Because the native missionary knows the local language, understands the nuances of his culture, and already has significant relationships within the community, an FMI church planter or evangelist is ready to hit the ground running immediately after graduating from a local seminary or Bible institute; no acclimation period is needed.

In the time it may typically take for a Western missionary to go through language training and just get settled in a country, most FMI church planters have already conducted pioneer evangelism, established a primary congregation, and have also planted one or two daughter churches beyond the primary ministry site.

For more than 30 years, FMI’s distinctive ministry has been to develop partnerships between western sponsors and trained indigenous Christian workers already living in these hard-to-reach nations – places which are more difficult for Western missionaries to obtain traditional access for service!

In an era when Muslim-dominant countries are refusing entry to foreign missionaries (or expelling those who have served there), supporting indigenous missionaries makes both short-term and long-term sense. It’s an investment which reaps eternal dividends.

Developing an overseas partnership through FMI is both cost-effective and time-effective. Becoming a partner with indigenous church planters through FMI multiplies the power of your mission dollar by a factor of 60, 80, or more versus traditional methods!

Because FMI’s distinctive strategy exclusively builds partnerships with church planters and evangelists serving within their native countries, each dollar donated to FMI has a potential impact that is exponentially greater than budgets which focus only on sending people from here to there (wherever there may be), because the living expenses of indigenous missionaries are much less than their foreign counterparts.

A recent report found it costs an average of well over $10,000 per month to support a missionary family from North America to serve overseas. By contrast, sponsoring an indigenous church planter through FMI requires just $140 per month. An investment equal to what it costs to keep one US missionary couple overseas can propel nearly 100 trained and qualified national missionaries to serve inside their own country

A lot of people to reach:

Pakistan is the world’s fifth-largest nation by population, and is the second-largest Muslim-dominant country.

FMI builds partnerships in this region with:

• Church Planters
• Women's Discipleship Initiative Leaders
• Safe House Shepherds