The Command To Mission Not The Call To Mission

Check out this brief video from Dave Black on missions. I love what he said, if I can paraphrase, that even though Dr. Black has been on many a mission trip he never was called to mission but he was commanded to mission as we all are.


"Every Christian a full-time minister of the Gospel"

Yes and amen.

Southern Baptist Convention To Cut Hundreds Of Missionaries

Christianity Today reports that the International Mission Board, the foreign mission arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, is cutting hundreds of staff including missionaries: Southern Baptists Will Cut 600 to 800 Missionaries and Staff. David Platt, president of the IMB, announced that the IMB has overspent by almost a quarter billion dollars and it sounds like the prior leadership was not exactly fiscally responsible. Is this a sign of things to come? It sounds like it could be...

Scott Moreau, editor of Evangelical Missions Quarterly, said the IMB staff cuts could be a sign of things to come. Since the 1700s, he said, evangelicals have used the “William Carey” model of missions funding.

In that model, churches and individual Christians donate to a mission society, which then sends out missionaries.

It’s a model that could falter in the future, Moreau said. “This might be a step toward the demise of the centrally funded mission agency.”

To me it is inconceivable that the current model of missions will survive the near future. We should be thinking very seriously about how to fund mission work and we should have started to do so a long time ago. Being a missionary supported by the IMB must be nicer than having a dozen local churches you have to ask for money from but I think both of those models are in trouble, We should have been moving to a model of using mission funds to equip local Christians in foreign mission fields. rather than parachuting white American missionaries into foreign countries to save the heathen. We have plenty of white heathens right here in America and you can find a bunch of them pretty easily because they are in a pew on Sunday mornings. By equipping and even supporting for a time Christians in their own native lands we change the 'Murica To The Rescue! paradigm and hopefully have a more genuine and less threatening Gospel witness. Plus I think it would be far more cost-effective. For a fraction of the cost of supporting U.S. missionaries in the lifestyle they are accustomed to, we can send equippers to help Christians already on the ground obtain the tools they need to be witnesses, which is far more Biblical anyway (see Ephesians 4:11-16).

Of course it wouldn't be like me to not point out the institutional elephant in the room. The SBC's IMB has been selling off mission property and not replacing retiring missionaries because they lack the funds to stay within budget. That means people in foreign lands are not hearing the Gospel and are dying condemned in their sins. Meanwhile as I have posted previously, the Southern Baptist Convention, as the largest Christian denomination in America, has tens of billions in real estate that sits mostly empty most of the week (see my post, Speaking of haranguing the institutional church  to see where I come up with that claim.). How can we sleep at night as the church knowing that our priorities are that screwed up? Let me say that again: people are dying and going to hell without Jesus and the richest and most powerful Christians in the world can't be bothered to spend less on ourselves so we can send the Gospel to them. You can bet we have the money to support sending Marines and drone strikes to those countries but not Bibles and missionaries. If God were not infinitely patient and sovereign  I fear that every lot in America containing a "church" building would be a smoldering ruin. I am not at all joking about that.

We are at the point where we have to decide which is more important for us, having a cozy and convenient place to get our religion on or taking the Gospel to every corner of the earth. We don't have enough money to do both now and that is only going to get worse in the future. I am quite confident that the Bible already answers that question for us in favor of the latter. The only remaining question is whether the church of Jesus Christ will be a faith Bride and carry out the Great Commission He entrusted to us.

Unreached People Groups May Be Closer Than You Think

We speak of unreached people groups as these strange people in far away lands that we need to send missionaries to. Some people have little apps on their webpage with the "unreached people group" of the day, always an exotic location with an unpronounceable name and a picture of someone wearing odd clothing with a note about what a small percentage of people are Christians in that area. In many ways this is a good and proper reminder of the importance of the work of evangelism, not primarily digging wells but sharing the Living Water of Christ that redeems from sin and rescues from hell. What I am concerned about with this notion of "unreached people groups" is that it almost always focuses on people who are far away in often unsettled or even dangerous areas.

This concerns me for two reasons. First, it gives the impression that the Great Commission is all about going "over there" and for the typical American Christian that is a daunting task, one made all the more daunting by the way we frame the preaching of the Gospel as the exclusive function of the clergy and professional missionary. A short-term mission trip might be OK as a photo op and a check mark on your religious bucket list but actual evangelistic mission trips are out of bounds. This is compounded by the general embrace of the futile chasing of the "American dream" by the majority of American churchgoers which leaves little money and even less time to devote much to the service of God outside of a hurried couple of hours on Sunday morning. The net result is that "unreached people group" is code for "people you don't have the time or training to evangelize so please make your check payable to....". The more we divide the people of God from the mission of God the weaker the church becomes. If you doubt that, please feel free to look around at the state of the church in America and the West in general.

The second issue is a problem of definition. Unreached people groups are not all or even mostly "over there". Many of the most unreached people around can be found sitting in pews on Sunday morning and therefore are quite reachable. Add to that the millions of people who have had some sort of non-regenerative religious event in their life but who have been told they are "saved" and the church in America ought to be plenty busy with getting the Gospel to our own unreached people groups. The church could send hundreds of missionaries to Utah and come into contact with millions of lost mormons and do so for a pittance. The same is true for most large American cities and, being honest, just about any decent sized town in the "Bible belt" or in  the heavily Roman Catholic communities of the upper Midwest. Of course doing that might necessitate offending some of our new best friends in the culture wars....

