What is Missions?

Why talk missions?

• Since January our Missions Committee has met every single month. Our team consists of Kevin Robinson, Amanda Pulliam, Leslie Huddleston, Bethany Wessels, and Courtney Bearden is the chair.

• Part of what I’ve been doing with the team is teaching them about what missions is and how we can be more involved as a church. I asked them how we could train our church and their reply was - teach them all of the same stuff you’ve been teaching us. So here we are. These next two weeks will be a collection of some lessons I shared with the team throughout the year.

• Story about Beck’s cross-stitch. An inward focused church is a dying church.

• If we are not actively finding ways to reach others with God’s kingdom then we will spend our time thinking about how we can serve ourselves. Selfishness and disunity will follow. You’ve heard of churches splitting over whether the carpet is red or blue. But this doesn’t happen in churches that are working hard to train pastors in churches across the globe, who are sending their best people out overseas to do a work they will never benefit from, and who are freely sacrificing and giving their money to see the lost come to know Jesus.

• If someone were to ask you to rank FBC as to where we are as a church in terms of Missions effectiveness and Missions-mindedness on a scale of 1-10. Where would you rank us? Truthfully, most of us probably don’t even have a category for what a church with healthy missions involvement looks like. And wouldn’t be able to rank ourselves.

• Let’s do some work to evaluate where we are with Missions.

  • We have a missions committee

  • We have the brown sack ministry

  • We have Operation Christmas Child

  • We give to Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon and Dixie Jackson each year

  • We send our youth to New Orleans on a missions trip

  • A portion of our giving budget each year goes to the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program.  the International Mission Board (IMB) and the North American Mission Board (NAMB)

• Honestly, that’s all really good. I’m proud of our church for doing these things. But I still would like to see our church grow a lot in regards to Missions

• For instance, if I were simply to ask what is missions? We’d hear a wide variety of answers without any clear agreement. Or if I were to ask the name of someone who is currently on the missions field that our church directly supports financially, we couldn’t name one.

• In the past our church gave an exemplary amount of money towards missions. Sometimes it was more than 20% of the church’s total annual budget. For instance, as recently as 1976, 50 years ago, we gave 20.6% towards missions. 2023 was the lowest year of missions giving ever by percentage. It was 8.4%. This past year was only a little better at 9.0%

• This isn’t a criticism of the people in our church. But we haven’t had any leadership recently that has prioritized missions. This isn’t a doomsday announcement, it’s an incredible opportunity. We get to build something meaningful and massively important. It could be a turning point for our church as well.

• 
  

• It is for this reason that I’d like to spend some time focusing on missions and turning our church’s attention back outward.

Missions is: the church sending qualified disciples to plant and strengthen churches where Christ is not yet known

Why missions must be centered around the church.

• You’ll notice that this definition centers on planting and strengthening churches. At the center of Missions work is church work.

• Read the Great Commission - Matthew 28:18-20

  • Baptizing them and teaching them to obey - Where does baptizing and teaching happen? In a local church. The Great Commission can’t be accomplished outside of churches

• Missions starts with sending churches at home

  • Read Acts 13:1-3

    • Paul and Barnabas are sent from the church at Antioch. They travel on three missionary journeys and they return to their sending church at the end (with the exception of the Paul’s 3rd because he’s arrested)

  • Read Romans 15:22-24

    • Paul intends to be sent by Rome to plant churches and do missions work further out into the world (but, he’s arrested)

  • Missionaries are sent by churches. They aren’t meant to be out alone.

    • Why must missionaries be sent by churches? (not just agencies)

      • Train them and affirm their character/qualifications

      • Accountability/Oversight - doctrinally and financially

      • Encouragement - visits, prayer, communication

    • These aren’t unique things that are just for missionaries - this is standard every single Christian stuff. No one can be a solo Christian. Everyone needs to have a church they’re connected to if they’re going to be on mission for the Lord

• Missions ends with planting churches abroad (the missionary should be saving people and connecting them with a local church)

  • Matthew 16:16-19

    • Jesus says “I will build my church”. His goal in saving people is to build the church, visible in local churches

    • He does not save people from the Titanic by tossing them into the ocean and saying good luck. He puts them into lifeboats that can then save others.

  • Read Acts 14:21-23

    • The pattern of the apostles was to evangelize the lost, gather them together, place them in a church, and appoint elders over them. These are missionaries planting churches.

  • Read Ephesians 4:11-16

    • The “Evangelists” are also responsible for building up the body of Christ. The church.

    • This establishes maturity in believers and prevents them from becoming captured by false doctrines. There are popular missions movements to get as many people to profess Jesus as fast as possible and to get them to share with others as soon as possible. This sounds great in theory, but in practice they end up not even knowing what they are professing. They don’t do what the Bible teaches or how God is their authority. They are captive by anything that blows their way (prosperity, syncretism, catholicism, etc.)

    • 
      

So Missions begins with a sending church that sends out missionaries to establish churches. Missions is church-centered on this side of the ocean and on that side.

Showing love for the lost

• Turn to 1 John 3:16-18 - Let’s not be a church that says we care about the lost. But that demonstrates we care about the lost. It’s also important to notice here that we learn to love others by imitating how God loved us. He gave his life for us, so that we can give our lives for others.

• Turn to 1 John 4:9-11 - Here we see another opportunity to demonstrate love by imitating God’s love for us. It says very specifically, if God loved us in this way, we ought to love one another. In what way did he love us? He sent his Son into the world. He saw the need and instead of remaining distant or hoping someone else would solve it, he went straight into the filthy streets with the wicked sinners and offered them life. We show love by imitating God in this way. We show love by going, by sending, by supporting and making sure the life-giving gospel is being shared. We cannot be indifferent.

• Turn to Matthew 6:19-21 - In order to demonstrate our love, I think it’s important that we put our money where our mouth is. That’s a weird phrase, but you know what it means. I’m going to argue that we ought to spend time

With this truth in mind, what does FBC need to do, to participate actively and biblically in missions work?

• Find some specific missionaries to send or support

Missions Team has been working this past year on finding someone to support and we have met Greg and Amy Royal who are currently serving with the IMB, here is what they sent us back in March:

 - Read Email

• I have been praying for several months now that our church would grow in missions-mindedness. This is what I mean. I want to see us finding ways to not seek our church’s good, but the good of others.

• Let me read one final passage - Luke 14:12-14

• I’d like to sacrifice our attention and our finances in a way that we see no earthly return-on-investment. I want to give in such a way that doesn’t increase our numbers, our comforts, or our reputation because in this way we’ll receive a great reward at the resurrection. This business meeting I’m going to make a motion to support the Royals with our church’s finances, prayers, and attention. The missions team will continue to update us on how we can do that effectively.