Our History

The Seattle Missions Fest conference was inspired by Missions Fest Vancouver (Canada) and is licensed by Missions Fest International. Missions Fest Vancouver was started in 1984 when the Missions Pastors of six Vancouver congregations decided to pool their resources, talents, contacts, energy, and prayers in order to hold a major missions event. A Missions Fest conference is unique in that it is a city wide missions conference sponsored by numerous local churches. It is exciting, informational and inspirational. The first few years, the annual gathering was held in large local churches, and eventually, the conference was moved to the Vancouver Convention Center to accommodate the larger crowds.

In 2001, eight Portland area mission pastors came together to hold a similar event, now called Mission Connexion. The only other city in the USA holding a city-wide missions conference sponsored by numerous local churches is Phoenix.

In the late 1990’s, Pastor Tim Heath of Lake Tapps Community Church heard about the Missions Fest Vancouver Missions Fest conference and encouraged his congregation to attend. In the early 2000’s some of the people came back to their small Bible Study Groups and told about how wonderful and exciting the city-wide missions conference was. These groups started to pray about having a similar mission conference in Seattle and in June 2004 a luncheon was held in Seattle with about 75 pastors and mission leaders attending. It was unanimously decided at this luncheon to try to have a similar city-wide missions conference sponsored by many local churches. These people were encouraged to visit the Vancouver Missions Fest in January of 2005, where they also caught the vision and continued to pray in earnest about having a Seattle Missions Fest conference. In March 2005, eighteen people (all of whom were volunteers from different churches) met at Highlands Community Church and unanimously voted to launch Missions Fest Seattle with each person taking on a specific responsibility. Both Missions Fest Vancouver and Missions Connexion provided valuable help and advice because none of the people on the Seattle committee had ever been involved in planning such conference.

Some in the group began visiting local mission agencies, large churches and other lay leaders, including hosting luncheons with ethnic groups to obtain their interest in becoming partners in such an undertaking with the goal of having a conference in the fall of 2006. Dedicated mission-minded individuals have sacrificially stepped up and faithfully accepted voluntary organizational roles which have allowed this event to happen year after year.

Missions Fest Vancouver’s budget was to request each of the sponsoring churches to help pay for the expenses by contributing $2 per person per average Sunday attendance. The Seattle Committee felt that it didn’t want the churches to think they were after their money, so its budget was established by requesting a donation of $1 per person per average Sunday attendance with a maximum of $1,000. In order to fill the shortfall, several private donors made a five-year financial commitment. However, after two years since we had a surplus each year, the private donors were released from their pledges.

Due to related costs of renting a church facility, bringing in exhibitor booths, paying honorariums for speakers, etc., a formal 501(c)(3) non-profit entity was established.

The initial goal was to obtain about 70 partnering churches (large and small), with the 70th sponsoring church making a commitment the week of the first conference. We thanked the Lord for this provision, and there have been many other examples of the Lord’s hand being over this effort to help get the Gospel of Christ out.

Over the years, we’ve had powerful guest speakers, more than 100 mission-related agencies help support the conference financially with exhibit booths, 80+ knowledgeable people annually leading seminars, and conferences at eight different large churches in order to share the burden of the conference and not to be identified as being a Missions Conference of any one church or denomination. Missions Fest Seattle has averaged about 2,000 people attending each yearly conference.

As with Vancouver we have felt from the beginning that missions is a two-sided coin: both home and abroad. Topics covered under our Missions Fest Seattle banner have been both local and worldwide. This is always a free, no-cost gathering, open to all, although we do have a free will offering. On Fridays we have 4th to 12th grade students attend an exciting youth program focusing on Missions, and on the same day, a workshop for local pastors is held with special speakers. Many pastors have indicated that they really appreciate the opportunity to get together with other like-minded missions and kingdom-minded pastors and mission leaders. We have seen several instances of revival in our country, and we feel that our Missions Fest conference is a small part of the revival going on.

Planning for the next year starts immediately after the conference, with two groups: an Executive Committee and a Leadership Team. At this point we have 21 people working hard from 16 different churches. Both meet monthly with strong leadership, many serving faithfully since our founding in 2005. All involved recognize our existence as God’s provision. We give Him the glory and praise, with each person on the committee pulling their own oar in order to accomplish the necessary work. When we hear of how the Holy Spirit is working around the world, it encourages us to pray more earnestly and work a little harder. Jesus is coming soon, and the world and our neighbors need to be ready.