Let’s pray for God’s help as we come to His Word.
Gracious heavenly Father, we are mindful that You have called us together here and we are not interested in wasted religious activity, to merely sit and hear a sermon, or that I would preach a sermon, but we want that Your Spirit, working through the Word, would so convict us and encourage us and inspire us and build us up in our most holy faith. So do a mighty work now through Your Word and give us ears to hear. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Our text this morning comes from Acts chapter 14. I’d invite you to turn there in your Bibles to Acts chapter 14. I’ll be reading verses 19 through 28. Acts chapter 14, verses 19 through 28:
“But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. And they remained no little time with the disciples.”
I want in this sermon to try to answer one simple question. That is this – “What is the mission of missions? What is the mission of missions?” That may sound like a very simple question, and you would be very prepared to answer it, except when you think about in recent years, whether in mission literature or simply in wider church conversation, it’s not exactly clear in many people’s minds and for many churches what is meant by “mission,” “missionary,” or the newer term, “missional.” What really does it mean to be engaged in mission? For some people, they may only hear “pioneering evangelism” – sharing the Gospel maybe in the 10/40 window with those who have never heard and think of evangelism and moving in a place as quickly as possible that you can write home to your supporting church and say, “We had thousands of people come to know Christ!” and then you leave and go on to the next place. That’s not often how presbyterians do missions. There’s a saying – “We may be small but we are slow,” so that’s not our particular danger, often!
But you may have heard from people a very expansive view of mission. Is creation care mission work? What about teaching people to read and write? That’s a very good thing. Agricultural development? Medical care? Digging wells? Building orphanages? Developing the arts? These are all worthwhile endeavors. Refurbishing a park? Lowering unemployment? Feeding the poor? Or defending western civilization? Defeating the forces of secular progressivism? Would these things constitute the mission of the church? Ought we to say that is the mission of missions? Now you can perhaps tell by the rhetorical nature of those questions that I am going to present to you that that is not the mission of missions.
But let me hasten to add, then, a couple of clarifying points at the beginning of this message. Number one, in asking the question, “What is the mission of missions?” I am not answering the question, “What are all the good things that Christians might do in love of their neighbors and as salt and light in the world?” Some people hear that word “mission” and they think, “Well what are all the good things that Christians might do?” And second, I am not answering the question, “What are all the things that we might do together as Christians?” Not at all suggesting Christians should not be involved in politics or education or the arts of justice or healthcare or law or a thousand other areas. Galatians 6:10, “As we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to the household of faith.” I don’t want anyone to miss here the rest of this sermon and say, “What was that sermon about?” “Well, the pastor told us to stop doing good things for people.” That’s not the point of the sermon!
However, here’s the danger. As the old saying goes, if mission is everything, the danger is that mission becomes nothing. We cannot afford to be imprecise when we think about the mission of the church and the mission of missions. I’ll give you a new word that maybe you’ve not heard before. It comes from the business guru of a previous generation, Peter Drucker, maybe some of you have read his books – actually a lot of wisdom in those books. And I learned the word from him years ago that not only do we have priorities, but here’s his word, we also need “posteriorities.” Prior means your head, something that goes before. Your posterior comes behind, and something you don’t do. And here’s his point that always stuck with me. Anyone in life and in the church can have priorities. You can write down on a list, “I have ten priorities.” Well those aren’t priorities. That’s a wishlist. You don’t really have priorities until you have posteriorities. That is, until you have certain things you are not going to do, very good things, but you say, “In order to accomplish these things which come ahead, there are some things which come behind, which we won’t do.” Now that’s very hard. That’s hard in life – it’s not that the “yeses” are easy; it’s the “noes” that are hard. It’s hard in the church, it’s hard for denominations.
So when we think about this word “mission,” we need to be clear what we mean. Now you could think to yourself, I want you to come up with all of the verses in your English Bible that have the word “mission.” It’s a trick question because there are no verses that have the word “mission,” at least not in most of our English translations. But in another way, your Bible has the word “mission,” it’s just translated differently because that word “mission” comes from the Latin, “mittere,” which means “to be sent out.” At the end of the service, you’ll be dismissed, which is a sending out. The word “mission” is there in “dismiss.” “Mittere” corresponds to the Greek verb, “apostolane.” You can hear our English word, “apostle.” And that verb, “apostolane,” occurs 136 times in the New Testament – “sent out.”
