(upbeat music) - I'm Ron Robertson. - And I'm Max Stiles, Director of Messenger Ministries. - And this is Mission Stock brought to you by Ninemarks and Reaching and Teaching International Ministries. Ninemarks exist to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches. To learn more about Ninemarks, visit Ninemarks.org. Reaching and Teaching serves local churches by helping them to send qualified missionaries to make matured disciples establish healthy churches and train local leaders around the world. And you can learn more about Reaching and Teaching at rtim.org. In today's episode, we are gonna be talking about setting missions, strategic priorities for your local church. Joining us is Robert Klein, Senior Associate Pastor at the High Point Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. And Jeffrey Timmans, Associate Pastor for Missions at Mount Vernon Baptist Church. Welcome, brothers. - Thank you. See ya. - Robert, I'm gonna start off with you, brother. As we talk about setting strategic priorities as a local church in the area of missions, are there any general principles that we should gather from the Bible as we think about this question? - Yes, indeed there are. And I think in terms of planning and plotting strategies, we wanna have a posture of humility, not be wise in our own eyes, recognize God's sovereignty in this mission and yet our agency, we are responsible. And then we look at scripture, places like Romans 10, where Paul talks about how shall they hear if no one tells them and then the end of Romans about how he wants to go where there is no church and not plant on someone else's foundation. But then again, I think we can go all the way back to the Old Testament and see God's intention even with the promise to Abraham to bless all the nations on the earth, they're in the earth. And it just appears over and over again, right in the middle of the Bible, Psalm 67, let all the nations praise and let them be glad, let the harvest come among all peoples. So I think one of the principles is that God is about making disciples and establishing healthy, reproducing churches among all peoples. We see that at the end of the Bible in Revelation seven and even at the very end. So I think one principle is that we are to make disciples of the great diversity of peoples that God has created here on this earth. And then it does seem as though Paul has something of a priority for going where the gospel is not known so that he's not planting on other peoples foundations. I think two, we read Acts and we see the Holy Spirit's involvement in the work of missions. And he is actually leading this charge, we plan and he's also very much involved. And then I'm really big on, yeah, the Paul's letter to the Philippians, it seems to be something of a missionary support letter. And chapter two, he talks about the importance of having what I call a Philippians two posture, just being humble and learning from others and even seeing others as more important than ourselves. Many other principles, maybe that gets us started talking about that. - Yeah, no, that's good. I hope much of our conversation today is infused with a lot of that biblical language. Jeffrey, we often hear of different priorities and missions, whether that's unreach language groups or Bible translations or particular places in need of the gospel or people groups that have less than 2% of a population that's evangelical. So if a church sets a strategic priority and a specific aspiring missionary does not fit that specific church's priority, how should that church respond assuming that they're dealing with someone who's qualified? - Yeah, that's a good question. I think probably the first thing is to go back to things Robert was just saying. It's good to be clear, whether that priority is biblical, whether it's prudential for whatever reason or maybe it's neither. Maybe it's arbitrary and it could use some editing. I think it's worth all thinking about what do you get the 2% stuff from? What's motivating the translational work? I think it's important, but I'd like to know the connection to a local church on the ground, how they're hoping to use it, where it's gonna hope the evangelism and the discipling they're already doing. I think it's really good in this question, the aspiring missionary under consideration is qualified. But I'd like to know, you know what's the nature of the work? They're hoping to be doing. You know, is the bullseye of it gonna be starting or strengthening its church? How exactly is that gonna play out? And in many ways, I would love the members of our church about what a Baptist actually know, the missionary's already working with so that some might just be directly recruited to go and help them in the labours that they're doing folks that we already know and are happy with. I think it's really good to have, you know, a little bit into this question, sometimes consolidator relationships. In January, I'm gonna go to where Mac used to be in the Emirates, we've got a number of relationships over there and it's helpful to see them all in one week and I only have to make, you know, one flight. That's really useful. But I'm also interested in, you know, our prospective missionaries doing really excellent work. So that can look like being opportunistic and working with like-minded churches and teams to see if we can find a good landing spot for these individuals. You know, Mac and Ryan, you guys are at church right used to be a member. Third Avenue Baptist where there's so many individuals. Dear brothers and sisters, you've relocated their lives. They're being trained. On seminary, they're sitting under the teaching of a good church, they're learning meaningful membership and they want to be sent. I don't have, you know, dozens and dozens, you know, maybe a hundred, like you guys do, if folks you are somewhere on the spectrum or desire to be sent. So I've got, at least here, ability to work with members with a bit more finesse. But honestly, this is where things like ACME, you know, things like, you know, Ryan, what you're doing, the way you get teaching, things like, you know, central age of the eye and being in particular, folks who I know are on the same page and there's already relationships. If I'm alerted to good work, these brothers and sisters are doing, I can kind of lay that before the eyes of aspiring missionaries here to begin to calibrate some of their aspirations. I can try and get on the front end of that. But if these boxes are all checked, you know, it's good to, for me to explore what are relationships with other churches, you know, just Robert have someone in this type of