Missions on Point: Recent Episodes
Propempo
Missions on Point is the ”propempo” perspective on church and missions. The New Testament term ”propempo” captures the local church-centered philosophy of missions. Missions on Point communicates paradigm-changing aim, vision, and practical implementation strategies for sending workers to the challenging, Gospel-neediest people on earth for long-term service for God‘s glory. ”Missions on Point” is a ministry of Propempo International, a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization. See more at https://Propempo.com Donate on the podcast web page or go to https://Propempo.com/donate
After 5-1/2 years of weekly Friday podcasts, we are bringing the Missions on Point podcast to the next stage. Lord willing, it has been and will continue to be a source of challenge, encouragement, and information for church leaders, their missionaries, and mission-sending organizations. We may add more to the Missions on Point podcasts, but it won't be every Friday; episodes may be longer and more focused on issues in local-church-centered missions sending. I'll be launching another issue-focused media outlet titled "A Drop of Meade" on my channel at DavidCMeade.substack.com. Find me there.
Thank you all, dear listeners, for your loyalty and encouragement.
David Meade
davidcmeade@gmail.com
This introduction to the biblical principle of the centrality of the Church and missions was actually published as Missions on Point. You can get it through Amazon.com. This is the fire in the engine and the main thrust of all of our teaching and ministry over the last 30 years. Please go back to the Missions on Point episodes and find the entire list, which this episode is just the beginning of. Please also let your friends and fellow Church leaders know that this biblical principle can change your church missions for the better in the long term. In fact, for eternity.
A good Missions Handbook resolves many debates and provides context for the direction and strategic development of missions in your church by grounding decisions in Scripture. Start with the simplest nuts and bolts, ensuring each policy and procedure aligns with biblical principles and clear scriptural definitions. This biblical foundation provides the framework for your missions team's decision-making process. Go to Propempo.com or listen to the entire series on Missions on Point podcast. SendForward.org has a reference book for Church Missions Policy that could save you a lot of time and effort.
I love this topic. I've not found anyone else who talks about it. We've all met missions junkies. You probably have at least one in your church. They are people who love to talk about missions, love it when people pay for them to go "do" missions (but only short-term). They don't have the focus and intensity to become a long-term missionary. It's about THEIR experience, THEIR selfies, THEIR "calling" to be an encourager of missions and missionaries, but never a long-term do-er of missions. What can we do with missions junkies? Let's turn their direction into something really useful for the church.
Visiting your missionary on the field is one of the sweetest blessings as a church leader. You get to see them in context, feel, hear, smell, taste, and touch their world. Yet it is also an earnest endeavor to shepherd them well, even to delve into the hard things in their life. Plan well. Let them know that your visit is not as a tourist, not as a dignitary or featured guest, but simply as a shepherd wanting to care for them. This episode will help you sort of the issues.
Business As Missions (BAM) has been the darling and the bane of attempts to reach "closed" countries with the Gospel. As Greg Livingstone has said, "You are either a job taker, a job maker, or a job faker." Most BAM out in the wild is job faking. While there is good work to be done by sincere Christians creating God-honoring businesses, they are rarely aimed at the end goal of establishing and strengthening indigenous local churches. However, we all need to understand BAM to interact with it. We've got more in Missions on Point and Propempo.com on BAM.
Church-based missionary training is a huge, paradigm-shifting undertaking. But, if you don't want your sent-ones to be cannon fodder, you'd better wake up and take note. Sound church-based, guided missionary training will make the difference between burnout and longevity, between frustration and effectiveness, between being crushed and thriving. Listen and learn.
Imagine you had to train someone from your church to become your associate pastor. Then add layers of training in church planting, cross-cultural exposure, leadership training, and becoming an elder. There you have it, in a simple form; that's how you train a church member to become a missionary. This episode will guide your thinking. Look for lots more on Propempo.com, SendForward.org, and the Missions on Point episodes' history.
We actually address the issue of candidate identification in other series of the Missions on Point podcast. This one is the first of four in an overview of sending, equipping, and shepherding missionaries. I maintain that having a constant stream of equipping and leadership training in your church is absent in most churches. That's why it's so important to begin to address it. The answers to finding and equipping missionaries from your Church are parallel to those for leaders in your Church, whether elders, pastors, or deacons. We need a thoughtful, well-known process for identifying and training, and putting in place, those leaders. Missions on Point will help you do that.
This episode, featuring The Best of Missions on Point, looks at episode 79. The "Missiology You Need to Know" series continues with The Missionary Must Reproduce Himself. This seems as obvious as the nose on your face. However, missionaries tend to copy the forms of the churches in which they grew up and don't learn because of the absence of emphasizing this in ministry training schools. This principle is essential for achieving the desired result of indigenous local churches. BTW, a church plant is not indigenous if the missionary is the lead pastor. The fact that this principle is so little or poorly practiced is damning to our Western missiology.
Perhaps you didn't think you needed to know about missiology, but understanding the priorities and foundation of practical missionary missiology is essential to comprehend the process of sending missionaries from your Church and supporting high-quality missionaries. Your understanding of key missiological principles will significantly aid you in grasping and empathizing with the work and ministry of your missionaries. This best-of-episode is the first of six outlining these key concepts.
The "Best of" series is one of my favorites. It deals with subjects that are almost never admitted to or discussed in public. The angst that those "left behind" by their missionary family member or good friend rivals the angst caused by them toward their dear one. Those feelings of loss or abandonment are real. Shortsighted, damaging perhaps, but real to the "sufferer." So, those around them need to step in with loving care, counseling, sympathy, and correction, pointing them to the Lord and His purposes.
This "Best of" episode is a synopsis of six major teaching/training topics we covered in 2-day Propempo seminars for churches seeking to learn how to become a sending church. This first one, V for Vision, is a great starting point for getting leadership on board with the concept of a biblical missions-sending church. Please consider sharing this podcast with others and supporting us to keep us going.
Churches, including the missions ministries, tend to evaluate themselves based on metrics from previous years. The same metrics, without reference to an external objective benchmark. Sound familiar? The Church Missions Profile is your ticket to clearer standards. Visit SendForward.org and click on the Church Missions Profile link to learn more. The episode replays and overview of the first three categories (out of 12) in the CMP: church leaders, missions team, and indvidual participation.
Books are an invaluable resource to us all, especially when you get the right ones! Here's my list of high-impact mission books. Visit SendForward.org/Store to explore some of these resources and others that have proven helpful to many.
Email me to let me know your thoughts:
ministry (at) Propempo.com
Go to Propempo.com to find transcripts of every podcast episode -- https://propempo.com/resources/missions-on-point-podcast/
This is a grand series from the best of Missions on Point. It begins a series on discovering missions through the Bible. This first episode in that series is the glory of God. What could be higher and grander and more noble than that?
This episode begins to explore the biblical content, showing how it's easy to see, if you have eyes to see it, the great missions themes throughout the whole Bible. The glory of God is the pinnacle, but many other episodes follow in the Missions on Point history.
A very interesting reference in this episode is the story of how John Piper from Bethlehem Baptist Church became aware of and turned to the story of the glory of God in missions in the Bible. A more detailed version of this story is on Propempo.com.
Enjoy!
Churches can easily neglect the essential ministry of the Missions Committee or Team. The series on Missions Committee Essentials, beginning from the replay of Episode 43, provides practical guidance to help start or restart an effective Missions Team. If your church wants to be missions-minded, the Missions Committee needs to be reinforced and refocused so that it can be used to effectively mobilize the whole church in missions.
More resources can be found on Propempo.com and SendForward.org.
The "Best of" episode features the first of a short series on the most fundamental truths of missions from the Bible for today. This episode works through an overview of key Scriptures that establish the basis for the centrality of the local church in God's purposes. The local church is NOT the universal church. The universal church does not have the same call, commission, or consequence in God's plan for our day. This truth is so significant that it has the power to change our minds and actions, transforming our local churches and their missions to align more closely with God's. Listen well. Find more articles and resources on Propempo.com and the Missions on Point podcast. Tell your friends and church leaders!
Historically, we've battled with the wrong assumption that parachurch missions agencies own world missions ministry. It was true in 1900! It is largely accurate in 2025! This episode calls Pastors to lead their local church to ownership of global missions as the church equips, sends, and shepherds missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission. The Pastor must step up in faithfulness to this biblical focus on the local church as the beginning and end of missions. As the Pastor leads, so goes the church.
It means the Pastor will have to learn some new vocabulary, skills, and principles --- because, surprisingly, this is NOT taught in seminary. May God motivate pastors to mobilize their church to such obedience.
Starting with validating the individual missionary candidate's missionary call through hands-on oversight and observation, the church equips him or her to be sent. Character, convictions, and proven competencies to do the work of a missionary are worked out in the laboratory of local church ministry.
The local church helps identify the field, the missions agency partner, and other supporting churches and individuals. The local church leads in shepherding the missionary in every aspect of their life and ministry on the field. The church also helps re-entry and reintegration to life "back home" when the missionary returns from the field.
Seven characteristics of a good sending church conclude this episode.
This episode continues the biblical case for the centrality of the local church in missions - as the beginning and the end, the progenitor and the purpose, the cause and result of missions to all people groups of the earth. The conclusion of this episode is that:
- Churches need to take their responsibility to step up their rightful ownership of missions.
- Missions sending organizations and parachurch orgs need to acknowledge and partner with local churches to have the best quality workers for the most challenging jobs remaining on earth to fulfill the Great Commission.
This is a truth that has long been missing in our Western missions mindset. Everyone has been so busy and so hyped on evangelism and humanitarian issues that the heart of the biblical goal of missions has been overlooked. It is right there in Scripture for those who seriously care about what the Bible has to say, without truncating or embellishing it for their own purposes. The interpretation and application are clear to the clear-minded! Have a listen to this "best of" episode.
This "Best of" replay of Episode 2 takes me back to 1974, when the Lord opened my eyes to interpretive keys to Ephesians 3 and burned it into my heart as my missionary calling. The centrality of the local church in missions practically explodes out of Ephesians 3 and should NEVER be neglected in teaching and preaching the passage, including its connection to missions. We said it before; we say it again: "Once you see it, you cannot UNsee it!"
Celebrating five years of the Missions on Point podcast prompts us to reflect on "the best of Missions on Point." This episode marks the first in a series that revisits and replays podcasts featuring key concepts for Propempo International and the biblical, local-church-centered missions philosophy.
This first one is an explanation of the biblical word, from Greek, "propempo." It demonstrates how the biblical concept of the local church qualifying and sending missionaries evolved throughout the first century to become the standard, even today.
We pause to reflect on God's grace and goodness to and through the Missions on Point podcast as we complete five years of weekly episodes (without missing or repeating!). We are grateful to God, to our listeners, and my associate, Joel Hollins, for making it possible to produce this podcast.
We ask that you, our listeners, help with getting the word out to share this great content to missions-minded people everywhere :-)
This retrospective may get you interested in hearing or sharing some of the past episodes and series. We've covered a lot of territory, by God's grace!
Thanks for listening!
In this step of elevation, we expand the learning and exposure of local church-centric missions to the entire congregation. This is a crucial step, both in humble learning and in accelerated growth in the area of missions for your church. We share specific resources and types of resources to increase ownership and participation throughout the entire congregation.
Practical and widespread communication and teaching of your church's paradigm to become a Sending Church will be key to your entire body of members embracing the biblical vision of a sending church. It will take some energy and enthusiasm to help your church grow to be committed to whole-church mobilization for missions. Lord willing, it will result in well-qualified missionaries sent to fulfill your missions strategy and see cross-cultural churches planted through your church!
Now we get to the Elevation Phase. Elevation is where the church and missions leaders begin to bring the whole church along into this new biblical awareness of what it takes to be a sending church. The leaders may be running down the track, excited about where they are going. The church members are probably still in the starting blocks, waiting for the gun to go off. Teaching is a big part of it: for the church as a whole, as well as smaller subsets. Organizationally, you are aware that new structures and roles need to be created and launched. An Annual Mission Event can empower momentum toward everyone in the church growing in understanding and involvement. Recruiting mentors and other new roles for the Barnabas Team or Care and Prayer Team for missionaries will come here. Do something to intentionally put new missionary candidates on your church's radar for future development. Lastly, but not least, build prayer for missions, for missionaries, and for a strategic focus on missions.
Yes, it will take some effort and study to become a good sending church. There are deficits in learning this biblical role, and you'll need to exercise discernment. Even some excellent sources of information and inspiration may be influenced by their own biases and historical context. So listen to our recommendations to help you get started.
A huge part of educating your church to grow in becoming a Sending Church is taking the initiative to ask for help! Key life lessons apply here:
- Don't be in a hurry
- Commit to self-assessment using metrics outside of yourself
- Learn from other churches that have been in your position
- Realize that God can use any "need" as an opportunity for growth, change, and positive movement in the right direction.
Find the Church Missions Profile on SendForward.org or Propempo.com
With a body of information from the Evaluation stage, we enter the Education stage. We will revisit some fundamental biblical truths as a priority to gain unity and clarity among the leadership. The episode highlights the most basic elements and draws some contrasts with fuzzy truths known, promoted, or accepted in our present day. We'll discuss a few key principles for funding missions, including some initial thoughts on church missions funding.
The completion of our consideration of evaluating your church's potential as a good sending church includes thoughts that will ultimately help your church rise to that challenge. Start with prayer. End with prayer. Pray throughout the process. Ask lots of probing questions. Understand that you must win the participation and ownership of your church leaders. Seek to find the right resources and partners to become the good sending church the Lord desires to use in His plan for fulfilling the Great Commission.