The first sending – this is important – the first mission upon which all other mission is based is actually the sending of the Son from the Father. That’s the mission. That’s where the language of missions originated. The Father’s mission in sending the Son. So even though the word, “mission,” “missions,” “missionary” is not in your Bible, that word “apostolate,” “apostle,” “sent out” – that’s what the word “mission” means, “to be sent out” for a specific task. Mission possible. Oh, that would make a good title! Your mission should you choose to accept it!
When my kids were younger, sometimes they watched this cartoon, I don’t even think it’s on anymore, it was called “Secret Agent Oso,” and he was a little yellow bear named “Oso,” which is the Spanish word, I think, for “bear.” So assuming no Spanish speakers are watching this, he’s a bear, we’ll call him, “Bear.” But he had in each episode a mission. He had to find how many sides were in a triangle or what’s 3 + 5 or something. He was sent out with a specific task to accomplish.
When we talk about the mission of missions or what missionaries do, we are asking, “What is that thing that we are sent and that the church sends missionaries into the world to accomplish?” Now I don’t know how you use your language here, so I’m not trying to be the language police, but at least at Christ Covenant we try to be clear that while everyone is engaged in mission – in your giving, in your prayer, in your sending – not everyone is, strictly speaking, a missionary if we think of a “missionary,” to use that word, precisely as someone who is sent out, someone who moves from one place to another, usually across a culture, who is sent out, authorized, commissioned. Those persons, called by God, sent by the church to go and further the mission in particular where it is lesser known or has yet to be fully established. So that’s the question we are asking, “What is the mission of missions?”
And I believe that this text in Acts chapter 14 gives one of the best answers. You could go to the Great Commission – we’re all familiar with that – but this is a particularly practical and relevant answer to the question. Now why Acts 14? Well one, Acts, you may recall, is Luke’s second volume and he says this is the book of what Jesus continues to do and teach. The gospel of Luke is what Jesus did and taught. And now, through the disciples, the Spirit and the Word, this is what Jesus continues to do and teach. So we have here the inspired record – we think of it as the early history of the church, it is that, but it’s really the continuing history of what Jesus is doing in the world through the church. And we have good reason to think this passage in Acts 14 is a particularly good place to answer that question.
If you have your Bible there, just turn back quickly to Acts chapter 13. Here we have the church at Antioch, prompted by the Holy Spirit, setting apart Paul and Barnabas. So you can see the heading in the ESV before verse 1 – “Barnabas and Saul Sent Out.” And you see verse 2, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” So there’s a setting apart. “You are going to do something specific on behalf of this church.” And then verse 3, “Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and” – I’m arguing this is the language of a missionary, of mission – “and sent them off.” And this is very important.
This is not the first time that the Gospel is going to be preached to unbelievers in Acts, clearly not. It’s not the first Gospel work that Paul and Barnabas will do. But here, this is important, this is the first time we see a church intentionally sending out Christian workers with a mission to another location. You know Acts, you know initially the persecution comes and there they’re spread out. That saying from Martin Luther that Christians are like cow manure; if they all just huddle together for too long they start to stink, but if you spread them out they do a lot of good. So that’s what the persecution did to spread out the church!But this is the first time intentionally the church prays and, “We’re sending out Paul and Barnabas.”
So as the first official, intentional sending out, we are right to think that this is paradigmatic of what missionaries do and what missions is about. And then go to chapter 14 and look in verse 27. “When they arrived and gathered the church together” – so they’re coming back to Pisidia Antioch – “they declared all that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.” So they arrived and gathered the church. So 13, 14 we have this missionary journey; now they’re coming back to the church. So this is the missionary potluck – pot-providence! The missionary gathering of the meal and here are the missionaries. And they had a missions conference at Antioch and they said, “Alright, we want you to come and we’ve got a powerpoint,” and they’re talking about what happened. “You sent us out. We’re coming back to give you a report.” And so we’re wise to think that the sort of things that we are told in Acts 14 are the sorts of things that Paul and Barnabas reported to the church. They said, “We’re your missionaries, we’re carrying out the mission of the church, and here’s a picture of what we did.”