area, or a finding that third avenue or high point has a team leader or pastor they're sending. And it's the same generation. That's a region that's really useful information for me. So those are some of the things I'd be thinking about. - That's really, really helpful, Jeffrey. - Yeah, I like that. - Robert, let me ask a question, kind of, how your church thinks through things to start. Well, could you recommend particular starting points, what, choosing a particular group of people, a place, an existing partner, kind of, stuff that Jeffrey's talked about already, but a trusted agency, I mean, what's the best place to start in setting your church's priorities? - Yes, well, I'm learning about this. I've thought about it some. And I think a lot of it depends, you know, what high point does is going to be different from some other churches. So I think the first thing is sort of do an audit, a diagnosis of who do we have in our church? That's what Jeffrey's done. And then also who do I know in my network that's already doing maybe what we are thinking about doing? And what's my city like or where I live? Are there opportunities right here in my neighborhood for our church to get involved and learn a little bit about cross-cultural things? Well, I think the best place is in terms of actually strategizing would be to look at who we are, who is God brought to our church. For example, we've trained people who go and work in consulates overseas. Well, those people can go and take the gospel in a way that's strategic, but not every church has people that are going and taking their job overseas. You may have ESL teachers. You might be in a community or a city like Houston, which is the most international city, as far as I can tell, in the United States, or at least the second. So learning about yourself, who are we, who is God brought to our church, who's in our neighborhood? Maybe we have retired Christian workers or missionaries. But then also I think the place to start is, I love that you have Samamadi's God's heart for the nations up there on the site, because I think the leadership has to plant that sort of seed in the heart of the church that really you can't open your Bible without thinking about God's heart for the nations. And once a congregation begins to understand that, and you can sort of fill in the spaces for what would it look like for us to actually be sending people. So I mean, I think, yeah, doing some kind of diagnostic work about who you are as a church, who's in your church, where are we located, who do we know? Teaching the biblical basis of mission or God's heart for the nations, so that it really influences everything that's being done. I had a friend who used to say, sometimes we treat missions as that, you give the missions pastor that broom closet of an office down in the basement, where nobody ever sees them. I don't know, mission should be, it should be all of what the church is doing. So I mean, teaching Biblically on that. And then I think actually getting real serious about what would it look like for us to have a pipeline or a pathway to help people be sent. And maybe it's a baby step across the city to a people group that write in our backyard or maybe it's taking a trip to visit missionaries. I think it's a very, I'm trying to speak in generalities at a high level because maybe you inherited a bunch of partners and you need to evaluate those. They're really, they are church centered or maybe they're not church centered. And so you need to look at that as well. So in developing, I think some sort of beginning with humility and talking to other local leaders, pastors, about what would it look like for us to actually have a document, a couple of sentences that's real clear on what our priorities are gonna be. And then of course some action steps. How do we get from here to there? You know, that all depends on the diagnostic work of where we are. And I think sometimes that can be harder. People get excited about church centered missions and they wanna go from zero to 60, but you kind of have to shift through the gears of learning, assessing, planning, and then maybe sending people or partnering. So that's maybe a very high level way to think about it. - Oh, it's super helpful. - Jeffrey, Jeffrey, same question in a way. How can elder boards begin setting priorities, maybe more than if you have other things to add than what you've already said, practical steps that need to be taken? - Yeah, I'm sick of question. I mean, the stuff Robert said is very good. I mean, maybe some things I would add, you know, we certainly wanna be informed from scripture and an elder's meeting a while back. You know, there was a brother who said, "Hey, why don't we open our Bible and see what it has to say about this?" That's what we wanna be doing. Same with our missions priorities. Next, I think we wanna define missions carefully. I think, at least, you know, where I am, people are very pro missions, but there's, it's not always well defined. So I think being biblical about it is helpful to map out. You know, what are our new testament examples? What are the things that Paul did? What are the things that his co-workers did? You know, and why would we do other things? You know, they weren't doing Bible translation, but they didn't need to, you know, but maybe there's things that they already had that we just can't take for granted. But I think it's helpful to map those out. Like Robert was saying, you know, we wanna think about existing relationships, people on the ground, elsewhere, we already know and trust. And then hopefully, you know, we can help our church know those individuals for partnership where at least to calibrate missions expectations here. You know, Robert mentioned there could be strategic things that characterize that guy has already endowed your church, that under God that perhaps could be well deployed in certain areas, as useful to consider that. I think in terms of current partnerships and funding levels, it's worthwhile thinking, how do you incentivize missionaries? So I, you know, think it's appropriate to fund more, you know, for an elder you're sending out, for maybe a team leader and a pioneer setting, you know. And unless that individual we're sending, it's gonna give you a senior pastor, a team leader somewhere, you know, how happy am I as an elder to some one of my dear members to work for these individuals. And I think it's helpful to just have some of those conversations on the front end. This is what we're gonna be thinking, like, once you finally get there, it's good to know that this is a question that will come up. And then like Robert