Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. Hello. Welcome to episode 14 of Missions on Point. We are in the middle of a four part series on pastoral leadership of missions in the local church. So part one was episode 12, the necessity of pastoral leadership. Episode 13 was the obstructions to pastoral leadership, and in this episode we're gonna deal with the practice of effective pastoral leadership and I want to give you 10 keys, a 10 ideas for how to be practical and effective in your pastoral leadership. Again, I wanna say to our listeners, please get your pastor to listen to this, but if you're not the pastor, that's okay. You can listen to it too because you have a part in understanding the challenges that a pastor has in leadership of missions and then how you can help. And that is part four, episode 15, yet to come.

The enablement of pastors leadership of missions in the local church, and that's where you're gonna come in. So listen, recommend it, pass it along. Let's see if we can help some pastors do a better job of pastoral leadership in the local church. The first key of 10 is walk the talk. It's not enough to say that missions is an important priority for the church. The pastor is a role model for all aspects of spiritual life and ministry. Therefore, the pastor must model the priority of missions in his personal and family life. Do things to enhance your relationships with specific missionaries and field ministries with the intent that unreached people groups would get the gospel and have healthy, biblical churches planted among them. It means that you have to step out and make missions a part of your life, not just say it ought to be the part of the life of the church.

Number two is learn the lingo. World missions ministry has its own vocabulary regarding culture and training and special issues on the field. The best way for a pastor to stay on top of it is to either keep yourself current with the massive information out there or better in trust. A wise, discerning, informed missions lover person to hand feed you only the best and most important things. Either way, make a plan to stay ahead of the curve for the sake of your leadership of your congregation in this area of missions. Don't mistake missional language related to growing your church as equivalent to world missions concerns. We actually dealt with that in the definition of missions a couple of episodes ago, so learn the lingo. Number three, pray like you mean it. How fervently would you like your people to pray for you, for your life, for your ministry?

That's how fervently you should take the lead in praying for missionaries and missions ministries in your church. That's exactly what an informed, passionate, fervent pastor would do to help develop the church's world. Missions. When you pray from the pulpit, include missions in your prayers. Make sure that you have a missions component to your prayers publicly and privately. If you need information for that, find an old copy of Operation World that has loads of information, encyclopedic information about the needs of the world and the gospel needs of unreached people groups in every country of the world. It will help you find a missionary biography and pray for people like you want them to become the people that you're reading about in missionary biographies or a series of missionary biographies. Make that part of your life to pray like you mean it. Take it seriously. Believe it, do it.

Fourthly, become a stakeholder. What do I mean by that? Well, you gotta put your money where your mouth is. Give to world missions. This means give of your personal time, treasure, and talent. If you want people to own and love a concern for missionaries and reaching the world for Christ, then you have to be a stakeholder. Also, if you have no investment in it, your people are just gonna sense that they're not gonna invest in it either. As I've said before, if there's fire in the pulpit, there's fire in the pews. This means your personal example of investing your time, treasure, and talent to assist and help and encourage and disciple missions for your church and for the missionaries will catch on with other people. Figure out how to be personally involved financially and in your stewardship of time and talent for missions as the pastoral leader of missions in your church.

Number five, hold values over sentiment. This is a little harder. You might, you need to wrap your hands around this too often, church missions commitments are founded on a sentimental relationship to the pastor. In fact, one pastor told me that most of the missionaries that pastors support or wanna support are friends of the pastor. Well, there's some truth to that and that may or may not be a good thing. Later, it may be discovered that the friend of the pastor or ministry in question has little or no alignment with the church's doctrine or intentions or strategic focus. It's much harder to undo those mistakes than it is to be thoughtful, intentional, and principled in choosing who and what the church will support from the beginning. That may mean that you have to train others involved in missions leadership in your church to be likewise discerning about who they choose holding value over sentiment.

Just because Aunt Sally has a nephew that's going to the mission field does not automatically mean that your church should support them. They should be rigorously interviewed to find out exactly what they believe, what they're going to do. Are they really a fit for the church or not? Talk to others and even get outside help on how you can identify and codify key values for missions for your unique church prior to making big corporate commitments. Learn how to say no to sentimental appeals and tangential connections. You and your church will be so thankful over the long haul. You are the one pastor that takes the leadership in this. Number six, see, teach and preach missions in the word. We've touched on this in earlier episodes, but missions is throughout the word. It's not difficult to find missions in the word of God if you're preaching expositionally through a book of the Bible.

