Missions Blog for Churches

Most of the resources I am on the lookout for and share with leaders are primarily practical. Here are two resources that are primarily academic, but certainly have practical implications. These are both seminary-level courses on missions and it’s pretty phenomenal in that they’re free. Both of these professors are sharp missiologists and  respected missions professors in Reformed circles. So take advantage of these and think through ways you can use them in your church to extend your congregations’s passion and vision for missions. Or maybe you’ve got someone considering a life in missions, or you know of national partners who are hungry for education…many possibilities to use these.

God’s World Mission – Dr. Nelson Jennings – Covenant Theological Seminary – a free, 17-lesson seminary course which offers a biblical, theological, and historical consideration of God’s redemption of His world.
Dr. Sam Larson – Reformed Theological Seminary (requires iTunes) – a free, 36-lesson seminary course which examines the history of missions.

“I have a fear that the church in the West will disqualify itself from being a missionary-sending region by portraying to its membership a Christianity that is a nice religion but that lacks a radical edge.”  -Ajith Fernando, in Jesus Driven Ministry

There are a few presbyteries in the PCA that are doing things with missions that I’ve become aware of. In particular, and I think I’ve writeen of this before, Missouri Presbytery has created their own website to promote missions among each others churches. I’ve also recently come across the North Texas Presbytery’s site, which is using the web to keep everyone updated about their own missionaries.

Presbyteries working together just makes sense. But it takes leadership to make it work, and that’s where MTW’s Church Resourcing folks can help. We are focused on equipping leaders to lead in missions locally. We can help you with strategy as well as ideas to challenge and motivate the missions leaders to collaborate within your presbytery. Everyone doesn’t have to do the same thing at the same time to work together. Here are some ideas of what may work in your presbytery:

1. If you don’t have a missions or MTW committee at the presbytery level, get one established.
2. Establish a common priority (e.g. church planting, missionary care, helping our home-grown folks raise support faster to get to the field faster, etc…) or two. Get buy-in as you decide and then afterward get commitment.
3. Work toward that priority(s) through specific opportunities. For example, if your priority is to mobilize as many people to short term missions (knowing that it changes lives and builds passion in the hearts of participants), begin collaborating on trips, extending an open invitation for any participant within the presbytery to join your team. Recruit from new church plants and other churches that do not have an established missions ministry. It’ll probably be the ones that go on the short term trip who are the future missions leaders in those churches (or even future missionaries).
4. Use media and technology to extend and collaborate. If you produce a video, share it with other churches in the presbytery. Churches that support the same missionaries, or even a missionary who is on the same team as one they support, can gain great value from the media that you’ll use just a few times. If you have a report/presentation from the field that you can share electronically, doing so will extend your ministry and the field’s.
5. Create and foster creativity. There are gifts within your church which people have that you may not have thought of being tied to missions. Look for ways to make that connection. And then share that idea with other churches in the presbytery. Even better, share your person with their gift. You’ll foster a sense of creativity, helping others to discover creative ways they can assist and support the global church. Focus especially on gifts that demonstrate redemption. An individual act that demonstrates redemption is powerful…a collaborative act is astounding.

There are many more ideas that I could write or even that you could share (feel free to in the comments section below). But here is the key. You have to share and be open to others sharing with your church. This involves risk, and we in the PCA like to calculate quite carefully to avoid any and every risk. That’s not a bad thing. But be willing to trust and demonstrate some faith in our sovereign God, who is doing some pretty incredible things in our churches and around the world, but also in our presbyteries!

MTW missionary to Japan, Michael Oh, was the featured missions speaker at the February 2009 Bethlehem Pastors Conference (home of Desiring God Ministries). His sermon title was, Missions as Fasting: The Forsaking of Things Present for the Global Exaltation of Christ. Last month I finally had the chance to listen to the sermon on a road trip to West Virginia. Immediately upon its ending I called my wife saying, “You’ve got to listen to this!” It encouraged and challenged me in so many issues that we are facing.

There are a number of ways you can connect with this sermon: read the manuscript in PDF here, read a synopsis of it here, listen to it here, or watch it here.

In the sermon, Oh gives a cursory definition of fasting, then focuses on how missions involves “doing without” on many levels. One exhortation that sticks with me was his question, “Do I simply want to go to school and study hard so I can get a good job and work hard, so my kids can go to school and study hard so they can get a good job and work hard, so that their children…?”

He also confronts the notion (which I agree is incorrect) that “we’re all missionaries.” The great commission is to all of us, but we are not all called out and sent to minister cross-culturally, giving up our home and stability, depending on the support of others, and subjecting ourselves and our families to the risks and challenges in another country.  There is a unique calling of “missionary.”

There are also some great challenges to consider, personally. I could go on, but you’ll be glad if you just read it, listen to it, or watch it yourself.