Missions on Point

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...

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:...

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 directi...

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...

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 par...

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...

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...

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 chur...

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...

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 ex...

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 churc...

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 pos...

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 wil...

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...

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 wh...

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...

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 Mi...

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,...

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 peo...

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 w...