was talking about, you know, we wanna think about what training and assessing aspiring workers will look like. So we only end up sending those that were really eager to totally get behind. That's good. Guys, I wanna just kind of just throw out some thoughts and let's get them chewing on them a bit. And I'm happy for you to disagree with me and push back on me. These are live questions that I'm talking about often and thinking about. So Robert, I hear often, I read often. It's everywhere. Romans 15, Paul's prioritization of places where the gospel has not gone. And I think my questions always lead to kind of the practical kind of so what? Like, what do we do in light of this? So let me just bring you inside my head a little bit and for the listeners as well. I look at 2 Corinthians, Paul's writing from Macedonia. It seems like he's taken some of his ministry time. It seems away from the immediately, immediate establishing of churches in a pioneer setting by raising funds amongst the Macedonians. I was in Acts this morning. I think it's Acts 20 where Paul is talking to the Ephesian elders saying that he's leaving. It mentions that Luke mentions that he's been there for three years. Jeffrey mentioned, and I think you mentioned earlier, the 2%, less than 2% is an unreached quote unquote, people group. We think about rough winner. And before that, Donald McGaverin and the Bridges of God talking about unreached peoples. There's just this wave after wave, after wave of literature and mobilization wording that seems to center around something unreached. And I'm always trying to hold an intention with what I'm seeing in the rest of New Testament. At the same time, I'm thinking about my own immediate context. So I had a wonderful conversation with a brother who's a missions pastor of a church in a very university-dominated city in the southeast, just massive amounts of university students. And he's able to kind of grab them between the ages of 18 to 22, get them trained up, send them off to training programs, and they're like going right into the unreached language group pioneer settings. And then I'm thinking about my own setting with Mac here in Louisville. And we've got men that are coming through MDivs, THM's, PhD's, they're graduating Southern in their low to mid-30s. It's getting harder to learn language, statistically at that point. They seem to be eminently qualified to train up theologians and pastors in other settings. So how do we deal with all of the mobilization language coming our way? And then the imminent realities of our own local church stewardship. What does Romans 15, Paul's prioritizing getting to Spain mean for my local church? Do I always have to go to unreached language groups as kind of the end strategic goal for our local church? Or is there more of like a macro way to think about these things? - Yeah, that's a great question. And I was looking at that passage again today. And all he says is it doesn't want to build on someone else's foundation. And if we make it where there is no church versus some very granulated approach to people groups, it's a very different answer that we give to the question. And one of the things I like to say is I'm really wary of anybody who says we have found the one way to do missions, but we have found the one way to plan churches because I see Paul doing different things and leaving behind, you know, Titus, why did he leave Titus behind to set things in order and establish leaders? Shouldn't he have gone on to the next town? And so I think there's a tension there. The way I think practically I would approach it is, you know, the lane, the four lanes are helpful. I think I would even take that fourth lane that's talked about the four lanes of missions and say, you know, there are those with little or no access that would be even a smaller group than the unreached people groups. And just, you know, we need to broadcast that reality to our people. And then trust that the Holy Spirit will guide some there. I think a good bit of the problem is people haven't even been made aware that, you know, this much is going to lanes one, two, and three and so very little of our intention effort is going to lane four. I'm pretty confident as that's communicated to our people more will be pulled in that direction. I am not comfortable saying that somehow that is more glorifying to God than any other mission work. I just don't see that in scripture. I think God's calling different people to different lanes. And we should urge them to think carefully about the reality that these people have little or no access to the gospel. And they will not be saved unless a human being goes and shares the gospel with them. But God calls people to all kinds of work and he may call someone to train a pastor in Delhi who ends up going to the mountains of the Caucasus to an unreached people. We just don't know. That's maybe not a satisfying answer. No, I think it's helpful. I definitely think it's helpful. It's one of those things, thinking about Jeffrey's advice about where do we have people? One of the things that I've heard often within our circle, so to speak, in our part of evangelicalism is we don't know many people who have planted churches amongst unreached language groups. And so even that beginning question of how do we start? If we're always starting with where are known relationships and where are the people that we know? We're not going to have many people in that unreached language category. Robert, your church that you're a pastor of has been privileged enough to send a couple out, at least one that I know of, to such a specific group. What are ways that art friendly churches? I think about Akmi, Jeffery, you mentioned Akmi, pillar network. How can we be thinking through how to work together towards those areas that have never had the gospel as far as we know, preaching their language or a church established there? You know, I think we may have to have conversations and relationships with people whose approach to missions is a little different from ours, but who have a lot of experience in that realm or that field and just learn, you know? But yeah, our churches, at least there's three couples I believe right now that are working in lane four. So it's pretty exciting, you know? And some of it is just the momentum of having a few relationships with lane four and then it just starts to really grow. But do you have a make a good point? If all your relationships are one, two, three, it's difficult. That's where you are and how do you initiate those? But we may have to run in some circles where we're not so comfortable to learn more about that. You