Beginnings: Clyde Morgan (1985-2007)
“If You’ll just give me my first month’s rent in donations, I’ll take that as a sign that You indeed want me to begin full-time right from the start.”

Thus went my prayer with God on a hilltop that December day in 1985. After completing my seminary training in Berrien Springs, Michigan, we had traveled to Alabama to spend the holidays with relatives. My support from the conference ended that month, and I was still uncertain how I would support my family of five. Friends had counseled different options, but every time I prayed about it, it was like God would say, “I want you to start out on this thing full-time right from the start.”

“But how can I do that, Lord? AFM has no money. I’ve got a wife and three children. How am I supposed to do that?”

“I want you to do this full time, right from the start.” God’s message was unmistakable.

It really all began when I was a junior at Pacific Union College and was praying about what the Lord wanted me to do in service to Him in the coming weeks and months. A few days later, during an assembly service, the announcement was made, “We need a student missionary to teach the Bible in Hong Kong.”

“That’s it. I want you to be a student missionary,” God was telling me.
I did not end up going to Hong Kong, but to Majuro in the Marshall Islands to start an elementary school. I later did two more tours of volunteer mission service in Micronesia during which the Lord taught me things that would turn out to be crucial for what only He knew would be His calling on my life.

While a student missionary on Majuro, I learned about a man from another island who, when he learned what Adventist missionaries were doing on Majuro, said, “Please come to my island. I’ll give you land. Build a church. Start a school.” The knowledge of that plaintive appeal stuck in my mind and heart.

Over the next dozen years, I learned of a number of similar situations where there was an opening, an appeal for missionaries, but none were sent. If you went, you would not be taking the place of a national worker because there were no national workers in these places. Then, while attending seminary, I learned of yet another such place. I was grousing about it to my wife, who said, “Why don’t you start an organization to send people to places like that?”

“Oh, it’s not that I haven’t thought about it, but it would be misunderstood and misinterpreted and would be such an uphill battle all the way that it wouldn’t be worth it.” (Happily, this would turn out not to be true. AFM would receive warm support from most leaders at all levels).
About two months later, a seminary friend, Mike Steenhoven, and I decided to start a mission fellowship group among seminarians to foster greater knowledge and interest in missions. We met at my place on Saturday nights. For the second meeting, we invited Russell Staples, then chairman of the missions department in the seminary, to meet and share with us.

In the course of Dr. Staple’s comments, he made the statement that he thought the time had come when the church needed a new mission society. Our small group of seminarians responded by talking about the idea of starting such an organization and decided to give ourselves to prayer on the matter during the following week. The next Saturday night, when we came together, we unanimously agreed that we believed the Lord would have us pursue the idea.

And thus, AFM was born with the mission to reach the unreached. I was asked to lead the organization and, over the next year, worked to develop it. In September 1985, Adventist Frontier Missions, Inc. was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in the state of Michigan.

But now, with only a few months left before I completed my seminary training, I was struggling with how I was going to support my family. Finally, on that hilltop in Alabama, I said to the Lord, “If You’ll just give me my first month’s rent in donations, I’ll take that as a sign that You indeed want me to begin full-time right from the start.” At the time, my rent was $295 a month. I walked back down the hillside, went into the house and called the person in Berrien Springs who was picking up AFM’s mail while I was gone.

“Well, we got some donations,” he said with a degree of anticipation.

“How much?”

“Three hundred and eighty-five dollars.” God had more than covered my rent.

What could I say? AFM had never before had anywhere near that amount of money. It was the sign I had asked for. Five days later, I called the fellow again, and he said, “We received a thousand-dollar donation from someone in California!”

My wife said, “Well, that’s our support for the month of January.”

We never looked back.

From that day in 1985, until I left AFM at the end of 2007, God provided not only for our support but also for all the long-term missionaries and their families, as well as for all the student missionaries who served with AFM. At the time of my departure, more than a hundred missionary personnel were in the field (counting all family members) or preparing to go. Each of the missionaries on these projects can tell a story similar to mine about God’s provision.

Hundreds, and indeed thousands, of people from many different countries and language groups around the world who before had no known opportunity of hearing the everlasting gospel have heard and responded to God’s call through these dedicated servants of Christ. In God’s providence, I will one day have the great privilege of meeting these thousands and sharing the story of how it all began. “This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Mark 12:11).