This episode of Training for the Sending Church focuses on a very important and often neglected part of our evaluation. It zeroes in on discovering our present missions commitments and helps us understand the past and present status of those missions commitments and aim toward the future.
The questions here will guide you and your church missions leadership in creating the backdrop for development as a sending church.
Assessment or evaluation of the local church's sending church potential is essential. This episode discusses some dynamics facing the person or entity doing the evaluation. We cover key questions that will reveal doctrine, desires, and design affecting the evaluation. This can be very helpful in discovering strengths and weaknesses. The process accelerates direction and solutions toward seeing the local church prepared and equipped to become a good sending church.
Whether you have a missionary candidate urgently asking to be sent out ASAP or are just growing your church's missions vision, this series will help you. We'll walk through the evaluation, education, and elevation steps to equip you and your church in sending. This episode closes with some key resources to follow up.
It's not your job, but it's also not what the church does. Christians are free to participate in any number of interchurch activities. We are better together than alone. But there must be a clear movement of the ministry toward the centrality of the church for every believer. Why is the priority of the church so important and how can we maintain that?
A Christian's job can also be thought of as a parachurch ministry. It's important to make a distinction between what the church does and what a Christian does, and a distinction between what the gospel is and what the implications of the gospel are. Thus Christians live out their faith in the workplace and around the world while maintaining the primary importance of the work of the church and church planting missionaries.
Churches have two kinds of ministries they operate: essential and support ministries. In this episode, we talk about how to make a distinction between the two and why that is important, along with some potential dangers and some helpful implications. Did you ever consider that your church operates parachurch ministries from within? Perhaps what your church has considered really important should be viewed as a non-essential parachurch support ministry. May all of God's churches be healthy in how we spend our ministry efforts.
Once we understand what the essentials of the church are, then we are able to define a parachurch ministry. The definition proposed in this episode will help us to keep the priority of ministry on the local church. It will help us understand why missions is important for churches as we compare and contrast all churches everywhere. And hopefully, you will be motivated in your own ministry to not exceed its mandate and see how it rightfully sits in submission to the local church.
Getting the church right sets the foundation for understanding all Christian ministry. The church is God's institution for his purpose of global glory. The church is essential and when we see how important the church is, then everything else we do as Christians will fall into place. What is essential for a church?
Christians do a lot of things, most of it on their own as an act of faith that God has given them a ministry. Yet, Jesus warns us that many will claim having done many things in Jesus' name, but Jesus will reject them because he never knew them. How can we sort through what is a Christian ministry and what is not? Before we can answer that question, we must first understand what ministry the church does. Getting the church right will begin to help us sort through the confusion.
Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God. Old Testament wisdom points us to Christ and to the work of the church to go into all the world confounding the wisdom of this world. The wisdom literature gives us guidance for life, teaching us through the schoolhouse of the Old Testament to walk by the Spirit in faith, and not according to the letter of the law. Wisdom is for missions, and missions is only possible with the wisdom of Jesus.
The final history books of the OT, lead us to think about the hard work of building God's temple and kingdom. Clearly the old temple's glory would not be restored, but God's glory is worth our efforts because we look forward to a better temple. The book of Esther too teaches us about the limitations of man. Yet, we are responsible to do what we can, and God may use our works if he pleases. God will build a dwelling place for himself and we must look forward to that one day when people from all nations will worship the Sovereign God of earth and time together.
The post-exile prophets have a unique message for the church today. Hope in the coming Messiah and the wealth of the nations being brought into the temple of God. Yet with a new temple that doesn't compare to Solomon's, we are taught to look for a glory greater than Solomon's. Today missionaries are God's messengers going to all the world, preaching the law and the gospel, preparing for the final coming of the Lord.
These three prophets each have a unique contribution to the biblical message. And, with as believers today rightly interpret and apply these books, they are led to be mobilized for global missions. God shows us his compassion for the nations. He fills us with his Spirit so that we can preach the good news to all nations. And He promises to defeat every enemy raised against him, especially those who were once his enemies but have now been made subjects of his kingdom. The church must now do what Israel in the Old Testament would never do by going into all the world to disciples of all nations.
Even though Judah was not like the apostate nation of Israel in the north, they had wandered from God. They too needed to be warned of impending judgment. But through this we learn about the prophetic hope in the judgment of God against every evil, which oppresses all mankind. The day of the Lord will be terrible, for God's wrath is not to be taken lightly. But in wrath, God remembers mercy, so it will also be a day of salvation for all from any nation who would put their trust in God.
The prophets give us a message and themselves as messengers to teach the church about its role in confronting the nations in a prophetic way with the gospel. Amos preaches about the Day of the Lord, a day of gloom and darkness for Israel, but a day of hope for the Gentiles. Hosea preaches about a faithful husband and father who adopts children who were once not his own and gives them mercy. And Micah tells us of the Shepherd King to be born in Bethlehem who would pardon the sins of all those who feared him. And in all of these books the judgment of the Jews brings about a hope for the Gentiles.
We know the stories of fiery furnaces, lion's dens, and the handwriting on the wall. We may the apocalyptic imagery too of beasts and horns. And it may all seem strange and far off from us. But Daniel has something to teach us that this world is not our home while a spiritual battle rages on. And surprisingly we learn about God's global mission to rescue those trapped in the kingdoms of darkness, under the dominion of the kingdoms of this world, and bring them into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Ezekiel received a bittersweet word from the Lord, a difficult burden to bear as a prophet. Yet he gives us a glimpse into the future glory of the Lord. Missionaries need to keep their hope in that glory, because suffering will come like it did for Israel and Ezekiel. The temple is destroyed, but in the resurrection of Jesus it is rebuilt along with God's army. God's word and God's Spirit give people from every nation a new heart. Don't shy away from this fantastic book full of apocalyptic imagery. And be amazed how it points us to the new temple of Jesus' body filling the earth with the glory of God.
The weeping prophet leads us to the steadfast love of the Lord, and the Old Covenant contrasting with the New Covenant opens the door wide for global missions. Jeremiah envisions judgment and hope for every nation to find future restoration in the coming Messiah. The prophet himself is an example for preachers and missionaries today who have been called by God to proclaim God's word to audiences who may be hostile to its message.
Isaiah, the evangelical prophet, probably more explicitly than anywhere else in the Old Testament predicts the Suffering Servant who would die for the sins of the world. Yet, this gospel hope is directed toward the nations of the world. Salvation for all nations comes through the exile of God's chosen servant. The missionary's call is quite similar to Isaiah's, yet listen to this episode to find out how they are different.
Right missions methodology is highly dependent on how we understand the kingdom of God inaugurated with Jesus as King. How do we relate to the kingdoms of this world? How is Jesus the king leading his kingdom of priests in this world now? The history books of the Old Testament offer to us a helpful contrast between the failed kingdom of Israel and God's design for the church in the new covenant.
God's story to redeem mankind is a story that spans all of history. If the church hopes to understand its place in obeying the Great Commission now, then we need the history books of the Bible to rightly situate us in time. God is gaining for himself an inheritance of the nations, and the Old Testament faithful did not received what was promised to them because God was insuring that the Gentiles would be adopted into his family. God's faithfulness to save a people for himself should spur us to be faithful to God's call on our lives today.
The law of God is essential for missions. Rather than simply a cultic and ritual code of conduct for the nation of Israel, Deuteronomy shows us the Spirit of the law, which has been made universally applicable for Gentiles through Jesus Christ who fulfills the law for us. Each of the ten commandments leads us to a need to preach these laws to all people everywhere. It is a worthy effort to consider how to apply these timeless principles to particular peoples, because Jesus hid these words in his heart, and he used them in his defense against Satan. The church now stands unified with believers of all places against the darkness of the world around us because we have the same doctrine and morality.
The Israelites are on a journey from Sinai to the Promised Land. Rather than a book about genealogies, this book gives us the story of the gospel, and the pattern of all of time, where a second generation replaces the first. There is hope in God's mercy and covenant faithfulness. Listen to this episode and learn about four motivations for missions from the book of Numbers.
Leviticus is the central book of the Pentateuch, and at its center it teaches us an important lesson - a lesson which motivates us for global missions - the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Man is not justified by following the law, his uncleanness is too great. But God's unilateral grace toward fallen man makes us holy. As the nation of Israel once gathered at the one place where sacrifices were made, so now the church goes out into all the world, now already made holy by the death and resurrection of Jesus, to be holy as God is holy. Holiness is missiological.
God's people are called out of their slavery to their sinful cravings, and called to be holy, separated as the people of God, strangers and aliens on this earth. Yet, like Moses, we are called to go into the world and rescue the lost. The book of Exodus lays a blueprint of God's dwelling with mankind, and the church now is the temple of God, preaching God's word to God's people, calling believers to obedience to God. Local churches need to be obedient to God's command to go into the world and preach the saving message of Jesus Christ, the only perfect mediator between God and man who can lead his people to God's holy mountain. The imagery and typology in the book of Exodus is rich, and it has global missions written all through it.
The book of Genesis begins God's story of his global glory. Jesus Christ completes that story. And now through the church, we get to tell all nations how they fit into that story. Beginning with God's intentions in creation, his plan for a second Adam to rule to world, and for Jesus to be everyone's hope of undoing the curse and reversing the division at Babel. The hope for all nations of one offspring from the line of Abraham starts here. And how every nation relates to this one has eternal consequences. Now we go into all the world and tell them that this hope has been born. Think with us about how to best preach missions from the book of Genesis.
There are dangers when preaching about missions, because we want to avoid reading into the text something that is not there. But how can we preach about it rightly. This episodes offers one primary way we can do that: biblical theology. From this recognition, we explore ten topics that are commonly found throughout scripture, and we see how they are naturally and easily connected to thinking about world missions. Come listen and get equipped for faithfully reading, thinking, and preaching from God's word with an aim for God's glory among the nations through the church preaching the resurrected and exalted Christ.
Is it possible to preach about mission in every sermon? Does every text of scripture lead us to this topic? Certainly you have preached or heard biblically faithful sermons where missions wasn't even mentioned. But once you start to see missions in the entire Bible, you can't help but to see it more. Consider this with us and we explore four ways to think about preaching and teaching missions from a framework of missions. You still might not mention missions explicitly, but at least you'll see the clues that have always been there.
As you get ready to leave for your missions field, here is a conclusion of last thoughts. There are some things that will prove very useful to you and your church, which are contained as Appendices in the print book:
A. Practical guidelines for security concerns
B. A Sample partnership agreement between your sending church and the sending missions agency
C. Questions for missionary candidates, usually applied near the beginning of your journey in missionary training
D. Why "church planting" is THE priority in missions
Then, some personal reflection encouraging you to keep a personal journal, intentionally build godly friendships that will span time and distance, and, finally, think about recruiting and encouraging others to joy you in eventually become your teammates in ministry on the field.
You may have come to a different conclusion of your plans to go to the missions field. Maybe you've worked hard for quite a while and found that you cannot go to the field. The doors have closed, at least for now. Then what will you do? Don't despair! God is still sovereign! He has plans to use you whether you make it to the field or not, whether you stay on the field or not. Get humble! Ask God what He has for you next. You might be surprised to find how God will use you effectively as an advocate or mentor for missions. Accept and absorb the love of your church family in helping you recalibrate the next stage of ministry in your life.
The capstone of your preparation and qualifications is the grand send-off service or weekend. Traditionally, this is called the commissioning service. You are recognized by the church as having completed all the requirements to go to the field. You are officially SENT from your sending church. It is a wonderful opportunity to praise God, thank all those who have helped in the process, and mark this milestone. Be sure to schedule some recuperation time between the commissioning and the actual travel to the field. You'll need it!
This is one of the hardest topics to deal with. Yet, historically, God has been pleased to use the process of raising personalized support, and the consequent partnership is material and spiritual, which has been the predominant means of missions ministry for hundreds of years. This now becomes an integral part of your ministry. It is not "other" than your ministry. It is a priority part of your ministry. You can find a balance. You need some help to do it. God will be faithful. Both in skill sets and in financial means, you cannot do ministry on the field without doing the support raising to make it happen.
You've already done a lot to grow in life, knowledge, and skills to become a missionary. Now, let's give attention to the last things, the final brushstrokes on the canvas of your training and qualifications. You want to be fully commended and affirmed by both your home sending church and your missions agency before you are free to leave for your field of ministry. Today's episode will help you make that last stretch of this marathon.
There are many necessary questions to ask when researching a mission-sending agency partner. Remember, though, that your local sending church needs to be involved in the decision. The process of becoming a member of a missions agency is a big step. It will frame the context of your ministry into the foreseeable future, perhaps for a lifetime. So, your diligence now will bring large dividends and eliminate surprises later. This episode is Part B of the two parts of "Get a Sending Agency Partner."
Winning the support, relationship, and equipping of your local sending church is important. Now, you turn your attention to selecting the best fit for a sending agency in concert with your church's leadership. It is a very important relationship. You need to have a good sending agency that respects the role of your church in your life and ministry and has expertise and experience in your target field "over THERE." This episode and the next will describe questions and issues to probe to find the best fit. If the agency in which you are interested will not allow a partnership agreement with your sending church, you should run away from that agency!
Church planting among the least-reached people groups of the world is a priority. Very few workers sent to do that ministry have had guided or curated exposure that equips them to do it. You want to be one of those few. Begin your cross-cultural training HERE, before your feet hit the ground "over THERE." Do the work to discover ways to understand culture, particularly your target culture. Get connected with church planting, even as a short-term volunteer or intern. Learn all you can about the process, the team dynamics, and the ups and downs of church planting. Though it takes time and effort, you will deeply appreciate what you learn through the process when you get sent over THERE.
