About Canadian Baptist Ministries
In 1874, John and Mary McLaurin left Canada for India.
The journey represented a familiar nineteenth-century picture of missions.
A missionary leaves home.
Crosses an ocean.
Learns another language.
Enters another culture.
Preaches the Gospel.
Builds churches.
More than 150 years later, Canadian Baptist Ministries still sends people across cultures and still believes deeply in proclaiming Jesus Christ.
But its understanding of global mission has grown considerably wider.
Today, CBM may help equip a pastor.
Support a church planter.
Respond after a disaster.
Help a family overcome poverty.
Protect a vulnerable child.
Strengthen a farmer's livelihood.
Promote peace in a community fractured by conflict.
Or help Christians confront injustice affecting their neighbors.
CBM has a word for holding all of that together.
Integral Mission.
Don't Separate the Gospel From the Person
Christian mission can sometimes become divided into two camps.
One emphasizes evangelism.
Preach Christ.
Make disciples.
Plant churches.
The other emphasizes human need.
Feed people.
Address poverty.
Pursue justice.
Care for the vulnerable.
CBM believes that division creates a false choice.
Look at Jesus.
He proclaimed the Kingdom of God while entering people's suffering.
He taught.
He healed.
He forgave.
He fed.
He confronted injustice.
He restored people to community.
The message and the action belonged together.
CBM therefore describes mission as the proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel.
People need reconciliation with God.
They also need food, shelter, relationships, physical and mental health, dignity, safety, and communities where they can flourish.
The Gospel speaks to the whole person.
Mission should too.
Put the Local Church at the Center
CBM doesn't want the international mission agency to become the hero of every story.
The local church matters more.
A congregation in Kenya understands its community in ways a Canadian organization cannot.
Christians in Lebanon know the pressures surrounding their neighbors.
Church leaders in India understand languages, histories, social structures, and religious realities that outsiders may spend years learning.
So CBM works through partnership.
Instead of asking only what Canadian Christians can bring to another country, it asks what God is already doing through the Church there.
Then partnership begins.
That might involve theological education.
Leadership development.
Church planting.
Community programs.
Funding.
Technical expertise.
Prayer.
Or relationships connecting churches across borders.
CBM brings resources to the table.
Its partners bring resources too.
Move From Mission To People Toward Mission With People
This represents an important change in global Christianity.
For generations, mission was often pictured as moving in one direction:
from the West to the rest of the world.
But Christianity has become profoundly global.
Churches across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East aren't simply mission fields.
They are missionary churches.
They have theologians.
Pastors.
Evangelists.
Church planters.
Development specialists.
Leaders.
And lessons Canadian Christians need to learn.
CBM increasingly describes global mission as mutual.
A Canadian church can strengthen a church in another country.
That church can strengthen the Canadian church too.
Everyone has something to give.
Everyone has something to receive.
Build the Church
The local church remains central because CBM believes God uses churches to bring hope and healing into communities.
That requires healthy leaders.
CBM helps provide theological education, scholarships, seminary support, pastoral development, and leadership training.
It supports missionaries.
Church planting.
Discipleship.
Evangelism.
The objective isn't simply creating larger institutions.
It's helping churches become communities capable of faithfully representing Christ where God has placed them.
A healthy church doesn't turn inward.
It begins looking outward.
Let the Church See the Poverty Around It
Sometimes the need outside the church doors is economic.
A family can't generate enough income.
A farmer's harvest fails.
Young adults lack opportunities.
Women encounter barriers preventing them from providing for their families.
CBM partners with churches and organizations addressing those realities.
But poverty alleviation isn't merely handing someone something and walking away.
Long-term transformation means helping people develop greater resilience, opportunity, skills, and independence.
The local church can become part of that process.
Not simply as a place where people receive charity.
As a community where people discover dignity, relationships, hope, and practical support.
Stand With Children Who Are Vulnerable
Children can experience poverty more intensely than almost anyone.
Food insecurity affects development.
Family instability creates vulnerability.
Limited education narrows future opportunities.
Exploitation can steal childhood altogether.
That's why Kids at Risk is one of CBM's major causes.
Its partners work with vulnerable children and families in ways appropriate to their local communities.
Meanwhile, CBM helps Canadian children understand global mission through resources such as Kids Care.
That creates another kind of connection.
Children in Canada learn that God's mission isn't something reserved for adults.
They belong to the story too.
Respond When Crisis Changes Everything
Some needs develop slowly.
Others arrive overnight.
War.
Flooding.
Earthquakes.
Displacement.
Political instability.
Food shortages.
When crisis comes, local churches often become important centers of response because they're already part of the community.
They know the people.
They know the roads.
They understand the language.
They often know which families are most vulnerable.
CBM can help strengthen those existing networks.
The objective isn't merely delivering emergency assistance from Canada.
It's helping locally rooted partners respond effectively where they're already serving.
Justice Belongs Inside Mission Too
CBM's understanding of the Gospel also brings it into questions of justice.
People can become trapped by systems larger than themselves.
Ethnic conflict.
Exploitation.
Gender inequality.
Discrimination.
Violence.
Corruption.
Environmental pressures.
Addressing those realities can be uncomfortable.
But CBM believes Christian mission cannot speak about human dignity while ignoring circumstances that repeatedly strip people of it.
Justice therefore becomes another expression of loving your neighbor.
Think in Terms of a Broken World Made New
CBM's vision is surprisingly short:
A broken world made new.
That brokenness appears everywhere.
Between people and God.
Between people and one another.
Inside communities.
Within unjust structures.
And even in humanity's relationship with creation.
CBM understands God's mission as restoration across those relationships.
That means Christian mission cannot be reduced to one program.
A pastor receiving theological training can be part of restoration.
So can a farmer developing a sustainable livelihood.
A church responding to refugees.
A child gaining an education.
A congregation confronting violence.
A missionary sharing Christ.
A community receiving emergency assistance.
Different expressions.
One mission.
Word and Deed Belong Together
CBM eventually coined its own expression for this conviction:
Wordeed.
Word.
Deed.
Together.
It's an unusual word, but that's intentional.
Separating the two should feel unnatural.
If Christians proclaim God's love without showing it, something is missing.
If they serve people while never bearing witness to the hope motivating that service, something is missing there too.
CBM wants the Church to become the heart, hands, and voice of God in the world.
Speak the Gospel.
Live the Gospel.
Let one give credibility and meaning to the other.
Mission Doesn't Belong to Canada
Perhaps one of the biggest changes across CBM's 150-year story is the understanding of who the missionary is.
The early story involved Canadians sailing outward.
Today's story is considerably more interconnected.
Missionaries can come from anywhere.
Churches in Africa can send missionaries.
Asian Christians can train other Christians.
Latin American churches can teach Canadian congregations.
Middle Eastern believers can offer perspectives on faithfulness that Christians living in comfortable environments desperately need to hear.
God's mission doesn't belong to one country.
Neither does leadership within it.
Canadian Baptist Ministries still carries Canada in its name.
But the future it envisions is a global Church walking together.
At the heart of Canadian Baptist Ministries is the conviction that the Gospel should be both heard and seen. For more than 150 years, Canadian Baptists have participated in global mission, but today's CBM increasingly understands that mission as partnership rather than one-way assistance. Through local churches across the world, it helps proclaim Christ, form disciples, develop leaders, strengthen churches, confront poverty and injustice, care for vulnerable children, and respond when disaster strikes. Word and deed remain inseparable because the same Jesus who proclaimed the Kingdom also entered human suffering. And the ultimate goal is larger than any individual project: local churches joining God's work of bringing hope, healing, reconciliation, and restoration to a broken world.