know, Robert, a theological phrase that comes to mind to me is, there's lots of different ways to skin a cat. (laughs) Um, you know, so I love outreach to unreach language groups. I'm a poster child for that. It's got to start in the DNA of any church, including international churches. So the international church, that one of the international churches that I was a part of has now planted a church among an unreach people group. Very different method, you know, very different strategy, very different way to get there. But it was equally successful in terms of what other people would do in a lane four, you know, when we talk about, I don't know that everyone understands what lane four is. We might want to talk about that. That is, lane four is an unreach language group. - Yeah, so the four lanes that Robert is talking about, there was an article put out by Ninemarks, written by Brooks Buser, but oh, just over a year ago, talking about ways to think about different missions, focus areas. One of them being English-speaking churches and global cities, one of them being majority language churches around the world where the dominant language of the country is the language that a church would gather in. Another lane that he talks about is theological education, and then the fourth lane that he describes in that article is ministry to unreach language groups. So no Bible, no church, as far as we know ever. - But in my mind, I'm sure you guys would agree. Every church, every group, if say you're a seminary professor, everyone who's on the field, needs to be able to explain how their work will lead to a healthy indigenous church. So to me, that's what I mean when I say the DNA of this, needs to be infused everywhere. That we have an end goal. It's that healthy indigenous church in whatever setting they're in. And by the way, Ryan, as you know, we've had Scott Logston on this program. He has come up with a city index that I think is incredibly helpful for measuring not just places to go, but also what skills are involved in the person that you're sending. Really helpful. Ryan, you remember all the website addresses? I don't remember it. - Yeah, we can post it out there too. The link to that episode is like to the city's index and some of the infrastructure that's there. - I think the only thing I would add is I've benefited from relationships with like-minded pastors working in other countries. They may be a lot closer. They may have some of these groups you're talking about. Right down the road, or at least within a more reasonable commute than it is for Atlanta, Georgia. And so thinking about what kind of things benefit their ministry. And if I'm able to invest in what they're doing, that's able to move the meter a little bit faster for the bubble out effect for at least them to send people, who maybe look more similarly, who already have failing members over there. So I think in many ways, it's a big problem. How can you get people to these far corners? And like Robert's saying, I'm kind of ill-equipped to do this on my own. And this is why I'm so grateful for brothers who are working well in far places of the globe. And for me to know how to better help them or send them people that are going to move the meter in their church, then that's useful for me to know. - Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I've thought about this question a lot, just from my role at reaching teaching as folks are coming to me with different motivations and different desires, all motivated by the glory of God. But different strategic focuses at a local church level, they hear some type of language about priority and then their conscience starts to get pushed in ways that I don't think the Lord intended in Romans 15 to push our consciences necessarily with what Paul is communicating to the church there. And you're worried about binding people's current. - Yeah, I think we have to be careful. I think Robert's right. I think if we look at our ministry, especially as we're preaching through specific texts in the Bible about the gospel going to the ends of the earth and not applying it and maybe asking the question would some of you consider crossing some of the most extreme boundaries and hurdles possible to take the gospel where it's never gone before? I think that's a missed opportunity. And I think we need to do that. But I think about the ministry of organizations like Good Churches that's doing exceptional work in a part in the world, which very hard for us to get to unreached language groups in light of Jeffrey's comment about finding national partners. Good Churches has done a great job of that. I think we have to think about the globalizing world in which we are in right now. There's a lot of realities in which majority languages are taking out minority languages, not in a bad way. Even Brooks himself says, "Whenever a majority language kind of wipes out a minority language group from a missiological perspective, the gospel is now accessible. At least the Bible is being translated, has been translated into that language." But ethno-log, I think that's coming from S.I.L. or another organization has been really helpful in understanding the vitality of languages so that we're not making bad strategic decisions in that we're spending resources, people, finances, time to get to a language that the experts are saying won't even exist in eight to 10 years. And I'm particularly worried about the binding of conscience at the local church level. So I don't want Jeffrey's conscience getting bound every time someone says something, like if you're not doing unreached language group as a local church, you're disobeying the great commission. I'm like, I actually don't think that's what we're, what we're trying to get at. And that's why I want to be careful with our language as it relates to these things. - Well, this is where I think it'd be useful, like to, you know, where do we see the Apostle Paul doing unreached language group work? And I think to the degree that we don't or we can barely find any like threads of examples then we don't want to use that to bind someone's conscience. But, you know, to the degree that our world is bigger than his was, you know, we don't have the Roman Empire unifying everything where culture and language looks an awful lot different today than I think we ought to deal with that. But I think to go that step and bind the conscience is, I think the biblical grounding is less secure. - Yeah, and I think to do credit to, I don't say this often. So we might not want to clip this for posterity's sake. To give credit to what McGavern was trying to do in 1955 with the bridges of