A supporting ministry developed and founded by Clyde and Cathy Morgan in 1985, along with a small group of seminarians, and mission instructors Russell Staples and Gottfried Oosterwal. At the time, Clyde was a student at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.
AFM focuses exclusively on establishing new churches among people groups as yet unreached by the SDA Church and, in many cases, yet unreached by Christianity. It is funded by voluntary contributions, yet works closely with church leadership at every level. Working agreements are signed with each division of the church in which AFM projects are located. AFM also works closely with the Global Mission program.
The first project launched was among the Ifugao people of northern Luzon in the Philippines in April 1987, with Marc and Aunie Scalzi serving as missionaries. A church and several companies were established among this previously unreached group. Other projects in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, Mongolia, Albania, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and India were started in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
AFM sends out missionaries under several categories. Career missionaries form the backbone of a new project and stay six years or longer until a church is established. Short-term missionaries include student missionaries who help out in an existing project for 9-12 months as well as nonstudent volunteer missionaries who serve for one to two years. Prior to service, all missionaries receive training at the Summer Institute of Frontier Missions conducted by AFM in Berrien Springs, Michigan.
AFM’s goal is to establish the work, train indigenous leaders, then turn the work over to the local mission or conference. Missionaries seek to use methods that can be reproduced and maintained by the people they reach.
A monthly magazine, Adventist Frontiers , is published by AFM and sent free to those requesting it. It primarily contains accounts and photographs submitted by the missionaries of the work they are doing.