LEADING CHANGE IN GLOBAL MISSIONS

Neopolis is focused on helping the traditional church grow and flourish under a new missions paradigm. We come alongside churches and leaders to build partnerships to plant new churches, strengthen and renew existing churches, and encourage and equip pastors and leaders in their local communities.

We are globally minded. We are healthy church focused. We are biblically driven. We are koinonia cultivating. We are leader developing. We are multi ethnic. We are city facing.

The Church has always sent missionaries into unreached parts of the world for the sake of spreading the gospel. However, in the 2020s, the traditional model of Christian missions is facing new challenges.

Traditional missions work requires significant infrastructure and resources—sending staff, forming oversight and development committees, partnering with missions agencies, and supporting missionaries. These are necessary for traditional missions.

Yet in God’s providence, the center of Christianity has massively shifted in the last 100 years. Nearly 70% of Christians live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And almost half of all full-time missionaries are sent by non-Western countries.

We need a fundamentally new missions paradigm to come alongside the traditional model - one that propels the expansion of God's people on earth by creating partnerships with indigenous leaders—developing leaders, networks, and resources to support the spread of the gospel.

NEOPOLIS VISION, MISSION, AND STRATEGY

  • We exist to see cities and the world transformed by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

  • We partner with leader and churches to spread the growth of the Gospel.

  • We plant new churches. We strengthen existing churches. We encourage indigenous pastors and leaders.

The story of neopolis

A Foundation of friendship

Neopolis began in friendship and with a shared vision for ministry and the world. Five friends gathered in 2017 at the 500th-anniversary celebration of the Protestant Reformation at The Gospel Coalition in Indianapolis and pledged to launch a new mission initiative to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.

Around a table, they discussed their deep devotion to Christ and his word and lamented their dissatisfaction with the status quo of missions. They recounted the histories and streams of global missions that had centralized Western ambition and left local indigenous churches and leaders by the wayside. They acknowledged that few mission models seemed to take into account the tremendous shift of Christianity to the Global South. They recognized the growing need for global partnerships that crossed ethnic, geographic, and linguistic barriers.

The question in front of them was, “Given the wealth of resources, what role does the Western church play in world missions today?” The directive was clear: to children in the slums of Nairobi, to impoverished Cubans in Havana, to the unreached in secularized Europe, throughout the massive continent of Asia, to where gospel resources are needed most. On that April spring day, Jay Thomas, Arthur Jackson, Jon Nielson, Oscar Leiva, and Jon Dennis began a mission to renew and reform the work of global gospel partnership—the work of Neopolis had begun.