In 2024, the Seventh-day Adventist Church commemorated the 150th anniversary of J.N. Andrews, the first official Seventh-day Adventist missionary who landed here in Switzerland to share the Adventist message. I use the word "commemorate" because there really was nothing to celebrate. If he came back to life today, I think he would be surprised and shocked that we are still here.

After his pioneering mission work, there was a golden era of Adventist mission. And missionaries started crisscrossing the globe, taking the good news of Jesus wherever they went.

But you know, just over 100 years later, church leaders came together to pray together, to plan together, and they got out the world map. This was in the 1980s, and they saw some areas of the world where the Adventist church was strong, other places where it was relatively weak, and other places where it just didn't exist. And from that was born Global Mission.

It was at the General Conference session in Indianapolis in 1990 that Global Mission was officially voted by the World Church. It was a groundbreaking vote because for the first time we started to think not just in terms of geography in our mission, but also in terms of people groups. We started to think not only of other Christians, but also of people from other world religions. The focus was 100% on starting new groups of believers, church planting, following Christ's method of ministry. And this is what Global Mission has been doing for the past 35 years.

We praise God for the wonderful things that have happened since Global Mission began. Literally thousands of new groups have been planted. So many new people groups have been entered. And we've also entered entirely new countries.

I think of India, where two Global Mission pioneers were rejected in the city they entered. Undaunted, they started worshipping groups in two nearby towns. Later, they tried again in the first city, and this time they started a church. And this church started a school and planted four new worshipping groups. And each one of those new groups planted even more groups. And so the gospel work has multiplied.

And we see this happening all around the world. Since Global Mission began, nearly 128,000 new churches and companies have been established. These aren’t just statistics on a page, these are real life men and women, boys and girls, families, millions of people who have found hope in Jesus Christ.

Of course, the mission challenge is daunting. When we look at the three Mission Refocus windows. When we look at the vast population groups. But this is God’s mission. He’s invited us to participate with Him in that mission. To start new groups of believers and make disciples for Him.