“When I think of Adventist Frontier Missions, I think of it almost in a Christian army context. The missionaries at Adventist Frontier Missions are like the special forces of our Seventh-day Adventist missionary movement.”
Those were the words of ASI President Danny Houghton when he was asked what AFM meant to him.
At first, the statement may sound bold. But the more you reflect on it, the more it sinks in. Not because it sounded like a claim of superiority, but because it captured something profound about the unique role God has called Adventist Frontier Missions to fulfill.
At this year’s ASI Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, we listened as frontline missionaries shared stories from places where the gospel has yet to take root. Repeatedly, they shared how God had gone before them—opening doors, changing hearts and moving mountains that once seemed impossible.
As we heard those testimonies, the phrase “Special Forces” kept coming to mind—the special forces of the Seventh-day Adventist missionary movement.
Think about what special forces do. They have a specialized mission. They are trained to enter places others cannot enter, navigate unfamiliar terrain, endure difficult conditions, learn languages and immerse themselves in a foreign culture that may not quite accept them.
Take a moment to think about it . . . has not God often worked this way? Throughout Scripture, He has always called men and women to step into the unknown first, trusting Him long before they could see the outcome.
That is exactly where AFM missionaries live—beyond comfort and the convenience of daily living, in unfamiliar cultures, difficult climates, political uncertainty, spiritual resistance and communities isolated by geography, language and tradition. They live not in places of comfort, but on the frontiers, where missionaries spend years learning languages, embracing new customs and diets, and building friendships long before a sermon is ever preached. These are places where progress is not measured in days or months, but in transformed lives, places often inhospitable, but those where God frequently does His most extraordinary work.
AFM missionaries truly are at the edge of the map and at the very heart of God’s mission.
Whenever I think about that calling, my mind goes to Caleb standing on the edge of Canaan with the other eleven spies. He saw the same towering walls, the same fortified cities and the same giants as everyone else.
The landscape was not different—his perspective was. While 10 spies measured the size of the obstacles, Caleb measured the greatness of God. He was in a league of his own, surrounded by God’s might and power. He believed God’s promise even when everyone around him doubted.
Years later, when the land was finally being divided, Caleb was eighty-five years old. If anyone had earned an easier inheritance, it was Caleb.
Instead, he trusted in God’s faithfulness and His promise to give Israel the land, even the land of Hebron. Unafraid of the descendants of Anak, the giants who had frightened the Israelite spies 45 years before, Caleb said firmly, “Now therefore, give me this mountain” (Joshua 14:12).
Caleb understood that God’s greatest victories often come during battles waged upon the hardest mountains, those where one may best behold God’s magnificent glory. This is the mountain upon which he desired to live.
This same spirit lives on in AFM and its missionaries, those who are conquering the difficult mountains, the unreached people groups where the gospel has yet to be established due to barriers of language, culture, geography and belief. These are not the easy assignments, but the ones where God’s faithfulness is most clearly revealed.
AFM missionaries leave behind the familiar, learn new languages and cultures, build genuine relationships and faithfully share Christ where no church yet exists. Their prayer is not simply to plant churches but to see thriving, indigenous disciple-making movements that will one day reach their own people.
As Caleb did not stand alone, neither do our missionaries.
Behind every missionary is a family of believers who pray faithfully, give sacrificially and encourage tirelessly, helping the missionary to take the mountain through God’s power.
God continues to entrust AFM with the same unique assignment to which He called it over 40 years ago—to enter the difficult, unreached regions with the gospel of Christ, preparing the way for followers to rise up and reach others, creating church-planting movements. Will you continue Caleb’s story, helping AFM missionaries climb the mountains yet to be conquered? Together, we can become an army of special forces to reach the unreached.
