Missions

How the Local Church Goes Global

Andy Johnson

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781433555701
• eBook ISBN: 9781433555732
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

Every local church should be engaged with global missions, even if most individuals in the church aren't called to go overseas. But what does this engagement actually look like? How can local churches train, send, and support missionaries well? Unpacking principles from the Bible and applying them in the context of real life in a local church, this new book in the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series is filled with practical steps and advice for supporting missionaries, forming international partnerships, sending short-term teams, and engaging with the nations here at home. This book casts a vision for the local church as the engine of world missions—for the joy of all people and the glory of God.

1

A Biblical Foundation for Missions

I once rented a vacation apartment on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator. The owner had been very clear in every email, stating, “This apartment is on the sixth floor and there is no elevator.” Still, the significance of her disclosure didn’t really hit me until I was panting on the fifth-floor landing, hauling suitcase number two of three up the winding stairs. Yet, as I stood there trying to remember the symptoms of a heart attack, I couldn’t feel angry toward the owner. She had been up-front about it, all along. I should have paid more attention.

Full disclosure is a good and honest way to begin any relationship, including the relationship between a writer (like me) and a reader (like you). That’s why I want to begin this book by stating some foundational biblical convictions about missions. You may not agree with each and every one of them. I hope you won’t put this book down if you don’t. There might be useful stuff here, even if we don’t agree on everything. And then you, as a reader, can be like the Bereans in Acts 17 and test everything to see if it squares with the Bible.

We need to start by defining the aim of the church’s mission.

The Mission of Missions Is Primarily Spiritual

At the outset of a small book we don’t need to enter deeply into the debate about churches’ responsibility to meet both eternal needs through gospel proclamation and temporal needs through material care. Christians as individuals clearly should care about all human suffering. And Christians should especially care about the terrible, eternal suffering facing all those who remain under God’s wrath. We needn’t pit the two concerns against one another in our personal lives. John Piper has balanced it well, saying: “Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering. Else they have a defective heart or a flameless hell.”1

As we turn to the global mission of the church, I hope we can agree that the church should especially care about eternal suffering. The church is that unique gospel community chartered by Jesus Christ himself. Consequently, it should especially labor to fulfill its unique mission to guard the gospel, proclaim the gospel, and disciple those who respond in repentance and faith to the gospel. If our churches fail at that mission, no matter what other good things we do, we will have failed in the unique mandate that Christ has given us as churches. It is good to do other good things, and our churches may make different decisions about engaging in good works and social action. But it is the stewardship of the gospel that remains utterly unique to the Christian church. We must keep first things first. That is the priority of Christian missions.

It’s important to press this point right up front because in recent days some Christians have suggested that encouraging churches to prioritize a spiritual mission means their members and missionaries won’t care at all about earthly human suffering. Historically, though, it has often been the generations whose churches focused most on heaven and salvation that have done the most social good. Even today researchers like Robert Putnam puzzle over the unusual level of altruistic giving by religious people from heavenly minded churches.2 Or we might read the widely acclaimed work of sociologist Robert Woodberry, who demonstrated that “conversionary missionary protestants” (meaning missionaries who prioritize saving souls above all else) have done more lasting social good globally than those who only, or mainly, focus on doing social good alone.3

Of course, at the end of the day we don’t prioritize eternal matters in our churches because of history or social science. We do it for love of neighbor. If we are convinced that eternal suffering in hell is the most pernicious of all human suffering, what else would we prioritize? Even more, we prioritize eternal matters for love of God. We want our churches to fulfill the God-glorifying purpose for which he specially entrusted them with the gospel in the first place.

We are joyfully driven by the command of our Lord to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). And we are driven by the apostle John’s heavenly vision:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9–10)

Calling and discipling all the peoples saved by the Lamb is the primary mission of missions. Whatever other good things a church may choose to do, that great vision must be our most fundamental objective and the joy toward which we labor. Would anything less be worthy of the one who “came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15)? Evangelism and establishing Christ’s church is our first priority in missions.

The Mission Belongs to God, for His Glory, on His Terms

God intends not only that his mission would go forward but that it would go forward on his terms. He means to get glory by showing that the mission is his and that his power sustains it. Any effort on our part to change or broaden the mission, or to substitute our ideas for God’s, runs the risk of trying to rob God of his rightful glory. And trying to rob an all-knowing and all-powerful God of the thing he is most passionate about in all the universe is breathtakingly stupid and ultimately pointless. God says:

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;

for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,

that I may not cut you off.

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;

I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.

For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,

for how should my name be profaned?

My glory I will not give to another. (Isa. 48:9–11)

God cares about how the mission goes forward because he will not give his glory to another. As we look to the pages of Scripture to understand the mission, this fact must remain etched in our minds. The mission of global redemption is ultimately for God’s sake: “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it.” And that is a wonderful thing.

Our confidence in missions and our joy in salvation flow from a knowledge that God’s mission of mercy finds its origin in his desire for his glory, not in our ability or desirability. Praise God! God declares,

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;

for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,

that I may not cut you off.

That may be one of the most encouraging verses in all of Scripture. As long as God cares about his own glory, and as long as he remains committed to getting glory by showing mercy to sinners, all those who trust in him are secure, and his mission will never fail. God has decided how the mission should go forward. He intends it to go forward by the simple declaration of the gospel and the gathering of his children into churches, so that everyone will see that salvation is God’s work, and he will get all the glory.

Global Missions Is Primarily through the Local Church

Who is responsible to carry out this mission of global salvation? ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Newsletter Signup
• Endorsements
• Other Crossway Books
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 A Biblical Foundation for Missions
• 2 First Things First
• 3 Sending and Supporting Well
• 4 Getting the House in Order
• 5 Healthy Missions Partnerships
• 6 Reforming Short- Term Missions
• 7 Engaging the Nations by Other Means
• Conclusion
• Notes
• General Index
• Scripture Index