Thinking Like a Missionary Series - Part 1

“Thinking Like a Missionary” – Part I

Message #1 in TLAM Series

INTRODUCTION:

Kennon L. Callahan was the founder of and senior consultant with The National Institute for Church Planting and Consultation. In his book, Effective Church Leadership, he writes, “The day of the church culture is over. The day of the mission field has come.” He bases this statement on three factors. Callahan points out that:

1.       Church attendance and affiliation is no longer among the major values of the culture in the USA.

2.      With few exceptions, Americans are not seeking out churches on their own initiative.

3.      By and large, people in America live life as though the church and God do not substantially matter to them.

Callahan concludes that thinking like missionaries is necessary because we live in an increasingly unchurched country. Ours is clearly an unchurched culture. If you do not believe it, the next time you leave your house to attend a Sunday church service, take a good look around your neighbourhood. How many people are getting into their cars to attend a worship service? You are dressed up for church, but how about your neighbours? One is out washing his car; another is leaving for a golf game, while the guy across the street is out mowing his lawn. Most people have no time for or interest in spiritual things. As a result, our culture around us is becoming increasingly unchurched.

I am not making this stuff up. Check for yourself. Do a little research and you will come to the same conclusion that I did. But these facts should in no way discourage us. Rather, they should spur us on to find ways to bridge the gaps so that we can fulfil our mission here where God has planted us.

Today we are launching a six-part teaching series entitled, “Thinking Like a Missionary.” This subject has been on my heart and mind for a long time and I finally sensed that the time is right.

It may seem odd to you at first, because chances are when you hear the word “missionary” you immediately think of something that a very select few individuals do “way over there,” wherever that may be. If you have been attending church for a few years you have undoubtedly heard at least one missionary speaker. Most churches support several “foreign missionaries” representing a variety of mission agencies. Most of these missionaries work overseas, in countries far away, with names that we sometimes even find hard to pronounce. Periodically these missionaries come back home and when possible, we have them come and tell us about their work “over there.”

It so happens that I was one of those guys for many years. Before coming here to be your pastor I served as a missionary in S. Brazil with the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society (now called WorldVenture) from 1976-1992. My family and I were in Brazil for three “terms” of 4 years each. During those years I served in several different capacities, including field administration, youth/college ministry, Bible college and seminary teaching, publishing house ministry, evangelistic crusades, music ministry, and theological education by extension (TEE). I loved being a missionary would have never left had there not occurred some events that were outside of my control that necessitated our leaving Brazil and returning to the States. I left Brazil, but being a missionary has never left me, because it is part of my DNA.

TRANSITION:

However, I believe that being a missionary is primarily not about geography but about attitude. Going to another country does not make you a missionary, any more than sleeping in the garage makes you a Toyota or living in the doghouse makes you a Rottweiler. Getting on an airplane might make you a tourist but it does not make you a missionary. That is because being a missionary is fundamentally a state of mind. It is a set of beliefs, affirmations, and actions based on God’s revelation in His Word, the Bible. In other words, it is a question of being not going, although sooner or later, going plays a part too.

One of the primary definitions of being a missionary has to do with the crossing of boundaries: distance boundaries, language boundaries, cultural boundaries, etc. By that I mean that when we use the word “missionary” we are almost always thinking of someone who leaves his home country for a faraway land, has to learn another language, adopt another culture, wear a different style of clothing, eat strange food, and basically gives up being an American, all for the sake of sharing Christ, making disciples, and planting new churches.

Granted, that is the common view, but it so happens that much of what a missionary does involves transferable concepts and methods that can be used anywhere in the world, including right here at home. With that in mind, my goal in these next six weeks is to get you thinking like a missionary, seeing the world like a missionary, evaluating the field around us like a missionary, and using the tools and techniques that missionaries use.

MAIN BODY:

To achieve that I am going to try to have us role play for the next six weeks, to see ourselves and this church in a new way, from a new perspective. We are going to become missionaries and this community is our assigned mission field.

My hope and prayer are that this teaching series will mess with your mind, that it will challenge your thinking in ways that will ultimately affect your behaviour. If at the end we are still doing the same old things in the same old ways and getting the same old results, then I will have failed to communicate adequately what is on my heart.

Now, to set the background for our role-playing I want you to imagine with me that we are all career missionaries, appointed and sent out by an evangelical missionary agency called the “New Life Mission.” By the way, I made up the name. I do not know if such a group exists. In other words, we are colleagues, teammates, and fellow missionaries from the same mission agency. We have all come here to Ourtownistan from several different places. We possess different skill sets. Some have more Bible training than others. We have different talents and spiritual gifts. Some of us are married; others are single missionaries. Those with families have children to care for in addition to their ministry duties. As I mentioned, we have all arrived here from other places. None of us has ever been here before and none of us speaks the native language.

After much prayer and some extensive survey work our mission leaders decided to target this small country of Ourtownistan because they believe that it is an area that is ripe for evangelism and church planting. However, rather than just assign one family to the area they have decided to do something different—they decided to try a team approach and have sent all of us here to work together to share the Gospel with this little country and to plant a strong, healthy indigenous church that will then be able to reproduce and plant more churches.

