Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Hello, we’re glad you’re here.  Thank you for joining us for episode 194 of Missions on Point.  We’re taking several podcasts now to walk through what we call missions paths.  We want to help chart a course for you from where you are now, helping you to travel through biblical convictions about God’s purposes for you and your church in missions.  If you’re joining us today, I hope it is because you have a special interest in discovering your personal involvement when it comes to missions.  We’re walking down the personal involvement missions path.  And in some sense, everyone needs to consider this path.  How can you be personally involved in missions?  Is God calling you to full-time cross-cultural ministry?  Maybe, maybe not.  Not everyone is a missionary.  But everyone should consider how you personally are involved.  There are some very simply steps that everyone can take.  And even if you are already taking some of these steps, it’s likely that you might need to improve in them. 

Most important of all, I hope that your desire for personal involvement arises not out a sense of guilty obligation, but out of a genuine desire to worship God with your whole life, because you love God and want others to worship him too.  Hopefully at this point you already have a basic understanding of missions.  Perhaps you have already walked down the inquirer missions path and answered some of those questions there.  But now you have that itching feeling that maybe you need to consider how you personally can play a role.  I hope you are coming to realize that there is much more to the Christian life than being a consumer, and giving God a tip with your offerings.  I’m praying that this path would grow and deepen your walk with the Lord and could even potentially lead you to pursue missionary service or help others to pursue their calling.

I’m going to give you six steps for how you can be personally involved in missions.  Yet, I’m only going to cover five of them today.  The sixth one garners so much interest that we’re going to give it its own podcast next week.  So, here we go.

Number one: Learn.  You’re not going to be involved in missions unless you are a learner.  However involved you already are, there is always more to learn.  But I want to challenge you.  True learning is never simply theoretical.  It’s always practical too.  Be a learner about how you can personally get involved in missions.  You can read and listen to motivating sermons and videos.  You can receive weekly email updates.  Learn about a new unreached people group every day from the Joshua project or Operation World.  Learn about your local cross cultural outreach opportunities.  Think about how you can get your family involved.  Lead them in prayer for missions.  Include missions in your children’s education.  Watch missionary films together.  Consider your church.  How does your potential missions involvement relate to your church?  Meet with your church leaders.  Influence others to get involved in missions.  Be patient.  Develop and work toward a whole-life plan for maximal involvement in missions.  Go on short term trips.  Listen to missions podcasts like you’re doing right now.  Ask Propempo for some help.  Consider one of these four possible roles: you might be a goer, a sender, a welcomer of international students, refugees and immigrants, or you may be a mobilizer for others.  Learn what it would take to fulfill those roles.  And most importantly, learn from scripture.  There are biblical examples that you can follow for your personal involvement in missions.  There is so much to learn.  Try to discern, even right now as you’re listening to this, try to discern what your weakest area is that you need to learn about.  Is it missions history, biblical basis of missions, unreached people groups, missions in your own church, short term opportunities, mobilization, becoming a sending church, or something else?  You probably don’t know how much you don’t know.  To become personally involved in missions, become a learner.

Number two: To become personally involved in missions, pray.  You need to consider how you can pray for missions and missionaries.  God asks us to pray. The Bible teaches and commands us to pray. God assures that He hears and answers prayer. Praying is analogous to a military special forces operative behind enemy lines calling in air support to take new territory for God's side to expand His Kingdom.  You see, prayer is not just for missions, praying is doing missions.  Or I could say this in the negative.  There is no missions work where there is no prayer.  Of the few things that Jesus specifically calls us to pray for, he tells us to pray for more missionary workers in Matthew 9:37-38.  “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  We pray because we are unable to bring about any substantial advance of God’s kingdom in our own ability.  Missionaries should have prayer teams.  Find your way onto that prayer team.  There are many resources that can be used to pray for missions too, such as Operation World, The Global Prayer Digest, missions agencies often provide resources.  Prayer Cast gives a daily video prayer for nations of the world.  When it comes to praying for a specific missionary, pray for these seven items regularly: The missionary’s intimacy with God.  The missionary’s character.  The missionary’s family. The missionary’s team relationships. The missionary’s spiritual warfare. The missionary’s ministry. And pray for the nation and people group the missionary serves.  As you pray, try to influence others to pray, get your church involved in praying for missions.  That’s the second step: pray.