A startling hole in most missionary training is a broad foundation of personal ministry in the local church content. Church planters desperately need to understand the dynamics, the highs and lows, the disappointments and joys, of ministry with and to real people in their sending church. The rewards are great! Relationships, skills, and growing in grace found in this context are foundational to long-term effectiveness in a missionary context. Take a deep breath. Let's do this right and do it with joy for the sake of Christ.
Somewhat surprisingly, the role of a missionary mentor in your training process as a missionary candidate is almost never acknowledged. For you to have a trusted friend and counselor (or several) as you wrestle through all the various aspects of personal change and growth is invaluable. Pray and ask and seek that God would give you a great mentor from within your sending congregation. This episode is a groundwork description of how a mentor can benefit and ensure your qualification process.
One of the early crucial steps you can take toward the mission field is to become deeply connected and involved in a healthy sending church. College and university students rarely see this as a priority. If you want to be a faithful and effective missionary, you must! This episode describes qualities to look for and how to help yourself, your case as a missionary candidate, and your chosen church. This is a make-it-or-break-it move for you right now.
Read Missions on Point: The Local Church at the Heart of Ecclesiology and Missiology for the biblical apologetic for the centrality of the local church in missions.
After the mountain-top euphoria of commitment to becoming a missionary candidate, the candidate needs a road map to help navigate the unfamiliar path ahead. The mentor helps you, the candidate, take stock of your special calling and position. There are a lot of new commitments that go along with becoming a missionary. Then, there is the careful and wise communication of your new commitment to those around you. Becoming a missionary is not something you do on your own. Leaders, friends, and partners are necessary to affirm and sustain your ministry as you move from HERE to THERE. May God encourage and enable you to become well-prepared for His glory to the nations.
Whether you want to be a missionary or are a friend, family, or fellow church member of a missionary candidate, this series of podcasts is for you. We will walk through the typical qualifying process to get from HERE (your home place) to THERE (your desired missions field). It's a daunting task to become a well-equipped missionary! It takes patience, time, and vision for personal growth and skill-building. It will take discipline, sacrifice, study, and change. Yet, though the standard is high, the results are worth it. Taking time, with a committed local church behind you, will prove to be your best asset for effectiveness on the field. May the Lord help you all to make it so for His glory.
You can get the current HERE to THERE (by David Meade) in Kindle version on Amazon. Or, wait for the updated edition coming out in a few months.
There are many streams of influence that affect the big picture of global church planting. We won't be able to address them all and certainly not in great depth. This episode deals with a few key thoughts about church planting around the world. We'll talk about effectiveness, the negative effect of American-influenced pragmatism, and hope for future changes coming.
A key foundation for biblical church-centered missiology is found in the new book: Missions on Point - The Local Church at the Heart of Ecclesiology and Missiology, available on Amazon.
Church planting in a foreign culture has to consider all the concerns of every other type of church planting and adding both language and culture to the mix. Missionary church planting is the most exciting and most exacting of all church planting. Thankfully, missionaries may be more aware of their challenges than church planters who don't have the obvious stark contrasts. We talk about special considerations for foreign cross culture concerns here. We'll also think about the desired end result: a reproducing local church that is fully indigenous.
There is a huge need and opportunity for healthy biblical churches to consider planting a church in their "Samaria." We continue to see large communities of ethnic people around us. They, with all their extraordinary needs and often tragic personal history, need the Lord Jesus Christ presented to them understandably and lovingly. They need a local church that exalts Christ and expounds the Scripture for their life and walk with the Lord. Though the issues of near-culture church planting are complex, we believe God wants us to consider getting involved, just like commanded in Acts 1:8, for His glory.
Acting on a commitment to plant a church in a nearby location within a very similar culture can feel daunting. Common concerns for the near-culture church plant need to be considered and addressed. Thinking through a number of diametrically opposite dynamics can help you avoid future problems. We address eleven concerns. By God's grace, working through the issues will forge your church planting team and "first members" into a unified group well before the first public worship service takes place.
Check out earlier episodes of Missions on Point that also talk about church planting.
New church planting "keys" or "schemes," models or frameworks, come around regularly. Pragmatism overshadows hermeneutics to produce the next rapid results methodology that will surely be effective this time. Careful, solid preparation of the church planter should enable discernment and careful implementation based on genuine biblical consistency. Adapt what may be good; reject man-centered definitions; take time to build a solid foundation that stands the test of time. Our Western culture tends to be easily swayed by marketing claims and short-term proofs of rapid results. Let's do better than that as we do the steady work of planting biblical churches with genuine believers and qualified indigenous church leaders in every people group on earth.
Let's clear the fog and demystify more about church planting. These issues should not seem new because every vibrant church should have some experience or be working toward getting experience in church planting. In this episode, we'll talk about universal issues every church plant faces: meeting place, model, marketing, money, and melding of the church plant team.
Don't miss next week's controversial episode!
Check out the Missions on Point book on Amazon.
In this series, we want to lift the veil of mystery and sometimes misunderstanding about church planting. If church planting is a sign of a healthy church, every church member should be aware of some of the issues and challenges church planters face, some of the joys and sorrows, and the needed plans and particulars of the church plant. This episode touches on seven universal challenges beginning with "D" words: distinguish, decide, determine, discern, develop, define, and differentiate.
Church planting is a surprisingly polarizing topic. It comes at the intersection of ecclesiology and missiology, which is the hallmark of Missions on Point. So, though we may say things that spark enthusiastic discussions, we'll start this series on church planting over these eight episodes, fueled by my own experience in church planting at home and abroad and lots of study over a handful of decades. May you be encouraged in heart and mind to love the local church and become a proponent of church planting.
Parents of missionaries can feel quite left behind. But don't worry, we haven't forgotten about you. This podcast is for you. Emotions are all over the place: excitement, sadness, joy, fear. How can you follow the Lord in faith as your children or grandchildren follow the Lord overseas? You have an important role to play, and God has a missions path for you too. Find some encouragement and help in this episode with ways that you can facilitate your relationship and manage appropriate expectations. You will be blessed in unexpected ways as God is at work in your heart causing you to trust in Him alone.
Continuing the Missions Path from last week, we are considering what it looks like to be a field missionary. There are some important strategies you need to consider. Altogether, there are seven steps you can take to be a faithful missionary. This episode especially focuses on the last few steps of a missionary and how to finish well. We pray you are encouraged by thinking deeply and biblically about your priorities as a missionary.
What does it take to be an effective missionary on your field? It takes a whole lot more than big dreams and wishful thinking. It takes a lot of work. But, what does that work look like, even down to your day to day activities? This is what we explore on the Field Missionary Missions Path. In this first part of 2 episodes dealing with this missions path, we explore the competency tools of aim, plan, build, and evaluate. We chart a course ahead for how we can break down the lofty goals that can take decades to accomplish into more tangible expectations.
Before you go, there is much preparation. The best way to mitigate the struggles on the field is to be well prepared and well sent by your church. This missions path episode is for the pre-field missionary, and it's crucial for the entire church to grasp the basics of missions here. Your waiting is not in vain. God will send you, when he wants to, and in his way. So, use your time preparation well. There is much to get started on now. A successful pre-field ministry sets you up for a successful field ministry.
Someone needs to take up the delegated pastoral responsibility of missions in the church. While smaller churches will necessarily employ one person with a large combination of responsibilities, as the church grows and the missions budget along with it grows, that responsibility will grow too. And you may even find yourself in need of a full-time employed missions pastor. Regardless of whether the missions pastor has other responsibilities or not, what does being a missions pastor entail? Find out in this podcast about the 7 responsibilities that a missions pastor oversees.
The Senior Pastor is the shepherd of the congregation who leads it in missions. He sets the pace and expectations, but it's not up to him. He, along with the church staff and the missions team all seek to equip the entire church for missions ministry. But how does the Senior Pastor fit into this wonderful body? He can be consumed by so much ministry that missions is often relegated to the periphery. Or he can be overwhelmed by all that needs to be done. Trust in the Chief Shepherd and leads others to him through the teaching and preaching of God's word.
Your missions committee is a vital dimension of how your church fulfills its strategic missions focus. Some people are delegated responsibility in your church to join this team and propel your church into greater missions effectiveness. But, be careful. Your committee should not be doing missions on behalf of your church. They should be mobilizing the entire church to be involved in missions. Find out here about 5 aspects of the missions committee.
Everyone has a missions path, but someone has to help them find it. Mobilizers are used in the body of Christ to equip the entire body for the work of missions. While only a select few go on the field, everyone can play a supporting role. Mobilizers disciple others in missions effectiveness, call the church to is biblical role, equip others with resources and help them overcome any hurdles they may have. The work of missions is not easy, but mobilizers can help make the path straight.
Churches and individuals should consider the value of Short Term Missions and how they fit into the larger picture of long-term missions ministry in planting churches. Short term teams can provide ministry that long term missionaries could not do on their own. Please tune in to today's episode to consider eight aspects of short term trips. You careful planning, and your prayerful discernment about how God is leading you can be a blessing, not only to the missionaries on the field and the recipients of any ministry, but for the individual who goes on the trip too. Perhaps this is the perfect opportunity for you to discern more clearly God's call on your life and your involvement in missions.
Everyone should consider how they can get personally involved in missions. There is always more for you to learn as you grow in your understanding of both missions and the missionaries in your church. Pray earnestly for the Lord to send out workers, and pray for those who have already been sent. Begin sharing your faith now. Support missions, not just financially. And start reaching internationals. This podcast begins to open our understanding on how you can be personally involved in missions. But there is much more to grow in. Keep going and don't stop!
You can find more details about the topics raised here at https://propempo.com/services/missions-paths/inquirer/
You can compile your only custom-made pdf of missions questions and answers with Propempo's handy tool: https://propempo.com/services/missions-path-pdf/
Everyone has a missions path to go down. Which one is yours? Begin your journey by inquiring. Ask good questions. Find out more about missions, it's biblical basis, it's history, your church's role in missions and the missionaries you know. Become a life-long learner of missions. Challenge yourself to commit to missions and grow in the depth of your understanding of God's heart for missions. Inquire!
You can find detailed answers to the questions asked here at https://propempo.com/services/missions-paths/inquirer/
You can compile your only custom-made pdf of missions questions and answers with Propempo's handy tool: https://propempo.com/services/missions-path-pdf/
We have much to praise God for when considering how churches are increasingly stepping up to take their rightful place being responsible for global missions. We see God growing churches to become sending churches, and there are many organizations that are teaching this and supporting this now. Please continue to pray that this paradigm shift in thinking about missions as church-centered would grow from a groundswell into a full on tidal wave of change in how most churches and agencies do missions. And thank God that we are already seeing that conviction take root in several ways now. Listen to this episode to hear a run down of several organizations that are on the right track. And leave a comment on the podcast if you can think of any more.
The church, the missions agency and the missionary all need to work together to accomplish the mission. Who bears what responsibility? How can we manage expectations? And most importantly, how can we maintain the biblical conviction of keeping the church in the driver's seat? Furthermore, how can we resolve conflicts when disagreements about or divergence from expectations arise? In this episode we walk through a proposed template for a church and agency partnership agreement. Feel free to adapt it as you like, because your church and the mission's needs will vary from situation to situation.
Over the years, missions agencies and churches have diverged from each other and often find themselves at odds. But, missions agencies provide a unique role in fostering church partnerships. First, agencies must recognize how they have succumbed to mission creep, no long supporting the church like they originally intended. Second, missions agencies can equip the church for their role. Third, they can let go of those roles that most appropriately belong under the domain of the local church. Furthermore, missions agencies foster church partnerships too, through prioritizing prayer and facilitating the gathering of churches around the mission that they are partnering in.
No matter what kind of church you are, there is value in establishing church partnerships in the work of missions. Three kinds of churches are explored in this episode: the sending church, the supporting church, and the receiving church. Each kind of church has a unique interest in church partnerships. Churches need other churches. Just like the Gentile churches sent support to the church in Jerusalem, we too need to be aware of and ready to help other churches in need. And who knows, one day we might find ourselves on the receiving end of care as well.
The missionary is a bridge between two cultures and the churches in those cultures. Church partnerships provides the framework for the missionary to understand the value of his work. Sometimes work like raising support and writing newsletters can feel like a drudgery, and simply a means to an end. But they're not. They support the grand vision of church partnerships. A vision for church partnerships can help motivate the missionary in their work to rise above the reduction of their ministry to metrics. Brotherly affection crosses cultures too.
What do church partnerships have to do with missions? Isn't it enough that we see healthy churches planted and leaders developed? In this episode we walk through the biblical account of God's plan for his glory through the unity of churches across cultures as we together worship the same risen Lord and Savior. Ever since the Tower of Babel, our cooperation has been cursed. But now that we share the same Spirit, church partnerships can show the world something unique about God's glory. This is the final goal of missions.
We are weak, limited and frail. Where can we find the strength to endure until the end, to accomplish the great task that Jesus has given to us to go into all the world, teaching disciples to obey all that Jesus has commanded us? We are desperately dependent on God alone for both our justification and our sanctification. God guarantees the success of the mission because he guarantees that his presence will go with us. We find comfort in the powerful, personal presence of our Savior.
Most people think of discipleship in terms of teaching, but it is easily neglected or undervalued. It's too easy to think that something else is the objective. Keeping this goal in mind, though, has dramatically important implications for the church and missions. We cannot fulfill the goal without the life-long discipleship that is found in the local church. From the cradle to the grave, everyone is still learning to grow in their obedience to all that Jesus has commanded his disciples.
Who should we invest our time and efforts into making disciples? How do we know if someone is truly serious about pursuing discipleship or not? Jesus has given a very simple command, and it should be considered the beginning of discipleship. Baptism is the glue between the church and missions, and we need to get baptism right in order to hold the two together.
