5 Questions Every Church Must Answer Before It Can Send Out Pastors and Missionaries
5 Questions
Your church will be ready to send out pastors and missionaries only when it can answer each of the following five questions with a loud and hearty, “Yes, and amen!”
1. Is Your Church Governed by Scripture?
We are under the authority of the Bible, whose truths transcend time, geography, and culture. The Bible is of the utmost importance not merely because it is wise, helpful, interesting, and comforting, but because it is, at its root, God’s Word. We affirm the conclusion reached by J. I. Packer, who taught that Scripture doesn’t just shape our thinking; it directs all of our affairs:
The ‘Word of the Lord’ conveyed by the prophets in their oracles, and the ‘Word of God’ set forth by the apostles in their sermons, was always a word applying directly to its hearers, summoning them to recognize that God Himself was thereby addressing them, calling on them to respond to His instruction and direction, and working in them through God’s own Spirit to evoke the response which is required.1
Our lives as individuals and our lives as churches should be instructed and directed by God’s Word as his Spirit works within us.
Of course, the Bible doesn’t speak to every aspect of our life together as a church. There is much room for differences of opinion. How long should a sermon be? Should more of our money go to local outreach or international missions? Should we plant a church locally or enlarge our auditorium? These are matters of prudence over which biblically minded Christians will disagree.
Prioritizing Missions in the Church
Aaron Menikoff, Harshit Singh
In this brief, insightful guide, pastors Aaron Menikoff from Atlanta, Georgia, and Harshit Singh from Lucknow, India, share their journeys leading their churches to be more missions-centered by taking the gospel across geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers.
However, we ought to be lockstep in our agreement that everything we do is governed by God’s Word. Each local church must be under the Bible, which is why faithful, ordinary churches embrace the weekly exposition of God’s Word, unpack Scripture, one passage at a time, and trust God’s Word to give life. In listing out nine marks of a healthy church, Pastor Mark Dever prioritized the importance of expositional preaching because he understood that when a church is committed to biblical preaching, good order in every other area should follow.2
Local churches are not ready to raise up and send out missionaries until they agree that their church must be governed by Scripture.
2. Does Your Church Know Why It Exists?
What is the ultimate goal of the church? What is the final end or purpose of the church?
John W. Alexander, the president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, opened up the Urbana missionary convention in 1976 by declaring “the conviction that God’s overriding purpose in his work is the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ.”3 Nearly twenty years later, John Piper threw down a similar-sounding gauntlet: “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions because God is ultimate, not man.”4
Alexander and Piper, two men who devoted their lives to promoting missions, read their Bibles and accurately concluded that God’s glory is the goal of all of life. Through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord said he formed a people so “that they might declare my praise” (Isa. 43:21). A few chapters later, God promised to one day showcase his grace by keeping his promise to build a nation for his glory:
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. 48:11
The book of Psalms ends with the purpose of creation:
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord! —Ps. 150:6
Jesus rightly received the praise which is his due. He never turned away a follower who fell at his feet in worship. After Jesus walked on water, Matthew tells us the disciples in the boat “worshiped” him, crying out, “Truly you are the Son of God!” (Matt. 14:33). Jesus received their worship. When Thomas touched the risen Jesus, he called out to him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Again, Jesus received his worship. Paul declared that one day every person will “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11). On that day, all creation—the sheep and the goats—will acknowledge Jesus is Lord, and he will finally and fully receive all the glory that is his due.
The church exists to give God glory.
God is glorified whenever and wherever his name is preached. Whether sinners acknowledge “Christ is Lord” is up to God. That missionaries proclaim “Christ is Lord” is up to the church. Therefore, the church preaches the gospel, recognizing God is glorified in the merciful salvation of the undeserving and in the just condemnation of the unrepentant.
Local churches are not ready to raise up and send out missionaries until they know they exist for the glory of God.
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3. Do Your Pastors Model Faithful Shepherding?
One of the most powerful metaphors for the church is that of the flock. “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you,” Peter wrote to the elders (1 Pet. 5:2). “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers,” Paul wrote to the elders in Ephesus (Acts 20:28). “Tend my sheep,” Jesus commanded Peter (John 21:16).
It is not flattering to be called a sheep—they are cautious, easily startled, and vulnerable. God chose such an image for his people to help us understand that we all need a shepherd. And it doesn’t matter how old or mature a sheep is; the youngest and the oldest in a flock need a shepherd.
Shepherding is at the heart of pastoral ministry. Shepherds love and feed and care for and pray over and comfort and guide and rebuke and serve the sheep. We don’t presume every pastor can know every member of his congregation—some churches are larger than others. But we do know that every pastor must strive to know the state of the people over whom God has given him oversight.
