What is deputation?

For the next 6 months or so, Sarah and I are involved in 'deputation'. So what is this 'deputation'?

Deputation is the old word for what we now call 'mission education'. As missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) (www.cms.org.au), one of the privileges we have is to be involved in education - especially the education of people in Australia about what God is doing all over the world. The idea is that as we talk about the work God is doing in Mexico, in Latin America and in all four corners of the globe, our hearers will for moved to pray for the work, care for their missionaries, give to support what CMS is doing, and perhaps consider going.

We have two majors areas where we are responsible for mission education.

First - we have six link churches. These are churches that have said they would like to specifically support us as their link missionaries. They will take a particular role in caring and praying for us, our prayer points might go in their weekly bulletins and on their websites, they might direct some of their church budget to CMS to support us - that sort of thing.

We will spend a week (or two depending on the size of the church) at each of these link churches. We'll be meeting as many of the church members as we can in situations from Sunday services, to small group Bible studies, dinners, morning teas - whatever they organise for us to do. We're really looking forward to this opportunity and the new friends and partners we're going to be meeting.

Second - we go to various one-off events - either organised by CMS or by someone else to which CMS people have been invited. Sometimes these are big events, like campus midyear conferences, sometimes they are smaller - regional CMS support groups and prayer meetings. Sometimes we'll be asked to talk about the work we're heading to do in Mexico, but other times it might be something a bit different - like how we became missionaries, or the training strategies of CMS.

Wherever we are, we're really keen to answer questions, share what God is doing in our lives and invite our hearers to become partners with us.