What is the scope of discipleship endeavors in the church? Who should we seek to make disciples of? Jesus makes a radically inclusive call for all peoples in every tribe, tongue, and people group to become his disciple. And thankfully, we are given the promised vision in heaven that this reality will one day be true. For now though, we need to set our sights on the nations of the world, especially those places that are darkest, the unreached and unengaged.
Jesus begins the Great Commission by declaring that all authority in heaven and earth have been given to him. But what does this mean for the church and for missions? Jesus' authority is essential for missionaries because it grounds them in the sure foundation of God's word and the church which is where Jesus' authority is exercised. Be wary of missionaries who are untethered from the church, just as we should be wary of anyone who comes in their own authority.
Matthew 28:18-20 is the familiar final command of Jesus giving to us "The Great Commission." In this series we do a deep dive into the Great Commission to see its implications for missions and the church. Jesus gives the central command for the church to make disciples. Discipleship is then defined with 5 distinct aspects, which will then constitute the remaining episodes in this series.
Here in the closing books of the New Testament, we see faithful church leaders writing to scattered Christians under persecution and to specific local churches. These books give instruction, encouragement, and correction to church leaders and the believers in their care. We continue to observe that the local church is the greenhouse for growing Christians in their faith. The startling visions of Revelation are also bookended with specific instruction and hope-filled comfort for local churches, which are the fruit of missions and God's global redemptive plan. God is sovereign! Jesus wins! He uses us to reach the nations in His name!
In this episode, after 3-1/2 years of Missions on Point, I introduce myself and my assistant Joel Hollins, who will be podcasting the next series. Please feel free to comment, give us feedback, subscribe, like, and follow Missions on Point. And, please tell your friends about the podcast.
The life and writings of the Apostle Paul are God's gift to the church. It's fair to say that we wouldn't understand the Gospel, theology, or missions well apart from Paul's example and letters. So, we read the New Testament and are encouraged to prioritize the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His church. Paul's example also teaches us to be team players, stick to priorities, and have a big heart for those supporting and serving alongside us.
This is a dramatic and critical narrative of the beginnings of the church, the first sent-out missionaries, and the grace of God through the Gospel to Gentile believers everywhere. Persecution exists as a thread throughout the story of missions. God's deliverance for His servants also exists. The first time believers were called Christians was in a Gentile church in a Gentile city. We wear that nametag today across the world. God used the church in Antioch to be the first sending church to Barnabas and Saul, who proved their qualifications and calling in the context of their local sending church.
It is a delight to read the dramatic narrative of the earliest church growing as the Gospel is faithfully preached in the book of Acts. Luke, the human author guided by the Holy Spirit, weaves in the key figures and moments in church development as their concept of missions was being formed. We see touches with many ethnicities from the beginning of the church in Acts chapter 2, the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The momentum and diversity grow in the subsequent chapters, building toward this Acts 1:8 Great Commission obedience to take the Gospel to all nations, to the end of the earth.
Christ's last days on earth, His final teachings, instructions, and commands build a consistent crescendo of missions direction. The elements of gospel proclamation to the whole world were repeated themes. We see Christ showing and telling of this missions theme up to his final command, reiterated until his ascension into heaven.
Perhaps we don't see Christ's ministry to the nations in the Gospels. Perhaps we minimize what we do see. This episode highlights some key observations that show Christ's consistent ministry to Gentiles and teaching that "all nations" are included in God's plan for the Gospel. Jesus' choices, interactions, teachings and instructions, and miracles all point to His extraordinary inclusiveness to all nations. This episode should help open your eyes to see it and be thankful for Christ's ministry to the nations.
We now begin a series of missions insights from the New Testament. Appropriately, we begin with the birth of Christ. Through the record of Christ's birth and the people involved, we see God's clear intent to bring salvation to all nations. This was prophesied in the Old Testament, demonstrated even through the lineage of Jesus, and confirmed by many people connected to His actual Incarnation and young childhood. God is faithful, in Christ, to fulfill his Word to bless all nations through the seed of Abraham.
It is fitting for us to consider Christ in the Old Testament. His life, ministry, death, and resurrection are the basis of the Gospel message of missions. Christ Himself teaches that the whole Old Testament speaks of Him as well as predicts His life and work in God's plans for His glory. So, it is a wonder to behold Him throughout the Old Testament. The Old Testament uses over 100 titles and names for Christ. Particulars of His position, His majesty, His perfections, and His cross-work are pictured, described, and portrayed in many ways. Jesus Himself appears in His pre-incarnate state to individuals in the lives of Old Testament saints. Types or pictures of Christ and of His saving work are modeled or shown to pre-figure His salvation in the Old Testament Scriptures.
In this episode we take a look at a couple of unique Old Testament missionaries - reluctant Jonah and captive Daniel. We also see God's purposes in the last words of the Old Testament before 400 years of silence until the coming of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. We clearly see God's heart for the nations, His clear purposes to be glorified and worshiped among all nations, and His faithfulness to give spokesmen who proclaim His majesty and greatness no matter the circumstances.
Psalm 67 is an outstanding example of a missions Psalm. The key phrases highlight for us how to read and look for God's missions purposes woven throughout the Old Testament. The purpose of God's blessing on His people is so that those resources would be used to draw people from all the earth to acknowledge and worship the one true God. We see similar phrases and usage in the great books of Isaiah and Ezekiel.
In our selective insights, we'll look at the purposive statement recorded about the story of David and Goliath. The phrase "that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel" is a key phrase used in various forms to show God's intent to spread His glory to all nations. Jesus reinforces this interpretation with His own statements in Luke 4 and the conduct of His own ministry. We see this repeated phrase, or equivalent, by other leaders and servants of God repeated many times throughout the Old Testament. It is a billboard-sized sign of God's intent to win people from all nations to a right relationship with Him for His glory. Stay tuned for more. Also, check out the book "Missions on Point" here.
We start a new series to introduce you to missions insights from the Old Testament. There are an abundance of things we could mention. But this series will focus on whetting your appetite with some personal favorite instances to highlight. The story of God's call and promise to Abraham is a crucial development in God's overarching purpose to bring glory to Himself in all nations. Genesis 1-11 can be regarded as an introduction to the main story of redemption, which unfolds here.
We've settled on a shorter, clearer book title -- Missions on Point: The Local Church's Role in Missions. This episode is a reprise that corrects the previously announced draft title. There are current thoughts in the missions world that missions agencies should give up on local churches' participation. Agencies are seeking to harden themselves to become independent of local churches. That thinking is dangerous and unbiblical! Local churches must rise up and take serious responsibility for their role in world missions. There is a lot of clear biblical support for the primacy of the local church in God's program. Working against that mindset could be disastrous for missions agencies. The local church needs to step up to reclaim their birthright. We've seen wonderful positive growth in a number of churches as they grasp this teaching. We'd love to see regional intensive weekend trainings spring up across the US: SW, NW, Central, East Coast. Pray with us to that end. Pray for the impact of the book as it comes out. Visit https://propempo.com/resources/missions-on-point-book/ to find out more and show your interest.
This is the last episode of the preview series of a book underdevelopment on the centrality of the church in missions. Please let us know if you're interested in being on the list to be notified when it is published. This episode is the capstone and summary of the main ideas presented in the previous episodes, starting with Ep. # 142. The local church is God's agent to accomplish His will on earth. The local church is central, by design, in missions as per biblical principles and precepts. The local church is the goal of missions ministry, as evidenced in many ways, including the Great Commission.
Let me know how this series affects you, your ministry, and your church.
ministry@Propempo.com
Notification of publication sign up here.
There are people and ministries who identify themselves as "missions mobilizers." We review the need and definition of missions mobilization. Yet, the missing element in most missions mobilization is the neglected role of the sending church. Mobilization would have stronger and better long-term results if more attention was given to developing the mobilization capacity of local churches! The best mobilization is by, with, and through the local church for the end goal of planting local churches among every people group on earth to the glory of Jesus Christ. cf. Eph. 3:8-21
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See transcripts of "Missions on Point"
What difference does this biblical orientation toward local-church-centric missions make for the missionary training school? There are lots of types of missionary training programs and institutions. Many are quite specific in what things they tackle in missionary training and preparation. Others are traditional Christian colleges and universities with a degree or diploma program specifically aimed at training missionaries. Yet, in light of our study, most do not include a seat at the table for the home or sending church of their student/candidate. This episode talks about fixing that gap. It is essential that some change be made in order to produce the best qualified, most effective, long-term missionaries being sent to bring the Gospel and plant churches among the final frontiers of people groups yet to be reached.
Sign up if you're interested in getting notice about the upcoming publication of the Church-Centric Missions book.
Get transcripts of Missions on Point.
We boldly talk to people about their missions giving, especially our beloved generous missions donors. Keep in mind this important principle of biblical local-church-centric ministry philosophy. It shapes the direction, criteria, and relationships of our giving. It has biblical, long-term, and discerning factors involved. Do you want more joy, more genuine long-term results, more spiritual fruit from your kingdom investments? Listen to this podcast and refer it to others.
This is a tough paradigm shift for missions agencies. But it must be done if we are to be faithful to God's church on both sides of biblical cross-cultural ministry. When we know the right thing to do, we must do it with determination and grace. So, missions agency, get more focused on the role of the sending local church. Recruit not just individuals but those individuals' churches. Equip, enable, and facilitate the church in sending the best prepared, best sent, best-shepherded missionaries in your agency history. You will not regret it!
Sooner rather than later, dear missionary candidate and missionary, get your church involved in your missionary development and missions ministry! The stakes are high. If you really want to be faithful and effective long-term on the mission field, you MUST get your home/sending church connected with a true sense of partnership and ownership in your ministry. True, it means giving up some "independence" and "personal rights." But that's way better than burning out! You will love having a solid team of people who love you and are concerned about nurturing your soul as well as your productive ministry on the field. Humility and acceptance on your part will bear rich fruit in your life and ministry. Do it for God's glory!
The local church mentor of the missionary wannabe is almost totally neglected in today's world of missionary preparation. There have been organizations that have tried to bridge the gap with very limited effectiveness. There is nothing like a warm, godly relationship within the home/sending church to walk alongside and give sound perspective and encouragement for the whole process of thorough preparation for the mission field. This episode unpacked the character of the mentor's role and the journey of preparation that they will facilitate.
Check out these resources:
https://propempo.com/resources/missions-on-point-series-list/church-based-missionary-training-7-of-14-mentoring-and-accountability/
https://propempo.com/resources/missions-on-point-series-list/church-based-missionary-training-1-of-14-introduction/
https://propempo.com/services/missions-paths/missions-committee/how-is-a-missions-committee-or-team-organized/how-do-we-raise-up-missionaries-from-our-congregation/
https://propempo.com/community/propempo-blog/what-are-the-qualifications-of-a-good-sending-church/
There is no doubt that the Missions Leader of the local church is absolutely key to the implementation of the biblical local church-centered missions mindset. To embrace this mindset and implement it is much more than being an administrator of a committee. It must be influential up and down the line to the church leadership, to the congregation, and to the missionaries that are being supported and sent. It's true that there are many components to getting the church on track. There is a special set of skills, including administration, communication, relational, skills, and planning skills. Take it as a challenge to help your church joyfully embrace what we believe to be God's biblical design for the local church's role in missions! Find resources:
Read the transcript
https://propempo.com/resources/missions-on-point-series-list/
https://propempo.com/services/missions-paths/missions-pastor/
https://propempo.com/services/missions-paths/
https://sendforward.org/product/get-your-church-involved-in-missions-pdf/
https://sendforward.org/product/church-missions-profile-3/
mailto:ministry@propempo.com
Pastor, LEAD YOUR CHURCH IN MISSIONS! Your role is crucial to the effectiveness of implementing this biblical local church-centric missions ministry philosophy. There are a number of simple, not-overwhelming things you can do to be an effective catalyst for missions in your church. Embracing this biblical church-centric view will give you freedom, focus, and fortitude as you enable and equip your church for this great ministry. Find more resources, including podcast transcriptions, at Propempo.com. Find the booklet entitled "Get Your Church Involved in Missions," at SendForward.org.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The two biggest categories of reasons why missionaries come home permanently from the field (attrition) due to preventable reasons are unrealistic expectations and lack of relational accountability. The sending church can be the solution for each of those. Rethink the candidate's pre-field training and qualifications. Build a strong web of relational accountability from the very beginning. Send and shepherd them well for long-term faithfulness and effectiveness.
Once you have the foundations laid for leadership and organization for missions values, you turn to "mobilizing the whole congregation in missions" by developing a church missions culture. Prayer, family devotions, biblical foundations, and engaging all the small group or affinity group ministries of your church and be inspired, informed, and enabled to participate in missions in practical ways. You know you've built a missions culture when your church members are spontaneously taking the initiative to be involved in missions both locally and globally.
The first concept to understand that it is not the church leadership or Missions Team/Committee's responsibility to do the work of missions on behalf of their church. Their responsibility is to mobilize the entire church in missions. That means taking seriously their leadership in informing, inspiring, and providing opportunities for every active member to do their part in missions as an intentional "world Christian" - living and aligning their lives in light of the Gospel and the Great Commission. This change of mindset will energize the whole church and eventually produce missionaries being sent out from your own church family.
It has been very helpful for church missions leaders to understand and implement a simple means of evaluating how much to financially support missionaries and ministries. Having passed through the initial application and alignment with the church's values in doctrine and relationship, this X-Y-Z grid helps visualize where the candidate is in X - relationship to your church, Y - priority of type of ministry, and Z - target access to the Gospel.
Adopting a Strategic Focus can be a game-changer in terms of earning greater participation and ownership of your church in missions. It clarifies, simplifies, and amplifies involvement. It is also more satisfying than casting out thinly and widely without deep missionary relationships. See the biblical model of Paul. Realize the benefits. Then act to do it!