Put simply, a pastor who shepherds well will labor to have meaningful membership. He’ll strive to ensure that the members of his church do more than simply profess faith in Christ; he’ll want to discern whether they actually know the Lord. Such a church will practice church discipline by excluding from official membership those who say they are Christians but who consistently refuse to live as Christians.
What does any of this have to do with missions? Missionaries tend to reflect the pastors who discipled them. So if their pastors at home are aloof—if their interest in preaching or evangelism far outweighs their concern for shepherding the flock under their care—then the missionaries they raised will likely have the same priorities. Missionaries with a low view of the pastoral office will be content with planting churches without ensuring that pastors are in place to shepherd the new disciples.
Local churches are not ready to raise up and send out missionaries until they are led by pastors who model faithful shepherding.
Local churches are not ready to raise up and send out missionaries until the cost of discipleship is clear.
4. Is Depth as Important to Your Church as Breadth?
Conversations about missions can be contentious. Conflict erupts when we pit two good things against one another, like breadth and depth. For example, the missionary task is urgent—we need to get as many churches planted as possible (breadth). At the same time, these new churches must be healthy—we need to ensure churches are strong enough to stand the tests and trials of this world (depth).
No church will become a sending church unless it is first a mature church, growing in its understanding of Scripture, deepening in its prayer life, sharing the gospel with its neighbors, and caring for those in need. In short, we want churches that are faithful where they are.
We are eager to see churches send hard-working, energetic, and prayerful missionaries overseas—men and women whose lives are devoted to sowing gospel seeds. Yes, we care about breadth. But we care equally about depth because missionaries must understand that only strong, mature churches survive and multiply.
This is why, after preaching the gospel throughout Asia, Paul didn’t immediately move on to new territories. Instead, he circled back to check on new converts who were growing in grace and godliness. He wanted to make sure they understood his teaching. He devoted himself to “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Paul knew trials and suffering would come, and he wanted to make sure these young churches would endure.
After all, not only did Paul aim to see the gospel preached where no one had ever heard the name of Christ (Rom. 15:20), he strove to “present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).
Local churches are not ready to raise up and send out missionaries until they take both depth and breadth seriously.
5. Is the Cost of Discipleship Clear in Your Church?
Let’s face it, a Christian’s story is often marked by suffering. We see it in Joseph who spent time in a pit and a prison. We see it in Moses who endured the complaints of the people he loved. We see it in David who fled from Saul. We see it in John the Baptist who lost his head—literally—to the sword of Herod. And we see it in Paul—perhaps the most famous Christian of all time—whose legacy features profound persecution and pain (see 2 Cor. 11:23–29).
Someone might ask, “If Christianity is filled with suffering, then why bother?” Because it is worth it! Suffering never gets the last word in the Christian life. Our future is glorious. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is on his way to heaven, the Celestial City. But his life is filled with so much suffering that he wonders whether God has abandoned him. He expects to knock on the gates of heaven, only to hear God say, “Get away, you don’t belong here.” Accompanying Christian is his good friend, Hopeful, who reminds him that the crosses we bear are evidence that we belong to a loving God who disciplines us for our good:
My brother . . . these troubles and distresses that you go through . . . are no sign that God has forsaken you; but are sent to try you, whether you will call to mind that which [until now] you have received of His goodness, and live upon Him in your distresses. . . . Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ makes you whole.5
Faithful churches don’t shy away from the sharp edges of Christianity. They preach that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). This is simply ordinary Christianity. Churches who join Paul in his desire to “know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) will export missionaries who preach the true gospel. However, churches that fail to keep the cross central will export missionaries who don’t preach the cross. They will water down the gospel message and create a generation who claim the name of Jesus Christ but don’t really know him.
Local churches are not ready to raise up and send out missionaries until the cost of discipleship is clear.
Conclusion
Media scholar Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.”6
Amazingly, in the Bible, the message actually creates the medium—the gospel makes the church! Now it’s the job of the church to protect and to promote the gospel. Get the church wrong, and you will soon get the gospel wrong. If you try to do missions without the “pillar and buttress of the truth”—the local church—eventually your work will have been in vain. It won’t last. In fact, it can’t last because God designed the church to protect and to promote the gospel.
All this to say, your view of missions needs to be church shaped. Since the medium is the message, faithful missions demand a gospel preached by and for local churches that send out qualified men and women all around the world to plant more churches. Remember, they only plant what they know. Churches on the field will look a lot like the churches at home.
Notes:
- J. I. Packer, God Has Spoken: Revelation and the Bible (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965), 66–67.
- Mark E. Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, 4th ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 44.
- John. W. Alexander, “Introduction,” in Declare His Glory among the Nations, ed. David M. Howard (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977), 15.
- John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd ed. (1993; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 15.
- John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (Westwood, NJ: Spire Books, 1965), 142.
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 7.
This article is adapted from Prioritizing Missions in the Church by Aaron Menikoff and Harshit Singh.
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