Why Global Missions Requires Healthy Churches

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | Welcome back to the podcast.

00:00:05.460 | The BCS Pastors Conference finishes up today

00:00:08.540 | here on Wednesday, and as I mentioned last time,

00:00:11.720 | earlier in January, Pastor John traveled to Louisville

00:00:15.020 | to speak at the annual cross conference,

00:00:16.980 | and one of the sessions was a panel discussion

00:00:18.820 | hosted by David Platt, and he was joined with Pastor John

00:00:22.900 | and International Evangelist Max Stiles

00:00:25.260 | and Pastors Thabiti Anyewabwile and Kevin DeYoung.

00:00:28.860 | There was a second clip I wanted to share on this podcast,

00:00:31.700 | and on this one, the topic is the place of the local church

00:00:35.300 | in global missions, and that connection

00:00:37.260 | is really important to get this.

00:00:39.100 | And here's David Platt himself talking about

00:00:41.220 | one of the major themes behind the cross conference.

00:00:45.140 | - One other that's a big emphasis among us

00:00:49.980 | and anybody else who you'll see on the stage

00:00:51.860 | is the role, central role of the local church

00:00:56.180 | in the Great Commission.

00:00:57.480 | So these are pastors have served as pastor,

00:01:01.260 | everybody who's come up here is either pastoring a church,

00:01:03.900 | is part of church planting specifically,

00:01:07.140 | so we don't see the Great Commission

00:01:09.260 | disconnected from the church.

00:01:11.220 | It's a mission given to the church.

00:01:13.900 | Mac, you spoke on that earlier today.

00:01:17.220 | Can you summarize in a minute or two

00:01:19.540 | just what you shared earlier today

00:01:21.180 | about the role of the local church?

00:01:22.740 | - Yeah, the local church is the embassy of God

00:01:26.620 | on earth, the platform for which the Lord God advances

00:01:31.620 | evangelism, discipleship, and mission.

00:01:34.540 | We can't do missions without the church.

00:01:37.580 | I didn't always believe that,

00:01:40.260 | I didn't always understand that,

00:01:41.900 | but I actually went to the Arabian Peninsula

00:01:45.920 | to do student ministry, but by God's great grace,

00:01:49.340 | we saw many people come to faith,

00:01:51.880 | many students come to faith,

00:01:53.820 | and there was not really a local healthy church

00:01:57.260 | for them to go to, and suddenly we realized,

00:02:00.140 | wait a second, we've gotta think about this.

00:02:02.860 | The church is critical.

00:02:05.020 | We can't just give lip service to the church.

00:02:08.740 | The church is kind of the aim of missions in one sense,

00:02:13.060 | and so we rolled up our sleeves,

00:02:16.220 | we got involved in a local ex-pat church,

00:02:21.220 | English speaking church, but revitalized it

00:02:25.540 | in some powerful ways.

00:02:27.660 | It's a vibrant, gospel-centered, cross-focused church today

00:02:32.660 | that has partnered with the student ministry

00:02:36.460 | such that there has been power as the result

00:02:39.500 | of being in a church, a local, healthy,

00:02:41.900 | vibrant, gospel-centered church,

00:02:43.540 | and reaching out into unreached people groups.

00:02:48.620 | So the main thing I want people to hear

00:02:51.380 | is don't ever let a missionary tell you,

00:02:54.740 | don't get involved in the local church,

00:02:58.260 | in a city that you go to as a missionary

00:03:02.140 | because it will take you away from your ministry,

00:03:05.340 | whatever that means.

00:03:06.740 | Don't let people tell you that.

00:03:08.540 | God loves his bride.

00:03:11.980 | They're often misshapen, they're often odd,

00:03:17.820 | but he loves his bride, and you should love his bride too.

00:03:22.340 | And pursue helping the church become vibrant

00:03:25.540 | if they're not, get plugged into the local, healthy churches

00:03:29.020 | if you become missionaries and workers overseas.

00:03:31.620 | Take hold of God's love for the church

00:03:33.840 | because it empowers us in ministry.

00:03:37.700 | God blesses those who love his church

00:03:40.780 | and are involved in it, help strengthen it,

00:03:42.980 | and help it grow.

00:03:44.220 | - Let me shift a little bit to something

00:03:46.700 | that's been mentioned already a couple times from stage,

00:03:48.620 | including this conversation.

00:03:50.060 | Do you all suspect as you pray for what will happen

00:03:55.180 | over the next few days that 7,000 plus people

00:03:59.160 | will leave here and move to another country as a missionary?

00:04:04.160 | And so do you suspect that's gonna happen,

00:04:08.160 | or do you think there are other ways

00:04:09.420 | God might lead people to play a part in this picture?

00:04:11.980 | So we've talked about going and sending.

00:04:15.060 | Who wants to give some clarity?

00:04:16.500 | - Yeah, they can do that.

00:04:17.800 | We can have 7,500 go.

00:04:21.820 | - Okay, that's great.

00:04:22.740 | So glad we answered that.

00:04:24.820 | But.

00:04:25.660 | - I think we need clarity even in front of that question,

00:04:29.540 | maybe you're getting at it, but what is a missionary?

00:04:32.660 | 'Cause many folks would say, you're all missionaries,

00:04:37.660 | and put it on the door as you leave here,

00:04:39.700 | go out into your mission field,

00:04:42.560 | and we're working with a narrower definition,

00:04:47.560 | not at all to minimize the 10 million good things we do

00:04:52.160 | in the name of Christ, but we're thinking of missionaries

00:04:56.000 | as those who are sent from one place to another,

00:05:00.400 | we see in scripture involving the crossing

00:05:03.080 | of some sort of barriers or cultures,

00:05:06.080 | with the purpose of speaking the name of Christ,

00:05:10.560 | planting and nurturing healthy churches.

