In 1982, Dr. Mike and Stephanie Harrison founded Agape International from a local church in Cullman, Alabama, USA. In their desire to obey the Great Commission, “… Go into all the world…”, the Harrisons began using the methods they had successfully used to launch several churches in Southeastern USA to begin planting churches and Bible schools in the Philippines. Growth from the Philippines spread quickly to numerous other nations in Southeast Asia, resulting in many more churches and Bible Schools being established over the next 26 years.

Chris Harrison is named President of Agape International Ministries (AIM). Recognizing that global mission indicators clearly established that the traditional model of missions will not complete the Great Commission, AIM leadership searched the scripture and sought the Lord for the most effective missions strategy. The scriptures and the Spirit made it clear that missions work must be modified to empower everyone from everywhere to reach those who are still living and dying without ever hearing the Good News of Jesus. Accordingly, AIM began its work to decentralize organizational control and implement rapid, locally contextualized, discipleship making methods.

AIM moved its USA headquarters to Palm Desert, California, where the vision of church-planting was continued through another church plant, Church212º.
AIM’s work of global missions expanded to include seven nations and the leadership team grew to include unprecedented diversity. This diverse group of Spirit-led leaders became increasingly convinced of the necessity to equip disciples from the majority-world* for the work of cross-cultural missions.
*“majority-world” refers to geographic regions other than what is most commonly referred to as “western” or “1st world”.

AIM refined its “seven-fold” process which is rooted in two very important endeavors that AIM had been engaged in for many years, i.e. church and Bible school planting. AIM invests in training national leaders through Synergy Schools of Ministry in various international locations. These indigenous leaders in turn plant churches to reach their villages, cities and nations. Short-term trips are organized to allow people from other nations, such as USA and Canada, to visit these indigenous movements to gain a holistic perspective of God’s heart for the whole world. We encourage, support, resource and empower our national leaders to obey the Great Commission in their parts of the world as well as mobilize everyone God has called to cross-cultural mission work.

AIM honed its focus on the “10/40 Window” (this is the section of the globe between 10 and 40 degrees latitude where over 3 billion people live without an adequate witness of the Gospel). Every effort of AIM is either directly engaging unreached people groups or is in parts of the world where AIM can train and/or mobilize workers into the unreached areas of the world.

AIM established its international headquarters in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which provides direct access to a huge proportion of the people AIM is reaching with the Gospel. This location also provides an environment highly conducive to training cross-cultural workers that are going into nearby countries where creative access is required to teach and preach the Word of God.