And once you see it, you won’t unsee it because you’re already doing these things and it’s so practical. We see in these verses in particular – go up to the previous paragraph, verses 21 through 24 you can think of as the three-legged stool of mission work. Now it’s not that every missionary does all three. They probably, in fact, focus on one of the three, but like the familiar imagery, you have a stool with three legs. You need all three for that stool to stay in place and be sturdy and steady. These are the three things that missionaries do. Some specializing in one or another, but this is the answer to the question, “What is the mission of missions?” What should your mission committee be supporting? What should you – now we have freedom in Christ as individuals to support all sorts of things. You may support your alma mater and school and all sorts of things, but when you think about accomplishing the mission of Christ, these are the sorts of things that we want to support. You can put them very helpfully in three categories – new converts, new communities, nurtured churches. Well you say, “That really fit nicely together!” Well I think it’s in the text. New converts, new communities, nurtured churches. And if that sounds good, I probably read it somewhere else first!
Look at verse 21. “When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples” – so there’s the new converts piece. We could call this evangelism and discipleship. I don’t think Paul put a sharp distinction. Sometimes we do – “I’m going to evangelize and then I’m going to disciple.” It was all the proclamation of the Gospel. It was teaching people the Word. And if you aren’t a Christian, it’s evangelism, as you grow as a Christian, it’s discipleship, but that’s what he’s doing here as he travels – preach the Gospel, new converts.
Go down to verse 23 – new communities. “And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.” So these are the new communities church planting. And then go up. Verse 22 is the one we sometimes don’t think about, but we see this on Paul’s missionary journeys. That word there, “strengthening.” This is what I call nurtured churches – strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith. New converts. New communities. Nurtured churches. That last one there in verse 22 – strengthening. So this is Paul going back to some of the places where there were Christians but he wants to ensure that these Christians are well-founded, well-established. They may need doctrinal help. They’re not, perhaps, yet self-assured and self-dependent and self-propagating. Maybe in our context we might think they need a seminary to help train pastors; they need good training. Maybe they need Bible translation. They need the church to be strengthened so that they then can carry on the work in their local community by themselves.
In a nutshell, those three things are the answer to the question, “What is the mission of missions?” To be sure, Christian missionaries may be more active in one aspect or another, but if the apostles are meant to be our models, and surely they ought to be because an apostle is literally a “sent out one,” then we have good reason to think that this is what our missionaries ought to be engaged in, what we ought to support with our mission dollars, and what we should pray for to that end. We can very easily think of it in those three categories – evangelism/discipleship, church planting, church strengthening. That’s what the church in Antioch sent mission-propelled Paul and Barnabas to do. Missionaries may aim at one component more than the other, but that’s what they’re doing.
And that ought to encapsulate our overall mission strategy. Think about it. The work of discipleship and church planting cannot take place unless there are non-believers being evangelized, coming to Christ. At the same time, we don’t just want to leave new converts on their own. They raised their hand, they said a prayer, they came to Christ, and then we go on to the next place. No, they must be grounded in the faith. They must be taught what it means to follow Christ lest they turn their backs on Him. And if we only focused on evangelism and discipleship without a vision for the centrality of the local church, then we are not being faithful to this pattern we see here in Acts.
Missionary work entails these three things, which means, on the one hand, we want to avoid the danger of making mission too small. There are some well-meaning Christians who can act like conversion is the only thing. Of course Jesus in the Great Commission did not say, “Go out and make decisions for Christ.” “Make disciples for Christ.” Some people put all their effort into getting to the field as quickly as possible, speaking to as many people as possible, and then leaving as soon as possible, just blitzing through, and this problematic missiology in some circles. They’ll report back and say, “We just planted 10,000 churches.” And you’ll say, “How is that possible?” And what they mean is they have three people meeting together in a dorm somewhere and somebody is leading an inductive Bible study and that person may not even be a Christian but he’s leading a study and they call all of these things churches. That’s not the mission that we see in the book of Acts. So there’s a danger that mission can be too small.
