Entrepreneurs and Mission

Glenkirk Church is working with a creative mission organization called Cargo of Dreams.

The idea is that Cargo of Dreams drops off a container (not Tupperware; the kind that goes on ships) at your church and provides instructions on how your congregation can transform it into a school, hospital, or office building. You paint it, build the interior, and stock it with appropriate supplies. You do the work together as a congregation over the course of a few months, then Cargo of Dreams ships the container to its intended location. The recipients simply cut windows and doors in the container itself and their building is built.

It’s Habitat for Humanity with a postage stamp.

In our case, Glenkirk is building a preschool for a group of children in a Black township in South Africa who currently hold their class meetings outdoors in a field.

The advantages to this unique kind of mission are numerous. It gets a much wider circle of the congregation involved in world missions than we could have by requiring people to fly overseas. It costs less than flying a team overseas to build the same building. It gives the congregation a galvanizing project to gather around, working together towards a valuable goal. And it’s obedient to Jesus. Cargo of Dreams works with churches both on the sending and on the receiving end, so it’s a work of the Kingdom and it’s clear to all spectators that it’s an act of the Christian Church. It’s attractive to people who aren’t Christian but who happen to find themselves at Glenkirk, because this is the kind of things that even non-church-attenders know the church ought to be doing. Further, it should serve as inspiration for those interested in Christian mission to think outside the box of familiar patterns of mission work.

That to say, I recommend it. We’re doing it, and so should your church. Check out their website if you want more information.