We all arrived here within the past couple of months. We have all found housing for ourselves and our families, although some of us are still living out of suitcases until we can buy what we need and get all set up. We have purchased cars and are learning our way around. We have gotten our kids enrolled in the local schools and they are starting to pick up the language.

Now that everyone is finally here, in country, we can begin to put the team together and formulate a strategy for sharing the Gospel with the Ourtownites. We have managed to put together enough money to rent this facility. It is old and it is not pretty, but at least the rent is paid for the next six months and it is a place to meet. But that is a problem because very few of the Ourtownites know that we are even here yet. They drive by this place every day but have no idea who we are or why we have come here. The ones who know could not care less. We are invisible to them, irrelevant to their daily lives, and insignificant.

But we are not going to let that stop us or discourage us. We are here to proclaim the Good News of Great Joy. God has sent us here to tell the Ourtownites that God loves them and wants them to know Him. He has sent us to tell them that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and that if they will just put their complete trust in Him, He will save them and give them eternal life. Most of the native people here have no idea of what God is like or who Jesus is. They have heard of Christians, but many have never actually met one, much less had one for a friend or a neighbour. Most of the Ourtownites are relatively happy with their lives and sense no need for what we are here to give them.

Yes, Ourtownistan is indeed a mission field, just as surely as any country in the heart of Africa or in the least evangelized parts of South America or Asia. Let me explain: The Ourtownites have come to believe in their own religious systems. Moreover, they have their own culture, and that culture is noticeably different from that of the neighbouring country of Othertownistan. Moreover, the people here have their own value system, language, and social structure. Ourtownistan is a unique country and we must find ways to bring the Gospel to these native folks in ways that are culturally relevant to them. That is our task.

Over the next weeks we are going to try to learn to think like missionaries. You might think that this would be easy for me since I was a foreign missionary for so many years. But to be honest with you, I have gotten out of the habit. Since coming here I have allowed the easy brand of Christianity that we know in this country to seep into me and change my ways of thinking and acting. I think it is evidence of the old “frog-in-the-skillet” principle. Our attitudes can be changed gradually and without us even noticing unless we are careful and attentive.

As I was sitting and thinking about this the other day, I realized that I used to be much more zealous about personal witnessing and evangelism. When I was a missionary in Brazil, I used to spend a lot of time planning for and praying about evangelistic outreaches that we were doing. I was constantly immersed in the Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language. Brazilian Christians were my dearest friends and closest colleagues. Sharing Christ with our unsaved Brazilian friends and neighbours was something I thought about daily.

I am ashamed to have to admit that I am not like that anymore, and that troubles me a great deal. I too need to get back to thinking like a missionary and approaching my ministry here from the standpoint of a missionary. But where are we to start? How do we begin?

We must start by revisiting and reaffirming the things that led us to missionary service in the first place. We need to go back to those biblical principles that have motivated and guided missionaries all the way back to the time of the Apostle Paul.

Thinking like a missionary involves believing and operating based on a group of extremely important principles. My list might be somewhat different from the lists of other missionaries, and the order might be a little different, but I see 15 guiding truths that I want to share with you over the next few weeks. I do not have time to go into all 15 of them this morning, but I want to tell you what they are and then go back and camp on the first one for just a few minutes.

15 Guiding Principles Governing All Missionary Service: “To be a good missionary I must…”

1. Own the Great Commission individually
2. Embrace God’s call personally
3. Identify our source of strength and acknowledging our weaknesses
4. Build a support team of “rope holders”
5. Go where “they” live
6. Survey the field
7. Learn their languages
8. Love the people genuinely
9. Adopt their culture and history as my own
10. Feel their needs and sincerely empathize with them
11. Contextualize the Gospel and proclaim it in culturally relevant ways
12. Develop friendships that last
13. Conserve the harvest
14. Celebrate the results
15. Return and continue the process

 CONCLUSION:

What do I mean by “Own the Great Commission individually”?  You probably learned the Great Commission by heart, at least the version of it found in Matthew 28:16-20 – “¹⁶ But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated.  ¹⁷ When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.  ¹⁸ And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in Heaven and on earth.

 ¹⁹ “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” 

            The Great Commission is also found in other passages and all of them are burned very deeply into every missionary’s heart. For example, in Acts 1:8 we read, [Jesus is speaking] “…But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

            In John 17:18 we hear Jesus praying to the Father, “As You sent Me into the world [meaning, in the same way, to be light and salt], I also have sent them into the world.” 

            Romans 10:13-15 says, WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.  ¹⁴ How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?  ¹⁵ How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” 

            In Matthew 4:19 Jesus called His first disciples with these words, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 

           

The main difference between missionaries and other Christians, is that missionaries apply these verses to themselves individually, rather than just collectively. They take the Great Commission as their personal marching orders. They do not wait to see what others are going to do about it, they own it for themselves, believing that God has called them personally to fulfil the mission, and they set out to get it done, believing that it can be accomplished with God’s help.

This week I challenge you to go back and read these verses again and then ask God what part He wants you to play on this missionary team that has been divinely commissioned to bring the Gospel to this needy mission field of Ourtownistan.