It is absolutely true that there huge numbers of people groups who have never heard the name of Christ and I am all in favor of equipping and supporting largely indigenous evangelists and missionaries to reach them but it is also just as true that there are huge numbers of people in the West with a tenuous religious linkage to our culture religion who are just as lost as a tribesman deep in the jungle somewhere. You don't get a pass on judgment because you were baptized as an infant or "made a decision" for Christ once in a fit of guilt. Rather than teaching the church that all of the lost people are in far away lands, unreachable by regular people, we should be equipping our churches to reach the millions of lost, largely unreached people right where we live. It is safer, easier and more accommodating to a passive religious life to evangelize by check writing but we do the church and the Gospel itself a disservice when we do. The reality of the mission field being both "there" and "here" demands a serious conversation and a major shift in how we think about, fund and carry out mission work. 

Unleash all of the church to reach all of the unreached, not just a little bit of the church to reach a few of the unreached groups. There is plenty of opportunity for evangelism and mission work to go around and most of it is within driving distance!

Spending on Sending

David Fitch who blogs at Reclaiming The Mission posted this on Facebook Sunday morning:

I replied with this:

Nothing new there but I was thinking about it more and the more I did, the more it struck me that we are missing a golden opportunity in the church and probably don't even realize it. Having been in the church for more than a decade and in that time seeing a pretty wide spectrum, at least on the conservative end, I have come to realize that the church in America is notable for untapped potential on a massive scale. In virtually every fellowship we have been involved in there were many individuals, couples and families that were highly motivated, mature and zealous but were not part of the leadership and therefore were relegated to teaching Sunday school or something of that nature. Nothing wrong with teaching of course but there is so much more they could accomplish if they were encouraged and untethered.

I believe the reason so many Christians are disengaged from the broader mission of the church is two fold but has the same root. First the rank and file Christian is encouraged to do very little other than faithfully show up and pay up on Sunday morning. Sure there is a lot of chatter from the pulpit about mission and evangelism and service but no one really exhorts or rebukes those content to live out their Christian life in comfortable religious apathy week after week and there are a lot of people like that. The second reason that so much potential is left untapped is that so much of the church, especially financially and emotionally, is tied up in local fellowships. With local churches spending or hoarding most of their income as fast as it comes in there is little left over for something outside of the institutional box. So weeks turn into months which turn into years of inaction and atrophy for all too many Christians.

Look at a place like Detroit. It is dirt cheap to buy houses there but it is also pretty hard to find a job and it is also pretty dangerous compared to our cozy suburban religious strongholds. Even so I am sure that if churches in the wealthy enclaves of Oakland County and Ann Arbor pooled their ample resources and recruited among the church they could find plenty of families and individuals who would move to Detroit to minister to that most desperate of cities if they got financial support for the move and initial expenses as well as subsidizing living costs while they got established.

Wait a second you might be saying! Aren't you against paying people in ministry. Why yes, yes I am. I would qualify that by saying that not all financial support is created equally. Am I in favor of providing domestic missionaries, evangelists and church planters with a permanent salary? Not at all. I think it is important for those who minister in a community to be employed and engaged in the community. Especially in places like Detroit where there is a major suspicion of outsiders coming in and telling them what to do. But there is nothing wrong or unbiblical about the church financially helping those called and sent to serve. I would much rather see churches helping several families get established in an area instead of hiring another staff member or increasing the size of their parking lot.

We often think of the church in America as being unbelievably wealthy and it is but not in the ways we are trained to think. Our real wealth is not in our obscene real estate holdings or overflowing bank accounts. Our real earthly treasure is found in our brothers and sisters, a treasure that is largely lying untapped by the church. It is high time to stop discouraging the saints and start encouraging, equipping and yes even spending to support them. The fields have never been whiter in America and the harvest sits ready but we can't harvest the field with our workers sitting idly in the barn every Sunday.

The Future Of Mission Boards

Eric Carpenter blogged about 25 Things That Will Occur in the American Church During the Next 25 Years. I think it is a good list and the kind of conversation we need to be having. Ministry in the next 25 years will look very different from ministry in the last 25 and the church needs to be thinking about it now, rather than after everything has changed,

I looked his list over and agreed with a lot of what he wrote. One point that I really liked (actually two) had to do with missions programs. Here they are:

11. Because of cost the USA will send fewer missionaries overseas.
12. American churches will fund an increasing number of national missionaries in their home countries.

I agree in part with that. Definitely 11, as church giving continues to shrink as fewer and fewer religious people attend "church" and give to religious groups, I think you will see the average local church turn even more inward and that means cutting missionary funding (in terms of sending American missionaries to foreign countries) in favor of spending to sustain the local religious organization, keeping the lights on and the clergy paid. It is the second part that I thought was interesting. I am not sure many local churches are down with paying local, indigenous missionaries and evangelists although they should be. I think there is a subtle, or maybe not so subtle, notion of the American version of Christendom that sees America as the pinnacle of the Christian experiment. We often seem to be exporting American religion more than Christianity. When I see pastors in third world countries sporting Western style suits and ties I see that we seem just as concerned with expanding the American religious culture as we are in spreading the Gospel. It is a matter of control. American missionaries with connections in the U.S. are more easily controlled than an evangelist or church planter in Ethiopia that is supported from afar. So I am not as optimistic that the future will see more indigenous mission support but I also don't see a great future for groups like the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.

In spite of my skepticism I am hoping that Eric is right and I think that the new world of post Christendom in American Christianity will be fertile ground for a new type of cooperative "mission board" that is not based on denominational affiliation but perhaps based on nations or regions. As the church changes I agree with Eric that we will see a "barbell" shape in American Christianity with a group of really large "churches" on one end and a lot of very small, simpler churches on the other with very few of the medium sized churches many people are used to in the middle. Those smaller churches will lack the critical mass to support missionaries on their own and likely will be unaffiliated with a denominational missions board. This creates a new opportunity for cooperative missions groups that transcend denomination. Perhaps 7-8 small church groups that have an affinity for Haiti or Vietnam or Ecuador can pool their resources together to support a local missionary in those nations. Indigenous missionaries, especially in third world nations, are far more "affordable" because they don't bring American lifestyle expectations with them. They know the people they are ministering to and lack the "noble American coming to save you" stigma. I think indigenous missionaries and church planters are the way to go and I think there is a real opportunity for this model in the post-Christendom world. The question will come down to whether our American pride will allow us to trust our brothers in another country to "get it right" without the "benefit" of an American church upbringing.

