In celebrating thirty years of equipping people to reach their nations, Galen Burkholder tells the story of how Global Disciples began. The following is taken from Global Disciples Approach, which outlines our philosophy and model for training and equipping churches around the world.

My perspective on global mission has changed. I used to think of ‘world missions’ as something that we did from the West for the rest of the world. It’s embarrassing to admit that because it’s so far from the perspective I have today. But that’s where my journey began.

      In 1984, I accepted the invitation to give leadership to a program called Youth Evangelism Service (YES). Our focus was on equipping North American young adults to ‘do missions’ around the world. Jesus had given us the Great Commission, and I was passionate to see us get the job done!

      Within ten years we had provided intensive discipleship-mission training for over 840 young adults. Participants spent three months in training followed by a 4- to 8-month assignment serving alongside the Body of Christ around the world.

      We were thrilled to see the positive impact these training and outreach experiences had on the lives of the young adults. Most grew in their relationship with the Lord and were profoundly impacted by their cross-cultural experiences. But increasingly I felt unsettled.

      We were providing great experiences for young adults who had many opportunities for training and exposure. But those with the greatest potential to make an impact were the young leaders living in the areas where our teams served! These local believers didn’t have the same opportunities to be equipped. I felt called to do something to change that, but how?

      Year after year as I visited the national church leaders who hosted YES teams around the world, I heard the same questions repeatedly:

      “Could you help us train our young people to be disciples who go and make disciples?”

      “Could you help us train our own leaders?”

      “Could you help us find a way to send out our own mission workers to places where people still have not heard the Good News of Jesus?”

COULD OUR PEOPLE HAVE THESE OPPORTUNITIES?

      When church leaders asked these questions, I would explain we’d be glad to share our training materials with them. We talked about how we did the training, and I encouraged them to start their own discipleship-mission training. But there were always reasons—usually good reasons—it didn’t happen. To most of them, it didn’t seem possible.

      These church leaders in Africa, Asia, and Latin America talked about their desire to send out their own mission workers. Sometimes they told stories of how their churches were started by missionaries who came from distant places to share the Gospel with them.

      They were often aware of ethnic groups, tribes, isolated villages, or urban neighborhoods where there was no church or witness to the Good News of Jesus. Sometimes they told how they had tried to send workers to these areas but had failed.

      Others would say they couldn’t afford to send their own mission workers. So, I often went to the Book of Acts and talked about how the Apostle Paul went as a cross-cultural mission worker. He had a portable business to help cover the expenses. Some were intrigued by the idea; others were not.

      Often the church leaders would talk about their desire to train and equip their own leaders. Some asked, “Would you be willing to help us train our most promising young leaders here rather than us sending them off to America or Europe or Australia?”

      They had many stories of young leaders sent away for university or seminary who never came back. Or if they did return, they felt overqualified to work with the church. Instead, they would get a good paying job with an international Non-Government Organization (NGO).

THE FUTURE IS IN THEIR HANDS

      By 1989, I was absolutely convinced we needed to think differently about our global mission responsibilities. The Great Commission Jesus gave us was not going to be fulfilled by sending workers from North American churches. There are African, Asian, and Latin American churches in close proximity to many of the unreached people groups.

      Less than 5% of the world’s population lives in the United States and Canada. But almost 60% of the world’s people are Asian and 17% are African. So, we in the West needed to seriously rethink our global mission strategies. It was not okay to just keep doing the same thing.

      After all, in 1900, about 80% of all Christians lived in Europe and North America. By contrast today about two-thirds of all disciples of Jesus Christ live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.¹

      Clearly the center of gravity in the global Body of Christ had shifted from the West to the East—and from the North to the South.

      Without question, this huge shift places the future of the Church and its global mission in the hands of brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia and Latin America. So how could we encourage and help empower these churches to take their rightful place in fulfilling the global mission Jesus had entrusted to all of us?

A MODEST IDEA FOR WORKING TOGETHER

      With these questions in mind, I headed for East Africa in 1989. My morning flight was delayed until evening, so I had all day to wait in the airport. I knew I would be asked the same question about training young leaders and mission workers when I arrived in Tanzania. And I wasn’t satisfied in giving the same answers I had for the last four years.

      So, in a dusty unused corner of an airport corridor, I settled in to pray, seeking God and desperate for direction. I poured out my heart and listened. Prayed and waited. Then mid-afternoon God gave me an idea!