Almost every book has significant missions, influence and impact that you can preach on as you just walk through the text. There's no lack of resources to help in this area. The testimony of the entire span of scripture is clear. God desires to bring glory to himself in all the nations, and it's unfolded at least from Genesis 12 all the way through Revelation from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. In Acts one, eight, it's not sequential, it's simultaneous. That is Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, uttermost parts are all done at the same time. Open your eyes and heart to really see it in the word and then faithfully teach and preach and apply it to your congregation. An interesting dynamic happens when you do that. Not only are people more motivated to be interested involved in world missions and the internationals around them, but there is this special, I call it magnetic appeal for people to join with a leader and a church ministry that is not so self-focused.

Number seven, it's not a competition. A common fear we've touched on in an earlier episode is that pastors think an emphasis on missions will have a negative impact on resources for the local needs and local outreach of their local church. However, ministry resource winning is not a competition. It's not a zero sum budget game. It's not limited to who gets how big a slice of the pie argument. Biblically missions is core to what God wants. Missions is at the heart of every ministry of the church. That is outreach and evangelism. Reaching people, seeing them transformed by the gospel. Resourcing from the Lord is a lot more like dipping water from a flowing river and the water keeps coming. The experience of most churches is that God meets the needs of the local body when the church is unselfish and sacrificial in its support of missions.

Number eight, engage the whole church. Part of our charge in propo is to help the church own missions to wrap their hands around it, to see the great commission as owned from beginning to end by the local church and as pastors, our role is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. That's Ephesians for in terms of missions. The paradigm changes from leaders or committees or teams doing missions on behalf of the church to actually mobilizing the entire congregation to ownership of and personal involvement in missions. So it's our desire to see every church member, every growing Christian become a world Christian, to have their eyes opened up, to see in the world news, in the events around us, opportunities for missions, what God is doing in the world for His glory through the gospel of Jesus Christ. When they see those things, they become more personally involved.

They're giving to missions is a personal part of doing the great commission themselves. Their prayer, they're relating to the missionaries. Their care and shepherding for missionaries is all a part of doing their part for missions. Number nine, delegation and effective pastoral leadership in missions involves delegation. That is trust but verify. The pastor himself does not have to provide all missions, leadership, opportunity, and administration. That's way too burdensome. There are too many other jobs that a pastor has to do. Leadership doesn't mean that you do it all. Leadership means that you know enough about it, you own it, and that you participate in it enough to know how to delegate to qualified people to take that role and push it on out to the whole congregation. Delegation doesn't mean just walking away from it either. The pastor does have a responsibility to see that this essential ministry is being done well.

It implies that there must be a sound relationship with the key players. Good communication, clear goals. Yes, that does mean that the pastor has some time spent in developing leadership that agrees. Good communication. The pastor must unashamedly ask questions and applaud progress and encourage implementation and be involved from the platform at promotion and explanation and prayer in order to see these things happen. Number 10, last but not least, the pastor should go touch, see, feel, taste, and smell it for himself. As adults, experience is often the best. Teacher missions sometimes is better caught than taught. Plan to visit your church's supported missionaries or their field of service. Resist the temptation to be put into the limelight with you as the center of attention. I've had pastors tell me, when I go to the field, I need to exercise my gifts. I say, the New Testament word for that is baloney.

Resist that temptation. You're there to learn about the missionary, his life, his ministry, the people he's ministering to and with what his environment is like so that you can feel it for yourself. You can explain it to your congregation. You can empathize better because you've actually been there. Go to shadow to learn, listen, ask questions. Experience it. Get a feel and a taste of the flavor of the food, the culture and everything about where they live and work. Feel the stress. See the opportunities. Smell the commitment for yourself. Touch the lives of your overseas workers. Shepherd them. Encourage them, pastor them. That's what you're there for. In a wonderful way, these heart images will appear back in your sermons back home. I remember one pastor that visited us on the field. He said his life was changed because of visiting the field that one time years ago.

It has influenced his outlook toward missions ever since then, and he often uses illustrations from his experience with nationals and missionaries in his sermons during the year. So do that. You will bond with these missionary servants who are an extension of your own church and ministry. You'll be better equipped to lead in this key area of your church. Propo is experience in providing counsel and resources to personally guide you and your church with tools that will enable you to be more biblical, effective, and strategic in your own mission story. For the glory of God, I encourage you again, get to the Pro Pimpo Church missions profile, do a self-assessment of your church and find out how you can grow more effective in missions for God's glory. Thanks for listening. Hey, thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. We trust that you'll find more resources and help on the website, propempo.com.