A Place to Train: Dale Bidwell (2008—2011)
In the spring of 2008, Andrews University notified AFM that its dormitories and classroom space would no longer be available for missionary training beginning in the summer of 2009. This notice prompted an extensive, but initially unsuccessful, search for an alternate location. Hotels and motels were unwilling to close their doors for weeks at a time to accommodate the training.

That December, during Berrien Springs’ annual Christmas celebration—when the two main streets are closed to traffic so pedestrians can enjoy local businesses—a gentleman stopped at the AFM office. After sampling some refreshments, he spoke with John Kent and mentioned the recent bankruptcy of a nearby camp. John quickly informed AFM leadership, and a site visit was conducted the next day.

The camp’s owner had defaulted on a bank loan after a fire severely damaged the main lodge, rendering the property nearly unusable. A local realtor listed the facility for $3.8 million.

AFM began earnestly seeking God’s guidance. Each morning, the staff prayed over whether the property could be restored and used for missionary training and whether the cost was reasonable.

AFM launched a detailed research and negotiation process, which included the following questions:

When did the bank’s fiscal year end? AFM discovered it ended later in 2009, giving time to negotiate before the bank’s year-end financial report.

Was the building large enough? After multiple visits, staff confirmed the facility had classrooms, a full kitchen with serving area, a large walk-in refrigerator, and a spacious meeting room with a fireplace. The site would meet current needs if properly restored.

What was the extent of fire damage? Although the structure was intact, the kitchen and refrigeration areas were affected and contained asbestos, requiring specialized removal.

Was the asking price negotiable? Staff continued praying daily for wisdom.

Eventually, AFM had a cashier’s check prepared for 10 percent of a proposed offer and scheduled a meeting with the acting bank president. AFM’s conditions for purchase included that AFM would not accept liability for fire damage, insisting insurance should cover it, the dock on the lake had to be included, and the purchase would be an all-cash offer using a matured trust fund already in AFM’s account.

At the meeting, AFM presented a $75,000 cashier’s check—10 percent of a $750,000 offer. The bank president was surprised, asking, “So your offer is $750,000 on a $3.8 million property?” He was assured AFM had the full amount available. The president requested five days to make a decision.

Three days later, he called AFM and asked if the organization would increase the offer to $800,000. AFM agreed, provided the previously negotiated conditions remained unchanged.

AFM then hired a contractor to oversee fire damage repairs, including asbestos removal. That winter, while the bank still retained possession of the property and maintained an insurance policy, the second-floor pipes froze, resulting in water flooding the building. By the grace of God’s divine timing, the kitchen, serving area, and main meeting room were renovated, and AFM was able to select the new carpet and make décor choices. AFM covered all non-insurance costs. With the purchase completed, the main building was named Morgan Hall in honor of Clyde and Cathy Morgan, AFM’s founders.

The same contractor also built:

An eight-unit apartment building for missionary families, each unit having three bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a laundry room.

An L-shaped dormitory for single students, including a shared kitchen and meeting area and separate wings for men and women; each room had a private bathroom.

The goal was finally achieved—AFM had its own training center. To God be the glory.

Expansion in Breadth and Scope: Conrad Vine (2011-2025)
AFM staff do not just believe in miracles—they rely on them through faith in God’s provision, leading, protection and anointing. In 2011, I found a team dedicated to reaching the unreached, with years of cross-cultural ministry experience in some of the toughest places on earth, and all eager for the Holy Spirit to write the next chapter in AFM’s ministry. After much prayer and a team planning event, we determined to open new recruiting offices on other continents to provide an open doorway to global missions for dedicated Adventists who would otherwise never have had the opportunity to serve.

God led us to establish AFM-SAT (South Africa Trust) in 2012, a joint ministry partnership with Abundant Life, the leading youth evangelism ministry in South Africa. AFM-Brazil (now AFM South America) was established in 2015, based at the Church’s UNASP/EC (Adventist University of São Paulo) university campus. AFM-EU was then established in 2022, in the midst of the pandemic, when the Vasiles, a dedicated young couple from Romania, came to our summer career missionary training program. They had just returned from volunteer missionary service in the Central Americas and wanted to learn how to lead a missionary recruiting, training and sending ministry that would recruit across the EU. These offices were added to AFMS, our sister office in Canada, which had already been established in 1997 and was recruiting and financing outstanding missionaries for frontline projects.

