What is this document?
This document is for mission mobilizers, but it may help everyone to understand Strategic Sending better. But it will not convince you of the value of Strategic Sending.
When you have read this and prayed, we hope that you will be able to explain what Strategic Sending is. We pray that you will also know how to use Strategic Sending to help mobilize churches for mission.
What Strategic Sending Is
The heart of Strategic Sending is a message to local churches to encourage the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. The message is in the form of a letter from the Strategic Sending Team. There are 85 different letters for churches in 85 different regions. Every church in the world has one special letter. For instance, one of the 85 letters is specifically for the churches in France.
Strategic Sending “shrinks the task” of global mission for each local church. This makes it easier for the local church to join in our global mission. We do this systematically. At a global level, we have analysed where the church is, where the world is and some simple affinities between different regions of the world. The two main affinities are the shared familiarity with a global language, and the physical proximity.
Most of the wording in each letter is the same as all the others. There are three crucial differences. We do not say how much attention each church should give to its local area. But we recommend a rough percentage of effort to devote to their own region versus further away. This varies widely. We encourage churches in places like Afghanistan to give 98% of their attention to their own region and only 2% abroad. On the other hand we encourage churches in high-evangelical places like South-East Nigeria to devote only 15% on their own region and 85% elsewhere.
Secondly, we provide a list of other regions that need prayer and sending. It can be a short list. It is often only one region. It can be a long one but it is always only a small proportion of the world.
Finally, for high-evangelical regions only, we may give a warning that we are not encouraging others to help them with the gospel.
There is overlap in the assignments. If the churches in one region pray for or send to a needy region, there will be others who will be encouraged to do it.
What Strategic Sending is Not
Strategic Sending is only a very small part of mission mobilization. It will not, in itself, mobilize the churches. You still need to work through the usual mobilization phases of Discovery, Development and Deployment. Strategic Sending is about geographical locations and directions. It says nothing about the methods of mission. It does not explain the importance and complexity of learning language and immersion in culture. It does not explicitly encourage you to going where there is no church and there are no disciples. It says nothing of disciple-making movements, of unreached peoples, of the primacy of evangelism or of holistic mission.
Strategic Sending is not compulsory. There may be good reasons for sending in other directions, following the Holy Spirit. You do not need to sign up. We welcome news and feedback. But there will be no management or monitoring.
How to Use Strategic Sending
Strategic Sending can inform and influence every stage of mobilization. For instance, when you choose inspirational examples of mission, they can be in line with the directions in the letter. You can choose to connect churches with agencies that are already at work in the encouraged directions.
We recommend that at some point you slowly and deliberately read the appropriate letter aloud without any visual distractions. The point at which you do this is your decision. After that make sure that the full text is available for people to read and pray through in their own time.
Other Helpful Materials
We have very few materials available yet. Our website will be StrategicSending.com. It is not yet ready (at July 2025). But you can get these materials already by emailing your request to strategicsending@gmail.com.
Letters to Churches
We can send you the specific one or two that you require.
The Story of Strategic Sending
This is the story of how this concept developed. It is not essential. It may be of interest to you and your audience.
Missiology Background
There are three very important articles published on the Lausanne Movement website. They will help you to understand the reasons for Strategic Sending.
https://lausanne.org/about/blog/gods-mission-needs-the-right-message https://lausanne.org/about/blog/gods-mission-needs-to-go-to-the-whole-world
Thank You for Helping Us
We are at a very early stage in Strategic Sending. We need your help. Let us know how you use this. We need feedback on this guide and on Strategic Sending in general. What is good? What is wrong? What does and doesn’t work well in practice? Send reports, comments and questions to StrategicSending@gmail.com. Thank you and may God lead us forward together.