Someone should write a polemic about the indigenous missionary model. Paging Dave Black!

Not just telling but inviting

I read a short but very interesting post the other day by a fellow named Chris Lenshyn. Chris blogs at anabaptistly and his post, Evangelism: An Invitation to Participate, was fascinating.

Evangelism is often viewed as going out and telling people about Jesus. That is true. But it is also more than that. When we go to people with the Gospel we also are inviting those who respond to become part of His family. Chris writes...

To participate is the grand call of God in the life of Jesus. We must be careful then, as we share the gospel that we do not get caught up in mere words. If our words do not offer the mutual participation in the obedience to God in our particular place and time we become a loud, noisy gong. 

We cannot simply tell people about Jesus and when they respond ask them to politely sit and watch ministry going on for an indeterminate amount of time. Every Christian is called to minister and evangelize, making disciples who in turn make disciples.  Our task is not merely to tell people about Jesus but to also invite them to engage in His Kingdom mission, a mission that is plenty big enough for everyone to participate in. When we tell people about Jesus but then don't really expect or allow them to participate in the mission of God, restricting those functions to professionals and excusing their inaction because they just aren't "gifted" in that way, we aren't giving people the whole story. (On a side note we need to honor all of the callings of the church and not just a few. A young mother raising her kids is doing something that is every bit, and probably more, important than the brother who is leading a discussion on Sunday.)

I just had this conversation the other day with a friend. If our "local church" culture creates barriers to full fellowship and participation, how can we really evangelize? Going out and telling people about Jesus when the people you are telling are not really people you will accept until the meet a certain set of criteria makes evangelism pretty hard. That is a big reason why it seems that the more traditions a church has that make fellowship difficult (formal membership, extra-biblical standards, closed communion, etc.), the less they tend to evangelize, relying instead on poaching other already like-minded Christians. I saw a lot of this among Reformed churches and am seeing the same thing among "conservative" Anabaptist groups. Anyway, interesting thoughts. Preaching the Gospel is about more than getting out of hell in the future, it is about being a part of the mission of Christ here and now.

(HT: Robert Martin)

Ouch!

This is a pretty searing indictment of short-term mission trips,Why You Should Consider Cancelling Your Short-Term Mission Trips , Here is the intro....

I have seen with my own eyes or know of houses in Latin America that have been painted 20 times by 20 different short-term teams; fake orphanages in Uganda erected to get Westerners to give money; internet centers in India whose primary purpose is to ask Westerners for money; children in African countries purposefully mutilated by their parents so they would solicit sympathy while they beg; a New England-style church built by a Western team in Cameroon that is never used except when the team comes to visit; and slums filled with big-screen TVs and cell phone towers.

I have seen or know of teams of grandmothers who go to African countries and hold baby orphans for a week every year but don't send a dime to help them otherwise; teams who build houses that never get used; teams that bring the best vacation Bible school material for evangelism when the national church can never bring people back to church unless they have the expensive Western material; teams that lead evangelistic crusades claiming commitments to Christ topping 5,000 every year in the same location with the same people attending.

Not sure what I think about this, there are some legitimate points but he is short on alternatives. Apparently there is another post with some ways to make these trips more effective. Curious to read that, I share some of the concerns he has but I also cannot discount the transformational impact of these sorts of trips.

Give it a read and let me know what you think. Have you been on a short-term mission trip and if so do you agree? 

Go into all the world and make them into North Americans?

Miguel Labrador linked to an older post he wrote but one that is quite timely. The post is titled Christian Missions, Making Disciples and Cultural Contamination and it focuses on the inescapable linkage between American evangelical mission work and Western colonialism. This sentence really got me...

I would have to say the my North American brethren are far more prone to making little North Americans then Making Disciples of Jesus.

That is my great fear, that we are sending out missionaries that are perceived to be trying to spread the American church culture and American cultural values rather than spreading the Gospel. It is hard for me to understand but in many parts of the world the arrival of white Westerners is a reminder of the colonial era and that can create a stumbling block for the Gospel. Because of this, it is incumbent on Western Christians to be especially concerned with what we are taking to the mission field and all the more reason we should seek to equip and support indigenous missionaries rather than insisting on sending American missionaries.

Give it a read, it is quite provocative but it is an important topic.

Visiting The Prisoner

I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:36-46)

Scripture is full of references to visiting those in prison. Jesus Himself was arrested and held by the authorities before being executed. Paul the evangelist and apostle spent a great deal of time in prison. In fact he used this time to his advantage, writing to the church in areas he had ministered and witnessing to his guards. The apostles were imprisoned and held for trial on more than one occasion. The Gospel has often lead to Christians being imprisoned and prison are a huge and increasing mission field for the Gospel.

In America we have a culture of incarceration. There are millions of people in prison right now and millions more that have served time in the past. I cannot verify the accuracy of this chart but it certainly seems reasonable. Starting in 1980 or so the number of incarcerated Americans has exploded. Some of this can be attributed to the increase in population but the rate of incarceration has gone up much faster than the increase in the population. For a lot of the genteel, polite, "Sunday best" American church, prisoners and former prisoners are a scary thought. We like having prisons and jails to keep the bad guys away from us, all too often forgetting that before we came to Christ we were under the condemnation of the most just and holy of all Judges.