You can always give your feedback and ideas for Missions on Point through email: ministry@Propempo.com
One of the amazing benchmarks of a church fully grasping its role in world missions is to raise up, send, and shepherd its own people as missionaries. It can be frightening at first. "How do we do that!!!" Yet, it shouldn't be much different than raising up church leaders, but with cross-cultural and international elements to it. This little episode can help inform your vision for "how to do that."
If you want to achieve a goal, you need to define the goal. The New Testament gives us a clear goal for Great Commission missions. The goal of missions is the local church. It is planting and strengthening local churches in every tongue, tribe, people, and nation on the planet. Too often missionaries, mission agencies, and even churches confuse and cloud methods and strategies with the desired end. They confuse the means with the end. Almost any kind of outreach ministry can and should be connected to the local church. A practical, intentional, conscious goal is essential. Ask your missionaries how they are connected to seeing local churches planted and strengthened.
This episode is dangerously fun. Here we answer the most frequent objections raised by church and missions agency leaders to restoring or repatriating missions to the local church. Want to learn the answers to these objections? Listen to this podcast. Could you share it with others? We believe the Bible is so strong on this that the pain of implementation must be overcome by our commitment to God's Word, faith in His plan, and hope for a better, preferred future. Then there is the Grandfather Clause ...
We transition in this preview of a more complete treatment in the book to come from the biblical basis to the implementation of the centrality of the local church in missions. Step one, if you will, is simply agreeing with the Scriptures and having your local church take ownership of missions. There are lots of good reasons to do so! Starting down this pathway will be of great benefit to all the players on the team: the church, the church members, the missionaries, their missions agency, and the target ministry people on the field.
Propempo is a very special term, transliterated from the Greek New Testament, which demonstrates the central role of the local church in sending out missionaries for the sake of the Gospel. This episode traces the use of the word "propempo" to demonstrate how it is used to describe this crucial responsibility of the local church. Track along with us as we show how it can fuel our understanding of the centrality of the local church in missions.
In this episode, we explore the scope and nature of God the Father's view of the centrality of the local church in missions. We discover that God is the originator and designer of the local church. The Bible is full of evidence of His involvement and purpose behind the local church together with its unique mission on earth. God's mission is the local church's mission. God's glory is found in and through local churches.
We dare not underestimate the incredible role of the Apostle Paul in establishing the centrality of the local church in missions. Paul clearly understood his special calling to preach the gospel and to establish local churches. In fact, he was under submission to his own sending church as he went out. His view and understanding of the centrality of the local church in missions is a model for our thinking and implementation of missions today. We pray this series will rock some boats, rattle some cages, and change some people's minds about how missions should operate in our world biblically.
"You can't see the forest for the trees" can be true of us. Sometimes we don't see the big picture because we don't lift our eyes to see the most obvious things. Every book of the New Testament was written by church leaders and church planters to local church leaders and local churches for the good of local churches everywhere. The local church is the beginning and end of missions. But it's not just the focus of missions; it is also the center of God's plan!
When the Apostles and disciples of Jesus heard the Great Commission, what did they do? How did they obey it? We'll see in this episode that they went all over the map preaching the Gospel and disciplining believers resulting in the planting of local churches. Acts is our guide for this 30,000-foot overview of early church history. Church tradition about the Apostles' work also confirms this summary: early believers planted churches in obedience to the Great Commission.
Please consider the well-known "Great Commission" passages in the Gospels and Acts. These contribute to a solid understanding that the Great Commission cannot be adequately fulfilled apart from planting local churches. It is NOT only evangelizing and discipline; it IS establishing a mutually committed body of believers who worship, care for each other, study the Scriptures, observe the Ordinances, have qualified church leaders, and continue to obey the Great Commission.
We like to start with the Bible. What better way than to start with Christ's view of the local church? After getting a big-picture overview of the use of the word "church" in the New Testament, we'll dive into how Christ Himself portrays His connection to and special relationship with local churches. In the largest scope, the whole New Testament, inspired by Christ and fueled by His Great Commission resounds with local-church-centered teaching.
This introduction begins a more extensive series on "The Centrality of the Local Church in MIssions." It is my heartbeat. It crystallizes my lifelong convictions for the local church and missions. Please listen attentively, recommend it profusely to others, and pray for its ultimate effectiveness for God's glory through the church to all nations.
The Muslim world is in the month of Ramadan (Mar. 22 -Apr. 20, 2023). This episode hopes to open your eyes to the strategic time of opportunity to share Jesus with your Muslim friends, coworkers, fellow students, and neighbors. Muslims are especially sensitized to pursue spiritual things during this month. They need to know more about their "Prophet" Jesus. They are more open to reading the New Testament (their Injil) to learn more. Your testimony, presented with sensitivity and loving concern for Christ's sake may bring fruit, by God's grace, in their coming to faith in Jesus. May it be so.
Congratulations, you have crossed the finish line of producing a new (or improved) Church Missions Handbook. Now it's time to roll out the implementation of the Handbook. Take some time to celebrate with your Missions Team or Missions Committee. Make sure everyone understands its content. Then progressively roll it out to the Elders, the congregation at large, and your supported missionaries and ministries. Use the Handbook for orientation for onboarding new Missions Team members.
Sometimes it is challenging to discuss measuring "performance," especially in spiritual things. Yet, information is a friend to effectiveness. Why you measure is essential. You want to have the right attitude about using metrics to better achieve your goals to mobilize the congregation in missions. What you measure may be obvious, less obvious, or even least obvious. It all works together to build a larger vision for what your Missions Team and your church can do to fulfill God's great purposes for His glory in Christ through the local church.
This episode could be used by every ministry group in the church! Here we'll look at key principles to having effective Missions Team meetings, decision-making processes, and the subtle dynamics that make for genuine unity.
Beyond the usual mechanical functions of a Missions Team, the deeper efforts of mobilizing the whole congregation for missions, missionary candidate development and sending, and larger partnerships come into play. Go the extra mile to become a Propempo-minded church in your role and functions.
Finding the right people on the Missions Team can be a minefield! Sometimes people with strange ideas want to be on the Team to leverage their agenda. How do you avoid that? Who and how do you get the right people on the Team to do this great ministry? Build a good foundation for qualifications, expectations, and team spirit as you serve the church in this vital ministry of world missions.
Structure, specialization, and delegation are keys to effectiveness, both short-term and long-term. This episode walks through 9 key areas for specialization in structure in order to have maximum impact on mobilizing the congregation for missions and for effectiveness with your field workers.
The Charter might be a stand-alone document that frames the most key principles for why, how, and what your church Missions Team does. It is a core piece of orientation for any church member, but especially for new Missions Team members. This episode uses a great model Missions Team Charter to walk through its elements and the significance of each part of it.
Few churches really think, pray, and lead their church in adopting a world missions focus and strategy. Those that do so, excel in missions ministry and launch their congregation to a higher level of understanding and involvement in missions. It takes work and time to pray through to the right focus for your church. But, it is worth it!
Building Your Church Missions Handbook will require you to think about key definitions which will guide your church for years to come. A side benefit is that good definitions, accepted by all in leadership, prevent a lot of misunderstandings and future wrangling over the same issues. Think well about these key definitions. Then, communicate them well to all concerned.
The first two keys for defining the Scope of Authority for Your Missions Handbook or Your Missions Team are: clarifying the differences between local outreach ministries and overseas, cross-cultural missions; and, getting your Elders or highest board of authority to conceptually mark the Guiding Principles or Guiding Values within which the Missions Team ministries will operate. This helps all concerned. Then move on to the standard questions of chain-of-command, scope of authority, reporting, and approval of key decisions. Let's write or review our Missions Handbook together!
As we begin building our Church Missions Handbook, the very first major element should be the biblical basis. We always start with the Scripture as our authority for life and ministry. Remember your audience: keep it simple and relatively short. It isn't a theological treatise or comprehensive. It is representative and builds a case for the priority of missions and the local church's role in missions. Blessings!
Hey, if you want more resources, check out the Propempo Guidebook on Missions Policy.
Missions issues, problems, misunderstandings, and conflict can be avoided by developing a "handbook" or "manual" that establishes the pattern for missions in your church. Church leaders regularly encounter questions about tough situations or from people sincerely seeking support for their ministry or some ministry to which they are related. Every church is unique. But every church should have guidelines for the biblical basis for missions, philosophy and policies guiding missions in your church, and the basis "nuts and bolts" for how it operates. Taking time to think about it, having good reasons, and focusing on priorities pays off in satisfaction, higher level of ownership, and freedom. Saying "no" to many good things allows us to say "yes" to the best things.
Check out the Propempo Guidebook on Missions Policy and the Church Missions Profile on SendForward.org
This is a rare personal view of Propempo new dynamic partnership with MissioServe - the Why, How, and When. As of Jan. 1, 2023, Propempo and MissioServe have merged and blended God-given strengths to better focus on a biblical, local-church-centered philosophy of missions. We're trusting God for great things. This vision includes having an impact on the entire evangelical church and missions complex of the West to step up to a stronger biblical view of the local church as the heart and harvest of our Great Commission ministries.
This episode reflects on the basis of the biblical concept of the centrality of the local church in missions and muses about the potential results if all stakeholders apply it together. It would be radical! It would also be a massive boost to missions effectiveness on all sides. It seems obvious, but why wouldn't we obey and apply this foundational principle?
Bible schools, seminaries, and missions specialty schools also need to be consistent in understanding and teaching the centrality of the local church in missions. Yes, even making practical the church's centrality for fulfilling God's purposes. If and when this happens, the schools and the missionaries they produce will be more effective, stay on the field longer, and bear more lasting spiritual fruit for their labor. We can do this together!
This is a sensitive topic. We hope to inform and guide your thinking towards being a more effective and satisfied donor to missions. We'll present six areas of thought and practical questions to help you be better biblically and strategically focused in your giving. May the Lord be pleased to use this for His glory.
This is a tough one! Missions agencies have developed a thick hide protecting their independence. It's hard to consider changing their mindset to allow the rightful biblical place of the local sending church in their enterprise. If done well, it promises incredible benefits to their administration, their missionaries, and the fruit of their ministries on the field. May God give overwhelming grace for missions agencies to understand, embrace, and change to become fully "Propempo certified."
Wow, I wish I had heard this episode before I went to the mission field decades ago! I wish that every missionary candidate could have heard this when they first started preparing for the field. This concept put into practice by missionaries and sending churches could lift the joy and effectiveness of missionary work worldwide! Having a biblical "propempo perspective" will encourage and sustain solid missions work as much as anything other factors. Prayerfully affirm and implement it for God's glory.
Propempo Certification for the local church missions Leader means understanding, accepting, and practically implementing the primary biblical and church principles of local-church-centered missiology. There are crucial, paradigm-shifting insights that will make your church and your leadership more effective in your role. This episode crystallized key concepts and foci to enable you to become that "Propempo Certified" kind of local church missions leader.
"Propempo Certification"? What is Propempo? What is certification? This series is a concept series on what it takes to be biblically local-church-centered in understanding the role of the local church in missions. It will rock your world! Understanding the biblical basis and the practical application could, Lord willing, revolutionize your church, your participation in missions, and your understanding of how to get the Great Commission done!
This is one of the most difficult issues to deal with emotionally for the church. The tangled web of relationships and motivations is hard to untangle. The intentionality of circumstances and diligence press us to do a good job of evaluation, prayer, and communication to get through to the best answer on the other side of the tough decisions. There are lots of legitimate reasons to reevaluate the level of support given to a particular missionary. Let's be realistic, gracious, and generous of spirit in the process while honoring the missionary, as well.
Oft-neglected, the issue of how best to communicate missions in the church is a key to mobilizing your whole congregation in missions. This doesn't mean that the goal is for everyone to become a missionary! It does mean that every church member should know and live out their personal role in the Great Commission. However, this doesn't happen without good, consistent, solid communication from and through the church. Missions communication should be fresh, memorable, and well-connected to your church's vision and connections for missions. These best practices can be used in many contexts, including your small groups, your homeschool, your prayer or Bible study group.
The term "missions junkies" refers to people who are hooked on missions - sometimes for the good, sometimes for the not-so-good. This episode helps you identify a missions junkie in your church or among your friends. Ultimately, the key to helping a missions junkie is to encourage them to focus on their local church and the biblical goal of the Great Commission. This might force them to focus on others more than accumulating a record of their own personal feel-good missions experiences. Missions junkies CAN be guided in positive ways in your church.
The critical junction of a long-term missionary coming back off the field "permanently" to retirement years is too often neglected as a special opportunity to help and shepherd them well. The past generation of missionaries retiring over the last 20 years or so were sadly ill-prepared to face the cultural whiplash and financial burdens of living back "home." We need to ask probing questions and stand ready to minister to them with honor and respect. We should include the missionary's extended family in the conversation. The retiring missionary can be a great asset to the ministry of the church.
It's a privilege and joy to visit a missionary on the field. It's also a solemn responsibility, especially when done on behalf of the sending church. That visit is a crucial interface between the sent missionary (family) and the sending church. So many things can only be learned with a healthy personal visit. Learn how to do it, what to do when you get there, and how to best advance the cause of Christ through your visit to the field.
One of the realities of contemporary missions is that many of our missionaries, particularly in unreached areas of the world, are at greater risk to their personal safety. Hostile governments, religions, and factions can cause a missionary harm or get them kicked out of the country. The wise missionary and sending constituencies take care to live with an alert and security mindset. We all have to adjust in order to have a lasting and effective Gospel presence.