Number three: Share Your Faith.  Do you want to get involved in missions?  Well, one of the first places you can start is by getting involved in local evangelism and discipleship efforts in your own church.  You have a personal responsibility to share your faith locally.  Love unbelievers around you.  Ask them penetrating questions and share the hope that you have.  Be prepared to answer any question about the gospel.  You cannot talk about doing missions “over there” without first living it out here and sharing your faith in your own culture here.  Evangelism is something that you can practice and get better at.  You can follow in the footsteps of someone else who is good at it.  Don’t be afraid of making mistakes and learning from those mistakes.  Practice hospitality.  As you grow in your understanding of evangelism, you will need to learn about various objections to the gospel, especially its necessity and exclusivity.  Be on guard as objections can quickly turn into hostility and be ready to know how you will respond.  But do not fear, for the gospel is the power of God for salvation.  The power does not come from you and your ability to persuade others.  The gospel does not need our confidence and power.  And as always, as you go start sharing your faith, don’t go it alone.  Bring others along with you and get your church involved.  Furthermore, have a plan in place for what you will do with new believers.  They need to be discipled in the context of your church. 

Our fourth step in beginning to get personally involved in missions is the step of support.  Money is not the main thing; but it is a thing.  While the gospel is free, it does take money to send people to the place where people need to hear the gospel.  Jesus had supporters, the Apostle Paul had supporters.  Your missionary needs supporters too.  A sender is someone who has determined that their optimal role is to remain at home and provide resources of time, treasure and talent that will help missionaries on the field to thrive.  It’s more than just giving money, but also providing for their needs like with care packages or a place to stay on home assignment.  Invest yourself in the missionaries you support so that you are aware of what they need.  Moral support, prayer support, communication support and re-entry support are all included.  You need to be discerning in who you support too.  Don’t just support anybody with a heartbeat.  Prioritize those who are going to the unreached and unengaged people groups.  Avoid giving to those that do not share the gospel or who lack transparency about what they do.  From your church, form a group of senders for a missionary, create biblically informed guidelines for who to support.  A sending team is invaluable to a church, to prioritize prayer and care for the missionary. 

Our fifth step in getting personally involved in missions is to reach internationals.  You may be surprised by how many internationals live in your area, whether they are students, immigrants or refugees.  As you grow in your heart for the nations and for people who are different than you, one of the best personal qualities you can develop is by being a welcoming person.  Seek to understand their culture and values.  Help them with acculturation into your area by assisting them with paperwork, or help finding a job and housing.  Ministry as a welcomer is one of the best ways that you can train for long-term cross-cultural ministry.  Help your family and church to get involved too.  Find a campus ministry to get involved in.  Find a church that is near locations that have international students or immigrants and find avenues to participate with them.  And help your church to become a welcoming environment for those who are different than you to feel at home. 

That’s the fifth step.  Reach internationals.  Our five steps so far are: learn, pray, share your faith, support and reach internationals.  There’s one more step we would advise for your personal involvement in missions.  But because there is such great interest in it, we will save it for its own podcast.  That sixth step is to go short term.  Tune in next week to learn more about the short term missions path. 

If you found these steps of the personal involvement missions path to be helpful and thought-provoking we would like to invite you to dig even deeper into the considerations here.  You can find a fuller description at Propempo.com.  There you will find all of our missions paths under our services.  You can find answers to many of your missions questions as well as many further resource suggestions that you can pursue.  I would like to also draw your attention to a special new feature on our website where you can compile your own custom-made PDF.  You can select from a variety of collected question sets or choose your own.  Whatever your questions are about missions, you can find some help there, and you can get them all compiled into one downloadable pdf. 

We at Propempo want you to know that you as a listener of Missions on Point are being prayed for.  We pray that you have been helped by this podcast, and that you have been encouraged to get more personally involved in missions and to be a catalyst for missions at your church.  We pray that you will be actively involved in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.  And may God be glorified as the church fulfills its design to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

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 missioserve.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.