So what does this mean for the church? For starters it means that we need to take seriously the words of Christ, both in Matthew 25 and in the Great Commission. Going to all the world with the Gospel to make disciples and visiting "the least of these" in prison go hand in hand. I am certain that there are plenty of God's elect sheep in the state penitentiary just as I am that there are plenty in the crowd at a revival and the pew on Sunday morning. Plus, and not trying to be cute here, people in prison are not going anywhere so we have to go to them. I think the Gospel is often best received, in other words hearts are most prepared, when a person is at the end of themselves and has nowhere else to turn. If that doesn't describe someone in prison, what does?

Jails and prisons are scary, unpleasant places. I have visited people who were incarcerated on a couple of occasions when I was a vocational pastor and it is a weird feeling for someone who has never been there before. I am not sure it ever would be comfortable but that is kind of the point of prison isn't it? I am convinced that "church" is perhaps the least conducive ground for the Gospel presentation. It is far too easy for an unregenerate believer to think they are right with God based on attendance, offering and attire. We need to go to the hard places, the pregnancy resource center where a frightened young woman just found out she is pregnant, to the prisoner in a place that we would never voluntarily go, to the homeless and the prostitute, to the nations where the Gospel is met with open hostility and preaching the Gospel is not mere stagecraft but real life changing and life endangering preaching in season and out.

I am trying to find some resources here locally to get involved in prison ministry. It is not something I want to do. Who wants to go to a prison? It is something I feel I must do for the sake of my King. There is no place on earth that is not His, not the fanciest suburban church nor the darkest prison cell. If I am indeed His ambassador, I must answer when He calls and go where He sends. I will post updates here if and when that happens. I could certainly use your prayers here and I will pray for you to find those hard places with unwanted people that Jesus wants you to minister to.

The American Perspective on Missions

I read something interesting this morning, The Other Side of Global Missions by Jason John. He makes the case for global missions as not just an opportunity to spread the Gospel but also to transform those who go. The whole thing is interesting but here is the conclusion that makes the point very nicely.

Global missions is God's universal mandate to take the gospel there and his gracious provision for us to be forever changed here. Stand in the midst of East African poverty. Build a home in southern Mexico. Walk the hurricane ravaged streets of Haiti. Sit in agnostic-packed European university classes. Observe the afternoon prayers of Muslims in the Middle East. Your assumptions, perspectives, and ideologies will be forever shifted. You will never be the same. Your homes will never be the same. Your family, your job, your neighborhood, your church, and your city will never be the same. All this is a deep and profound expression of God's grace towards you.

Wow, I get that! I also don't quite get it. I am not sure that God's intent in the Great Commission was to shake His apathetic American sheep from their affluence and entertainment induced stupor. Not that we don't need that, we certainly do. I just wonder about the mindset of America Christians. It sometimes seems like we read the Great Commission like this:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the other non-American nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but in America just invite them to church (Matthew 28:19 re-mix)

Yes, we should be sending missionaries from America to all parts of the world but I also believe we should be inviting and supporting missionaries from all parts of the world to come here. America is no better and no worse when it comes to being a mission field. Don't let the "church on every street corner" fool you. America is full of lost people and a whole bunch of them are "members" in good standing in a nice, new local church with a praise band and a snappy, well planned out sermon each week. America is no more a "Christian Nation" than Liechtenstein or Lithuania or Mongolia and the sooner we drop that mindset the better.

We should also support native missionaries overseas instead of assuming that we have to send American missionaries so it gets done "properly". For the cost of sending one American missionary family to Honduras for a year, how many local native missionaries can we help equip and support? Which is likely to be better received? Given the American tendency to confuse American cultural, patriotic religion with Christianity I sometimes think we would be far better off equipping and supporting native missionaries. When I went to Haiti my group stood out like a sore thumb. We were all Caucasian, none of us spoke the language and we clearly were not not Haitian. I impact Haiti a lot more in front of my computer trying to raise awareness and sending money than I did playing with orphans and looking confused when they spoke Creole.

America is part of the global mission field in the same way that Haiti or Ethiopia or Thailand is. It is not God's launching ground from which missionaries go to the rest of the world. It is so hard to get out of that mindset that sees America as God's chosen people, uniquely called and qualified by our freedom and affluence to take the Gospel to "those" countries. The American understanding of the Gospel, the American way of doing church, are  not terribly healthy for Americans and not something we should be exporting.

In spite of the popularity of mission trips to transform American Christians, it doesn't seem like much has changed in American Christianity. In many ways I think we would benefit more from the sober counsel of "foreign" missionaries coming here. Let the elders from a church in Africa come and look over your church budget. Have some elders from China sit in on your next business meeting. Host some missionaries from Central America in your home and show them your family budget. Invite a Haitian pastor who was robbed and beaten and had his daughter raped to your next pastors lunch and tell him how busy you are and how ungrateful your church members are.  You want to see American Christianity impacted, let the world come to us and perhaps then we will see just how out of whack our priorities are!

I absolutely see the value of global missions and I get what Jason is saying. I was changed and impacted far more by my trip to Haiti than the children I visited were impacted by me being there. I hope to go back soon and take some of my kids with me. I also want to be careful that I don't see global missions as merely a way for me to become a better American Christian. The mission field is not a one way street and the Great Commission it is not unique to America. We need a much bigger view of global missions.

An inward focus or an outward focus

Yesterday Baptist Press reported a modest increase in the Southern Baptist Convention Annie Armstring offering in 2011 (the Annie Armstrong offering goes entirely to support overseas missionaries)

Southern Baptist churches gave three percent more to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions in 2011 than they did in 2010.

For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the offering totaled $56,040,868.

That sounds like a big number at first blush. Fifty-six million dollars, all of it going to support missionaries! Hang on a second...

It comes to about $1200/ SBC church. For some churches that would be a lot of money but even for a small church that is a fraction of their operating costs. When you look at some of the really big SBC churches and examine their budgets that number sounds less impressive. When you compare that figure to the real estate holdings in the SBC of over $40,000,000,000 or an average of over $1,000,000 per church, it really should be sobering. A denomination ostensibly founded in part for the purpose of supporting missionary that gives such a paltry amount to missions is cause for some serious soul searching, not celebration.

