Editorial: The Heart of an Alongsider

DUKE DILLARD, Editor

Applying the models of ministry in the book of Acts to missionary practices today can give a sense of conviction but is often done in an over-simplified, cookie-cutter manner that disregards the massive differences between our world and theirs. Of course, first principles will apply across time and space, but, in my experience, our earnest desire for quick fruit and utilitarian bias drive us to take surface-level models and treat them like principles.

50 Years of Frontier Ventures: Reflecting on Growing Up at the Center

David Bogosian, Angela Clark, and Andrew Parsons

For this issue, we asked three people who grew up at the US Center for World Mission to reflect on their experience. David Bogosian, Angela Clark, and Andrew Parsons are adults now but spent much of their childhoods on the campus. Read on to learn what life was like in the community through a child’s eyes. Images supplied by the authors.

The Development of Alongsider Ministry

Edited transcript of interview with JOHN JAY TRAVIS by DUKE DILLARD on Zoom on July 2, 2026.

I’m not sure who first coined the expression Alongsider, but I remember already using it in the early 2000s. The term caught on because it described so well what many, ourselves included, were trying to do in helping initiate and nurture movements to Jesus in areas that had very few Jesus followers.

Transformative Process of an Alongsider Approach to Frontier Mission

H. L. RICHARD

The fundamental premise of the missionary movement from the West is that we have good news, and it is our responsibility to be good stewards of that deposit and spread that good news to all the nations and peoples of the world. An Alongsider approach significantly shifts away from this premise and the actions and approaches that have developed from it.

What Alongsiding Is NOT

SCOTT WALKER

Several years ago, my wife and I heard a knock at our door. A neighbor—a Hindu housewife—asked, “Can you help me get a Bible? You are the only Christians I know.”¹ This lady’s closest connection to Jesus was through her relationship with us.

The Fence and the Edge

BRIAN S. NELSON

“If you attend your family’s celebration of the festival, you’ll be tempted to participate.” I’ve heard this warning being given to disciples of Jesus from Hindu families on numerous occasions in South Asia and in the UK, but I have thought to myself, “Really?”

The Conversion of a Missionary: How Philippians 2 Taught Me to Become an Alongsider

DR. LYDIA CARMEL

Many people assume a missionary’s primary role is to go and convert others. In my experience, being a disciple maker has looked more like walking alongside people as God draws them to himself.

Walking and Talking Alongside

ANIL YESUDAS

Being an oral-aural learner, I came across the term Alongsider through conversations with H.L. Richard in the Rethinking Forum circles. Slowly, over time this concept, along with other contextual nuances, became a part of my own journey to communicate the unchanging message of the Bible.

Coming Alongside Hindu Families: Called to the Impossible

TIM SHULTZ

I was first introduced to India and Hindu people during the first missions conference I attended. I was a 19-year-old college student from a backwater, small town in northeast Ohio and quite unaware of the larger world. I vividly remember sitting spellbound while the missionaries described their experiences living and serving in different countries all over the world. I was fascinated.

Alongsiding in East Africa: Things as They Are

D. ANNE (Pseudonym)

In Amy Carmichael’s book, Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India, published in 1905, she wrote about the “truth—the uninteresting, unromantic truth”¹ in hopes that her audience would understand that the “reverses” are more common than the successes; that the work was more complex than imagined; and that most of the strategies set forth from Western theological classrooms and church pulpits may need to take a different path than their ideologies espoused. In my experience, these truths are still evident today.

The Value of Patience in Walking Alongside Hindu Families

ELISE METZLER (Pseudonym)

Sravani, how has your devotion to Jesus been lately?” Sravani sat quietly, reflecting to herself how she wanted to answer my question. She responded by asking me a question that surprised me.

The Limits of Letting Go: Submitting to Local Leadership

DEBORAH BERNHARD & JIM HARRIES

How far should Western missionaries and practitioners go in relinquishing control and submitting to local leadership? What are the risks, tensions, and transformative possibilities when ministry is carried out in indigenous languages and with local resources alone, as advocated by the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission (AVM)?