      What if we began a training co-op? Like a farming co-op in which everyone owns their own farm, but they work together for greater effectiveness and efficiency. I began writing quickly.

      The ideas just flowed. It was amazing. I remember wiping tears from my eyes as I finished writing. It was unlike anything I had experienced before.

AFRICAN LEADERS EXCITED—NOT SO LEADERS BACK HOME

      Now I was eager to sit down with the church leaders from Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia! This simple little idea was stirring up an unusual level of passion in me.

      I wondered how the African leaders would respond. And I wondered how much I should even say about the idea, since I hadn’t had an opportunity to test it with my leaders back home. I fell asleep on the plane praying about that.

      When we finally landed, I was whisked off to a youth retreat with one of our YES teams. After the weekend, I sat down with leaders from the region. We discussed and evaluated the teams they had hosted and made plans for the coming year.

      Then came the anticipated question, “Do you have any idea how you could help us provide this kind of training for young leaders here?”

      I explained my experience in the airport and briefly outlined the idea the Holy Spirit had placed in my mind. I don’t remember what they said in response, only that everyone started talking on top of each other in excitement! I tried to answer their questions and reminded them repeatedly this was only an idea; it hadn’t been tested with anyone on our leadership team.

      When I returned home, I shared the idea with the leaders in our Discipleship Ministries department and our mission agency’s Executive Team. Both groups thought it was worth pursuing, and a few weeks later I presented it to our Board of Directors. The response was much less favorable. They had many questions: How would we pay for this? Who would have time to work at it? In what ways would this interfere with our current priorities?

      All good questions, but within about 15 minutes it became clear this was not the right time or place for the idea. So, I took the proposal back to my office, labeled a file with “International Training Co-op,” and put it in a drawer.

SEVEN YEARS OF WAITING AND PRAYER

      For the next seven years, I pulled out that proposal regularly, prayed about it, and put it back in its place. As time went on, a few friends and I began to take occasional days to fast and pray about the idea.

      Somehow my conviction grew about the importance of this idea. But I was busy with other responsibilities and felt a deep sense of peace that, at the right time, things would come together.

      In time I had the opportunity for a 5-month sabbatical for additional study, refreshment, and preparation for more effective ministry. I prepared a proposal to visit 12 groups of churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America which were most interested in developing their own training programs. The Board approved my proposal, and I was thrilled. But I still had several months of work to do.

      One priority before my sabbatical was to gather a few leaders I had come to know from other discipleship-mission training programs. I wanted them to do several days teaching at our three YES training locations. Then I arranged for six of us to spend a day at a nearby prayer cottage. We set the dates for late October 1995.

      I had one more administrative trip to take in early October before starting my sabbatical in January. But something was about to happen on that trip that would change my life forever.

AN EARLY MORNING SURPRISE

      For years, my habit has been to go out early in the morning to walk and pray. The Lord’s Prayer serves as an outline for these times. And I love these times alone with the Lord.

      One morning, during my prayer walk and about halfway through my travels, the Holy Spirit spoke in what I experienced as an audible voice: “I want you to quit your job.” I was startled. I quickly looked around to see who was talking to me—and then realized what was going on.

      I remember trembling as I walked back to my little room. I sat down at the small table and wrote a resignation letter, explaining that God was calling me to pursue the idea He gave me seven years earlier.

      As I wrote, questions swirled in my head. This was not what I had anticipated. I always assumed this idea for an international training co-op would be a collaborative effort between various mission organizations, not a separate or distinctive ministry on its own. I had no desire to be ‘the founder’.

      I wanted to promote unity in the Body of Christ—to get people, churches, denominations, networks, businesses, and organizations working together to fulfill the mission Jesus entrusted to us. Yet amid all my questions, and overwhelmed with how the Holy Spirit had spoken, I felt a peace I couldn’t explain.

      So, I prayed and said, “God, if this is truly what you want me to do, I’m asking that you speak about this to Marie, my wife, before I do. And I ask that you confirm this with the President of our mission board and the four leaders in our Discipleship Ministries department.”

      I decided not to talk with anyone about this until I got home. I needed some time to ponder and pray about it all.

GOD BRINGS THE NEEDED CONFIRMATION

      A week later my wife, Marie, met me at the Philadelphia airport. She had arranged for someone to be with our three children, then ages 6, 10 and 12. We stopped for a meal on the way home.

      We caught up on the events of the past few weeks, how the children were doing, and highlights of my travels. Then I said, “Marie, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but one morning as I was walking and praying during my trip, God spoke clearly and told me to quit my job.”

