Our mission is to join God in His work of transforming ordinary people into fully devoted followers of Christ. We use this baseball diamond to illustrate the pathway people can follow on our way to full devotion to Christ.
Love for God moves us to grow in Christ, serve the church and reach the world – with the ultimate purpose of glorifying God. Our home plate is focused on reaching the world with the good news of Jesus Christ.
- “The win” for us is when someone from Oakwood invites a friend or neighbor to our worship service or an outreach event (like our upcoming Fall Festival!).
- “The win” is when one of our people takes a week off of work to go overseas on a short term missions trip to share the gospel.
- “The win” is when one of our people follows the Spirit’s leading to have coffee or lunch with a co-worker or friend to see where they are spiritually and point them to Jesus.
- “The win” is when a believer steps out in faith to give a sacrificial gift in support of a missionary who is bringing the Gospel to the nations.
This is why we are participating in Revive Florida. This is why 15% of our church budget goes to local outreach and global missions – and why we prayerfully desire to increase that percentage over the next few years.
Click here to visit joshuaproject.net and learn about Frontier People Groups – “Unreached People Groups with 0.1% or fewer Christian of any kind, and no known gospel movement. There are about 4,751 Frontier People Groups with total population 1,848,341,000. One fourth of the world lives in FPGs and have almost no chance of hearing about Jesus from someone in their own people group.”
Check out this prayer guide for the 31 largest Frontier People Groups. Let’s pray for these people groups, that the Lord will raise up workers to go to them and open doors and hearts to respond to the Gospel and begin a movement in them.
It is overwhelming to think that 25% of the people in the world today have virtually no access to the Gospel. But when we focus on the 31 suddenly the task begins to seem finish-able. If churches and missions agencies will focus on reaching these large and hard to reach frontier groups representing nearly half of the remaining unengaged people groups, movements from within them would likely spill over to reach the rest of the remaining frontier people groups.
Check out this message on the Great Commission from Pastor David Platt in Texas. (Podcast here.) “The remaining unreached people groups are unreached because they are hard to reach. If it were easy it would already be done.”
The Great Commission is not hard to understand it is simply a matter of committing ourselves as believers and as churches to obeying it. We have been charged by our Savior and King to proclaim the Gospel in all nations and to make disciples from every tribe. Jesus promises to be with us every step of the way. He has given His Holy Spirit to guide and empower us. And He has entrusted us with the only message by which people can be saved.
Heavenly Father, please awaken your church to the urgent need to complete your Great Commission. Give us your heart for the millions upon millions of people still lost in darkness with no access to the light of the Gospel. Fill us with faith so that we joyfully step out of our fear and boldly move forward, side by side with Bible-believing disciples all over the world to reach into these hardest to reach areas. May Jesus Christ be glorified as we sacrifice our own plans and comforts so that people all over the world might be saved.