The bigger issue is that in spite of the "Great Commission Resurgence", the Southern Baptist Convention and most other traditional churches are still not very focused on reaching the lost. That may sound like a harsh indictment but given the reality that outside of baptizing children of believers and adding new "members" from other churches, many (most) evangelical churches are primarily inwardly focused on the operations of their own organization far more than they are on reaching the lost.

The gathering of the church is vitally important but it is not important for its own sake. It is important because of the equipping and encouraging that is supposed to go on. If all we do week after week is listen to sermons and sing a few songs but never mature beyond knowing a few new tidbits about a passage of Scripture gleaned from the sermon and Sunday school, frankly we are wasting our time and might as well stay home. A church that doesn't see those who gather there on a regular basis being equipped, released and engaged in mission is failing. I don't care how many people are on the membership roll. I don't care how big their budget is or how famous their pastor. If rank and file Christians are not reaching the lost and caring for the poor because they are not being equipped to do so on Sundays, the church that they gather at should be closed down, the property sold and the proceeds given to those who will take the Gospel to the world. We simply cannot afford more palatial manmade temples that put on a religious show but do little other than spoon feed the sheep. We need gatherings that are Gospel cannons firing equipped believers into the world. The field is far too white and the laborers are far too few for us to do anything else.

Gospel dispensers

As a follow-up to my post yesterday Where Are We The Church? I want to keep thinking about the relationship between the community of the saints and the mission of the church. What role does the church play in the mission of God? Can the two even be properly distinguished? What is our focus? Is it on the gathering or the going?

Let me say this at the outset. If the gathering of the church you are part of is not equipping you to take the Gospel to the lost, it is failing in its calling. Utterly and completely. It doesn't matter if you have super preaching and follow the "regulative principle of worship", if Christians can come Sunday after Sunday and walk away with nothing more than some notes about the sermon on their bulletin, you aren't a Biblical gathering of the church. It also doesn't matter if you have a participatory meeting where everyone gets a say if no one gets equipped. We cannot lose sight of the primary purpose of God's collected people, namely to be the vehicle God uses to carry out His purpose in the world.

I like what Dave Black had to say regarding the church and her mission in a new entry, The Church Is A Granary

We err when we think of the church as a storehouse for converts instead of as a distribution plant. Every believer must be equipped to become a witness for Christ. And every church must become a center of Gospel distribution. Jesus sent out the 12 and the 72. I have the deep conviction that every deficiency in the church can be traced back to a failure to follow the New Testament teaching and pattern about missions. We may be completely orthodox in our theology and yet fall completely short of the New Testament teaching in our practice. Our faith must be a living thing, not just faith in itself. The earliest Christians were wholly dedicated, sold out to Jesus Christ and His cause. And because they were committed men and women, they expected their converts to be equally committed to the Great Commission, to propagate the Gospel, and to serve as Jesus served. Their leaders trained the entire church to be fulltime ministers rather than selecting a few who would devote themselves to "fulltime Christian ministry."

The church is indeed a distribution plant. We are supposed to be making disciples to send them out to make disciples, not making disciples to show up on Sunday. As we make and equip disciples, the community of the saints is what should be formed for the purpose of equipping, encouraging and sending.

Community and mission are not enemies. To the contrary, if the church is functioning correctly and hoping to impact the world for the Kingdom they must go hand in hand. I tend to focus and think a lot about the gathering, not just the Sunday meeting but the people of God living lives together. That is so crucial to the health of the church but if that gathering doesn't lead to the going, it is worthless no matter how Biblical we think it is. We oftebn get caught up in the "doing church right". If we can just make the church gathering more organic or more reformed or more "spirit driven" or more participatory, we will be OK. We need to have our end on the end result we desire first instead of the process. If you try to build a house by slapping up walls without a blueprint, you are going to get a haphazard house that will fall down sooner or later.

Conversely if we neglect the community of the saints, mission simply will never happen. Just assuming that any old church gathering is fine as long as we are personally "missional" grossly misunderstands the purpose of the church and the vital role it fills in mission. The church is the equipping and encouraging system that God has ordained. How and why and what we do when we gather has a major impact on how we carry out (or don't) the mission God has called every single Christian to. Some, I would say many, models of church gathering not only do little to equip believers, they tend to discourage mission from individual believers in favor of sub-contracting mission work to the "properly" appointed professionals, leaving most Christians on the sidelines as observers and check writers.

I would also clarify again that what really matters is the community of the church more than any regularly scheduled "official" gathering. The community of believers who make up the church is the thing, not gathering as the church and hoping community happens.

I am not sure this post makes any sense at all. It seems a jumble of stuff that doesn't flow very well. That might be because I am having a hard time even processing all of this yet again as I come around to this topic over and over. I still have more to write about this but I am afraid of adding to this post and making it worse. Certainly not my best effort in the blogging world!

Apostles Only?

Felicity Dale posted a fascinating question on her blog yesterday: Was the Great Commission given only to the eleven disciples?

I like her answer!

I believe that all of us are called to be ambassadors, those who represent the Kingdom of God to the rest of the world. Obviously, how we do it, and what motivates us is important too.

I have heard the argument made in the past that the Great Commission was only for the apostles or at least is reserved for a few, properly ordained Christians. When I hear that, I just turn to the New Testament itself for proof that all Christians are called and "licensed" to preach the Gospel. Check out Acts 8:1-4 (emphasis added)

And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. (Act 8:1-4)

Preaching the Gospel is not the privilege of a small sub-class of the church. It is the calling of every Christian. Of course we also have to keep in mind that when the Bible speaks of preaching, it is not talking about sermons delivered to the gathered church. There certainly are men who are recognized as elders who equip believers for the work of ministry so that the less mature become mature by observing the example of servant-leaders in the church. But spreading the Good News? That is for every born-again follower of Jesus Christ.

