Two Anglican Missionaries Are Part of the Changing Face of Missions

By David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | June 8, 2026

Jerry and Stacy Kramer are two unlikely missionaries. Pass them on the street and you might wonder if they were looking for a hot meal and a place to lay their heads.

Jerry is an ordained Anglican priest who doesn't wear a dog collar. He’ll snipe that he can’t remember where he put it. You would be hard pressed to know what he was about — until you see him and his wife in action. Together they bring nearly a quarter century of ministry experience in the Middle East and Africa. Their ministry — Love for the Least — is by any standard small, but it does more to advance the Gospel and bring converts into the Kingdom than 95% of the organizations and ministries operating today.

The Kramer's Vision for Love for the Least

Jerry and Stacy’s vision for Love for the Least (L4L) is to ignite Disciple-Making Movements (DMMs) among the world's least-reached and most vulnerable peoples through a fusion of radical compassion, frontier mission, and obedience-based discipleship. Their aim is not to build an organization but to catalyze Kingdom movements that multiply far beyond any single ministry. They have no vision for global denomination, do not want to be “large” and prefer to go unknown. “We want people to see Jesus, not us. He’s far more attractive and interesting.”

The Core Mandate: "The Kingdom for the Least"

The Kramers define the least as those who are unreached, unseen, or unwanted — widows, orphans, refugees, trafficked women, and Muslim people groups with little or no Gospel presence. They have worked with ISIS-displaced refugees in Northern Iraq, with orphans and widows in East Africa, gone into combat in Syria several times to reach and help refugees and with trafficked and abused women in conflict zones.

Their primary focus remains Unreached Muslim peoples across the Middle East, the Swahili Coast and Central Asia. There are 3.4 billion people with no access to the Gospel, including two billion Muslims. That’s 42% of all People Groups. Only one out of thirty missionaries goes to the 3.4 billion Unreached. 87% of the world’s Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus will never meet a Christ follower in their lifetimes.

What separates the Kramers from traditional missionary approaches is a Disciple Making Movement strategy: multiplying disciples and planting churches that plant churches, not programs. Their work is anchored in Disciple-Making Movements — rapid, generational multiplication of disciples and simple churches. The Discovery Bible Study (DBS), invented by their mentor David Watson, the “Father of Modern Movements” has at its core engine Training for Trainers (T4T).

The big global paradigm changes and shift is to obedience-based discipleship rather than knowledge-based teaching, identifying and developing local leadership from the start, and in missionaries exiting early. "The only metric for success is generational growth — disciples making disciples to the 10th, 12th, and 14th generation," he tells VOL. They are part of a network that now has 14 generations of churches and disciples. Jerry and Stacy are catalyzing and stewarding two official and five emerging DMMs in 12 countries across the Middle East, Central Asia and East Africa. Their original prayer captures the urgency: "God, give us a DMM or let us die." They prayed for one Movement and now have seven. And are gunning for more.

Prayer as the Work, Not Support for the Work

At the heart of L4L is prayer, fasting, and what the Kramers call "failing forward" — learning from setbacks, persecution, and martyrdom. “You have to make mistakes. That’s how you learn. Americans are allergic to failure. Our mentor, David Watson, told us, ‘You will have to become experts in failure before you become experts in success.’ We tell our new young team members, ‘Get out there and fail. That means you’re actually doing something.’ If you’re not failing, you’re not trying and not learning.”

Prayer for the Kramers is not support for the work; prayer is the work. They consider their intercessors, “The Dream Team,” the engine and far more important than they are. Movements are spiritually birthed, not strategically engineered. Their local teams are trained in extended fasting and intercession, bold prayer for the sick, and listening prayer for strategy. “I’m not an idealog,” says Jerry. “I don’t really care how we get to movement as long as it’s faithful. There are folks out there who insist you have to do it ‘this way.’ All we do is see how and where God is working and join Him. We pray for God to move His hand. Only God can move Movements. Simple.”

The Kramers reject the false choice between social action and evangelism. L4L integrates both without apology. They call it, “Breathing with two lungs,” mercy ministry and evangelism/discipleship. The two are both expressions of the Kingdom and cannot be separated.

To date, the ministry has brought relief to over one million war-displaced refugees, provided care for hundreds of orphans in East Africa, cares for 400+ orphans in East Africa and delivered trauma support for widows and abused women — all while making disciple-making and church planting among 49-plus unreached people groups a simultaneous priority. "Compassion opens doors; the Gospel transforms lives," jerry says. Some 15,000 new churches have been formed in their broader network.

Frontier Focus: Going Where No One Has Gone

The Kramers would never call themselves apostles, but their vision is unapologetically apostolic — pioneering new work among people groups with zero known believers. “We go to zero or worse,” said jerry, “More on fire the better.” Recent frontier initiatives include the remote Muslim tribes in East Africa, war torn Syria and diaspora Iranians in Central Asia. And they are catalyzing what they believe to be the biggest Movement in the Anglican world, certainly among numbers.

If they know you, they’ll give you a great deal of information not for public record. “We don’t fear the Muslim Brotherhood. The biggest killers of movement are denominations and money. Denominations can do it but they have to think and act differently. We hide largely from American Evangelicals who will swoop in and kill it. You cannot fund the church side of the work. That will make the locals dependent on money: when they run out of money they run out of mission. Their money goes for mercy ministries and discipleship training.

The Kramers think beyond the local and the immediate, seeing L4L as part of a historic realignment in global Christianity. They are fully aware that the center of gravity in the Anglican Communion — and in world Christianity — has shifted decisively to the Global South. The Anglican Communion today is primarily Black, under 30, and female. The Western church, by contrast, is over 60, white, and male. The latter will flame out in a generation. “The face of global Anglicanism,” notes Jerry, is a “Young Nigerian woman.”

Movements, Jerry notes, are spreading fastest in the Muslim world, with Western missionaries shifting from leadership to catalysis. "The future belongs to indigenous, rapidly multiplying movements," he says. “You should be at a minimum of three to four generations in five or so years. Our role is to help establish the locally led, self-multiplying, self-correcting, self-disciplining, self-funding indigenous church. Then get out. I always tell the big leaders, ‘I’m not your bishop. I’m not your boss. I’m not your pastor. I’m your friend. Friends walk alongside and talk. It’s Jesus’ Church led by them. I don’t have a title and don’t want a purple shirt that’s been on offer. We work from influence not authority and position.”

The Stakes Could Not Be Higher

Their ultimate vision is seeing the Gospel of the Kingdom through bringing hope where there was none and making self-sustaining, Spirit-driven waves of disciples reaching the least-reached until the Gospel has taken root where it has never gone before. “If a People Group is more than 4% reached, that’s not for us,” notes Jerry. “We pioneer and break hard ground, not sustain or maintain.”

That vision is not romantic. It is purchased at the cost of displacement, danger, martyrdom, and decades of grinding faithfulness in places most Western Christians cannot find on a map. Jerry and Stacy Kramer have paid that price — and they are not finished. In a church age defined by institutional decline, celebrity pastors, and strategic retreats, they represent something rarer and more costly: the apostolic edge, still cutting.

Love for the Least Ministry can be accessed here: https://lovefortheleast.org/