Issues
Facing Missions Today 11: Three Suggestions for Local Church Mission Programmes
In this blog post, I want to offer three suggestions
for local churches as they think about their mission programmes. These are by no means exhaustive, and I
intend to offer more suggestions at a later time. My three suggestions are that the local
church needs a (1) ‘world mission’ perspective, a (2) ‘Gospel’ perspective, and
a (3) ‘missionary’ perspective.
1. The local
church needs a ‘world mission’ perspective.
That is, missions should not be reduced to the doing of ministry, such
that it might just as well be done around the block rather than overseas. A world perspective ties the local church
into the long and deep missional narrative of Scripture: there is One God who
wants all people to be saved. Luke,
e.g., repeatedly uses Isaiah 49.6 in his two volume work of Luke and Acts in
reference to the disciples/church’s ministry.
It says,
"It is too light a thing that you [God’s Servant] should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will
give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of
the earth."
God’s people do not just exist to be a righteous remnant
in a wicked world—although that, too, is missional. God’s people do not exist simply to minister
to people in need—although they do, of course, do this. God’s people also exist to participate in God’s
salvation shining to every tongue, tribe, people, and nation.
This world mission perspective can be gained by:
· * Frequently
having missionaries tell the story of what God is doing in missions in our day
around the world
· *Giving
updates about the missionaries and their work in the local church
· *Supporting
ministries of long-term missionaries with whom the local church is closely
related (and not restricting support to certain geographical regions)
· *Finding ways
in various church activities for all age groups to be aware of, pray for, and
support foreign missions
· *Teaching the
Bible as a missional book that calls
us into its story
· *Developing a
missional identity for the church
· *Encouraging
an outward, ministry, and universal
focus in the church over against an inward,
self-preserving, and nationalistic
focus of the local church or the country in which the church is located
2. The local church
needs a ‘Gospel’ perspective. The ‘Gospel’
is the good news of the salvation that God has offered sinful humanity in the
work of redemption that Jesus has produced through his sacrificial death on the
cross for our sins. This announcement of
good news requires a response of faith in and to Jesus Christ: that is, belief
that God has, indeed, offered sinful humanity (each of us) salvation through
Jesus and no other. Receiving this good
news means forgiveness of sins, a new life lived through the empowering
presence of the Holy Spirit, an obedience and transformed life that comes from faith
in Jesus, a new fellowship in Christ with God’s people, the church, and a
salvation from God’s coming wrath against all wickedness. The mission of the Church is to tell this
good news and to live it. Since no
aspect of life is untouched by the Gospel, the mission of the Church is
holistic: it involves personal change as much as the formation of community in
Christ; it involves forgiveness of sins as much as the moral life; it involves
the message of salvation from sin and future judgement as much as healing,
restoration, reconciliation, and good deeds.
Holistic missions, though, does not mean a separation of mission into a
host of ministries. It rather means
being able to draw various ministries together into God’s plan of salvation
that is focussed on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Local churches should be able to articulate how their
various ministries relate to a Gospel message that focusses on Jesus, and their
support of missionary work should be based on being able to articulate how
whatever missionaries might do (church planting, well digging, or children’s
education, for example), they are doing this to proclaim God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.
3. The local church
needs a ‘missionary’ perspective.
The local church may be missional.
Every believer might understand himself or herself in terms of mission work. Yet some people are called to missions. These are ‘apostles’ (not the Apostles)—one’s ‘sent out’ (‘apostellō in Greek) with a
mission. The local church should not
democratize ‘mission’ to the extent that it cannot distinguish those called to
take the Gospel to the ends of the earth from people in the local church
involved in good works in the community.
Nor should it democratize ‘mission’ to the extent that it confuses
short-term projects overseas with the support of missionaries.
a. Not ‘Short-Term’ Missions but
Missionaries
The local church can support a missionary perspective by separating
the recent concept of ‘short-term missions’ from ‘missionaries.’ Missionaries are called into a life-time of cross-cultural
ministry. They are skilled in
cross-cultural interaction, Biblically educated (or should be!), able to share
the Gospel clearly, and working to evangelize, plant churches, and nourish
people and churches in the faith through training in the Scriptures and for
ministry. Their example is Paul the
apostle and his missionary team, not the Peace Corps or the Red Cross. Short-term mission work possibly involves an exposure to missions, although doing
good works is not Christian missions if it is not tied to a proclamation of
Jesus Christ. Short-term mission is typically
educational for the person going and
often consists of benevolence work. As such, it should come from an educational
or benevolence fund in the local church and not be confused with the foreign mission
budget of the church.
b. Not ‘Grants’ and ‘Projects’ but
Missionaries
Also, to have a ‘missionary’ perspective, the
local church needs to be involved in the lives of the missionaries that it
supports. If the local mission committee
approaches missionary support as though it were approving ‘grants’ for ‘projects,’
requiring missionaries to fill out application forms, it has entirely missed
the importance of personal involvement in the lives of missionaries. Both the mission committees and the churches
need to know their missionaries. They
should invite missionaries to engage with them in various ways whenever
possible to develop these relationships (and should be proactive in inviting
missionaries into their lives). They should
not drop support if the missionary is called to a new country or a new type of
ministry; rather, they should recognize the call of God on the missionary’s
life and support the missionary wherever God is leading him or her (or the
family). People may be called to join
the work of the missionary from the local church precisely because the church is
so closely attached to the missionary family that they know so well and support
so enthusiastically in prayer and finances.
c. Not Places but Missionaries
Finally, the local church should have a ‘missionary’
perspective by refusing to design their mission programme around places of
ministry instead of people. A fad in local
churches in our day is to choose one or more places where a church is
interested in focusing its efforts in missions.
When a missionary approaches the church, whether from outside the church
or even as a member of the church, and expresses a sense of calling to some
other ministry or some other place, the church should focus on the missionary,
not the place.
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