God, there I said it. He was criticizing, I think rightly so, a mission station approach that had evolved in the previous decades that was very dominant on the building of buildings and infrastructure physically at the judgment of evangelism to people who hadn't yet heard the gospel. And I think that's one of the things that motivated him to provide a corrective. Now I think he over corrected in what he was doing. But I do think there was an assessment of, we're building these massive infrastructures, compounds with little evangelism. And yet there's these entire groups of people that don't have access to the gospel and we should get it to them. And I think we should give credit to him for that. - I think it was an important, corrective. - I'm misunderstanding because of the English language translation of ethnea as nation, that that meant nation state. And it's obvious, I mean, it's understandable why people would think, oh, that means nation states. No, it doesn't mean nation states. It's a smaller grouping than that. The caution, and I'm not, I don't think I'm disagreeing with you brother, but the caution I would offer is, I think it, we might be tempted to say, since we're not binding consciences, what I'm doing is fulfilling the great commission, which I think is 100% true. It would not be true that it's reaching the people with the least access to the gospel. - I agree with you on that. - So you just have to kind of hold both of those things in tension. - Absolutely. - Yeah, and I think in our world today, it's very hard for us to hold things in tension. We end up, I don't hold this extreme there for I'm pushed to this extreme. And I'm like, I'm just really trying to both end this conversation. - Yes, yeah. - Yeah, I think it was an important, corrective, right? In 1973, at Lasson, it was McGavern, I guess, Brian, you know more about this history. - Winters, Winters said-- - I mean, it was Garrison, you know, McGavern Garrison, and Winters at in Lasson, we're making the same kind of point that we want to move away from nation state and think about what that word means. And it's Michael Debuss, who's done some really good work on this, where it can mean all kinds of things. It can mean family, it can mean clan, it can mean a people group, it can mean a language group, biblically, when you look at biblical texts. So it's important to understand, again, that theological term, there's lots of different ways that I'm just going to care. - I love that theological term smack. - Brian, let me offer one potential way forward here, I think. And I made me wrong about this. But my experience has been that, for those of us who work in churches in the West, or established brick and mortar churches, who've never done laying for zero to one work, those guys are a little weird to us, and we don't really know how to relate to them. And we often hold them at arms linked, and they hold us at arms linked. I think we got overcome that and realized, in a zero to one situation, the work takes a long time, it's really different. It's not a church transplant, you don't have staff, you're like trying to scratch out a few believers, disciple them and train them. And that feels really different than the average pastor's day to day job. And so somehow getting, you know, those groups, more in conversation, in a trust, a trustful conversation, I think would really help. - Yeah, amen Robert. Some of, I call them my most dangerous friend in missions. His name's Tim Watley, Mac and I interviewed him several years ago, dropped out of a helicopter into a people group and into a language group in Indonesia, and thought he was giving up his life in that moment. And now there's a thriving church amongst the Moe, very similar to what Brad, sorry, what Brad and his wife did, and then what Brooks and Nina did as well. They're just, it's a unique, and I love these are some of my closest friends. They're just unique. What you said, the people that take the zero to one and go there, they're very unique. And some of them are with our Tim, and if you're listening to this, I love you, even though you're very unique, especially because you're unique. I, one of the things that we've done, Brooks and I talked about this two years ago, is we got into a room where like, how do we, how do we move the needle amongst our section of evangelicalism, the Reaching Teaching tends to run in. And we came up with this thing called the William Carey Project. If people go to our social media feed, they'll see it right now. We highlighted 10 Unreach Language groups. We're asking churches that we associate with together to like, let's have conversation about like the mat bad people in northern Indonesia who don't have the gospel. And what if like, some of us work together and get a team there to bring them the gospel? Wouldn't that be amazing? At the same time, we're also kind of highlighting places like Tokyo and others. We don't want those two things to be at odds with each other. And I think then you add the layer of the work that we can talk about in places like Erbil publicly and Dubai publicly. And we've got our friends in these international crossroads cities that are planting healthy churches that are bearing fruit amongst economic migrants and forced migrants. That's where I say I don't want to bind conscience necessarily on an elder. But I don't want to do it at the extreme of discounting all the other really good work that needs to happen in those places that don't have it. So Robert, your corrective was helpful. Yeah, that's really why I brought you on is just to help me solve within my own mind some of these questions. So Robert, how can our churches responsibly ensure we're working with agencies and local churches on the ground as we mark and make strategic progress towards our goals? Because there's thousands of miles that separate us from our missionaries. And if all we're doing is depending on our missionaries for their updates, it may be insufficient. I think it's defining the partnership well. And something I've learned is that a relationship is really nothing more and nothing less than conversations over time. So building a relationship with the agency and the field partners, where you define expectations, I think it's really helpful to have a written MOU memo of understanding, here's what we expect, here's what you're working towards, here's what you can expect from us. And then I think the biggest challenge, honestly, is delegating oversight. And that needs to be really clear, is those sending church still have oversight, elder oversight of this team, or these people, or is that delegated now to an agency? A number