On the other hand, we want to avoid the danger of making our mission too broad. This may be more of the temptation in our circles. Some well-meaning Christians can act as if everything counts in mission. So mission is one. Everything is mission. Medical centers, great schools, better crop yields, all of which can be a wonderful expression of Christian love for our neighbors, and yet we have to be honest that it’s not what we see Paul and Barnabas sent out from their church to accomplish in the book of Acts. This mission creep happens, and if we’re honest, it can come as much from the right as from the left. I used to say to just sort of poke people in the eye a little bit, I would say, “If your church is focused” – it’s a very sort of Gen-X fifteen years ago way of putting it, I would say – “If your church is doing all the things that Oprah and Bono are already doing, then you’ve probably lost sight of the mission of the church.” Now if I want to poke people in the eye I say, “If your church is doing all the things that Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro want to be doing, then you’ve probably lost sight of the mission of the church.” Maybe good things, maybe worthwhile endeavors for different Christians with different vocations, but when we think about the church as the church, what Paul and Barnabas are doing, the central work to which they have been called is the verbal proclamation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Paul sees this as his identity. Romans 1 – he is set apart; he is called to be an apostle for the Gospel of God. And that’s why this summary here, as they return to the church in Acts 14:27, is constitutive of these three things.
In their books, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission – I’d commend it to you; it’s a little bit of an academic book but it’s readable, by Andreas Kstenberger and Peter O’Brien, they describe what it would look like if, “the apostolic model is to be followed by missionaries in the contemporary scene.” Here’s their summary, their Biblical theology of missions. They say missionaries would begin with the winning of converts but would not stop there. Here’s their quote – “Forming believers into mature, Christian congregations, providing theological and pastoral counsel against dangers arising from inside and outside churches, strengthening believers, both individually and corporately as they face suffering and persecution so that they will stand fast in the Lord all fall within the scope of what is involved in continuing the mission of the exalted Lord Jesus Christ.” To put it another way – What do missionaries do? They preach the Gospel to those who have not heard, they disciple corporately and individually new believers in the life and doctrine of a Christian, they establish these disciples into healthy churches with sound teaching and good leaders.
So let’s bring this to some points of application, or you could think of them as implication. If this is so, and I hope it’s not a hard thing to show – it’s right on the face of the text. Any of you can remember this. You can remember Acts 14:21,22, 23 – right there – evangelism/discipleship, church strengthening, church planting; it’s right there in black and white. This is what Paul and Barnabas did. If that is so, if that is the mission of missions, let me suggest three implications. Number one, those currently serving as missionaries ought to consider whether Paul’s priorities are their priorities. I have no doubt that the missionaries supported by this church can wholeheartedly answer, “Yes.” Ought to also be consideration for our mission agencies. Mission to the World in the PCA. Mission to North America in the PCA. You have the name “mission” – they ought to be thinking, “Are these the things that we are about under the banner of mission, like Paul and Barnabas, being sent from one place to the next with this threefold aim?”
Now for most missionaries, and likely all from this church, this is a simple reminder to keep doing what you’re doing, to be encouraged in the work that you are carrying out in whichever one of these three legs of the stool you are most focused on. But it does happen from time to time that mission agencies, mission organizations, missionaries themselves wander from their charge. I remember many years ago, it was before my previous church was in the PCA, we had a longtime missionary, he was a lovely human being, he was a medical doctor, he had a heart of compassion for people, he came and he preached at our church when he was back on home assignment, and it was very concerning to many of us. Though he was a sweet, compassionate man, we had no indication that he was carrying out any sort of missionary endeavor along the lines of Acts 14. And to our concern, the more we pressed him on the matter the more it was unclear whether he thought the lost people in his part of the world were actually lost and actually needed to repent and convert and believe in Christ and was aimed at establishing churches.
We went through a painful process. Our denomination was not very happy where we eventually said, “I don’t think we can support you in the work that you are doing.” It’s not that there is never a time or place that you enter into a country with – many countries, the hardest countries to go into, you can’t have “missionary” on your VISA. You go there to do some other kind of work and access into the country. You may set up a coffee shop. You may be there teaching English as a second language. But you have in your mind and in your heart what we’re doing, this is an avenue where we might speak to people of Jesus Christ, disciple them, and be given the opportunity to establish churches.