Don't let anyone tell you that you are not called to preach the Gospel if you are a Christian. Don't let some religious group tell you that you need special education or an ordination certificate or a "license" to preach the Gospel. The mission field is far too vast to have most of the church relegated to being spectators in the Great Commission.

Mission Report

I really loved this report from D. Kevin Brown who just got back from Ethiopia where he was ministering along with two of his children, Where To Begin. I especially appreciated this:

I will try to write over the next week or so about the experiences of the journey and the things the Lord has taught me and given to me and my family in this process. In doing so, perhaps vicariously you can somehow get a taste of the work. But, I must tell you that I have another motive. It is to place a seed of desire within you for mission work to reach beyond the comfort, security and pleasure of our own homes and even our own borders to reach the world with the Gospel. I hope the Spirit of God will place a desire in your heart to do “hard things.” I pray some parents will see that it is just as important to send your child on mission adventures as it is sports camps/weeks, summer camps or academic exploits.

I so get that and it is my desire to take my oldest daughters with me next year to Haiti, not to give them a cool experience and some pictures to post on Facebook but to give them that sort of spiritual awakening that comes from seeing the enormity of the work and our utter dependence on God for the task. It takes a certain level of trust in God to take your children from the comfortable world of middle America and show them how the rest of the world lives. It is far easier to talk about missions from the safety and comfort of the youth room at church but the mission field is out there waiting and God has called us all, without exception, as His workers in the harvest.

I am looking forward to the rest of Kevin's posts and encourage you to read his first entry and the subsequent entries.

Missions: Few subjects are more important or more filled with misconceptions

Dave Black posted a list of Top Ten Misconceptions About Missions and it is a great list. The mission of the church is the great responsibility and great privilege of every single Christian. It is a terrible truth that many of the so-called experts on missiology have transformed the universal calling of all Christians into a specialized subcategory of the church.

"Pay, Pray and Stay" is not The Way

Pay, Pray and Stay

Those three words sum up the missionary mindset of the American church. The "average" Christian in America sees their calling as monetary contributions to support professional missionaries (which is of course important), praying for missions (which is critically important) and staying in place because mission work is for “someone else”. I can feel comfortable in my staying as long as I am praying and paying. This attitude might make sense if the world were overwhelmingly reached for the Gospel with only a few isolated pockets left to reach. The reality is far less rosy but this attitude persists in the church.

I think part of this mindset is, to be blunt, just laziness or apathy. I start that criticism right at my own doorstep. We talk about the Gospel and having a “heart for the lost” but the concerns of our every day life, no matter how mundane or banal, are more important in practice if not in theory. We work hard all day, pick up the kids or run them around to activities, throw together some dinner, watch some TV and hit the hay. Who has time for mission work? Let the professionals go and proclaim the Gospel. Sure there are a billion people in Africa and almost 4 billion in Asia and 700 million in Europe and almost 400 million in South America and the vast majoroty of those billions of people are unreached but I am sure that those missionaries can reach them all with no problem. They keep sending us postcards to put on our "missions" bulletin board in the foyer and we keep sending them money and everyone is happy.

The other problem is that we have been painted a picture of missions that seems out of reach and terrifying to most Christians. When we talk about global missions, what comes to mind? Living in a hut in Africa? Running an orphanage in Haiti? Helping women get out of prostitution in Thailand? The very term “global missions” evokes images of danger, hardship, discomfort. All terrifying to American Christians and a huge barrier to mission involvement. Now you can cluck your tongue at the unfaithfulness of so many Christians but going from the suburbs to the bush is a huge leap and one that most Christians are not spiritually prepared or equipped to take. The church has failed miserably in equipping and preparing the Body for missions. What we are left with is an “all or nothing” missions mentality. Either you pack up the family and head to the Philippines or you sit in your pew and put a check in the offering plate. That isn’t the way it has to be. It cannot be. For every Paul who travelled the known world, there were 100 Christians who witnessed where they lived to people that they knew. We don’t get extra points for degree of difficulty in missions work. The person down the street who comes to Christ because of a relationship with you is just as saved and just as precious as the African or Asian who comes to Christ. All men without exception need Jesus and none of them without exception will hear about Him if no one tells them.

Maybe you aren't called to go to Tanzania or the Sudan or Haiti (but maybe you are!). That doesn't mean you aren't called to mission. I am not even convinced that we need more American Christians to go be “full-time” missionaries in far away lands. I think a lot of our effort should be in equipping local missionaries rather than parachuting American missionaries into foreign nations. Joe the Missionary from Iowa is going to have a harder time witnessing to people in Ecuador than Sam the local Christian who knows the culture and the people. Some of us may be called to go and preach, some to go and equip and many to evangelize right where they are but all of us are called.

We need to abandon both the “professional missionary” mindset and the “all or nothing” mindset. There is no place on Earth that is so thoroughly reached for the Gospel that mission work is not needed. Not in China and not in Chicago or even Chattanooga. The presence of a lot of buildings with the word “church” on their sign is not an indicator of a region that is thoroughly reached with the Gospel.

Jesus is our King and our Lord. He exemplified and modeled our calling. God the Father sent Him to us and He in turn sends us to them (John 20:21). We are His emissaries, His ambassadors, His heralds and we are universally called to this noble task. The call is clear but the question remains: how or if we will respond.

If you are a Christian, your ordination certificate is etched on the heart of flesh God placed in you. Your call to mission is written in blood on a cross on Calvary. Your mission field starts with your own children, goes out your front door and extends to every corner of the world. That is true for every Christian and there are no exceptions. Not every Christian will minister to every people group in every place but every Christian is called to minister to someone somewhere.

