Adventist Frontier Missions

Description

Adventist Frontier Missions (AFM) establishes indigenous Seventh-day Adventist church-planting movements among unreached people groups.

History

In the fall of 1984, a small number of seminary students gathered at Clyde and Cathy Morgan’s home to learn more about missions and to promote an interest in the subject. One year later, in September 1985, the group officially incorporated, and Adventist Frontier Missions was born, with Clyde Morgan serving as president and executive director.

In March 1987, AFM sent its first missionary family, Marc and Aunie Scalzi and their two children, to plant the church among the Ifugao people of northern Luzon, Philippines. Six years of ministry later, the Scalzi’s project was completed, and they bade farewell to a well-established church of about 100 baptized members as well as several smaller groups. The Ifugao church continued to evangelize and grow, and within about two years the membership doubled.

Initially, As AFM learned how to do cross-cultural mission work, it targeted people groups it felt would respond readily to the Gospel. But this was only the beginning. In the fall of 1991, Brad and Cathie Jolly opened a new chapter of AFM’s work when they launched to the previously closed country of Mongolia. Exactly two years later, the first Seventh-day Adventist Mongolian believers were baptized. In November of 1997, the first Mongolian Seventh-day Adventist church was established with 26 charter members. In 2012, their membership surpassed 1,400 with another church added and several branch Sabbath schools meeting regularly.