Have you noticed how quickly and frequently we Jesus followers are all about being/doing everything except THE MISSION Jesus left us here to accomplish? Lesslie Newbigin reminds us, “The New Testament assumes a missionary situation in which the church is a small, evangelizing movement in a pagan society.” Sadly the local churches we lead, if we are not vigilant, are not comfortable working as the marginalized outsiders and, therefore, abandoning our countercultural mission (not just to the world but to much of Christendom) of extending the grace and glory of Jesus.

We just finished what I believe is our 14th Missions Conference at North Life, and the Lord truly blessed in ways that we do not deserve but for which we are eternally grateful. Here are 14 sneak-up-on-you benefits that I am increasingly discovering as a result of repeatedly emphasizing world-wide missions in the context of the local church:

  1. It exposes/eliminates, all on its own, unnecessary lines of separation/preference between brothers and sisters in Christ to reach the world with the transcendent Gospel.
  2. It is a reminder that the only substantive hindrance/lid to missions is not the condition of the “heathen” or the circumstances of any period of church history but the apathy of God’s people. (I say that not to pass judgement but to give us hope because we can change this!)
  3. It breaks our hearts not just for the desperate needs of the far-off lost in other lands but for the “silent cries” we are otherwise prone to miss of the hopeless, desperate lost all around us.
  4. It pushes back against the false narratives that all that is holy and godly is on retreat when nothing could be further from the truth-God is on the move in every corner and crevice of the globe.
  5. It allows the real, modern-day heroes of the faith to shine for God’s glory (missionaries, national pastors, and host of others), not those who insincerely platform and project themselves into the limelight of mainstream Christianity.
  6. It engages and enlists the next generation with a breathtaking purpose and calling for which the God of the cosmos has created, redeemed, and gifted them. (Most of the hands raised at the closing response of our most recent conference were under the age of 25!)
  7. It provides a broader context/perspective in which to process the immediate stressors, blessings, and circumstances that otherwise distract us from what God is up to in our day.
  8. It puts faces and places in our mind’s eye that don’t look like us to remind us that our Western bias and bent are often more of a liability than an asset to advancing God’s kingdom on earth.
  9. It challenges parents and grandparents to stop coddling their young people and preaching a “safety first” mantra that stifled a Spirit-infused courage and initiate that dares to extend the gospel beyond who/what they grew up with.
  10. It transforms how we read the Bible in our heart-language (in contrast with so many who don’t have it in theirs) from a self-help and a prosperity-leaning mindset to one of gospel-centric clarity and conviction.
  11. It provides enough inconveniences and demands to expose where our actual level of commitment to and love for Jesus needs to grow. (If we are not willing to love what He loves and show up for what He commissions, then everything in our so-called “relationship” with Him must be in question.)
  12. It incrementally liberates us from being stuck upon ourselves and more giving and sacrificial for the eternal enrichment of others.
  13. It provides a higher purpose that refines out of the local church the pettiness, gossip, and superficiality that threaten to divide and conquer it. (Those who are on mission from God’s perspective have no time for these small-minded distractions; those who aren’t cannot help but digress into them…they are mutually exclusive!)
  14. It makes the believer incrementally detach from the temporal pursuits of this world and yearn for heaven where we will play catch up on all that God’s redemptive plan has accomplished and who all it has enveloped.

Our missionary delegates this year were truly a blessing-including a missionary of ours who is serving in a limited access country, Joshua Mead in West Africa, and the Matt Goins family in Honduras. It was striking to see each of these families’ unabated passion/commitment to missions…including the Goins’ tract pictured below that graciously employs the death of their dear son Jadon to testify of the death, burial, and resurrection of God’s Son: (Oh for more of this heart in me…in you!)

As John Anderson recently put it, “A church without a robust and clearly defined plan for evangelism and missions will eventually institutionalize and become keepers of the aquarium instead of lively fishers of men.” A plan that, with our spiritual amnesia tendencies, must continuously be reviewed and reaffirmed. You can do whatever you want, but God has a mission more noble and glorious than any other you can find. I don’t exactly know every application that the Lord may choose to make in your life and ministry with this post, but I do know that to opt for anything different than glorifying Him by taking the gospel to the nations is to settle. Don’t settle. Even when you don’t feel like it or have every human “reason” to disengage from it, choose to lean in and let God reveal Himself to you and through you. As I was just reminded again in surprisingly large doses, you will not regret it. Mark Dever concludes, “God has a purpose as big as this world (and bigger!), and He wants to involve our churches in it deeply—in everything from our praying to our paying, from our sending to our staying.”

Photo by Christian Buehner on Unsplash