Mission as worship

Mission is one thing. Worship is another. The only time that they meet is when a missionary comes to our "worship service" to tell us about what he is doing, show us some slides and ask for money.

That is kind of the attitude that dominates the church world. Not in those words but certainly in how we act and what we emphasize. Dave Black calls that false division out with a new essay, Missions As a Lifestyle of Worship. Here is an extensive quote, I hope Dr. Black doesn't mind:

For this reason, I can’t be content any longer to talk about a missional theology without at least exploring its implications for its transformation potential. God’s concerns are much bigger than the typical church’s concerns. Take worship for example. Understood biblically, worship is not a gathering of individual Christians seeking an intimate experience with God. Rather, worship is the offering of our lives sacrificially to Him daily (see Rom. 12:1-2). Worship is not merely an occasional activity of the believer. Instead, it defines the core of Christian discipleship: We are called to be worshippers in every sphere of life by participating in the Triune God’s mission in the world. This can take place only through intentional “neighboring” practices and in relationship with non-Christians. The key is for ordinary Christians (like you and me) to develop their capacity to serve their neighbors in love. The work of the Spirit is crucial to this renewed participation in society. Christians are to embody the ethics of Jesus before a watching world, providing it with a limited but powerful glimpse of what it means to be a bearer of God’s image. The Gospels clearly present Jesus as constantly moving into unfamiliar territory across cultural barriers and social lines. And at the heart of it all is the cross – the profound need for reconciliation through Jesus Christ, in whom God has acted to overcome the enmity of human sin. True Christian discipleship always means taking part in Christ’s ministry in the world in a dynamic yet concrete fashion.

Thus, when we speak of worship today, a much wider definition is needed. The church does not gather in order to worship. Believers gather as worshippers who have found their vocation in sharing in the community of Christ as He sends them like sheep among wolves to minister to the needs of others. This, as I said, represents a major paradigm shift in my own understanding of Christian worship. As I see it, too much of what passes as Christian worship today is unaffected by the world. It stands aloof, isolated, and ingrown. The incarnation and crucifixion are sung about but the realties behind these truths are rarely put into practice. Rather than participating deeply in the life of the world, the church holds itself apart from the world. This leads, in turn, to a highly individualistic conception of discipleship – a kind of anthropocentricism focused solely on an individual relationship with Jesus that fails to take into account the wider fabric of the Christian community, not to mention the Triune God’s life and activity with all creation. What remains is a watered-down, emasculated version of worship in which the vocation of the church as a missional, worshiping Body is severely diminished.

I spent quite a bit of time in the mindset that is prevalent in the church, especially in the conservative, highly academic corners, that sees "worship" as the purpose for the gathering of the church and "worship" defined as making believers into smarter, more discerning and theologically astute Christians. The assumption was that we needed to constantly refine our doctrine within the church, making disciples who were theologically mature (as we defined it) and this would inevitably lead to service and evangelism (i.e. inviting people to church). The problem with this mindset is that rather than leading to the assumed results we end up with Christians that are better and better informed and less and less engaged in mission. Church becomes an end in and of itself rather than a vehicle to reach a greater purpose, the purpose of carrying out God's mission in the world as His ambassadors.

A study of the New Testament gives us a far more robust, vibrant faith. It takes Paul out of the imaginary study full of scrolls where he spent his time preparing sermons and puts him out among the lost preaching Christ, working for a living among unbelievers, encouraging and equipping the church for the work of ministry so that they would not become overly dependent on him. It shows us a church under unimaginable persecution but simultaneously filled with joy, living in community and on fire for missions. There was little room for denominations, seminaries, committee meetings and mission boards because there were simply too many people who needed to encounter Jesus. I read the New Testament and then I look around and wonder what happened. It seems that comfort, ease, affluence happened and we have found it easier and more comfortable to turn inward, acting more like the world every day and yet reaching that same world less and less. We need to get back to the church as a distinctive, salty witness to the world that is not only distinct from the world but reaching that same world for Christ.

You have already been called to ministry

I love the essay from Dave Black today, Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions? . I especially liked this section...

For several years now I've been studying the missionary movement in North America. I believe we are on the verge of an era when insourcing missions will become the strategy for achieving global evangelization. A strategy that depends on outsourcing the work to paid professionals is not going to get the job done. Outsourcing will be around for a while longer because it is what everyone is used to. But insourcing will require a wholly different mindset. It's not just about producing more missionaries. It's about creating a completely different kind of environment -- a collaborative environment in which everyday people like you and me are constantly thinking about how to generate towel and basin ministries both at home and around the globe.

The old world of subcontracting professional ministers in global missions and in local church ministry is in its final days. The world today simply is not one where Christians can stand aside and leave ministry to the professionals. The field is too vast and the workers are too few for us to be observers.

The towel and basin image is so incredibly powerful. Humble servanthood is the highest calling in the church, not positions of authority or fame or power. How far have we strayed in our drive to gain the acceptance and acclaim of the world instead of being salt and light to the world?

I love Dave Black's passion for missions and his passion is infectious. My hope is that everything we do as the people of God is done for the purpose of advancing the mission we have all been called to. So much that we concern ourselves and trouble our minds with has little or nothing to do with our mission. That doesn't mean that those issues are not entirely without value but they certainly take a backseat to telling the lost about Jesus Christ and showing the hurting around us the love of Jesus in our actions as His ambassadors. I especially like that Dr. Black reminds us that missions starts right around us, in every day interactions. There are so many people who live around us, even in the rural area we inhabit, that need to know Christ and He has called us to go and equipped us with the Holy Spirit to carry out His commission. We have everything we need. What holds us back is fear, apathy and indifference. I struggle with that all the time and I am sure others do as well. We must struggle against it because it is sinful to know Jesus and refuse for whatever reason to tell others about Him.

May God fill His people with humble servant hearts that cannot help but proclaim the Gospel message.