of problems come in with that. I think it just has to be clarified up front. And that's part of the writing that we have to do in our day and age, or just figuring out how do we communicate that in an MOU? I think that helps a lot. Visiting going on site and actually being there to learn, not to show people how to do it, but to learn from the folks that we're sending, I think there's nothing that is more helpful than go, spend a week, just shadow them, encourage them, understand what they're going through. But I mean, that sounds really, it's, I don't think it's complicated, but it is hard to maintain communication and conversations and keep like checking, are we understanding each other? How are we doing? Where could we do better? That kind of thing. That's good. So Jeffrey, in light of that, let's say there's these updates that are coming back and let's say using an extreme example, we find out that the strategic priority that we were working towards as a local church and supporting, let's say it's an unreached language group. Let's say something happens. And our missionaries can't access that because of maybe a political hurdle, economic hurdle, or maybe the language is inviable anymore. How do we help our churches, our congregations deal with those changes in our strategic priorities? - I think if the strategic priority was found to be faithful from the beginning, and God has sovereignly engineered circumstances to hinder that coming about. I think you can live with that. You may make adjustments over time to sort of recalibrate to what the target was. Maybe it'll have to be in any setting. But I think in the first instance, the elders in the congregation wanted to care well for that individual, for that family who was sent out. It may not be immediately obvious, I think Nestero has to know what to do. What are the possible partnerships, church options, et cetera that exist in the variety of places where they can now land? Are any of them super interesting to pursue? Or is there a similar enough strategy that can be pivoted to elsewhere? I think it's worth all exploring those, being patient, recognizing that God is an individual. - So Mac, I'm gonna ask you this, and then Robert and Jeff, where you guys can chime in. So think about the aspiring missionary who has their own desires. Maybe they're good desires. - Yeah, yeah, of course. - They're conversing with their elders, and they find out that their elders have certain priorities that might be different than their own. Can you just give words of counsel to that aspiring missionary? - Well, praise God that the elders have thought about it. Number one, because a lot of times elders are just reactive. You know, someone says I wanna be a missionary and here's where I wanna go, and they say, oh, cool, you know, we'll help. I think number one recognizes that if your elders have thought about priorities and missions that your church is a step ahead, so that's first and foremost. But secondly, I'd say it requires a great deal of humility. And so your posture isn't to tell the elders what you're gonna go do, but rather listen to the elders of what their priorities are. So I start with a position of humility. I'd certainly be open to what they're thinking through, and maybe it's not a good fit, maybe you need to wait. Maybe you need to hear no. So those are the kind of things that I think kind of, kind of, sociological one-on-one things that we wanna see happen in church-centered missions. - Robert? - Yeah, I think he answered in very much the same way I would. I do think there may be a situation where the elders could learn as well from this particular candidate, and I'd wanna focus in on what are the real issues here, are they, is it, it's not church-centered, they're not doing gospel proclamation, they don't wanna go a long term. And so teasing out what is the real reason here? Where's the disagreement? And if we can move beyond that, that's great. But when you can't, maybe it's just our church supports workers in a particular area of Central Asia, and they wanna go to Indonesia. Yeah, I think that just put it on hold and pray and humbly wait upon the Lord and see what happens. Yeah, I know a situation where that's been the case, and the workers ended up being directed to the place where the church has people, and it's worked really, really well. And I know cases where they've waited and ended up in Indonesia. Oh, yeah, just don't be impatient. - Right. - Just wait upon the Lord, Jeffrey. - I think just giving our missions portfolio, I mean, I'd be willing to have this conversation with this individual, and you know, if they're willing to work really hard to find a really good landing place, maybe, for example, in the country that they have just had their heart set upon, and they can find the like-minded team in a really great church, or folks from our networks moving that direction, all of a sudden, you know, maybe my mind sort of changes on this. But on the other hand, like these brothers are saying, I think humility on their part is really important, no matter where the Lord leads. I've even talked to some who were in our pipeline, who wanted to go somewhere where I wasn't comfortable sending them, not that the place didn't need good workers, but I thought they were not quite ready to go to that place with the current setup. And I felt like maybe a compromised solution could have been, why don't, what if you were to go where there's someone who's doing similar type of work, but in a different country, you kind of go train with them for two, three years, and if you are really, you know, well-skilled by the end of this, then we might be able to have a conversation with you going to this original destination, or maybe you really like, you know, this place you've pivoted to. So I think I'm happy to sort of work with them, but nevertheless, kind of hold the line that, there's certain boundaries that we don't want to across. - Yeah, that sounds wise. - Let me ask the question for both of you to warnings that you might give that any practical advice for those who seek to lead the congregation towards strategic priorities. - Yeah, it's not really a warning, maybe it's just a caution that, you know, we throw around that word strategic with a lot of, you know, sometimes carelessly, and just really trying to understand, is this something that the church and the elders, that you've thought through carefully, the problem you're trying to solve, what is this challenge that strategically we're organizing to address by God's grace with his help, or we're just reacting to the latest thing, and, you know, some of our friends are doing