Missions Upside Down

The six-part video study we’ve called “Missions Upside Down” was several years in the making. Researching, filming, editing, and all the other post-production finishes took a total of five years to complete; however, the genesis for this project started long before that.

For me personally, I got involved in foreign missions in 2007 when I met a pastor from Liberia while I was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia adopting my son, Judah. This Liberian pastor’s life and story inspired me to the point that we made a promise to each other to explore opportunities to advance the Gospel despite living worlds apart—he in the poorest English-speaking country in the world and me in the richest. And perhaps together, by God’s grace, we could help Liberia rebuild after nearly 15 years of back-to-back civil wars.

We started with developing a sustainable system of financial support for 69 war orphans that his brother and sister-in-law had taken in when those kids had nowhere to go because the country’s social support systems and international assistance groups had all collapsed or left. One opportunity led to another and orphan care led to health programs, educational opportunities, improved housing, church planting, radio ministries, community development, agricultural projects, and microfinancing programs. Today, many of those same kids are now graduating college and becoming pastors, teachers, social workers, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

As these systems began to grow in size and scope, I just assumed that I would quit my job at Dordt and become a missionary in Liberia. However, when I started to do the preliminary work around fund raising, I quickly realized that the cost for me and my family to go overseas was comparable to hiring 50 or more Liberian pastors who were already in country and knew the culture, the tribal dialects, and possessed the ability to relate to their countrymen in ways that not even decades overseas could have accomplished for me. So, in the end, I resolved to commit to missions by not going. Rather, I would commit to developing support structures here in the US to enhance their work. It was a missional epiphany for me—to realize that the effectiveness and stewardship of supporting indigenous leaders would be so much more effective than anything I could accomplish.

In 2018, I was introduced to a fascinating couple from California who had invested heavily in overseas missions for decades and had arrived at many of the same conclusions that I had regarding effectiveness and stewardship in missions. They agreed to fund this video project so that we could help start more of a change within the conversations around missions, encouraging models of indigenous support and not just sending missionaries from the West to the rest.

Throughout the video and study series, we try to honor the stories of missionaries who have gone overseas and given at great sacrifice in answer to the call of the Great Commission. After all, we wouldn’t be where we are today in the global growth of the Church without them. But, we also want churches, deacons, missions committees, and donors today to ask new questions about the models for missions that will be the most effective in the twenty-first century and beyond.

The reality is that Christianity now has a foothold in countries all over the globe and there are leaders within those countries and cultures who are passionate about reaching their neighbors and the nations with the Gospel. So, with a strong Christian presence in so many places around the globe now, we can (and should) be rethinking about the most effective and most stewardly ways of engaging missions into the future.

It is our hope and prayer that people will find these videos inspiring, instructional, and challenging. And maybe, a few more years from now, because of this project, churches and individuals will have a larger portion of their giving toward missions being directed toward supporting indigenous leaders hard at work in places all over the world, laboring on behalf of the Church and spreading the Gospel even faster.

About Missions Upside Down:

Aaron Baart, chief of staff and dean of chapel at Dordt University, and Mark Volkers, instructor of digital media production, have spent the past five years working on Missions Upside Down (MUD), a 6-part video series aimed at reigniting the Church’s passion for the Great Commission. The series, co-produced by Baart and Volkers, follows Baart as he travels the world, exploring past and present missionary stories, showcasing global missions, and identifying future needs.