According to an online thesaurus the word change (schimbare in Romanian) has several positive synonyms including: advance, innovation and transformation.  Yet change, again, according to the thesaurus can have some negative synonyms as well like reversal, about-face, revolution and turnover.  Thus, depending upon your perspective, change can be either a good and needed thing or a bad and disruptive force.

Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe once said, “One thing about change hasn’t changed: it still fascinates some people, frightens others, and provides a good living for a prophetic minority.”  As we all have experienced, change is seemingly constant in one way or another–we get older, our children become adults, our job changes, we move to another house or city or country.

For the last couple of years the organization we serve with, Reach Beyond, has been undergoing a transitional phase.  After our new president, Steve Harling, began leading the ministry he realized that in order for us to fulfill our goals and vision we needed to adapt for the new realities in the world today.  Realities such as studies indicating that 70,000 people per day are entering eternity not knowing Jesus.  Thus, for us to be relevant and impact our world, some changes were required.

If you haven’t already heard, Reach Beyond is rebranding. No, we aren’t changing our name or tagline this time, but we have launched a new logo and clarified our vision, mission and voice. We are excited to move forward in one clear voice, as we set our sights on reaching the 1,900 unreached people groups of 100,000 individuals or more with the love of Jesus.

We began launching the new brand this week, first with a website refresh, and then with the relaunch of two publications V+H Magazine and Prayer World. (By the way, if you aren’t receiving these you can download them both at the above links.)  In V+H Magazine you can read Pres Steve’s comments as well as the explanation of how  the rebranding of Reach Beyond relates to being “the Voice and Hands of Jesus…Together” moving forward. I hope that you will take a few moments and read through what “reaching beyond” really means specifically for us.

Change for the sake of change itself isn’t beneficial.  But as Rick Warren has said, “There is no growth without change, no change without fear or loss and no loss without pain.”  Change can be hard, but changing in order to reach more people with the good news of the gospel…there can be no better reason to change!