Audio Transcript:
Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.
This is episode 250, and I am David Meade, your host for this series.
This series is training for the sending church. We will break down three stages of development, evaluation, education, and elevation. When we work in church engagement ministry with Propempo and MissioSERVE Alliance, we realize that all churches are individual. Every church is unique, and every church leadership is unique. So we approach every church and every church leadership to understand how they do things and what their expectations are. All of the training for the sending church is individualized to enable your church to move from where you are now to understanding and being prepared to fulfill your church's biblical role as a missionary sending church.
Realistically, very few churches have actually been sending churches, and very few of those have actually taken the biblical role as a sending church seriously. Usually, the local church just dishes over the responsibility to a missions agency. We want you to overcome that mindset and break into a whole new mode of understanding the wonderful blessings of being a sending church. The missions agency will still have a role, but the sending church takes the leading role in ownership of their missionary and that missionary's ministry on the field.
This newly awakening mindset is in line with the things that we have done for the last 30 years with Propempo and Propempo.com, all the resources that are there, as well as the most recent book release, Missions on Point, the local church at the heart of ecclesiology and missiology. These resources explain the why and the how of implementing a plan for training you and your church to become a missionary sending church.
Today's episode of Training for the Sending Church we're calling Evaluation, Foundations, and Direction. How do you become a good missionary sending church? What does it take to be a sending church? There are lots of questions behind the question here. I think of some standard responses of churches to the idea of becoming a missionary sending church.
- Our church loves missions. What more could we possibly do to improve?
- Our church doesn't have a missionary to send. How can we become a good sending church without a missionary at hand?
- Our church has not seriously considered world missions at all. It would take a miracle for us to become a good missionary sending church.
- Or, our church does have a missionary candidate. What does our church need to do to become a good missionary sending church?
So, consider these four cases or responses.
1. First, the missions engaged church with or without a missionary from their congregation as a missionary.
2. Second, the well-intentioned church with no missionary from or missionary candidate in their church.
3. Third, the church is clueless about world missions.
4. Fourth, the church urgently needs to learn how to send their missionary well.
Again, every church is unique. Every church's leadership is unique. Each church has its own history, tradition, context, and influences. They view the world and the realm of missions through those lenses. While every church can learn from others and adapt those ideas and structures, they must authentically own missions, its expression, and implementation through their distinctive identity. A local church's uniqueness must be recognized by those seeking to mobilize and engage that church in missions. It means asking questions and doing some research. It's not a one-size-fits-all seminar. The missions mobilizers seeking to do church engagement with a particular church will never wholly understand the tensions and internal structures, whether explicit or implicit. They will have to depend on leaders and others from the congregation to inform them about such things as they initiate and move along through the process. Failure to appreciate the local church's uniqueness may result in a failure of acceptance and effectiveness. Understanding this concept of uniqueness is a 180-degree shift in a cookie-cutter approach.
All this being acknowledged, the approach to answering their questions and making progress on becoming a good-sending church follow the same pattern. We start by understanding where we are, then build toward the ideal vision for missions in the church.
Our process generally involves three major areas, evaluation, education, and elevation. These process areas may overlap a bit, but they include the same kinds of things. It is very important that the highest leadership body of the church understand and agree to what the biblical ideals for missions are. This is part of evaluating the foundations of missions for the local church.
1. First, the Great Commission assumes that believers go. While many churches might say that they are missional, meaning they encourage and facilitate believers in their congregation going to their neighbors and their community, the goal that we think about in the Great Commission is going to all nations. It's cross-cultural ministry.