Here’s the second implication. If that first one is for missionaries, mission agencies, the second one is for churches. The second implication is this – We ought to aim with our missions budget to support missionaries who have for their goals those things we see in Acts 14. And I commend to you for your own personal giving, most of which I trust comes through the local church, but maybe you support other missionary endeavors and missionaries on your own, you ought to think of these three things. Yes, there is a place for Christians to be engaged in all sorts of good work or developmental programs or initiatives designed for human flourishing or civilizational advance. And yet as we think about what the church as the church is going to support in its budget, it ought to be these things that we find in Acts chapter 14.
In fact, we did this several years ago at Christ Covenant and we added a fourth category that we called “Diaconal Ministry” or “Mercy Ministry.” And I know you have that as well. And we don’t apologize for that; we’re glad to support those things. Part of our rubric was, as we support a crisis pregnancy center or hurricane relief, “Do these diaconal sorts of ministries have as their ultimate aim that they might speak to people about Jesus Christ and evangelize and make disciples?” That is, they may have as the front door this diaconal, service, mercy kind of ministry, but do they have as their ultimate aim these three things that we find in Acts chapter 14? It isn’t that we have our missions budget in exact amounts of those four categories, but it’s a helpful rubric when we, like you I’m sure, have many, many people asking for support. We can’t support all the good things that come our way, but to have in our mind, “Is this accomplishing the sort of work that Paul and Barnabas were sent out to do?” Evangelism/discipleship, church planting, church strengthening.
As I said at the very beginning, the “yeses” are easy; the “noes” are hard. We are finite creatures, we have finite time, finite resources, finite abilities. Your missions budget, like ours, is finite. So that means we must be thinking, “How can we support godly men and women, mature in their faith, likeminded in their theological convictions, who are being sent out towards these three great aims?” And once you have that, I encourage you, you probably do this already, keep two further questions in mind. “Where is the greatest need?” It isn’t that God means to restrict us to only places that have no certain percentage of Christians there. My good friend Mac Stiles who had served overseas in many different places says it’s not missions by mathematics where you say, “You can’t go there. There’s too many Christians.” But it is to remind us, this language of “unreached people groups” or “unreached language groups” or the most underserved places. And that may be in some settings a place in the north of England that hasn’t had a presbyterian church for 200 years. To think about where is there the greatest need. Where are they most in need of some help in order to get this work off the ground?
And then very practically you think as a church, as we do, “Where are there specific open doors or callings?” And you have to be okay with that. We have in our church, we’ve established a lot of partnerships in the UK. We have a lot of partnerships in southern Africa and a few others places. I’ve known other churches that are very locked in to Turkey. So you have connections through your people, through relationships, maybe countries that you come from, and that’s absolutely acceptable to say, “We can’t do everything equally well in every place, but we are going to think with this three-fold stool, these three legs – Where is the greatest need? Where do we have an open door and a heart among our people for this work?”
And here’s a final implication. I’d be remiss if we didn’t put this before you. You should consider, I should consider whether God is calling you to be engaged in this work should the church be willing to send you out. Of whatever age. Maybe this is your early retirement years. Maybe this makes no sense to your family and midcareer you feel a call of God to go to one of these places and do this sort of work. Most often, God begins stirring that call in young people as teenagers, as college students. There’s nothing particularly amazing about this sermon I assure you, but maybe the Spirit is as work in a way that someone will look back and say, “It was this missions week at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi where I first began to consider if this might be God’s call on my life.” Short-term mission trips are good for exposure and helping out partners. The Great Commission is not accomplished through short-term mission trips. We need people who are willing to go for years, and if the Lord allows, for a career. And you ought to consider that. Are you one of those?
It is a healthy sign in a church – and this has been true for ages – how do you know if a church, a movement, a denomination is going well, is healthy? Well there are certain things. They sing songs and like to sing and new music tends to come out of different periods of revivals and awakening. Good literature is produced. You think of the Puritans. The riches of devotion and theology. Men are sensing a call to Gospel ministry and men and women feel called to give their lives for the sake of the Gospel near and far. Could it be that God is calling you to that? Maybe you resonate with what Paul says in Romans 15 where he’s writing there to the Roman church and he says, “I want to come visit you, and I want to visit you so that I can go on to Spain because I haven’t been there yet.” And Paul knew his ambition was to go where the Gospel of Christ had not been named, where the need was greatest. Maybe you find that stirring in your heart. You love this place, you love your family, you love this country, but you find a stirring in your heart like Paul. “I have an ambition to go where Christ is not known or where the church is very small or needs help to be planted and established.”
