Several years ago, a couple who attended a Nazarene church in the Netherlands sensed God calling them into cross-cultural mission work, so they approached the Church of the Nazarene Eurasia Regional Office to inquire about how they could become missionaries. At the time, there was not an established structure or method for the region to deploy missionary volunteers from within the region, and the couple met with a closed door. The couple researched other mission organizations and the Nazarene church lost an opportunity.

The Eurasia Region is now opening that door to Nazarenes across the region who sense God leading them into cross-cultural ministry.

M-Power, which stands for "mission power" and is a play on the English word "empower," is a new regional initiative to identify people whom God is calling into short-term mission and match them with sites in other cities or countries where the church is ready to receive them as co-laborers in the ministry.

Missionary volunteers make up 50 percent of the 100 missionaries on the region, but only 10 percent of those missionaries originate from within Eurasia. The rest are from North America, where there is an established structure designed to identify, train, and deploy missionary volunteers around the world.

Arthur Snijders, the regional director, and his wife, Annemarie, a church planter in the Netherlands, came up with the idea for M-Power after they had their own volunteer cross-cultural experience more than two years ago. At the time she was pastoring and Arthur was the district superintendent for the Netherlands. They spent their two month sabbatical teaching and training in Bangladesh and also spent time with pastors in India.

"That experience was very positive because we longed to see with our own eyes a country where the Lord would be at work in a much more powerful way than in our own country," Annemarie said. "We felt like we were spiritually dry and we needed to experience a fresh touch of the Lord. We visited Bangladesh and that was a life transforming experience in the sense that we experienced what it was to be in another culture that was so different from our own and sense the presence of the Holy Spirit. For the people of Bangladesh, the solution to nearly every problem was prayer. As a group of leaders, they would go to the person in need to pray about the situation, and the situation would change. We felt both ashamed, but also the wonder of what it is to encounter the bride of Christ in other people and places."

Arthur decided to make missionary deployment one of the region's four priorities when he took over as director in late 2013. Annemarie became the Mobilization coordinator.

"Fortunately there is a team of people to help out because this is so big that we could never do it on our own," she said. "It is really something in which we have to work together."

A new regional website, eurasiaregion.org/volunteers, has been designed to receive applications from interested people on the region and match them with possible ministry locations.

The M-Power team is currently setting up sites that will be ready to receive missionary volunteers from the region.

"There are several criteria for ministry sites," said Nancy Firestone, the Eurasia Region personnel coordinator. "1) We want people to go into thriving ministry atmospheres where they can have a local person to coach them and also someone who will mentor them as they develop spiritually and in their service. 2) We want to be sure the ministry has been well developed and in place long enough to be a help and support.

"In the future we hope we can begin to use M-Power missionaries as church planters and start new work, but that's a long-term goal and we know it will take a little bit to get there."

Anyone on the region can fill out an application and start the exploration process of becoming a missionary volunteer. The application is in English, but might be translated in one of the region's major languages (Bangla, Arabic, Russian, and Hindi).

Positions will be available from three months to more than a year. Those whose applications are approved by the M-Power team will be required to participate in one of the region's to-be-scheduled cross-cultural orientation training events that will take place in different places on the region each year. The first training event is 15-18 May in Büsingen, Switzerland.

Once a person's application is approved and he or she has successfully completed the training and passed evaluation, he or she will be matched with a ministry location, as well as a coach and a mentor to guide through the ministry experience and provide emotional and spiritual support.

The candidate will be required to raise all funds necessary to get to and from the location and to live there during their contracted service. The region will work with each economic situation, attempting to match people to areas where it is believed they can reasonably raise the funds from their local church, district, or field to go.

There are already two approved sites for short-term missionaries on the Italy District — Catania and Florence or Rome. District Superintendent Daniel Fink is eager to see missionary volunteers come to work with his district.

"We need people that can encourage us with their presence and prayers and with whatever capacities they have that can help in our district," Fink said. "I hope and I pray that not only someone will come from outside and minister in our district, but that our young people and whosoever is willing to become a volunteer will accept the challenge (to go elsewhere)."

The two other approved sites are in Armenia and Portugal.

"We want to get the message out that we believe every country that is part of the Church of the Nazarene has people God is calling to cross-cultural ministry," Firestone said. "We know they're being called and we want them to be our missionaries."
--Church of the Nazarene Eurasia Region