It's surprising to many that the average termination of service of a missionary on the field may be less than five years. This is especially true for missionaries in fields of higher stress, greater antagonism toward Christianity, or more challenging living conditions. We can help! Awareness and prevention of preventable attrition can go a long way toward keeping our valuable missionary personnel on the field for long-term faithfulness.
A key to avoiding preventable attrition on the field is having a strong sending-church-to-mission-agency partnership agreement. The local sending church must not abrogate its continuing responsibility to shepherd and guide their missionary on the field. The mission agency must not divest the sending church of the responsibility to shepherd and "own" their missionary's ministry on the field.
Too often mission leaders and supporters take for granted the need for language proficiency in missions. Many of us come from a mostly monolingual society. We short-circuit language learning or press for minimal time and effort so that, in our view, the missionary can get on with the program. Little do we realize the significance of a higher level of language proficiency in order to teach and explain and proclaim the glorious intangible truths of biblical truths, theology, and the Gospel. We must change our attitudes and minds in order to encourage and insist that the missionary learn the language or languages! really well.
International commerce and opportunities abound. Christians are sometimes persuaded that going for overseas employment can be an effective means of witness for Christ and the Gospel. Maybe so; maybe not. Digging into the details will help temper expectations toward realism. It's possible that the job proposed doesn't allow for much, if any, evangelistic or ministry opportunities. Count the cost. Qualifications and job performance are also of high importance. This is not a vacation! Not a lark! Your presence and performance need to leave a lasting testimony that makes your message believable.
So many institutions are established by mission agencies with well-meaning intentions. The natural compassion of Western affluence sometimes provides an outlet for humanitarian concerns and goals. However, institutions too often become an end unto themselves over time. They lose sight of the original goal - that is, to establish a platform for Gospel ministry toward indigenous church planting. Institutional workers feel burned out and disconnected from any spiritual purposes besides fellowship within their own staff team. How can we help? Challenge, question, and redefine the time, structure, and purposes of the institution. Connect with the local church/es. Disciple and train for indigeneity to replace the Western workers and Western control.
It's no surprise that there is opposition to the Gospel and Gospel messengers. Jesus said it would be so. Paul said it would be so. History teaches us that it is so. How then do we prepare ourselves for the challenges of resistant culture in our world? Ignore?, Deflect?, Neglect?, Disobey?, Hit and run? None of these weak, selfish, sinful responses will do! Listen to this episode. Pray. Ask what God would have you do to be involved in going or sending to the last bastions of resistance to our Almighty King Jesus.
It seems simple. Yet, the simple process of planting a church can be distorted or muddied by modern pragmatism and the pressures of fadish methodologies. The end goal is a biblical, healthy, indigenous local church. It takes time, prayer, sweat-equity, relational skills, and no small amount of administrative and logistical attention. We start with biblical models and build goals and priorities which reflect the right ends.
Wildly diverse and unbiblical definitions of "local church" continue to infiltrate contemporary trends and field practices. We MUST start with and expect a solid, biblical definition of a local church in order to plant solid, healthy churches. The implications are HUGE. Wrong goals produce wrong results. Fuzzy targets yield a lot of misses. Inappropriate altruism only helps people feel good about something that is less than true and reproducible. We must ask these questions in order to actually fulfill the Great Commission. Nothing less, nothing else will suffice.
One of the most dramatic streams of trends in missions over the past decade and the present is the methodologies represented by DMM ("Disciple Making Movements"), CPM ("Church Planting Movements"), T4T ("Training for Teachers"), DBS ("Discovery Bible Studies"), and others. The statistics are mind-boggling! While we can learn some essential things about the power of God's word, presently plainly, simply, clearly, we also can see the seeds of a kind of legalism that breeds flawed concepts of salvation and the local church. Be careful! Ask questions. Stick close to a truly biblical understanding of conversion, Christian growth, and biblically qualified church leaders.
Literally billions of people around the world, especially in the remaining people groups unreached with the Gospel, are strictly oral learners or oral communicators. Though various kinds of media may be used, often technology limitations require that a person go and teach the Gospel to them orally. Recent emphasis on this means and refinements of methods have improved and helped to spread the Gospel through orality. Still, church planting and leader development is aided by literacy being an intentional follow-up to the harvest of orality ministry.
Contextualization is a key concept in the communication of the Gospel and its application in the field. It has been often exaggerated in application to the point of heresy. Understanding and communicating in an understandable way within a language and culture is essential. However, losing the moorings of key doctrinal anchors will result in a highjacked version of healthy contextualization. Don't let the modern trends of highjacked contextualization and the vaporous pragmatic results sway you from holding to more time-testing methods and long-lasting results based on biblical truths.
Churches and "investors" are getting inundated by proposals and requests from those wanting to start a business overseas under the banner of "Business As Missions." Just like any business proposal, the hearer needs discernment and should ask hard questions. Among those questions for missions must be questions from a Christian missions perspective: who? what? where? why? when? and how? are all legitimate. The missionary must be a missionary! But the missionary must also be a good business leader.
Business As Missions (BAM) is not only a large issue in missions today, it is an inescapable necessity. Many countries do not allow religious workers. So, Christians must have a legitimate business reason to obtain a long-term residence visa. Missionaries today must be prepared, in these contexts, to either take a job contract or create a business of their own. There are lots of sticky issues related to these opportunities, and the missionary and their supports need to be prepared to navigate those waters.
We highly recommend having a written partnership agreement with your missionary's missions sending agency. But it's more than just the paper. Making a good partnership work requires time, effort, relationship, and prayer. This episode explains some of the challenges and tips for making an effective partnership agreement that really works to the advantage of all involved and to the ministry on the field.
No one talks about this! We should talk about this. Your church, your people, the family members of your missionaries, and the missionaries themselves need to have right and realistic expectations about their accountability, focus, and communication while on the field. It should not be a surprise to anyone that the missionary has a lot of pressure and change to cope with on the field. They also have more expectations of them in accountability, focus, and communication than ever before in their life. We can help now by learning right things about these areas and by building a mindset and tools to help them.
Even before your missionary departs for the field, it's good for you and for them to have realistic expectations for a healthy, pastoral accountability field visit. This episode will help prepare for the wholistic scope of interests for the sending or supporting church field visit.
So, your missionary is fully prepared and qualified. Now what! Celebrate! Give God glory publicly! Invite friends and family and all those supporting your missionary. Send him/her/them well.
Also, be aware that de-commissioning is no light matter. Learn how to navigate those reefs and help your missionary, if necessary, understand the gravity and significance of leaving the field. Help them re-acclimate and re-integrate to the home side.
Though it is a challenging topic, it must be discussed with your prospective missionary. It's a good thing for every Christian to think about! Missionaries, though they say they are willing to sacrifice and to suffer for Christ on the mission field, have a very hard time putting into practice the humility and servant spirit required to life in another culture. We all fight against giving up our personal autonomy and independence. Yet, we must do so, under the Lordship of Christ and the constraints of the host culture, for the sake of the Gospel.
It's not all classroom work! Missionary candidates need to embrace and be self-motivated to do some research on their target group before they leave for the field. They need to lay a foundation of practical understanding of the Bible, theology, culture, history, language, and more! You can facilitate and encourage them to dig deep. Lastly, the field or vision trip to the target area is a significant capstone of their studies.
Let's take the mystery out of a training sequence for your candidate. This episode gives an overview of a 40-week curriculum which includes most of the content and experiences you will want to build in to your own curriculum. You won't be able to do all of it in-house; plan on outsourcing or bringing experts in to fill out the course. The capstone is a field visit that exposes your candidate/s to real life on the field.
Starting the training and development process, we encourage assigning a mentor, or a series of mentors, to the missionary candidate. Begin with an inventory of personal spiritual disciples, discussing in-depth and candidly the major areas of life in which they may need attention, help, counsel, and qualification. The purpose is not to disqualify them. Rather, the intention is to identify areas and concerns in which the mentor and the church can come alongside them to help them qualify for missionary ministry. It will take time and some intense effort. Everyone will be pleased in the end with the results!
Every missionary candidate has a similar sequence of steps in preparation that must be taken to get from HERE, at home, to THERE, on their target field. Every church should know those steps and walk that pathway with them, guiding them along the way. This little book, available on Propempo.com and Amazon, is a great little primer of practical priorities, counsel, and resources to help all those involved.
Let's demystify the "missionary call." This thing involves both a subjective inner compulsion but also requires the external validation of the local church. How do you go about evaluating it? Take your time. Get to know your candidate well. Remove the most common and obvious barriers to missionary qualification. Walk with them through the preparation process. In the end, it should be apparent to the whole congregation that God has His hand in leading and equipping on them to to the work of missions.
The most important biblical qualification for a missionary is character. The scope of character includes integrity and reputation. Biblical qualifications for church leadership apply to missionaries, as well! It takes time and conscious effort to observe, mentor, examine and evaluate a missionary candidate's character. Don't take short-cuts! These qualifications are great goals for any mature Christian. We can all learn and grow in the process.
Very significant to your missionary training process will be defining some basic concepts which will serve you well. Not only does this work in developing new missionary candidates, but it frees your church leaders to be more discriminating, in a good way, and more focused in all the missions ministries your church supports. Learn how to distinguish priorities in relationship to the church, access to the Gospel, and priorities of ministry.
Discovering a new missionary candidate from your church should be as glorious as finding a new diamond. That diamond may still be "in the rough." But, it is the joy and privilege of the church to cut and polish that diamond specifically for cross-cultural service to the King of Kings. How do you inculcate a local church culture that produces awareness of missions and develops people willing to give their lives to this great Cause of Christ? Listen to this and the following episodes of this series to find out.
Church-based missionary training is both exciting and scary! Yet, it's nothing to be afraid of. If a church wants to send its own, it should be willing to invest in training them to be as fully prepared as it takes to give them every expectation of being long-term, effective missionaries on their appointed field. You can do this! Stick with us as we walk through Introduction: benefits, basic concepts, and the joy of church-based missionary training, as we begin this series.
OK. Our missionary is ready to be sent out to the field. We're done, right? NOOOO! This is where the true sending church steps up to ongoing responsibility and ownership of the missionary, their ministry, and the goals for which they were sent. It is still a team sport! There is plenty to do in full-orbed support, partnership in several levels, and a heightened sense of shepherding care for them "across the water." Listen and go for it.
Somehow churches freeze when a young person comes back from college or some spiritual experience and announces that they are going to be a missionary. Sometimes they are absolutely confident that they are going to do a particular ministry in a particular place with a particular goal. AND, they expect their church to foot the bill! Wait a minute! The missionary's direction and guidance are a function of the relationship and spiritual oversight of the sending church. Step up and learn how to do that in a way that is best for all concerned.
So many missionaries dash to the field without a loving check to assure they have the training and qualifications for effective long-term service. They come home dashed to pieces in avoidable attrition. We are passionate about training churches and their candidates to build the right mindset, skills, and expectations to survive and thrive in cross-cultural ministry. Get your church and mission leaders to grasp this essential commitment, for the good of the work and the glory of Christ.
If your church aspires to be a missionary sending church, you don't have to wait for volunteers. Create a culture that expects God to raise up missionaries from your membership. Look for opportunities to challenge and encourage your people to consider vocational missionary ministry. Draft, recruit, join, mentor, call people to give their lives for God's glory on the missions field because Jesus is worth it!
This is #6, the last, of this six-part series on "Missiology You Need to Know." The simple concept is that the means, methods, and tools/resources that the missionary uses must be reproducible by his audience. The content of the teaching and training has to be able to be replicated by the local people. So, don't use things that are inaccessible to them! Find out how they would do things if it were up to them and/or if the missionary wasn't present to do it.
This is a big one because failure to understand and apply these principles has caused a lot of confusion and problems for us on the missions field today. We must continually ask ourselves and our missionaries if the Gospel is clear, biblical conversion is clear, and the key definitions of ministry results are biblical. Let the stumbling block of the Gospel to unbelievers be the message and not the messenger.
Please listen carefully. It may seem like a "no-brainer". However, the missions world is always fighting popular definitions and methods that are primarily driven by pragmatism and sometimes cross the line into twisted beliefs and practices. The traditional biblical definitions of our faith and the traditional methodologies that arise out of steady, relational, and Word-based ministry will always prevail in the long term. We have a right and an obligation to ask the questions and challenge fadish or trendy definitions and methods. Go for solid, long-term growth over short-term statistics any day!
It seems embarrassingly simple, yet this principle is one that we even fail to apply appropriately in our ministries here in our home country. It is very significant and necessary for the missionary to point their local people to the Bible as the sole authority for Christian life and practice. God's Word is truth. It is trans-cultural in its application. The missionary must consciously and humbly point to the Scriptures as the source of answers for his people. That implies teaching them how to read, interpret, and apply the Bible. But, hey, that's part of the job anyway! Right?
Somehow this simple, intuitive, and practical principle gets lost in the mix of missionary activity. Yet, it is one of the most important principles for long-term results and indigeneity on the field. The missionary MUST intentionally and systematically reproduce him (or her) self in the ministry. Producing partners rather than dependents is key to fruitfulness. Listen. Pass it on. Ask the questions.
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Missiology - what is that? If you have an interest in missions, leadership of missions, or are going into missions, you must know some basic principles of missiology. Sound, biblical principles and practice of missiology will be the lens for your understanding and evaluation of missions ministry. The first one is the first priority: the missionary must make culture and language learning their first priority on the field. It is the foundation upon which all other ministry is built. It is a process that is intense at first and never really ends. It is comprehensive in its impact on their life and work on the field. Don't short circuit a requirement and the time required for high proficiency in the language.