      The first words out of her mouth were, “Yeah, I know.”

      Startled, I said, “You know what?”

      “Well,” she explained, “I was having my devotional time one morning last week and, out of what I was reading, I sensed God saying, ‘You need to get ready for a big change.’ And this sounds like a big change.”

      The next day I stopped by the office to give my resignation letter to the President of the mission agency. When I explained what it was about, he said, “If that’s what you’re called to do, we can do it here. We can start a new department with this as the focus.”

      Well, that certainly sounded easier than what I anticipated. But the one thing the Holy Spirit had spoken clearly is, “I want you to quit your job.” I suggested to him that we both spend a few days praying about it.

      The next day he stopped by my office and explained that as he prayed about it, he clearly sensed that I should leave, and I had his full support. For 15 years, the late Richard Showalter, my former boss, a mentor, and a dear friend, served faithfully on our Global Disciples Board of Directors.

      The four leaders in the Discipleship Ministries department I supervised unanimously expressed their support for this step of faith. They knew how I had carried this vision in my heart over the years.

BORN OUT OF BROKENNESS

      I still had the day scheduled at the prayer cottage with the leaders from other discipleship training programs.

      We started our morning by getting to know each other over coffee and tea. Then we put our chairs in a circle and spent time praying together. As we began to pray, one of the leaders slipped off his chair onto his knees.

      Soon he was lying on the floor weeping. As he regained his composure, he explained the Holy Spirit was convicting him of their denomination’s pride and arrogance—considering their perspective and doctrine as more correct than anyone else’s. He felt like God was calling him to repent for his denomination.

      As he repented, the Holy Spirit convicted each of us in similar ways. The next hour or two was spent in repentance and praying for one another. Out of our brokenness, repentance, and prayer, God was birthing something new.

      Our tendencies to compete and compare ourselves or the training programs we directed faded away. And God knit our hearts together in remarkable ways.

      We spent much of the day talking about the similar requests we each heard from the churches to which we sent our teams internationally. How could we assist them with training and mobilizing their workers?

      It seemed like the time to tell them I had just resigned from my job—and about the vision God had placed on my heart. So, I suggested we spend a few minutes praying together and then I had something I wanted to tell them.

      As we began to pray one of the brothers spoke up, and said, “God gave me a picture in my mind of you.” He looked at me and continued, “You had a sign on your forehead which said ‘Ambassador’.

      “I feel like I’m supposed ask you if you would be willing to serve as our Ambassador to work with these clusters of churches around the world so they can train and send out their people,” he concluded.

      “Have you heard that I resigned from my job?” I asked. He said no. Then I shared with the whole group the vision God had placed on my heart for an international training cooperative.

      Global Disciples was born that day, and the leaders in that room became four of the five charter members of the Alliance we formed. In the weeks that followed, those charter members made and confirmed five commitments:

1. To share any discipleship-mission training materials they had developed with others who were committed to starting similar training programs around the world—without cost or copyright restrictions.

2. To serve as mentors to the directors of new discipleship-mission training programs that would emerge from this Alliance.

3. To take one day a month to fast and pray for each other and for the other new training programs that would develop around the world.

4. To meet once a year with one another and the directors of new training programs that would develop in other nations. This would be a time to pray, worship, and learn from one another.

5. To give generously (at least 2% of our program budgets) to a common fund to provide seed funds for new training programs being launched. But we would never give seed funds of more than 49%,² so each new program would be locally owned from the beginning.

FROM A SMALL, SIMPLE BEGINNING

      Global Disciples was launched in January 1996, with five charter members in the newly-formed Alliance—three from the US, one from Canada, and one from Ethiopia. And that list of five commitments provided the initial framework.

As 2026 began, over 4,000 training programs in more than 70 nations are equipping and sending out workers to multiply disciples among least-reached people.

      We are humbled and deeply grateful for the way God has been using this simple approach to multiply thousands of new fellowships of believers in least-reached areas around the world.

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SOURCE:  Chapter 1, Global Disciples Approach, pages 9-19, copyright 2016, 2024 revision.

¹Christianity in Global Context: Trends and Statistics, Todd M. Johnson, Ph.D., Director, Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Prepared for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

²This has been adjusted since the original commitment in 1996. Global Disciples now provides a maximum of 45% towards program expenses. The church cluster covers 55% or more of the funds needed.

³2024 Annual Report, published by Global Disciples and available for review on our Financials page at globaldisciples.org