Do we Christ-followers want to see the peoples of Greenland and Canada become part of the family of God as eagerly as the USA president Donald Trump wants their territories to be part of the USA? It’s a very interesting world we are now living in.

After the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, I pursued my diaspora reading and research. I discovered that the Russian Orthodox Church planted a church in Antarctica for their scientists! In 2019, I was invited by the Anglican Bishop in the Arctic Circle to speak at their event which took place in Yellowknife, NWT. There I met the simple but dedicated Inuit ministers, about 150 of them. I gave each delegate a DVD of the Jesus film.

The ministers in High Pole and Inuvik invited me to their towns, where I learned more about their mission among the working migrants from Africa and Asia. Amazing! If I had been younger, I wouldn’t have minded moving up north to live; I am an ethnic Filipino, but I look like the Inuit! I don’t speak their language, but they could have accepted me for not looking like a colonialist.

These Inuit Canadians’ vision is to reach out to their tribe living in Alaska, Siberia, and Greenland. Indeed, we are family when referring to our cousins in Greenland.

This is what missiologists Allen Yeh and Joseph Handley are vigorously advocating in their preaching, teaching and writing—see Yeh’s book, Polycentric Missiology: Twenty-First Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere (2016, 2022).

Pinoys or Filipinos in Greenland? They are tropical people! But no, they are all over the globe. On every ocean merchant marine ship there are Filipino seafarers (See Martin Otto’s books). Filipinos have been in Alaska from early on until today. They work as fishermen, specifically in the salmon canning industry. (Prior to Lausanne 3 in Cape Town, I posted my blogs about church planting on the oceans, followed by another post on planting churches in the North and South Poles or in the Arctic Circle and even Antarctica.)

Close to 1000 Filipinos are living in Greenland; most of them work as fishermen and household workers. Over 25,000 Filipinos are living in Alaska. (Source: Google 03.2025)

In Canada, according to the joint research of Narry Santos (Tyndale University} and Lorajoy Tira- Dimangondayao (Jaffray Centre), there are now over 400 Filipino Christian congregations. However, my question is: Are they looking beyond their ethnic circles? Are they disciple making? Are they conducting polycentric missions or polycentric church planting? I hope they consider ministering to the Inuit or the First Nations peoples and help equip them to reach out to their cousins and perhaps send short-term ministers to Filipinos in Greenland. The fishermen can become fishers of men (and women)! Those who work in the households could become fishers of babies for Jesus That is polycentric missions to all people everywhere in the planet in all seasons - even during the dark and cold days of Arctic winters!

Thought:

• Fishermen catch live fish (including crabs and lobsters), causing them to die.
• Fishers-of-men catch dead men, including women and babies and toddlers, to let them live for eternity!

How will you hone your fishers-of-men skills? What if your life is your mission field?

Explore these ideas in the Empowered to Influence course. Courses can be offered online or in person.
Check out more information here Empowered to Influence Course | Simply Mobilizing Canada
or contact us if you want to host a course -  contact@simplymobilizing.ca. 

Simply Mobilizing is all about seeing every believer living a life on mission with God and, every church a missional church, facilitating God’s people on mission with God.  

Sadiri Joy Tira, DMiss, DMin, more commonly known as Joy, is the Diaspora Missiology Specialist at the Jaffray Centre for Global Initiatives at Ambrose University in Calgary, Alberta.