Where are we going? Are we there yet? All Christians have this in common: we were able to believe because someone told us about Jesus. Knowing God’s mission is important; knowing our role in His mission is important. Vision — knowing where we are going, why, and communicating it to the team — is essential to be effectively pulling together in the same direction.

The ministry of the church and the mission of the Church, though intertwined, are not the same thing. Ministry is what we do. We can do good things for people without ever giving them the message of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. The mission is why we minister: some people have no way to learn about Jesus, and we need to engage them about Him. Missions is about giving people access to the Gospel.

On the highest authority in heaven and on earth, Jesus commanded His disciples to go everywhere to teach people to obey all that He commanded. How can this be less than central to every endeavor of the Church?

This page brings the Great Commission into focus through five aspects:

  1. 01

    Reached — The Church

    Missions is a body function of each local church. Under the headship of Jesus Christ, directed by the Holy Spirit, under the leadership of elders and deacons, every member uses the gifts God has given to evangelize, disciple, equip, support, and send other members to reach people who have not heard of Jesus — and to establish thriving churches among them. Our goal is to know Him and make Him known. (John 15) We have been blessed to be a blessing.

  2. 02

    Unreached — The Untold

    “Unreached people groups? We’ve got those at our local high school.” These groups are NOT at your local high school or inner city. Unreached language groups of people have no way at all to hear about Jesus. They will be born, live, and die without ever meeting a Christian who speaks their language, hearing a broadcast, attending a church, or seeing a Bible in a language they understand. Most have unwritten languages in which God’s written Word does not exist. The main reason they are still unreached is that no Christian has been sent to learn their language, translate the Scriptures, and teach about the Christ who died for them. Nobody told them.

  3. 03

    Perspective — The Mission

    Like the blind men and the elephant, each of us has a perspective of God’s mission that may be full of truth yet lacking the big picture. Many activities called “missions” in western churches today may not be effectively accomplishing what Jesus specifically told His disciples to do. When everything is missions, much of our energy goes toward things that will not result in “well done” in the day of accounting. We need to see that what we do is invested in Christ’s mission — and learn to delegate or pull back from what does not move the needle on the Great Commission.

  4. 04

    Handoff — The Discipleship

    “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” (2 Timothy 2:2) The work of our mission is to pass on to faithful men what we have learned of Christ, working to present every person complete in Him. Patterns of handing off responsibility can be established long before the Gospel message is finally delivered.

  5. 05

    Relating — The Partnership

    The end game of missions is thriving churches of Christians who are engaging and maturing with us in God’s objectives — relating well to God, to His word, to each other, to other people, and actively engaging in the world as partners in ministry. Teaching people to relate requires a lot of time. There are no shortcuts.

Worship = worth shipping

Dictionary definitions of “worship” are so lofty as to be almost intangible. For the sake of missions, may I redefine it a little? Worship is about something that has enough worth to ship it to someone else. Worship is about valuing God so much as to glorify Him through holy living, to grow in the knowledge of Him, to serve others because of Him, to tell others about Him where we are, and to proclaim His glory where He is not known. As Piper says, “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”

Growth toward maturity

There is a tendency to treat evangelism and Christian growth like a buffet where anything you choose will help you grow. But if the objective is spiritual growth to reproductive maturity, then there is a process. There are things one must know and do before other things can be understood and applied. There are Biblical qualifications for leadership (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1), and there are reasons new believers are not qualified to lead Christ-centered, Bible-teaching, thriving churches: they must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord. (Ephesians 4:22-32; 2 Peter 1:3-11; 1 Corinthians 3:10-15)

If what we are trying to do in missions is an extension of what happens in the local church, then the process of missions will be similar to the path toward spiritual maturity in your local church: discipling people from spiritual infancy to functioning members, Biblically qualified leaders, senders, and go-ers who are “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:20)

Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. — Colossians 1:28

The objective

The Good News of Jesus Christ is to be preached to every creature in every tongue, tribe, people, and nation, and every person brought to maturity in Christ, equipped for ministry through life-on-life discipleship. Why? The whole of Scripture reveals that from eternity past into eternity future, God has desired a good and eternal relationship with each person He has created: whosoever will. Knowing God and His love for us is the cause behind loving our neighbors as ourselves — and telling everyone in the world about the glorious God who has provided everything we need to live forever with Him and Who will resolve everything that is wrong. (Revelation 21:1-8, 22:1-5)

In a remote village of Papua New Guinea, I once met a man named Jeniae who was blind. He had been abused most of his life, so when he heard about Jesus he wasn’t sure that message was for him, too. When he realized and believed what Jesus had done for him, he had to tell everyone in the distant villages about Jesus. Being blind slowed him down, but it did not stop him — there were times he traveled the jungle alone to tell others, and even got lost because nobody would go with him. He knew the message, he knew the mission, he knew the urgency, and he trusted God to do what he could do.

Definitions

Words have meaning within the context of a sentence and a culture, so the same words can mean different things — especially when people talk about missions. Here is what I mean as I write:

  • Evangelism — the process by which people come to understand the goodness of God’s identity, purpose, and plan, as well as their own standing before His perfect righteousness and judgment. The objective is to give people what they need to make an informed decision about believing God’s written word.
  • Discipleship — the life-on-life process whereby believers learn to become followers of Christ in faith and practice.
  • Church — beginning at Pentecost, the body of Christ comprised of those who have trusted Jesus Christ as Savior.
  • Church planting — the work of evangelism and discipleship toward establishing groups of Christ-followers who revere and obey Him, His word, His purpose, and His plan.
  • Cross-cultural planting — establishing thriving communities of Christ-followers across barriers of geography, ideology, worldview, language, and culture.
  • Missions — the corporate work of the Church to proclaim Christ where He is not known and to establish thriving communities of people who believe God’s Word and can join us in completing Christ’s commission.
  • Missionary — a person recognized, set apart, and sent by a local church as a messenger (or assistant to a messenger) to establish thriving churches where Christ is not known.
  • People group — an ethnolinguistic group of individuals, families, or clans who share a common language and ethnic self-identity.
  • Reached — language groups who already have access, in a language they understand, to the Gospel through Christians, churches, and Bibles.
  • Unreached — ethnolinguistic groups with no access to the Gospel: no Bibles, no churches, and no Christians among them.

Definitions used by others (not necessarily the same): Joshua Project, IMB Key Terms, Radius International on the definition of a church, and Hijacking “Unreached”.

Go deeper

In conclusion, the vision is to go to people of every ethnolinguistic people group and teach them to observe all that Christ commanded.