2. Another biblical ideal is that the goal of missions is healthy churches planting healthy churches. Saying it this way assumes that the goal is to plant churches that are indigenous, that is, they are led by and composed of the target population, not the missionaries themselves, and that those churches are healthy enough to grow and to plant other churches like themselves. Unfortunately, this is quite different than the way a number of organizations over the years have fudged on the definition of what a church plant is. There are actually groups that think that paying an indigenous national pastor to give a new name to their church and put a sign outside that matches the name of the denominational or affiliation or fellowship group that is supposedly planting churches means that they just planted a church. Actually, all they did is pay a guy to say that they were part of that group and therefore add another church to their roster of churches. There are other groups that are guilty of calling any assembly of people from a village or a town that's meeting around a Bible study as a local church. That, friends, is not a healthy local church. They might not even understand the gospel as we know it, and they almost certainly wouldn't have biblically qualified leaders that are teaching them the word and administrating the ordinances and having church membership and shepherding their church members. It's just a quick and shallow way to have a group that you might call a church. So let me restate this one. The goal is healthy churches, planting healthy churches.
3. The third one is missionaries are not neophytes in ministry. These are simple biblical ideals. Basically, missionaries should not be newbies to ministry. They should know how to articulate the gospel. They should learn the language well so that they can communicate these intangible truths from the Bible to people who have never heard it before. And they are experienced in discipleship, in leadership, in training others in ministry, in being a part of a team. It is not at all a biblical ideal for a missionary to say, I feel called, therefore send me. That so-called call must be verified by biblical character qualifications, convictions, knowing the Bible and theology well enough to be able to carry that and communicate it cross-culturally, and in ministry competencies, all within the context of a local church. You don't send someone to teach in a foreign language if they haven't had experience teaching in their own language. You don't send someone to evangelize, disciple, and plant churches if they have not been involved in that process at home. Missionaries are not neophytes in ministry.
4. The fourth one is, biblically qualified church leaders replicate themselves. Now, this missions-driven ideal actually works at home as well. Our churches should be replicating biblically qualified church leaders for our churches and for churches that our church plants locally and domestically. It's amazing to me, in my history of observation, that really good churches somehow fail to train and replicate qualified church leaders. Great churches, especially small ones, but also some larger ones, have failed to produce a leadership training and recognition pipeline that affirms and verifies men for church leadership, whether or not they're needed for a specific office in the church. So, our local church ministries can greatly benefit by thinking deeply about missions ministries. Doing so helps us to evaluate what we're doing and how we're doing it even in our home church.
When we evaluate a church for training to become a good sending church, we look at these foundations. We ask questions about the direction of the church and the outward focus of the church. We want to see buy-in from the highest leadership of the church and a trajectory toward wanting to improve and make their missions ministry better with the ultimate purpose, whether they have a missionary candidate or not, of becoming a good sending church.
It's been our experience that when a church, by whatever reason, finds themselves really working on and improving their missions ministries, it has a larger impact on all the ministries of the church. When they get missions right, answering those basic foundational questions, that same process can be applied to almost any ministry in the church to make it better and more effective. When missions is done well, the process of training and sending missionaries to that cross-cultural missions field becomes a pattern for every ministry to identify up-and-coming leaders, train them well, and then send them or release them into ministry in the church for that particular ministry.
I hope you'll be encouraged by this series on training for the sending church. It does have implications and application for every ministry in the church. Ultimately, we pray that God would enable your church to identify, raise up, equip, verify, affirm, commission, send out, and shepherd a missionary from your church well. There are literally tens of thousands of missionaries on the field that wish they had that kind of church behind them.
I would be remiss to not mention some resources and contact info if you have questions.
- First, some resources. Of course, the Missions on Point book is on Amazon, and soon, we will publish a study guide and the audible audio version will be released.
- Second, sendforward.org/store is a website where you can find lots of resources and tools to help your church and missions.
- Thirdly, propempo.com/services/missions-paths. The Missions Paths part of Propempo.com has hundreds of articles about missions from the individual asking questions through a lot of missions committee, missions team, training articles, and most all the articles on Propempo.com have resource links for you to click on to find books and videos and audios and printed materials that can help you.
- Next is MissioSERVE.org/send. This is the church engagement or sending church part of MissioSERVE's website. You can find good information there that's similar to this series of the podcast plus a link to contact somebody to get back in contact with you to help your church.
- Last is my own email address I don't usually give out but you can contact me with questions at davidcmeade(at)gmail.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 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.
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