Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions On Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. I warmly welcome you to episode 168 of Missions on Point. This is an additional reprise, if you will, after the conclusion of the series on the book, and one of the reasons is I mentioned in the last one the present title of the book in that day, which was several weeks ago before this recording was Local Church Centric Missions: Biblical Support and Implementation. Since that time, we have reconsidered and so I have to say thank you so much for many who had input. We have made it so much simpler and easier I trust to grasp and to generate interest. The name of the book coming out is going to be Missions on Point: The Local Church's Role in Missions, so the title is Missions on Point. Several of us who are working on the title and probably had over 150 different recommendations and possibilities decided that Missions on Point was actually the simplest and most direct title for the book.

The subtitle, the Local Church's Role in Missions is explanatory of the development of the book. It's funny and embarrassing at the same time here we've had a podcast Missions on Point for three years and we never thought of that as the title of the book, but it actually is a good title for the book. We trust that the basic logo for the Missions on Point podcast will be very significant on the cover of the new book. It is descriptive in several ways because it obviously points toward world missions or global missions, but it also has the two streams of thought of ecclesiology, that is studies of the church, and missiology, studies of missions, intersecting. There are very few books and articles that actually address how those two disciplines or schools of thought merge together. In fact, there is a case that you can't have one without the other.

We are really excited about this book in development and thankful for the opportunity to bring these thoughts into book form into your hands. If you're interested in following or learning more about the book over the next few months as it comes to its final development, go to propempo.com, move your cursor over to resources or tap on the resources link. The very first link under resources is the Missions on Point Book. That page will continually be refreshed and have added information about the book and what's going on with it. It also, as you scroll down, gives you the opportunity to express your interest in getting the book when it comes out. Several people have asked, "Why this book? Why is this book even necessary?"

Well, for those of us who know and love the local church and understand the role that the local church has in world missions, we don't have any questions about it. It is a significant study and book, but there are movements out there that are running against the local church's involvement in missions. And I think their objections to the local church having a stronger role in world missions are somewhat understandable because the local church has largely failed in our contemporary times to take seriously their role and responsibility in world missions. So those people and platforms and organizations that want to do world missions have a hard time getting the local church to cooperate with and support it in a large way. So they're actually hardening themselves against the collapse of the local church in world missions so that the Parachurch nonprofit organization becomes its own master, so to speak, that they are completely independent of the local church, which is a serious downfall and goes against all the scriptural evidences that we present in the book.

I truly believe that if the Parachurch nonprofit mission agency organizations turn their back on the local church, it ultimately will lead to their downfall. The model that God gives us in the New Testament is the local church, and if an organization or even a very energetic evangelistic individual thinks that they can do it without the local church, they will run into serious problems theologically, practically, and with regard to what work results in that cross-cultural ministry. If that's the case, then how do we address it?

Well, I've mentioned it before, but here it is again. We deal with the scriptures first. The first third of the book has to do with the centrality of the local church in world missions biblically. So we look at the biblical evidences, everyone from the Godhead to the Apostles, to all those who actually participated in missions as we see it in the New Testament. The second third of the book develops how we do it in a local church, what difference it makes in how the local church operates around the theme and the Ministry of World Missions. And the last third of the book deals with all the other stakeholders or the roles of other players in the world Missions enterprise. We really believe that this is the message that God wants us to get out and needs to be out for transforming local churches to be the vibrant centers of world missions that God has designed them to be.

I think the flip side of that argument is also true. If the local church fails to come to grips with their world mission's commission and focuses entirely on their local growth and development as a church, without having that vision out beyond themselves and beyond their body, then they become very nearsighted and self-absorbed and the character of the church that God designed as described in the New Testament isn't really happening. They can put people together and give them a happy time for a lot of the time, but they're not really meeting that inner drive that God has given to people and to churches as a church family to be able to reproduce themselves in another church, in another culture, in another part of the world.

So do pray for us, show interest by going to the website and let others know about it. We really need this message to get out. Therefore, we need God's help and we need your help. Please allow me to describe in this episode three opportunities that are coming down the road that are very significant, I think for our ministry, and that is to have some regional trainings of local churches in at least three different places around the country. There's a small church in California that has a young man who wants to be a missionary in Asia. They're struggling. They're struggling with how to do this as a local church, how they can get the required support and shepherding for him all along the way of training him fully to go into a hard environment in Asia, and there are other like-minded churches around. I'd love to gather those churches and have a meeting to help the host church, the sending church, to understand their role better in some practical detail, but also other churches to surround them and become a part of that sending.

Most of the churches in that fellowship are smaller churches and they may not have a missionary of their own, but it's a perfect opportunity to adopt a missionary from a like-minded church and support them fully from within their handful of local churches together. So there's one in Southern California. Similarly, there's a church that was greatly impacted by our teaching near Denver, and we'd love to see that church develop as a host for another regional training of churches coming from anywhere around the whole sweep of the Northwestern US. They are on the learning curve of learning about sending missionaries themselves and caring for them properly, and they would be a perfect example as a laboratory to teach and to show other churches this is how it's done.

Then there is another opportunity very similar in central Illinois, and we would love for that to be a regional training center also. There is one other one, a fourth one on the East Coast that we are considering and praying about as a possible centralized training place for some like-minded churches to the host church that express specific need and interest in developing this local church centric mindset for global missions. So pray with us about that.

If you have interest in participating or perhaps sharing it with others, please let us know that. Also, if you think your church is interested in having an intensive weekend of training and interaction over these biblical and practical concepts, then please let us know. You can always write an email to ministry@propempo.com. That's ministry@, P-R-O-P-E-M-P-O, propempo.com. Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at propempo.com and missionserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever, amen.