Repatriating Missions to the Local Church

History museums are starting to repatriate their precious artifacts. Often captured during colonial expansion, these artifacts have showcased the unique creativity of diverse cultures for the viewing pleasure of patrons and museumgoers for decades and centuries. Although well-meaning curators have preserved and honored these cultural items, even protecting them from wars and looters, they cannot ignore that they don’t belong there.

Similarly, global missions needs to be repatriated to the local church. This provocative claim is hard to accept unless we begin with the biblical conviction that God has primarily entrusted the work of the Great Commission to locally gathered congregations. In Ephesians 3, the Apostle Paul declares that God has entrusted to him a stewardship, a plan for the administration of the gospel and the people of the gospel. The local church is the city on the hill, God’s temple, where he dwells on earth this side of eternity. The gospel gathers people from all nations and unites them into one diverse body. The place that God designed to display this precious treasure is the building that has living stones, the local church.

We indeed have brothers and sisters in Christ as ministry partners all over the world. Still, the local church is where we can best find lifelong discipleship, submit to spiritual authority, and fully obey all of the “one-another” commands in scripture. Matthew 28 has the local church written all over it. Central to that concept of discipleship is the church as the only context where we can obey all that Jesus commands us, beginning with baptism. And with this in mind, the local church is at the center of the “going” too.

As many parachurch organizations recognize, churches have for many years neglected their responsibility to raise up missionaries from their midst and to send and shepherd them well while in the field. In the wake of that failure, many organizations have stepped in to fill the gap with promises of greater effectiveness and efficiency. However, a subtle, sometimes imperceptible, shift occurs when ownership is transferred. Without a connection to a local church, mission creep easily takes over. As Spitters and Ellison argue, global missions loses its meaning when everything is missions.^[1] Missions must have the church as its root and its fruit. Ministries that have been disconnected from the local congregation are like plants that have been severed from their roots; mission creep kills the mission. The mission comes from God and is found in his word. And he has commissioned local churches to spread across the earth and establish more local churches.

The local church is the beginning and end of missions. It starts with a congregation of believers discipling its people to gain a vision for God’s glory spread all over the earth, reaching into the darkest recesses where the gospel is not currently being preached. Those churches then equip congregants who desire to go with the theology and practices of their church so that they can reproduce healthy churches elsewhere. The result is a local church in another culture, united in the one faith that all believers everywhere share. The gospel is the power of God for creating cross-cultural bodies of believers.

Thankfully, in recent years, there has been a growing awareness that local churches are the proper owners of global missions. “Church-centered missions” is becoming a catchphrase. But it begs the question: what does church-centered missions mean? Any term we use needs to be clearly defined. I would humbly submit for your consideration three propositions that keep the local church in the driver’s seat of missions, with parachurch organizations in their rightful place as servants to the church, navigating from the passenger seat. These three propositions for church-centered missions could be called the beginning, middle, and end of missions.

1. God intends for the local church to be the primary mobilizer of missions. This is the beginning of missions. College campuses and missions conferences are unhealthy substitutes for identifying prospective missionary candidates. The unintended consequence of plucking an eager young person from these venues to send into the world is that the local church no longer views this as a necessary function. How much better would it be if our churches that preach God’s heart for the nations from childhood to old age were the places where missionaries are recruited? The biblical pattern shows churches tasked with sending (Acts 13:1-3; 1 Cor. 16:11; 3 John 5-8).
2. God intends for the local church to own the strategic responsibility in missions. This is what I call the middle of missions. This is where the local church currently has the greatest disconnect. Missions is a complicated endeavor; therefore, we should never despise the help of agencies coming alongside the church. But as with any organization, missions requires authority, accountability, strategy, and support. These functions are inherent in the design of the local church. Before commissioning the disciples, Jesus declared that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. He exercises this authority as head of the church, which is now manifested through congregations that can discipline erring members (Matt. 16:18-19;18:15-20). The gates of hell will not prevail against the church that gathers and sends out in Jesus’ name.
3. God intends for the local church to be the goal of all missions endeavors. This is the end of missions. Whatever work we do, we must have a singular aim of seeing new bodies of disciples gathered as a congregation to worship God among every culture. Humanitarian work is not an end in itself; it plays an essential supporting role. However, when we cross cultural boundaries to minister to people, we do not stay there long-term. The people who live there must take up the baton of the mission from us and carry it forward. For the work to continue long after we arrive, a local church must be established. This follows the pattern of the first missionary journeys (Acts 14:23).

The precious treasure of global missions belongs in the local church. Repatriation requires a concerted effort. First, it means that churches must step up and take ownership of what is rightfully theirs. Second, and just as important, missions agencies need to commit themselves to a vision and mission that humbly positions them as servants to the church.

For more help in understanding the biblical basis for church-centered missions and how to implement this philosophy in your church or missions agency, check out "Missions on Point" by David Meade or contact us at ministry@propempo.com.^[2] We pray that you and your church can discern the role that God is calling you to play in furthering the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. “To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph. 3:21)

[1] Denny Spitters and Matthew Ellison, When Everything Is Missions, Bottomline Media, October 1, 2017.

[2] David C. Meade Missions on Point, Send Forward, June 25, 2024.