this. I don't think mission strategy is immune to that kind of thing, where, you know, this is interesting, it's new, it's different, let's try it. So I think the caution, when we just be careful, think it through well, talk with others, be wise to ask the council of others, like Jeffrey just listening to him, I know if I have a question, I'll come and ask him, he sounds like he's figured out a lot of things. So don't operate in that. - I've been to one college where I worked so far. - Well, we'll get each other on speed dial, and you never know what could happen, right? The other thing I would say is, this phrase has been very helpful to me. We need a relaxed sense of urgency about this. And, you know, people get real wound up and urgent, but not in a relaxed sort of way, trusting that God is still sovereign. And so sometimes I'm more relaxed, sometimes I'm more urgent, but I think a relaxed urgency about prioritizing any changes that are coming could be a helpful way to think about it. - Hmm, that's good. - Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good advice. I mean, I think in many ways, strategic priorities can be pretty abstract, but really there are some ways to road when the budget changes or when you send real beloved members. And so I think my advice would be to go really slow in sending, you know, like this relaxed urgency, because once you send, you know, you should care well for those who you send and not quickly require of them new changes. But also understand your opportunity to disciple best is when you still have those individuals with you. So to the degree that you send too quickly, you maybe, you know, have lost a little bit of that opportunity. And then I would encourage to have the folks during the type of work you want them to be doing. You know, from relationships made with partners or with folks that you want to set before them, this is kind of what I'm hoping you're going to be doing once you get there. Maybe that's from friends who come into town who they're able to spend time with, or maybe going to visit them. So I think there's some of the things that I would want to be thinking about. It's good. So in this moment of time here in 2025, we're having a lot of discussions about being church centered in our mission strategies. So what ways can we think about being church centered in our mission strategies and keep the focus on the church? This, in some ways, we're saying, this is the way things have been done for millennia. But at the same time, in today's world, it feels like some of this literature is coming up with ideas that haven't been written in a few decades. How do we help keep the local church at the center of our strategies? We'll start with Robert. - Yeah, I mean, I think a good bit of it is always the communication. And just making that central and all communication, being the kind of church that will use the DNA phrase, I like that, the kind of church that has God's mission, it's hard for the nations as part of the DNA. So the healthy churches that wanna do church centered missions, it's all of the same, it's the sending, it's the goal. So the more we can do to have healthy churches, and actually probably what we would wanna say though, it's a little cumbersome to get off the tongue is healthy church centered missions. And so we want healthy churches here. And in my mind, a church that has no heart for the nations isn't a healthy church. So I think when we have healthy churches here, and we focus on that, and our churches are sending, and we're talking about it, praying about it, celebrating the healthy churches that are being planted around the world. It's not complicated, it just takes time with communicating again and again and again. What are we celebrating? We're celebrating, healthy church was planted in this place where there was not a church before. Things like that that become part of the celebration of our church helped too. - It's good, Jeffrey. - You know, we want members to know what the church is, to love the church. For that to be pretty ubiquitous in the congregation, so they can expect that to be central to the work somewhere else overseas. And Aaron and Harshaet's new book that came out, I guess, number of months ago, Aaron interviews a brother that we sent a few years back, asking you know, why did you, that's one, prioritizing missions of the church. He and he asked him, you know, why, why did you want to do this, you know, move your family overseas? You've got a career of what was going on in your head. And he didn't say it was, you know, a love for ex people group or this part of the world, but through corporate worship, he came to really love the church. And he thought, this is a good thing to give his life to, even if it's really far away. I think, so we wanted to be central and our church, you know, the sending church, we wanted to be central, wherever the destination is, that church. I think it's good to have conversations with the field church, you know, team, how do we set everything up for success if this member comes your way? I was talking to one brother in Africa, just asking how many folks, you know, call you, saying, hey, we're going to send someone to your, you know, neighborhood, your city. And we think this guy's qualified to be a missionary. And it's like not that often, you know, that they get calls. And I said, well, what would you, you know, encourage? And he's like, well, what if, there's just, you never know if a relationship's going to work, if the wife's going to thrive, if the kids are going to do well. But if there's low pressure, you know, what if you had a six to 12 month trial run, where let's just see, you know, is this a good fit? And no pressure, we can always pivot if it doesn't. But I think managing expectations, I think it can be easy to, a little bit overspiritualized, you know, some of this weed, the task is urgent. We need to get people over there. It can be any number of reasons why this is not the best fit right now. And it is okay to pivot. But to be clear, you know, what is the church, what is the team over their need? Some folks need, need people who can come and teach, train in turns. Some just need people who can share the gospel really clearly and preach well. I think it's also helpful to really clearly distinguish what the missionary is going to do as part of their job as differentiated from being a member of the church over there. I think it can be, you just don't want to conflate those where you should be doing. What's the role of their team and team leader in all this, you know, what's the weekly schedule going to look like? What's discipling at the