The topic of expectations is full of land mines! Somehow we hope that our missionary loved one coming home is going to yield our fulfillment of every our dreams for time together. Think again! Right expectations are going to yield joy and fulfillment. Wrong expectations will yield disastrous results. So, listen and learn. Grow up and take responsibility for embracing good and proper expectations centered on them and not on yourself. You'll make your and their life better in so doing.
This episode is loaded with practical observation and counsel on how to deal with the unique challenges of your loved one serving overseas. Understanding builds empathy and a helpful safety net for both you and your missionary. Learn what those challenges are all about and how we can overcome them with wisdom and prudence.
Every profession has its own set up specialized vocabulary. Missions does too! If you want to relate well to your loved one in missions, learn the glossary of terms they use in their context, their mission organization, their field. It will help you and them a lot! This episode could be viewed as a little quiz on missions terminology. See how well you and your family or friends score :-)
Oh, no! My loved one has moved thousands of miles away. I won't see them very often. What will I do?
Hey, this episode of Missions on Point will help you generate helpful and wise patterns of communicating your love and appreciation for their ministry overseas. God has provided wonderful means of communication. There are easy and simple ways to show your care for them. Listen to this and the next episodes in the series to learn more. Tell your friends to listen to Missions on Point, too! :-)
Help! My family member (or close friend) is a missionary! They're leaving me behind! Sometimes the family left behind can feel betrayed, hurt, jealous, bitter, angry. It's hard to even describe how it feels. The missionary is being obedient to the Lord for His glory and for the sake of the Gospel. How is that a bad thing, especially as a Christian family member? Yet, these heart issues are real. Friends and church leaders should be aware of this battle and come alongside - both in compassion, accountability, and practical help. Listen in to this series of five episodes!
This final installment of the four-part series on Missions Funding deals with an oft-misunderstood distinction between "local" and "cross-cultural" missions. The Great Commission does apply to local ministry and outreach; however, the drive of the command and the rest of the New Testament compel us to distinguish between ministries inside the reach or scope of our own church and ministries clearly outside the reach of our church. Practical considerations help us understand this dynamic and equip us to confidently make the best decisions regarding funding and involvement. May God use this in your church and your own personal life.
The question addressed in this episode can be troubling. Here we give four key principles to fuel discernment about your choices. Ultimately, we want you to make good decisions, based on what is best for you, for the recipient, for the ministry, and for the long term. Feel free to give us comments and feedback through email: ministry@Propempo.com
This second of the series on Missions Funding deals with the principles behind establishing an objectivized basis for giving to a missionary or ministry. Those metrics are defined along three scales: relationship to the church, priority of ministry, and Gospel impact. Besides the level of individual support, there are considerations for how much the church should give on the whole. Listen to all four in this series to catch the big picture of missions funding, both as a church and as an individual.
This first of four episodes deals with the inevitable questions about missions funding. In this episode we talk about different sources and types of funding. Yet, we cannot escape the basic education of the congregation respecting the biblical priority and need for their participation in funding missions. The autonomy of the local church allows a wide degree of freedom of expression as to means and methods for funding. Your church needs to be discerning and wise in stewardship. Listen to all four of this series to pick up more principles to help you as a church or as an individual donor.
This is part 6 of our 6-part series, helping a church to learn and implement the dynamic VISION of becoming a missionary sending church. We compress two days of training into these six 15-minutes overview segments. This episode, NURTURE, helps the whole church understand their role and proper expectations for enabling their missionary with shepherding ministries. Missionaries with such a caring sending church are the envy of other missionaries on the field. This part of the VISION will certainly encourage and enable your missionary to stick with it in faithfulness for the long term.
This is part 5 of a 6-part series, helping a church to learn and implement the dynamic VISION of becoming a missionary sending church. We compress two days of training into these six 15-minutes overview segments. This episode, OWNERSHIP, helps church leaders and the congregation understand their sending roles in the process of training and sending out a missionary. The whole congregation should be given opportunities to help with a high level of ownership.
This is part 4 of 6, walking through the Implementation phase of our VISION process. Implementation includes the selection of a missionary candidate, missionary training, and implementation proper (including finding a sending agency facilitator). Too many people, both candidates and church leaders, rush this phase, much to their later regret or attrition. Think and pray it through carefully. Solid preparation leaves no regrets. Check out the HERE to THERE book and the Six C's of Missionary Qualifications.
This is the third of a six-part series, helping a church to learn and implement the dynamic VISION of becoming a missionary sending church. We compress two days of training into these six 15-minutes overview segments. This episode wrestles with the hard work, prayer, and learning necessary to developing a strategic plan or strategic focus for the church's future missions outreach. Research, communication, and thoughtful discernment are essential to the process of understanding and selecting your church's focus. The time spent in doing this is well worth it!
This is part 2 of a six-part series, helping a church to learn and implement the dynamic VISION of becoming a missionary sending church. We compress two days of training into these six 15-minutes overview segments. This episode, IDENTITY, helps church leaders understand their church missions history, connections, and present circumstances in order to begin designing a missions focus and vision for the future.
This begins a six-part series, helping a church to learn and implement the dynamic VISION of becoming a missionary sending church. We compress two days of training into these six 15-minutes overview segments. This episode helps church leaders understand the biblical and practical ways they can begin the process in their church with VALUES development and communicating those values throughout the church at every level.
We'll continue talking about some of the most outstanding missionary biographies to consider. We'll also offer suggestions for some of the ways to present and to learn and grow from consideration of their lives. Practical issues framing each one's testimony, life, and lessons learned can have indelible imprints on our own walk with the Lord and vision for ministry. Personally, for your family, and for your church, it's hard to beat the impact of well used and well presented missionary biographies.
Missionary biographies can be one of the most useful tools to accelerate your and your congregation's interest in missions. It's not academic; it's real life! Biographies are "relate-able" and help people understand that God uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways for His purposes and His glory. Not only may missionary biographies encourage some to consider becoming a missionary, but every listening Christian's passion for Christ, for the Gospel, and for personal godliness will be encouraged.
Your Church Missions Profile series walks through the 12-category self-assessment of your church's missions ministries. We'll talk you through how to think about and assess your church's implementation and effectiveness. Our online CMP is available at https://propempo.com/church-missions-profile. "Follow" or "Subscribe" to help evaluate your church missions profile and get help to improve your missions ministries.
Your Church Missions Profile series walks through the 12-category self-assessment of your church's missions ministries. We'll talk you through how to think about and assess your church's implementation and effectiveness. Our online CMP is available at https://propempo.com/church-missions-profile. "Follow" or "Subscribe" to help evaluate your church missions profile and get help to improve your missions ministries.
Your Church Missions Profile series walks through the 12-category self-assessment of your church's missions ministries. We'll talk you through how to think about and assess your church's implementation and effectiveness. Our online CMP is available at https://propempo.com/church-missions-profile. "Follow" or "Subscribe" to help evaluate your church missions profile and get help to improve your missions ministries.
Your Church Missions Profile series walks through the 12-category self-assessment of your church's missions ministries. We'll talk you through how to think about and assess your church's implementation and effectiveness. Our online CMP is available at https://propempo.com/church-missions-profile. "Follow" or "Subscribe" to help evaluate your church missions profile and get help to improve your missions ministries.
Many times we've received a panicked call from a Pastor who was approached by "George" (our hypothetical missionary wannabe), who thinks God is calling him to be a missionary. What do we do? How do we train him? Should we just refer him to a mission-sending agency? How can we be sure he has the right qualifications? Listen in. Don't freak out! It's OK; God will help you train up missionaries from your congregation. It is actually a very good thing for all involved.
It's painful to realize that the church needs to reduce or completely cut support for a missionary previously heralded and highly regarded by the church family. Emotionally difficult, it can have land mines with big repercussions. Good communication with both the missionary and the congregation is key. Whether for economic reasons, sinful patterns, strategic focus, failure at some level, or other things, the church is obligated to face the facts, communicate graciously and firmly, then take action. You can do this! God will help you.
Another common question posed to Propempo by many churches: "How can we get our church to be more actively involved in missions?" The basics start at the top with the pastor and continue with reevaluating the role of the Missions Team in mobilizing the whole congregation. Relationship and experience, paired with good information and opportunities will turn the tide. Don't abrogate responsibility for missions to anyone else (or any other institution)! The local church owns missions and is the God-appointed agent responsible for missions. So, stand up and get involved!
One of the top urgent calls for help we get is this: Help, we just realized that our missions ministry has no focus, no common thread, no strategic purpose. The things we support seem to be a random collection of people, places, purposes, etc. How can we work toward having a focus? What questions should we ask to get us on track? Rifle target instead of a shotgun blast? This episode will not give you a specific road map. But it will give you initial concepts to start that journey to your desired focused vision for missions ministry in your church.
More books! Not the dry, academic, brainiac type, but the warm, personable, practical type. This episode highlights some of my favorite resources, the tip of the iceberg, the frosting on the cake, for helping missionary candidates, some biographies, and some practical books helping families get involved in missions. Curl up or recline with a cuppa and enjoy!
There are lots of times we are asked for recommendations of essential missions books. Here's my latest line-up. Hopefully, these will prove to be friends to you and your church to grow a stronger, more biblical, and more effective mission trajectory. Today's episode is aimed primarily at church missions leaders. But everyone can benefit and learn from these books. Then, you can use them to encourage and influence others in their missions responsibilities or pursuits.
Discovering Missions Throughout the Bible begs us to consider the practical applications. Knowing these things should find us seeing missions in our Bible reading (and listening, and study)! We should have our understanding tuned to better grasp things of Christ and the Gospel throughout the inspired Word. We see God's heart for the nations through the Gospel even in normal information and scenes of everyday life. It fuels our prayers and changes our perspectives. Then, we share our discoveries with others.
Way too often, we minimize and marginalize the Great Commission! We think we hear about it too much. We think we know all we need to know about it. We feel that it only applies to a few zealots in the church. How sad to learn that, if we pause and think deeply about what it is, what it means, and how important it is to Christ, to the Gospel, our church, and our world, we find our preconceived notions mistaken. May this re-thinking drive us to repent and pray for God's grace to re-shape our thinking, our attitudes, our obedience. We can only become true "world Christians" by thinking deeply about God's purposes for us individually and corporately. May it be so!
Knowing how to look and see "the nations" and equivalent terms throughout the Bible will reignite and revolutionize your missions insights. God has left us clues throughout the Scriptures to see His heart for the nations for His glory. It is comprehensive in scope and intent. God alone is God. He alone is worthy of awe and worship and loving obedience. He makes His purpose known through all His interactions with us and through all His inspired revelation to us. May we better see and understand "the nations" and our role in fulfilling God's great purpose.
One of the joys of understanding how to recognize Christ, the Gospel, and Missions throughout the Bible is that, as we read the Scriptures, these gems of insight jump off the page and illumine the pathway to see them all connected in God's great plan for His glory. With just a little insight, we can fuel our eagerness to read and understand God's passion for His glory in all of human history. We lift our eyes off of ourselves and discover the majesty and sovereignty of God in the details of seemingly mundane life. We get to see Christ and the Gospel unveiled; and we understand something of our part in God's story.
As a beginning point, it is important for us to discover and realize that God is the hero of the Bible. The Bible was written by Him for His purposes. And His overarching purpose in all of creation and history is His own glory. God's glory is the end goal and common thread behind all of Scripture. It's also an essential component of our understanding of missions throughout the Bible. Seeing God's glory as the high view of Scripture gives us hope, understanding, perspective, and a grand sense of weak-kneed awe of Him, who alone is worthy of all glory. What reverence and anticipation we should have to read the Bible that way!
How can you measure Missions Team effectiveness? Use the Church Missions Profile self-assessment diagnostic tool on Propempo.com. Your church should plan for growing missionaries from your church body. Regularly teach and preach biblical missions. Expose your church to missionary heroes and practical understanding of their role and of "how we do missions in our church." Don't forget to keep God and His grace at the center of all your vision, strategy, and goals. Amen!
Ah, the essentials include the necessary considerations of the values behind missions direction, relationships, and values. These things keep everyone on the same page heading in the same direction. Then there is the broad scope of Missions Team meetings and operations. How do we do that? Lastly, we'll talk just a bit about building real local church ownership of your missions personnel and ministries. Mundane, maybe. Glorious in its impact on the whole church, absolutely! p.s. - ... and on the mission field, too!
Every church should have an effective, functional Missions Committee. We prefer you call it a "Missions Team" - not to be confused with a Short Term Missions Team. Whether you call it a Committee, or Board, or Task Force, or Team, whether you call it Missions, or Global Outreach (GO), or Cross-cultural Ministries, the main purpose is to mobilize the whole congregation to do their part in the Great Commission. Practical alignment with your local church's identity and values helps frame the scope of work. Listen and check out the paradigm-shifting concepts and resources available here.
Sorry for the technical glitch on this episode. It mysteriously disappeared upon update. I've had to repost it.
The Gospel is so essential to missions and the local church's message. It is the exclusive message of salvation in Jesus Christ. It is simple, profound, and the only basis for the transformation of men and women from the inside out.
Proclamation of the Gospel is necessary and God-empowered for effective spiritual fruit. No other substitutes will accomplish regeneration. It is a simple message: God's requirement of holiness, man's sin, God's own provision of fellowship, adoption, and payment of sin in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and man's required response of repentance and faith in Christ alone for salvation. Adding or subtracting other "works" or agenda to this distorts the Gospel; the Apostle Paul calls that "anathema;" doing so is "another gospel."
The ministry of missions is, in essence, the reason for the church on earth. Keeping that passion for outreach central in the heart of the local churches maintains a healthy biblical balance. "Mission," without the "s," can be selfish and inward-focused. People often think of missions in inaccurate or misguided terms. Local churches dare not allow external Christian organizations to eclipse their own responsibility, participation, and joy in doing the work of missions to reach the world.
