Audio Transcript
We like to focus our consideration right here on the podcast on worldwide missions. I do know this can be a excessive precedence for you, Pastor John, which is evidenced in the place you converse and make investments your life. Everybody right here at Wanting God has excessive respect for frontier missionaries laboring within the remotest components of the world. So, how do international missions and the native church work collectively? That’s the query right this moment. “Good day, Pastor John. My identify is Jack, a seventeen-year-old highschool scholar within the U.S. with a ardour for world missions. My query is that this: Given the current lower in long-term profession missionaries, and up to date will increase in church assist for short-term missions, who ought to the native church be partnering with right this moment to advertise biblical missions? In different phrases, what do you assume is the very best blueprint for biblical world missions in a neighborhood church right this moment?”
I actually need to converse to this query as a result of I believe God is doing one thing very uncommon in our day with respect to frontier missions. And by frontier missions, I imply missionary efforts that try and get to locations in peoples or language teams that don’t have any extraordinary entry to the gospel and don’t have any Christian church buildings that would construct up such a motion of gospel spreading. In every single place they appear — in every single place the individuals in these teams look — they see unbelievers like themselves. And most definitely, they’ll be born, they’ll reside, they’ll die with out ever figuring out a Christian or listening to what God has completed in Jesus to save lots of sinners from destruction.
“God is doing one thing very uncommon in our day with respect to frontier missions.”
It appears to me that God is awakening his individuals right this moment in a contemporary option to this unfinished mission Jesus gave us. It appears to me that, alongside historic mission businesses which have been doing nice work for a very long time — many years — God is elevating up new conferences, new mission organizations, new on-line ministries, church buildings with the form of biblical theology and ecclesiology and cultural methods which can be freshly empowering for advancing Christ’s international mission nowadays.
Once I say biblical theology, I take note of Reformed theology that places a excessive premium on the sovereign grace of God in saving sinners who would by no means flip from their conventional faith to Christ aside from God’s work of unconditional, all-powerful regeneration. They should be born once more. It’s a sovereign act of God. God is gloriously adequate in his grace to save lots of the toughest of sinners in one other faith.
And once I say ecclesiology, I imply placing a excessive premium on planting wholesome biblical church buildings amongst peoples of the world that may keep it up the mission for many years, if wanted, earlier than Christ comes.
5 Assumptions for Missions
I’m going to say just a few of those newer works that I alluded to as a result of I believe that that’s what Jack is asking for. The place ought to we search for partnerships? However first, let me identify some assumptions that I’ve in looking for to reply the query about long-term profession missionaries in comparison with short-term missionaries. 5 assumptions.
First, all human beings, aside from the saving grace of God in Christ, are beneath the simply wrath of God and are perishing and can spend eternity in hell if they aren’t reached with the saving message of the gospel. That’s assumption one. It’s a large assumption that will get minimized in so many sorts of church buildings and theologies that don’t like to speak about that fact.
Second, there isn’t any different manner for individuals to be rescued from the wrath of God than by the availability that he himself has made in sending his Son to bear the punishment of sinners and soak up the wrath of God and canopy the guilt of the misplaced and free us for forgiveness and justification by religion alone in Jesus. There’s no different manner for individuals to be saved than Jesus.
Third, subsequently, they have to hear the excellent news, and we should take it to them in order that they will hear. We’ve information. I like this phrase information. It’s not first an ideology. It’s information — spectacular, breathtaking, wonderful information about what God has completed in his Son Jesus Christ in historical past to rescue sinners from all of the peoples of the world. The duty of missions is to take this information to all of the unreached of the world — all of the unreached peoples and languages of the world — no matter the price. That’s quantity three.
Fourth, it’s important to the missionary job that biblical, worshiping, obedient, soul-winning, wholesome church buildings be planted in order that the continued Christian life may be lived out over the many years the way in which it’s described within the New Testomony. And so, the work of evangelizing the native individuals group may be carried on even when the missionaries should not there anymore. Church buildings, that’s quantity 4.
Fifth, translating the Bible into indigenous languages is essential. If such church buildings — those that I simply described — are going to flourish spiritually in the long term, everyone knows how valuable and completely essential it’s for rising in Christ that we immerse ourselves day-to-day within the Bible. That’s why the Bible is required within the individuals’s coronary heart language, wherever the mission goes.
Our Major Job
Now, a lot extra could possibly be mentioned in addition to these 5 assumptions. However due to these alone, I might say short-term missions has a secondary place of worth in recruiting, motivating, and supporting what’s major. However what’s major — the first effort of the native church, the first funding of our sources for missions, the first problem of the pulpit, the first technique for ending the mission of Jesus — is to boost up, ship, assist, nurture, and maintain the rope for profession missionaries.
If church buildings are to be planted and the Bible is to be translated and an ongoing motion of evangelism is to be sustained, short-term missionaries are most likely not the principle means by which that’s going to occur.
4 Commendable Companions
So, Jack asks, “Who ought to we be partnering with?” Now, you’ve already heard the place I’m coming from theologically, in order that governs what I’m going to recommend right here. And please perceive that there are dozens of actions and businesses and ministries which can be trustworthy and that may enable you and your church change into a launching pad for the form of missionaries I’m speaking about. However I might point out, I believe, 4 explicit businesses or teams that you must take note of.
“The duty of missions is to take this information to all of the unreached of the world, no matter the price.”
First, Reaching & Instructing Worldwide Ministries is a sending company that shares these convictions.
Second, Radius Worldwide. It’s not a sending company however a outstanding coaching group getting ready the form of missionaries I’m speaking about.
Third, Radical, the ministry of David Platt, which waves the banner for the unreached of the world, and teaches and conjures up and trains for the sake of sustainable, radical dedication to planting the church globally.
Fourth, two conferences: The Missionary Convention this fall in Jacksonville, on October 16–18, 2024. And the CROSS Convention, a missionary convention for 18- to 25-year-olds in Louisville, on January 2–4, 2025. I’m going to be at each of these conferences. And I might like to see you, Jack, and plenty of others of you who’re listening at these conferences.
God is as much as one thing superb in our day. It’s thrilling to be part of it.