Let me just finish by reminding you of what verse 22 says because this is the hard and necessary word. “Strengthening the souls, encouraging them to continue in the faith” – and here’s what Paul did as part of that strengthening – “and saying through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” One of the things he did, when they went around to these churches and strengthened the souls, just to remind them, “This isn’t going to be easy. I’m not calling you to a task that is going to be easily fulfilled, but it is one that the Spirit will be with you. Jesus Himself will be with you to the very end of the age. But we must enter the kingdom of heaven through tribulations.” A key aspect in discipleship and in missions is the awareness that we will suffer. Hopefully there are lots of common sense, common grace ways to try to be wise. And today we have more access to help and medical care and emergency services, and yet it is the realization that this will not be accomplished except through tribulation. Paul himself was threatened, attacked, stoned, dragged out of the city, left for dead. If the call of a Christian is a summons to carry the cross, how much more is the call to be a missionary, to bring Christ to those who have not heard?
In some ways, we have the task easier than Paul and Barnabas did – travel is easier. You know the story of the missionaries in the 19th century. They would pack their coffins with them. They didn’t know if they would ever return home. So travel is easier. Communication is easier. Medical care and hygiene are better. So there are ways in which it is easier, but there are also ways in which the work of a missionary today is even harder than what Paul and Barnabas did. That’s not casting any aspersions on their work of course, but today’s missionaries will often travel a greater cultural gap to bring the Gospel than Paul did. Paul didn’t have to learn a new language. He traveled within the borders of the Roman empire. Now that was still a long ways away and there were different kinds of people, but it was within the borders of the Roman empire. He ministered among those who shared something of the same educational system, political tradition – even though the religious history would have been different across the empire. All that to say, to send an American to Indonesia or Eastern Europe or West Africa is likely crossing a greater cultural gap than what the apostle Paul had to do.
This isn’t to compare missionary service from one age to the next to say who has it easier, who has it better. It is simply to remind us there will always be tribulations in the cause of missionary venture, which means we must be prepared to suffer if we go. And feel something of that suffering and sacrifice to support those who go. You don’t want to just think, “Wow, that’s a great call. I really feel bad for the people who might be called to that, but good on you. Glad you can go out and suffer.” But what is God calling us to do, most of whom will stay and send and mobilize? What does it mean how you raise your kids with the sort of spiritual foundation you give them? How we support our missionaries who come out from our churches – these men and women are servants, they are to be honored, but they are not superheroes. They have all the same struggles in marriages and with children that we have, and yet often they have them in another cultural context. Missionaries must first and foremost be people of the Word, just as we are, and they must be prepared to do the same ordinary, faithful thing for year after year.
Sometimes I think the missionary stories we pass on, they can serve us, but sometimes they don’t serve us well because it can sound sort of exciting. You get your machetes out and you’re going to go chop through the bush and you’re going to have people, cannibals chasing you down! I love the John Paton story too, and it’s going to be rough but it’s going to be an adventure! The cities of the world that are unreached have very few forests to machete through currently! It’s going to be figuring out public transportation and it’s going to be in the post-Christian West or it’s going to be in the Muslim world. It’s going to be a different kind of service that requires sacrifice but requires doing ordinary, boring, faithful, plodding things in another part of the world for a long time. “Do not despise the day of small things.” That’s what Zacharaiah said, the word from the Lord when they were putting the temple stone in place. “You will look up on that day” – it took a long time, a lot of years to put all those stones in place, but there’s a temple, so “Do not despise the day of small things.” You must announce and teach this good news. That is why we send, that’s why we go. “For how will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?”
Let’s pray.
Gracious heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. Would You call us to this great task, some, we trust very particularly, and for all of us in some way that we would support this great missionary endeavor. We ask for Jesus’ sake and in His name, amen.