The centrality of the local church in God's purposes is too often eclipsed by our skewed cultural values of independence and resistance to vulnerability to others. The Bible makes it clear that the local church is God's agent for His work in the world - not just for missions, but for local ministry to each of us and through each of us to our community. The New Testament repudiates a "Lone Ranger" mentality. Churches may come in all kinds of forms and sizes; healthy biblical churches are absolutely central to honoring and glorifying God, ultimately throughout the world. We must radically realize the centrality of the local church in God's purposes today.
This series has highlighted 13 Keys to Effectiveness as a Missionary. Every one of them could also be applied to our local church and to ourselves in our spiritual life. This wrap-up episode gives two other simple concepts for evaluation of missionary candidates, in particular: a battery of straightforward questions, and what Propempo calls the "Six C-s". The over-arching concept of all of this is that the local church has a vital, biblical role in raising up, developing, evaluating, sending, and shepherding missionaries. Solid attention to these things in the early stages will reap huge rewards in effectiveness, faithfulness, longevity, and, we believe, fruitfulness on the field. May it be so, for God's glory!
We've touched on the importance of the missionary knowing the Word and of demonstrating the authority of the Word. This key deals with the practice of teaching the Bible as the central message and source of teaching and training in the missionary's ministry. References to the content and teaching of God's Word should naturally ooze out of the missionary from informal settings and conversations to formal meetings and teaching. God uses the Word to save and to transform lives. No other book has the same power, promise, and potential. Teach and preach the Word!
Frightening attrition of missionaries permanently coming off the field highlight this key to effectiveness: stay on the field! Life on the mission field is tough. Longevity and staying power are key to fruitfulness. There are ways we can help enable this key, through doing our part as sending and through encouraging our missionaries to do their part to trust God through the suffering and challenges to be durable, have the stamina it takes for the long haul. Propempo helps senders, churches, and missionaries do what it takes to make longevity a reality, by God's grace and for His glory.
Praying in times of crisis comes naturally. Making prayer a priority in normal daily life does not. The most effective missionaries make prayer for the work in all its aspects a clear practice and priority. Studies show the most effective church planters commit 30 minutes per day to pray for the people and the work of the ministry. It is taught, modeled, encouraged, and commanded in Scripture. Why isn't the priority of prayer more evident in our missionaries and in our own churches? Prayer shows humility and dependence upon God; then, God gets all the glory for the results!
This series gives emphasis to the importance of the Bible in missions ministry in three of the keys to effectiveness. The first deals with basic Bible knowledge and the ability to know and find answers from the Bible. This one deals with applying the Bible to practical life, ministry, church, culture, and personal roles and issues on the field. The third will come soon, that is the priority to teaching the Bible as our primary sourcebook. The missionary needs to model and teach that the Bible is the highest authority to solve problems and conflicts as Christians, rather than tradition, cultural practices, external rules, social norms, popular trends, personalities, etc. Keeping the authority of Scripture will enable the indigenous church to grow strong and sustainable, even after the missionary leaves.
This key is subtle because missionaries tend to make a lot of assumptions based on their own culture and experience or even a mandate of authorities over them which also make assumptions. If the missionary is going to be effective into the second and third generation of followers, he must be sensitive to adapting to methodologies that are accepted, embraced, and practiced in the local (target) culture. Our highly Western and technology-driven life here tends not to be reproducible there. Choices in teaching styles, tools, and even lifestyle do have an impact on long-term effectiveness.
Most missionaries and individual churches and Christians, in fact, understand the practicality of having simple priorities day-to-day and clear biblical goals. Few, however, see beyond the first major milestone to see the bigger picture. Committing to the really long-term view of 10-30 years can be transforming to choices made early in the start of a ministry. In fact, it is a key to effectiveness. Doing things right now that facilitate the reproducibility of the ministry into the second and third generation of leaders creates a legacy for God's glory. Visualizing what the finish line celebration looks like, helps motivate the missionary (or pastor, or individual) to do the right things for the long haul. That's what builds effectiveness!
This is one of my favorite topics, partly because it is so rarely discussed. It is often assumed and not understood. It is also incredibly practical even in our stateside churches. Indigenous churches are the goal. They don't get that way without giving attention to indigenous principles from the very beginning. It changes the way the missionary acts and thinks as the church develops. Valuing indigeneity can be dangerous! But it is absolutely worth it.
Believe it or not, missionaries all too often don't have this assumed key to effectiveness in their toolbox. It's not enough to have a passion for missionary ministry! Even sincere candidates (and missionaries on the field!) have such a simplistic understanding of the Gospel and of the Bible that they freeze up if called on to explain the storyline of the Bible or find a reference in one of the Minor Prophets. Having a good grasp of Bible content, the interpretation of Scripture, contexts, biblical history, and application of the sufficiency of Scripture are important skills that are used often in the challenging questions and spiritual discipline of people on the mission field. Better to get in here than to lack it there.
Sound understanding of biblical theology and the discerning ability to accurately apply it to life, even amidst a foreign culture, is a key to missionary effectiveness. It's too easy for the greenhorn missionary to be judgmental of cultural practices and features based on their home culture or personal preferences. Discerning theological structure provides the biblical framework for teaching God's truth for new believers. The oppressive religious practices, from major world religions, to animism and occultism, can be a puzzling barrier to the transforming message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Help your missionary get what it takes to have theological discernment in the toolbox.
Who would have guessed that learning the target language and culture was so important, so time-consuming, so rewarding? Commit to giving the time and effort to learn the language and culture well, for you are dealing with intangible truths that affect your audience's eternal destiny. It is truly one of the most basic, and most dismissed keys to effectiveness. Don't be among those who minimize the importance of language and culture to the long-term detriment of the ministry.
It's extremely challenging, as a missionary, to maintain and focus on a few simple priorities. The challenges of cross-cultural living, an environment lacking in comforts and conveniences, even the standard utilities, of "home." Missionaries can get side-tracked by well-meaning urgencies, self-focus, self-family-focus, trendy strategies, and striving to accrue statistics. All these blunt and misdirect the sharp focus of achieving that clear biblical vision. Learning how to keep simple priorities that are in line with the end-result vision is key to effectiveness. You'll have to ask questions to pry beneath the surface and find your answers.
Second in our series of Keys to Effectiveness. The concept here actually can be applied to Missionaries, to local churches, to pastoral leaders, and to individual Christians. Asking a missionary candidate or missionary to express a singular, distilled vision for the preferred outcome of their long-term ministry just might be one of the best things you could do to help them focus and to help you evaluate the ministry (or potential ministry). Ask yourself the question, "Do I have a clear biblical vision?" Maybe it will help you too!
Since we understand the centrality of the local church, effective missionaries must have an experiential, functional, and informed understanding of practical ecclesiology. Lacking ecclesiology is a source of many woeful shortcomings on the field. This episode will also specify a list of assumptions of Christian life and character essential to beginning to build effectiveness. May God use this for His glory in effective missionaries, effective sending churches, and effective sending saints.
How can you tell if a missionary candidate is prepared for effectiveness on the field? How can you evaluate a field missionary? What are the most important markers of effectiveness? Propempo submits this series to help the discussion. 13 keys will be examined, one each week. We'll try to define each one, show which shortcoming each may address, and suggest some remedies to build the qualities that are the keys. Our goal is to avoid preventable attrition and prepare effective field missionaries for the glory of God.
We'll use the Arlington Statement on Bible Translation to highlight some contemporary problem issues with translation and the corrective principles. We also want to urge sound churches to consider making Bible translation a priority by praying, recruiting, and sending qualified Bible translators to the harvest fields. May it be so for God's glory!
We can talk about pioneering missions ministry. Yet, an essential element that is often neglected is the priority of Bible translation. No Bible, no ministry! We need to affirm the importance of sound Bible translation by sending our best and brightest to become translators and translation consultants. It is difficult, long-term, and essential to indigenous church planting.
Christmas is a special time for missionaries on the field. The meaning of Christmas is one of the main reasons they are there! It can be very different on the field than the celebrations and traditions from back home. It can be lonely and even depressing. But it holds a wonderful opportunity to share Christ and the Gospel through the Incarnation. Missionaries may have to be subtle or creative in their personal celebrations. You can help with that.
Clarifying and balancing "preventable attrition" with the sovereignty of God. Who gets to go on a missionary care field visit? What are the keys for the role he/she/they play? What is the outline of what you need to talk about with your missionary in your pastoral/counselor shepherding care? These critical factors can make or break your effectiveness in field visits.
In this second of three parts, we'll take a deeper look at the "Barnabas Team" concept. We'll dive a bit into nine of ten categories the Barnabas Team is responsible for with respect to the church's shepherding care of their missionaries. The tenth category we'll deal with in part 3 of this series.
It is of utmost priority that your whole congregation understand and accept responsibility for caring for your supported and sent missionaries. It makes so much difference to your church's ownership of the missionary task as well as the effectiveness and longevity of your missionaries in their respective fields of service. This first of three in the series, explains some of the concepts to help you implement grassroots missionary care in your congregation.
It's incredible how few churches actually think about how Short Term Missions fits into the bigger missions vision for the church. Often we are pushed and pulled by the glittering promises of whatever promotion is thrown our way. Better to have thought through the key elements of a comprehensive strategy that will guide and help us be effective in the long view. Better to selectively choose few and best, rather than more and worst!
The first "Win" of our "Win-Win-Win" philosophy is the incredible opportunity your church has to pour intense discipleship into your STM participants. This could be life-changing for your STM Team! This episode outlines 12 key elements of discipleship for your STM Team. Sound foundations, structure, and practical aspects will help your STM ministry be a solid contribution to the church and the lives you impact for the Lord.
Short Term Missions (STM) can be as confusing a standing in the middle of the broadway at a carnival or county fair. There are opportunities and conflicting visions and philosophy all around you. How can you and your church zero in on the BEST pathway for STM for your people? How can you select and design the most effective opportunities? Listen to this and the next two in this series on STM.
The Pastor has to overcome deficits in missions leadership. But God has placed you there to come alongside in genuine, caring, thoughtful enablement. Here are ten ideas that will guide and direct your attention to the right things done in the right ways. Your Pastor needs your help to be all that he can and should be as the leader of missions in your church.
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Part 3 of 4 - Please listen to the entire series! We've seen the necessity and the obstructions, now we talk about the practice of effective pastoral leadership. These 10 keys will help you, as a pastor, be faithful and fruitful in your role. Simple, practical, effective leadership of missions ministry does not have to be burdensome. It can be a joyful discovery of all God has for you and your church.
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Pastoral ministry is tough! There is so much to do, so many voices to appease, so many areas of ministry that it doesn't seem like there is enough space for missions in the pastor's agenda. Add to that the fact that there is a vacuum of training and preparation to do this. This episode helps us understand the obstructions so that we can win the battle with a clearer vision.
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If the local church is the key to missions, the pastor is the key to the church. Not only does Scripture indicate the priority of missions ministry for God's glory to all nations, it also gives solid footing to view the pastor's role in leadership of missions as a necessity for accomplishing that Great Commission goal. Listen to 10 reasons to embrace in the necessity of pastoral leadership.
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This episode describes the essential elements of a good biblical definition of missions and explains what each means. We will offer a solid model of a biblical definition of missions for your church which cuts through the fog and gets to the point.
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A deluge of incomplete and incorrect definitions of missions makes it difficult to zero in on a true, biblical definition to guide our understanding and practice of missions. Buckle up! In this episode, we will primarily address some of those negative ones. In the next, we'll move toward a proposed biblically-informed definition that helps us moving forward.
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Well-meaning believers are often confused in understanding the message of the Gospel and how it is communicated. Today's world doesn't help with distracting agendas replacing the simplicity and priority of the Gospel of Christ. This episode may rattle your cage. Hopefully, it will bring you back to the basics.
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Missionary attrition is really hard and potentially avoidable. The local sending church has a large role to play. Here are 10 categories of missionary care. Bet you didn't think of all of them! And, we'll start you out on practical ways to take an active role in helping your missionary stay effective and serving with joy on the field for the long term.
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As a sending church, never send your wannabe missionary to the agency's candidate school without first having a signed partnership agreement of some sort. You need agreement on what, where, why, how, when the local church and agency interface, and partner together to ensure effective mission field ministry, personal and relational health, and alignment with your church's beliefs for the long term.
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This episode is an overview of the Missions Agency's Role, especially from the Local Sending Church point of view (the Propempo Perspective). We encourage churches to partner with the most compatible missions agency for sending their particular missionary candidate for specific ministry in a targeting field or specialized type of ministry. Use these quick ideas to guide your thinking and develop that relationship for greater effectiveness in the long term.
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With the background of biblical understanding of the centrality of the local church in missions, we now address two key questions:
- What is the role of the local church in missions?; and,
- What is the role of the missions agency in missions?
In this episode, we'll deal with the first question, giving a broad overview of the local church's role. In future episodes, we break into very practical application of how do fulfill the responsibilities of that key role.
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Part 3 of the biblical basis for the centrality of the local church in missions:
Why didn't we see this before? Why don't churches and missions agencies step up to their biblical role and biblical goal in missions? The whole New Testament is telling us: obey Christ's Commission by establishing and strengthening local churches.
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Part 2 of the biblical basis for the centrality of the local church in missions:
Taking a closer look at the Great Commission and its elements in Matthew 28 obliterates false assumptions about missions and establishes the real measure of missions success.
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Part 1 of the biblical basis for the centrality of the local church in missions:
A close look at Ephesians 3 demonstrates that the local church is and has always been God's plan for accomplishing His purposes and for His glory to all peoples.
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In this first episode, we'll see from Scripture how the term "propempo" radically changes our perspective on missions and the local church.
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