church going to look like, even while learning a new language, doing lots of evangelism and discipling and new converts. But I think really fundamental, you know, at the bottom of a lot of this is being a really mature member here, thinking through things like church-centered evangelism and excelling at those types of things before we think about, hey, we may be getting close to go. - Just good, Mac? - Yeah, just to pick up a bunch of everything, the most important thing that you can have in a church-centered missionary is that he comes from a healthy church-centered church that he's seen in an operation. And the kids just read a book and do the stuff. I say that all the time, but we've got to teach our people well so that we send people that understand what a healthy church is. I want to see more, I want to see more missionaries committed to church than a strategy. I want them to understand what the church is and why it's the end goal of missions. So often it's easy to, you know, take hold of a strategy and forget what it means to be a part of what God has put in place as his strategy, which is the church. Which by the way, you know, again, Ryan is why I appreciate reaching and teaching. We need more agencies, yours and others who will say the church is the center, it's the ultimate agencies are pentaltimate, they're helpful. But if they try and take the place of the church, they've overstepped their biblical authority. So finally, in some ways, in our churches, we need to go beyond just being reactive. I was with a large church, a church we all respect and know and love, and I ask the question of the gathering of them about what are you doing to be strategic in developing missionaries that you will send, rather than just have someone come tell you I want to go somewhere. And that went around the room, it was some interns, some others, they all answered about the wonderful things that they were doing to missions and it was all great. But at the end, the pastor said nobody's answered the question, we've not been strategic and really identifying people that we want to send and I'm gonna do a better job on it. I think we need that happening too. That people will actually select, look into their congregation. This person is really good cross-cultural, they're having an incredible impact on their campus with a Chinese fellowship or something. And saying, we need to cultivate them and think about as they grow, how we can equip them to be a missionary, rather than just waiting. Waiting some kid comes back from cross, all pumped up and telling the older's what he's gonna go do. - Amen, amen. Love the pro-I hope that people do get pumped up about missions at cross, and I will be there. - Final question, brothers. Any particular books on mission strategy that you would recommend? - I personally like, you know, this is a bigger one. A cartridge novel's Paul the Missionary. We're gonna be reading it, discussing it in our mission's reading group tomorrow. There it is, we split it into two different, you know, chunks to read through. I just think before I set mission strategies, I want to be really clear on what the New Testament says. And I think salvation to the ends of the earth that series of the New Testament biblical theology. I think that's really useful as well. Looking at this, there it is from the perspective of the whole development of the plot line of scripture. Those are gonna be more higher level. What the Bible says, but I've appreciated those. - It's good. Robert, you keep plucking books off of your shell. So people might just want to zoom in on your bookshelf. - Yeah, I think Andy Johnson's book on missions is it's pretty nuts and boltsy, but very helpful things about, okay, we understand now what are our next steps. I think he does a good job of helping us understand what strategic partners should look like. This one probably isn't on anyone's list, but it's actually a very interesting book about zero to one by JD Payne, Apostolic Church Planning, the Apostolic with a small A. I think it's helpful if your church wants to get in that lane of lane four of what's it look like so we can learn as pastors. We don't have elders to send. We don't have 40 members to give. We're sending a team to scratch out a church by God's grace where there is no, they're not even believers. It's a whole different scene and I think his book helps us think about that. Well, and I think, you know, here we go. Good stuff in there. It really is, it will help you think about how to prioritize missions in your church, even from a very basic pray about it in the pastoral prayers. It's super helpful. It's very tactical. Robert was holding up prioritizing missions in the church by Aaron Minikoff and Herschütz Singh. Mack? Yeah, I'd recommend, especially given that we're talking about church policy, actual mission policies matter written by Blaine Boyd, pastor of Denver Baptist Church and Denver, North Carolina. This is going, this is a chapter in our new book called Global Missions, a field guide for the church coming up by Crossway here from the Great Commission Council. And it's just policies, I mean, it sounds dull, but policies protect the church. It helps you say no if someone shouldn't go. It helps explain why you've chosen certain things. Five chapters, no one be affirmed by the congregation, strategic placement, faithful ministry, fruitful ministry and intentional end of service. And there's an appendix that goes with this, this very helpful sample guide of policies that you can put in place in your church. This is not out yet, but we do have these in booklet form. It's not out in the full book, but you can get it, download it for free. We're not, we're not selling it as a PDF file from messengerministries.com. That's great. If you're listening to this and your ears are tingling because you wanna talk more and more about mission strategy and perhaps something that one of these brothers has mentioned, makes you wanna dive in and have a strategic discussion with them. I know they're open to having those conversations with you. You can find them on their respective church's website. Mac is at Messenger Ministry, He's Great Commission Council as well. I know he'd be willing to speak with you. Or you can reach out to me at
[email protected], specifically if you're looking with intention on who to partner with in some of these areas that you might not have partners. Happy to make connections and pass your name along. That's it for this episode. Friends, thank you so much for your time. For more articles, books and podcasts, please visit 9Marx.org.
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