In each case, start-up funding provided three years’ worth of capital intended for us to open an office, recruit a local leadership team, develop all the needed recruitment pathways and local funding mechanisms, and build capacity for local training of missionaries. God blessed us with high-quality leadership teams, and today those sister offices provide a steady stream of dedicated Adventists to serve in the 10/40 mission window. On AFM projects today, one is just as likely to hear Portuguese, Afrikaans or Romanian spoken as they are to hear English, French or Thai! The intentional learning of cross-cultural competency soon became a priority, as different cultures have very different understandings and expectations of what competent leadership, effective communication and meaningful conflict resolution look like.

Parallel to this growth in the number of frontline missionaries and projects (expanding to nearly 30 countries), God led us to two significant ministry developments. First, for many years, Jesus has been appearing to Muslims worldwide in dreams and visions, inviting them to follow Him. This has led to the single largest movement to Christ that we have witnessed in the past 1,400 years. Missiologists estimate that in Iran and Iraq, millions of young adults have turned to Christ in faith in the past few years alone! These are huge developments in the Muslim world, which is being torn apart as believers realize there are multiple versions of the Koran in existence, that the Hadith (personal sayings of the prophet of Islam) are not as reliable as they have been taught, and as leading Muslim apologists admit online that there are major holes in the standard Islamic narrative about the rise of Islam. As apostasies from Islam surge around the world, Jesus is appealing to those behind the veil to follow Him!

In response, AFM initiated the Dream Project in 2017, reaching out to Muslims in almost a dozen languages who have seen Jesus in a vision and want to know how to follow Him. A dream interpretation manual is being prepared for Muslims so they can identify, using the Scriptures, the meaning of what they see in their dreams and visions. Muslims are seeing Jesus walking among candlesticks, three angels flying in the sky with a message for humanity, and Christ coming again on a horse surrounded by an army of angels. They are hearing that the final day of judgment is imminent and that to be ready, they must follow the “man in white,” and obey His teachings.

In 2018, AFM held a conference on deliverance ministry, bringing together frontline practitioners from around the Adventist world to pray together, share practical insights, and plan for how to better equip pastors, elders and members to be involved in the Great Controversy. Out of those meetings, the Set Free in Christ Institute (SFCI) was born (setfreeinchrist.org), a practical manual on deliverance ministry written, and now every year, SFCI, led by Dr. Michée Badé, conducts training events involving hundreds of pastors, elders, and men’s and women’s ministry leaders in different locations worldwide, together with consultations in individual cases of members experiencing demonization.

I can say, as did Joshua as he passed on the mantle of leadership to the next generation, “You know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one thing has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you; all have come to pass for you, not one of them has failed” (Joshua 23:14). My prayer for each of us, and for the worldwide AFM family of missionaries, support staff, prayer partners and donors, is that we will all walk in the same covenant with God so no people group will be left behind.
Editor’s note: AFM’s next chapter is about to unfold in countries such as Japan and Czechia. Leading AFM will be Brad Mills, who has accepted God’s call as AFM’s new president and will begin on August 1, 2025.

As I step into the role of president at Adventist Frontier Missions, I do so with a deep sense of humility, gratitude and conviction. AFM was born out of bold faith—a commitment to go where no one had gone, to reach those who had never heard the gospel message. That same pioneering spirit still beats at the heart of our movement.

Looking to the future, my vision is to deepen and expand that legacy by equipping Spirit-led disciples who will catalyze indigenous Adventist church-planting movements among every unreached people group. AFM will continue to be a launching pad for courageous missionaries, a hub for innovation in cross-cultural missions, and a partner working hand in hand with the organized SDA Church to focus on the unreached frontiers.

We are living in a moment of extraordinary opportunity. Global shifts are opening doors long thought closed. As we move forward, we will remain anchored in God’s Word, guided by prayer, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Together with our missionaries and faithful supporters, we will press forward to reach the unreached in this generation. Jesus is coming soon, and there is still time for all to hear. Partner with us in reaching the world!

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