Welcome In: Adopted as an Alongsider

GEORGE MCBRIDE

“Our neighborhood is so safe. It is the only safe neighborhood in this area. We are safe because we all love each other and look out for each other. We can walk home tonight unafraid. Thank you for bringing God to live in our neighborhood, showing us how to love one another.”

What Is Conversion in Islam?: An Alongsider’s Perspective

ANONYMOUS

In 1990, I met a retired diplomat in an Asian country. I will call him Alif. We were fellow aficionados in a rare hobby. He also discovered that I lived by faith. I told him the story of how God had just given my family a fully paid house. I also shared the life of faith that Jesus (Isa) taught in Matthew 6. He said, “We don’t have anything like this in Islam. Can you share this with my family?” So, my wife and I were invited to his home during a Muslim festival. Thus began my friendship with Alif that lasted until his passing 17 years later.

A Barnabas-Style Alongsider Ministry

TRENT T (Pseudonym)

Let me explain my paradigm, and then I will add a few nuances to that. I would say the first 13 years, from 1993 to 2006, when we were in Country A, we were doing more of a classic Pauline ministry. We were measuring out the field and starting to take out the rocks. Basically, as the apostolic kind of people in a place where there were no local Muslim-background believers (MBBs). And then we left Country A with most other expats in 2006.

Alongsiding: Reframing Discipleship

ELIE KAYOBE

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19a). This sentence ought to resonate in the heart of every believer and lover of Jesus Christ. Yet for many Christians, this command isn’t met with much enthusiasm. It is either done purely out of duty or simply left for pastors and spiritual leaders. Now, as a spiritual leader in college ministry, and an introvert who finds more comfort in solitude, I confess I often feel temptations of this nature.

Book Reviews: Decolonization, Evangelism, and the Other: Thoughts for Prospective Alongsiders

ANDY BETTENCOURT

There has yet to be a definitive account on alongsiding as the posture and approach for ministry among least reached peoples. A book like Subversive Mission is helpful, as it rearticulates the APEST model of ministry in a foreign cultural context.¹ However, this review will bring insights from three different books: Decolonizing Mission by Harvey Kwiyani, Mission and the Cultural Other by Randy Woodley, and The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George G. Hunter III. 

24:14—“Pursuing movements in every unreached people and place.”: God Chose the Lowly

ROBIN SMITH

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are (1 Cor 1:27-28).

The Church

GREG H. PARSONS

What do you think of when you think of church? Be sure to ponder the Bible’s meaning… Were you thinking about a building you go to on Sunday? Or people meeting in a home with others from the neighborhood somewhere in Indonesia or Thailand or Europe? Whatever we think about, we don’t want to miss the richness, relationships, unified witness, and simplicity of what it means to be an Acts 2 fellowship.

An Unfiltered Look at Marriage on the Field

IRENE SPRINGFIELD (Pseudonym)

When you picture married couples on the mission field, maybe you picture the wife staying home to teach the kids and manage the household while the husband does ministry or tentmaking work. Maybe you picture them shoulder-to-shoulder, leading a team or running a nonprofit together. Or maybe you imagine something in between.

Living Among the Bengali Hindu Community

HADASSAH PINKERTON

I’m a Gen Z tentmaker living in New York City (NYC) who has been walking alongside the Bengali Hindu community for the last three years. Prior to moving into my neighborhood, after doing an internship in cross-cultural evangelism, I told everyone that I was not interested in Hindu ministry because it felt too complicated. Growing up in an environment where theology and rationality was important to my faith experience, the lack of rationality, replaced with an emphasis on spiritual experience in the Hindu worldview, felt impossible to navigate. However, several months later, I found myself surrounded by a wonderful Bengali Hindu community.

Color the World: Alongsiders

KODY FRIESEN

For this page, Kody went for a feel of, “When Alongsiders come to lift others up, everyone wins.”

Final Reflection: My Situation Didn’t Change… But My Heart Did

HANNAH

If you had to describe how your heart feels today in one word… what would it be?
A while ago, mine would’ve been, “Exhausted.”
I’m a young Cuban woman, and together with my husband, we said “Yes” to something we knew came from God: serving in another country, another culture, another reality. It sounds inspiring when you say it quickly, but the process… was a different story.