A good portion of my life is devoted to evangelism, both personally and from the pulpit. I want unbelievers to hear the gospel. We should be in awe of a God who saves. But the sad reality is that many believers are so ill-equipped to share the gospel, so scared to be rebuffed, or just so busy with themselves that they never get around to evangelism.
Not only that, we manage to live without a sense of the plight of the unbeliever. I was recently talking to a case worker for Georgia's Family and Children's Services Division. I mentioned how difficult it must be doing what she did, and I thanked her for her service. She said that most people don't like to know the things she knows, and they certainly don't want to see it. They just sort of cover their eyes and close their ears and pretend children aren't being abandoned.
Isn't that how we can be about the lost? We know that eternal separation from God awaits, but maybe we don't know what to do, we don't know how to help, and so we cover our eyes and do nothing.
That's not good.
Missions and evangelism are central to the mission of the church. Here are four things that should be clear in the mind of every believer when it comes to missions. These four things are not all we need to know, but it serves as a place to start the conversation. I pray that as you read it, you will be made aware of ways that you can grow both in your love for the lost, and how you can begin to speak the gospel to family, friends, and even people on the other side of the earth.
The first thing to make clear is that our participation in missions is not an option.
It is tempting to fall back on the well-worn sayings, “I don’t have the gift” or I’m not called to missions. But my fear is that if you say that, you are pulling the rug out from under your Christian witness. Our Bibles stop making sense when we interpret personal evangelism and missions as a nice but unnecessary add-on to the Christian faith—like leather interior or seat warmers.
I could go to tons of places in Scripture to show this. But Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians stands out to me with its positive, natural presentation of a church devoted to making the gospel known. Paul wrote to them, “For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything” (1 Thess 1:8) When an apostle can write, “so that we need not say anything,” you know you’ve done something right. The believers in the church at Thessalonica spoke the Word and showed their faith. They took the Great Commission seriously. We should follow in their footsteps.
The second thing to make clear is that our participation in missions cannot be outsourced to so-called professionals.
If the girl who shared the gospel with me in high-school had done that, I may not be here today. Instead she took it as her responsibility to contend “for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). She spent time with me, an unbeliever. She challenged my worldview. She told me that I was going to hell unless I repented and believed the good news. She didn’t claim to have all the answers, but she had the gospel, and that is what she gave me. I’m not sure she had ever read a book on evangelism, missions, or theology. But she had read her Bible and she knew that hell was real.
In their book, What is the Mission of the Church, Greg Gilbert and Kevin DeYoung helpfully explain that at the heart of our ministry is the awareness of hell:
Since hell is real, we must help each other die well even more than we strive to help our neighbors live comfortably. Since hell is real, we must never think alleviating earthly suffering is the most loving thing we can do. Since hell is real, evangelism and discipleship are not simply good options or commendable ministries, but are literally a matter of life and death.
If this is true, how could we sit by and let pastors, missionaries, and other Christian workers bear the evangelistic load? I want to help people die well. I believe hell is real. As much as I love discipling believers, attending church services, counseling the suffering, and writing, the heartbeat of my personal ministry, not merely as a pastor, but as a Christian, is the awareness that without the gospel of Jesus Christ our non-Christians friends will spend an eternity in hell.
If we believe in hell, “missions” will become heartbeat of your own lives. We will not think of missions as a program organized by the church, a check written out to a missionary, or a prayer said at our bedside. Missions is not what we pay others to do, it is what we are to do.
The third thing to make clear is that theological depth and missions should not be separated.
Biblical knowledge is not like cement. Cement, when poured, hardens. It doesn’t go anywhere. Biblical knowledge, for the Christian, is not like that. For believers, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, biblical knowledge is like lava that never cools, it moves forward and changes whatever it touches. So, as you learn about missions, if you are a Christian, you will inevitably put it into action. The deeper you are theologically, the deeper you will be missionally. As we learn what Christ commanded, as we grow deeper in our faith, we will be better able and more eager to share their faith with others.
Some have told me of churches who have great head knowledge but have been poor at living out their faith. They have been very good at teaching about missions and very poor at being missional. That has not been my experience, nor, do I believe, is it what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that if you truly understand—with your mind—what Scripture says about the state of the lost and the power of the gospel, you will strive to be an instrument to bring the gospel to bear in the lives of your non-Christian neighbors. Consider Colossians 1:9-10 where it is clear that if you are truly filled with the knowledge of God you will be “fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work.” I take that good work to include evangelism.
Perhaps this is where I should mention that I believe the church is not just important to the fulfillment of the Great Commission but central to it. The more we are living out the Christian life the more the world will see it. An underutilized missions text is John 13:35, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The fourth and the last thing to make clear is that God cares about missions because he wants to receive praise.
I went to the conference room of a leading missions agency where I saw a wall of evangelists who had given their lives to personal evangelism. I’m thankful for them, I’m glad they shared the gospel, and I think they are worthy of our respect. But I believe that wall has the subtle, unintended, and real effect of making missions about us, instead of about God. I think it leads us to think ungodly thoughts like, “I want to share the gospel so that my pastor respects me.” or “I want to share the gospel because I know that is what a good Christian does.” And I think this line of thinking undermines biblical evangelism.
Biblical evangelism takes God as our starting point. This approach to missions says that God is great and greatly to be praised. This approach so longs for his name to be made known here and abroad, that it can’t rest until the nations are reached. This approach hungers for the day when a great multitude from every nation are standing before the Lamb, “from all tribes and peoples and languages” crying out “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” The angels are singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen” (Rev 7:9, 10, 12). The God we praise is a God who delights in receiving the praise of his people.
My heart or attitude or mindset or vision toward missions is rooted in the conviction that as our church loves God more, as we increasingly want God’s name praised more, as we hunger to see the crucified and risen Christ glorified in the world even more than we now do, we will become even more missions-minded than we are now. It is my prayer is that every sermon—even if it is not a “missions” sermon, will exalt Christ and edify us with the knowledge of Christ so that our heart to be personally involved in missions will ever increase.
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