The Gospel is offensive and divisive

CNN featured a blog entry on their religion page by Carl Medearis. Titled My Take: Why evangelicals should stop evangelizing, it starts off with a picture of a grinning Carl posing with the number two man of Hezbollah, a terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, a group with an upraised fist grasping a rifle as their flag. All well and good, we are to go to those who hate us in love with the Gospel. Here is the thing though. We are to go to them with the Gospel. Not with Jesus as a wise teacher or Jesus as a great leader or Jesus as a prophet but Jesus as the incarnate Son of God, the Lamb who was slain.

The post starts off OK but then turns into a series of well meaning but I think ultimately dangerous statements. A few choice ones are below…

Even the Apostle Paul insisted that it’s faith in Jesus that matters, not converting to a new religion or a new socio-religious identity.

Paul certainly wasn’t interested in converting people to a new religion but he was hardly someone who was peddling some sort of fuzzy ecumenical “all religions are the same” monstrosity. Paul was bold about the Gospel and what exactly that Gospel means. What it means is a message that causes persecution and hatred, as Paul himself discovered first hand. If Paul were alive today I have no doubt he would be out taking the Gospel to the hardest places in the world and no doubt he would be persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and likely killed for it.

Jesus the uniter of humanity, not Jesus the divider. How might that change the way we look at others?

He is? Not really. It is true that Jesus breaks down the wall between Jew and Gentile but this creates a different divide, between those who believe and those who do not. We cannot overlook or brush over those differences. The words of Christ show this starkly (Matthew 10: 34-37) that the Gospel will divide even members of families.

When I used to think of myself as a missionary, I was obsessed with converting Muslims (or anybody for that matter) to what I thought of as “Christianity.” I had a set of doctrinal litmus tests that the potential convert had to pass before I would consider them “in” or one of “us.”

Funny thing is, Jesus never said, “Go into the world and convert people to Christianity.” What he said was, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”

Encouraging anyone and everyone to become an apprentice of Jesus, without manipulation, is a more open, dynamic and relational way of helping people who want to become more like Jesus — regardless of their religious identity.

There is a world of difference between “making disciples” which Jesus defined as including teaching them to observe all He has commanded us and baptizing them. Teaching people to emulate Jesus without acknowledging Him as Lord is not making disciples. Acting like Jesus isn’t the Gospel and isn’t saving anyone.

It may come as a surprise to many Christians that Muslims are generally open to studying the life of Jesus as a model for leadership because they revere him as a prophet.

That doesn’t surprise me at all. Lots of false religions like to invoke the name of Jesus while denying Him as the very Son of God: Islam, mormonism, the Watchtower, pretty much every pseudo-Christian cult out there. Jesus did not come to provide an example of great leadership, in fact by the worlds standards he is a pretty poor leader. What kind of leader takes pains to offend the rich and powerful and often seems bound and determined to drive off followers (John 6:66)?

I believe that doctrine is important, but it’s not more important than following Jesus.

Gee that sounds nice but lets ask a hard question. How do we know how to follow Jesus without doctrine, without studying the commandments and what He taught? The Gospel is not merely a set of doctrinal truths but it is in part a series of doctrinal truths. Either Jesus is God incarnate or He is not. He either died and rose again or He did not. He either claimed to be the only way of salvation or He did not.

Inviting people to love, trust, and follow Jesus is something the world can live with. And since evangelicals like to say that it’s not about religion, but rather a personal relationship with Jesus, perhaps we should practice what we preach.

That elicited an audible groan followed by a facepalm. The last thing Jesus was interested in (and by proxy the last thing His followers should care about) is proclaiming a message the world can “live with”. The world can “live with” an empty, fuzzy message but that same empty message that the world can “live with” is the same empty message the world will die with.

We need to stop exporting American churchianity to the world. I absolutely agree with that. There is no point in trying to get Christians in other parts of the world to look and act like American Christians. An elder in Tanzania or Haiti or Thailand doesn’t need to wear a western cut suit and tie. That does not mean that we need to abandon the truth of the Gospel, the divisive “His way or the highway” message that saves men’s souls.

I admit that I have no experience in evangelizing Muslims. There are plenty of other people with far more experience. I get that we need to use culturally sensitive methods to get a hearing for the Gospel but at some point we need to actually proclaim the Gospel. Nothing less than that is going to do. It may be offensive. In fact I am sure it is. The world is not going to find it to be something it can “live with” but those of us who have experienced the transforming power of the Gospel know that it is something that in the end the world cannot live without.

What do you think? Am I overreacting?

Can you eat? You can be a missionary!

I was reading, ironically enough, Tim Chester's A Meal With Jesus while grilling burgers and in this section he was recounting a number of ways different groups he is familiar with use meals to build bridges and relationships in order to the share the Gospel. What was interesting was that all of them occurred outside of the normal church settings:

These are all forms of mission Jesus would recognize. They are the kinds of events he might have attended. The Son of Man came eating and drinking.


But these are also ways of doing mission that you could do. In one sense none of these meals is anything special. They don't require any special training or a course in apologetics or a grasp of the latest missiological jargon. When you combine a passion for Jesus with shared meals, you create potent gospel opportunities.

(A Meal With Jesus, pg 77)

I love that. Mission is not necessarily or even typically found in the "big" events. We think of Billy Graham revivals or the Lottie Moon offering but often it seems that missionary opportunities are best found all around us and not on Sunday morning. They don't require special training, just a passion for Jesus, an understanding of the Gospel and a willingness to open your life to others. The same is true of fellowship and discipleship in the church. These are perhaps best accomplished outside of church meetings and formal sessions, over a meal or a cup of coffee.

However we meet as the church, we need to get away from the "Sunday morning mindset" and start seeing opportunities for mission, fellowship and community in the glorious mundane that is all around us.