00:05:13.440 | Something like that would be what we see,

00:05:15.920 | and a text that I go to is Acts chapter 14,

00:05:19.760 | I won't read it to you, but you can go to the end

00:05:21.240 | where Paul is sort of giving, I think,

00:05:23.920 | his missionary report to the church in Antioch,

00:05:26.200 | and right above that, it gives a summary

00:05:28.360 | of what he does in those trips to Derbe and Lystra

00:05:32.040 | and around the Mediterranean,

00:05:33.360 | and he's doing those three things,

00:05:35.300 | sharing the gospel, making disciples,

00:05:37.480 | planting churches, and strengthening churches

00:05:39.980 | as he's sent to places to do that.

00:05:42.260 | So, as a very good recent book came out,

00:05:46.880 | "When Missions is Everything,"

00:05:49.880 | and that's a play on an old line,

00:05:51.480 | but when missions is everything,

00:05:52.520 | it ends up that missions is nothing.

00:05:54.880 | So we want to specify not every good thing you do

00:05:58.960 | in the name of Christ is what we mean by missions.

00:06:02.000 | - But that definition you just gave won't work,

00:06:04.920 | because it applies to all American church planters,

00:06:07.760 | doesn't it?

00:06:09.120 | - Well, for crossing cultures?

00:06:11.100 | - That wasn't one of the three.

00:06:13.260 | - Well, that was at the front end, I said,

00:06:14.780 | of being sent across cultures for those three purposes.

00:06:19.300 | - To make disciples.

00:06:21.060 | - Here's a better text.

00:06:22.760 | [audience laughing]

00:06:24.380 | - They're all inspired, John.

00:06:25.780 | - Don't you love that moment when John Piper says,

00:06:29.060 | "Won't work."

00:06:29.900 | - They don't all say the same thing.

00:06:30.940 | [audience laughing]

00:06:32.060 | So, the question you have to ask is,

00:06:35.340 | in every church, should there be somebody like Paul,

00:06:39.720 | not just somebody like Timothy?

00:06:41.520 | Paul, in Romans 15, said,

00:06:44.720 | "I have completed the gospel from Jerusalem to Albania.

00:06:49.720 | "I've completed it.

00:06:52.080 | "I have no more room for work here."

00:06:55.740 | That's ridiculous.

00:06:57.820 | There's tens of thousands of unbelievers there,

00:07:01.320 | because he told Timothy to go do the work of an evangelist,

00:07:04.360 | and he's leaving for Spain.

00:07:05.920 | Now, who is he?

00:07:07.440 | Who is Paul?

00:07:08.720 | Because he's got no room for work here.

00:07:11.520 | Timothy, you got lots of room for work here.

00:07:13.880 | Get it done.

00:07:14.700 | Do evangelism.

00:07:15.960 | Go plant churches among all those people like you.

00:07:18.580 | I'm going to Spain because I'm called to something different.

00:07:23.160 | Now, that's what, whatever you call that person,

00:07:26.080 | that's what I want about 800 of you to be.

00:07:29.600 | That's my number out of my head.

00:07:33.320 | You said, "Do we want 7,000?"

00:07:37.360 | Paul did not, because when he wrote to Rome,

00:07:40.640 | he didn't ask them all to go with him to Spain.

00:07:43.840 | He asked them to send him,

00:07:45.600 | and if he thought everybody should be

00:07:47.100 | a frontier-type missionary, he would have said,

00:07:51.480 | "No, let's all leave Rome.

00:07:52.840 | "It's evangelized, and go to Spain."

00:07:54.960 | So, I think that's included in your first qualification,

00:07:58.760 | to cross a culture, or go to unreached.

00:08:03.720 | It's not just crossing a culture.

00:08:06.280 | These frontier-types or pioneer-types missionaries

00:08:09.800 | are those who want to go someplace

00:08:13.200 | where Christ isn't named, and put a stake in the ground,

00:08:18.160 | and herald his name, and gather disciples,

00:08:20.580 | and then do that amazing thing of forming churches.

00:08:23.880 | And I just want to underline that church issue,

00:08:26.640 | because most of you are not heavily engaged

00:08:31.640 | churchmen and churchwomen, and you need to be.

00:08:36.960 | Spend the next years becoming churchmen and churchwomen,

00:08:41.040 | meaning you get it.

00:08:43.760 | You understand what elders are, or deacons are,

00:08:47.160 | what pastors do, what the role of women are,

00:08:49.560 | what the role of men are, what the role of evangelism,

00:08:51.840 | what the role of prayer is, how a church works.

00:08:54.520 | Because when you go to an unreached people,

00:08:56.760 | and they have nothing, nothing, what are you gonna build?

00:09:00.580 | What are you going to build, if you don't have any idea

00:09:04.800 | of how churches function when they're healthy?

00:09:09.080 | - Such a good word.

00:09:10.200 | Global missions in the local church

00:09:13.020 | are linked up in the plan of God.

00:09:14.960 | I love this cross-conference conviction.

00:09:17.320 | I love how these men articulated here.

00:09:20.220 | The BCS Pastors Conference wraps up today

00:09:24.020 | here in Minneapolis.

00:09:25.160 | So does a very busy January for Pastor John.

00:09:28.640 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.

00:09:30.240 | Thanks for listening to the podcast.

00:09:31.600 | We'll see you back here on Friday.

00:09:33.300 | (upbeat music)

00:09:35.880 | (upbeat music)

00:09:38.460 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Why Global Missions Requires Healthy Churches

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