Keys to Becoming Local Church Centered in Missions, Part II

Most local churches sincerely believe that they are missions-minded. In today’s world, the term “missions-minded” has evolved to include many things. The type, content, focus, and geography of missions may have little discernible consistency. Let’s take a step back to recalibrate our local church's consistency on missions.

The term “missional” has been adopted by many as a new catchphrase for everything related to outreach. While it is true that well-known missions verses in the Bible, like Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8, may include our own church’s community and neighborhoods, local outreach and cross-cultural missions ought not to be blended as the same thing. The biblical intention of the words “all nations,” “the whole creation,” “the world,” and “the end of the earth” is clearly not focused on our local outreach. Others have said, “Your neighbors, classmates, co-workers, and friends can’t be called ‘unreached' people because they already have you to tell them the Gospel.”

A sharper definition of missions is much preferred and helpful. MissioSERVE can help with clarifying these fundamental definitions. I’ve used this in the Missions on Point podcast:

Missions is the ministry of local churches, which glorifies God by sending qualified workers cross-culturally to establish and strengthen healthy biblical local churches where they do not exist.

A definition like this dispels confusion:

• Missions is a ministry of local churches.
• The local church is the primary sender.
• Workers are well-qualified for the work to which they are sent.
• These workers go to a cross-cultural context away from their sending church.
• The missionary may have a wide gamut of ministry means, but the singular goal is to raise sound, indigenous, local churches.

The local church using this definition (or one like it) does not:

• call local church growth outreach “missions”
• imply that the local church does missions without the help of a missions sending organization
• allow missionaries to claim they are called and qualified for missions independently
• give up ultimate ownership of their missionary, their missionary’s ministry, or the shepherding of their missionary to another organization

A practical question arises about the relationship of local outreach to missions. Church members may assume that they should have a literal balance of equal funding. In other words, should we split our funding between local outreach and world missions 50-50?

The answer is “No.” I’ve used this chart to explain the distinction and clarify the reasons behind my answer.

This is a simplified graphic that shows the funding principle. Local ministries, including outreach, are NEAR in cultural distance and can easily involve many people with relatively few dollars expended. Missions ministry requires a higher qualification standard for the workers and more money to support and sustain that specialized ministry at a FAR distance.

An important reminder: asking questions and recalibrating doesn’t require your church to change overnight traumatically. Healthy change takes time, careful communication, and wise shepherding. Healthy change, however, means thoughtfully designing a preferred future. Then, you plan the changes, step by step, to achieve that future. Everyone learns to understand and embrace that desired end as positive for the whole church.

Here are a couple of tools that can help us help you:

• The Church Missions Profile self-assessment
• The Sending Church Readiness Inventory, used in conjunction with MissioSERVE’s Church Engagement staff coaching process
• Contact us to get started in the process of MissioSERVE Church-Centric Coaching