Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. Thank you for joining us for episode 253 of Missions on Point. We're in a series on training for the sending church. We've spent the last three episodes talking about evaluation. In this one, I want to talk a little bit about the big picture of evaluation and the resources for evaluation of your sending church capacity.

We've already talked about some big picture issues by talking about foundations and direction, doctrine, desires, and design, and discovering our past, present, and future missions commitments. Trends and insights in all of these things are found in documents and history and relationships, including your church's financial commitments.

There is one key that no one likes to talk about, and that is your church leaders. Your church leaders' cooperation, understanding, and vision for missions, or lack thereof, can open up a world of opportunities or squash the movement toward growing your sending church capacity. Your church leaders include your leading teaching pastor, your elders or your leadership board, your missions chairman or whoever has the missions director or missions pastor responsibility, and the committee or team they work with as a missions team.

It is so important for your church leaders to love and understand biblical missions and the call of the Bible for the local church to take the lead in developing missionaries and sending them out to reach all nations in fulfillment of the Great Commission. If their vision is only short-sighted, however passionate that might be, it means that they're never going to have a vision for sending missionaries out to the far reaches cross-culturally to take the gospel where it has not been taken before. On the other hand, if they see it and love it from the Bible, there's no stopping the growth of commitment to world missions from your congregation.

They need to see it biblically. So what do you do if they don't apparently see it? First, you pray. That's what God has given us to help effect his will, and it's his will that the local church be engaged in and committed to missions. So pray for them and expose them to God's word in any way possible. It's going to be very difficult for them to argue with what they see from God's word.

I've been reminded of this many times, but just recently a pastor said, “once you see it, you can't unsee it.” It changes their heart. It changes how they see missions in relationship to their local church. So if you would really like to see your church become a good missionary sending church, but you feel like you're swimming upstream, then go to your knees. Get other people to pray with you and find ways to sweetly and carefully bring biblical material to your pastors and leaders that would help open their eyes and lift their eyes to see God's design for the local church in this.

Maybe even if it's not initiated by the church leaders, you could get a small group of people in your home and pray and walk through the Missions on Point book, get the study guide to help you and then start applying it in wider and wider circles to include those church leaders. And by God's grace, they will see it from the scriptures and be in there with you.

Among the highest priority things I do when I start working with the church is to ask questions of the church leaders to find out where they are personally and in leadership on the issues of missions. That's the first thing to find the pulse of the church and missions is find out where the leaders are in relation to it. Another source of evaluation is to find out where people in the congregation are in it. Sometimes just by observing what's on their website, what's in their literature, what's on the lips of their congregants as they talk about their church, what's in their budget.

After going through a Propempo training, a friend of mine, Kenneth Warnock, developed an assessment tool and he uses these kinds of areas to discern exactly where a church is as a potential sending church for missionaries. He asks questions about biblical awareness. Do the church leaders and the people understand what is missions and what does the Bible say about it? Do they teach about the biblical basis of missions? Do they understand that missions is not just humanitarian causes?

Another area of questions has to do with emotions and enthusiasm. Why is missions done and why should people be excited about missions? Do the church leaders and members exemplify a relationship that is so keen on loving Christ that it motivates a passionate interest in missions? Another area of questions is how? How can people be involved in missions in your church? What opportunities are presented to them? Is personal involvement intentional and important to them?

Then we look at the church's ownership of missions. What is the church-wide pattern for people being involved in missions? Who is actively involved? And in what ways is a missions team or committee empowered to mobilize the whole congregation for missions? Do those who are in missions leadership actually disciple people for missions?

Lastly, we come to when. When are members involved in missions? When is missions talked about? Is there a regular rhythm or frequency or priority of missions in the church calendar? Is there any way that missions is integrated into the personal devotional life of families? When and how easy is it for someone who wants to be involved in missions to get involved in supporting or helping missions or perhaps beginning to train to become a missionary?

We've talked in another series of Missions on Point about the church missions profile. It's a simple self-assessment tool that when taken online results in a multi-page report that reflects your choices and recommendations for how to improve in 12 areas of local church missions ministries. You can find a description of the church missions profile at propempo.com/services/church-missions-profile.

If you're serious about taking the next step as a sending church, then contact us at MissioSERVE.org. We'll probably send you to find the sending church readiness inventory, which is an online form and it asks questions and asks you to submit some documentation from your church for us to take a look at and get a feel for where you are in evaluating your readiness as a sending church. You can find it easily just by doing a web search for "sending church readiness inventory."

Another key which no one likes to talk about is to find a mission agency that will come alongside you to help you become a good sending church. Even saying this, I have to go back and help you understand what we mean by a good sending church. A good sending church is a church that recognizes and helps to equip a missionary coming from their church membership and supports them well and shepherds them on the field for the long term.

So we're not talking about a good sending church is a church that sends out a lot of people on short-term trips. We're not saying that it's somebody that sends someone to your favorite mission agency and completely releases all ownership and control over them. We are saying that a good sending church steps up to its biblical responsibility to both raise up and fully qualify biblical missionaries for cross-cultural ministry for the long term primarily to plant churches and equip churches to be healthy churches and reproduce in their own country in their own people group.

There are literally hundreds of mission agencies out there that would love to have your people, but they want you to just provide pesos and prayer and not get involved in their ministry or encourage them or help them once they're on the field. Those missionary agencies do not want you to be a good sending church and would even deny you the ability to be a good sending church by taking your missionary and your money and your prayers and telling you goodbye. We've got it from here.

And I'm talking about mission agencies that actually are doing pretty decent, well-aimed biblical kind of ministry. There are literally thousands of so-called missions agencies out there that would love to have your people and take them away in a similar way out of your ownership and out of your sphere of influence and really don't do biblical ministry at all. They might be doing all kinds of humanitarian and relief work with no connection to the gospel. They'll take your money and it won't even have an evangelistic bent to it.

So I would plead with you. If you're going to be a good sending church, you may need to find a good partner missions agency that will allow you to be a good sending church and encourage you and help you and equip you to be a good sending church. You'll have to ask some good questions and get beneath the surface because the surface answers are, of course, we want you to be a good sending church. But they're talking about a completely different type of church than we're talking about on Missions on Point.

Another side to this story is the possible missionary candidates that get recruited into those kinds of missions agencies and think that it's all right to do so. Those missionary candidates may not want you to be a good sending church because you'll get into their kitchen. You'll get involved in their life so much that you want to see them become really good missionaries, really well qualified and spiritually strong in their character and in their ministry skills in order to become a good missionary for the long term in the hard fields of the world.

If a missionary candidate from your church comes and says, I want to go with missionary agency XYZ out there, you need to sit them down and pray with them and tell them that our church wants to be a good sending church. And we're going to have to ask some tough questions of that agency will work with you to help you go to the field as long as you will work with us and become qualified. But it might not be with that agency or to that field or to that glitzy ministry that you've been promised.

I'm getting a little too excited here. I want to go back to square one. The first resource for evaluation is going to be prayer - prayer for your church, prayer for the potential missionary candidates that come up through your church. Prayer for God to give a vision of missions to your church body so that everyone in the church understands that missions is part of their biblical joy and purpose and responsibility. And God's going to help you become a great sending church.

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.