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While women continue to sacrifice immensely for God’s mission, they are victims of sexism and marginalization.

It is a fundamental principle of church-planting movements that workers for the harvest are in the harvest (Garrison 2004, 172; Cole 2005, 149). We have the privilege of living in a time when more and more missionaries are emerging from the harvest itself.

The phenomenon of globalization is impacting all sectors of society, and mission agencies are no exception. Of course, mission agencies have always been concerned with culture—we have been talking about cross-cultural communication and strategies for reaching out across cultures for as long as we’ve existed

The Christian religion has been developed mainly from scriptural sources—the writings that form the Bible. Secondary sources have included such works as the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Formula, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Not everything in our Bibles is inspired. The words certainly are, but the chapters, verses, footnotes, references, and maps are not. This is particularly true when it comes to Paul’s missionary journeys.

A few years ago the founder of our training program said, “We have a lot of people who come to us with a desire to serve God internationally, but not all end up overseas. How can we help people get to the mission field? What things are helpful? What things hinder? How can we help address these issues?” These simple questions led to a search for how to appropriately steward the gifts and resources of people God has called and support them all the way into long-term missions. Out of these simple questions, the LAUNCH Survey was born.