begin in places Canadian churches once imagined only as destinations. And in many cases, we are discovering that the map was always more complex than we were taught to see.
I see this new reality in the two regions I serve as CBM’s Director of Partnerships for the Americas and Asia. In these contexts, the church is not simply receiving mission. It is originating it, shaping it, and influencing the wider Church.
Across the Americas and Asia, this shift becomes visible when partners are not waiting for direction from Canada, but discerning, leading, sending, teaching, and strengthening one another from within their own contexts. Mission is not one region teaching and another learning. It is partners sharing wisdom across borders and discovering that each voice can help form the others.
This does not mean CBM steps back. We still go, serve, support, and respond to the invitations of our global partners. But we are learning to take our place differently: not at the head of the table, giving direction, but as one voice among many, contributing what we have while recognizing that our voice does not carry more weight simply because it comes from Canada.
We have not fully learned how to do this yet. Like many Western mission agencies, we are stepping into this future with humility and expectation.
One place this becomes visible is in Latin America. In recent years, CBM has helped create spaces where church leaders from our partners in Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic can gather and learn from one another. What makes these gatherings significant is that the wisdom in the room does not flow from Canada as the primary source. A pastor in Guatemala can share encouragement and practical support with a church leader in Cuba as they navigate the challenges of ministry under pressure. A ministry leader in Bolivia and a leader in the Dominican Republic can exchange ideas from their work with vulnerable children. Increasingly, Canadian leaders find themselves receiving as well, as partners from Latin America bear witness to resilience, community, and faithful ministry when resources are limited.
Mission is not one region teaching and another learning. It is partners sharing wisdom across borders and discovering that each voice can help form the others.”
This same reality is taking shape in Asia, where local church networks are sending missionaries across the region. In one recent CBM-supported training initiative, pastors and missionaries were prepared for cross-cultural ministry from within their own regional context. The future of mission in East Asia will not be designed in our offices in Canada. It is already emerging from churches in the region themselves.
Closer to home, churches across North America are rediscovering that mission is not something that happens somewhere else. Through networks like the Ascent Movement, which brings churches and mission agencies together around gospel witness in North America, CBM is one participant among many. In these spaces, we are learning that the church in Canada is no longer simply a sender of mission, but also a receiver, needing the insight and experience of Christians from the Majority World.
What I do believe is that the shift is real, even if our response to it is still unfolding. God’s mission has many centres because the Holy Spirit is at work…”
I do not want to overstate where we have landed, because we are only beginning his journey. CBM is a Western mission agency with a 152-year history shaped by that old map. We are still learning how to fund partnerships without controlling them, how to celebrate a partner’s success without needing credit for it, and how to participate as one voice among many.
What I do believe is that the shift is real, even if our response to it is still unfolding. God’s mission has many centres because the Holy Spirit is at work, and, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, “all over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing.” (Colossians 1:6)
The task for CBM in the next decade is not to draw ourselves at the centre of a new map, but to learn how to serve faithfully in a mission whose centre has never been us.
