What's the Answer?

Pastor Bob Wall – Fostoria Baptist Church – Fostoria, MI

“The answer to the challenge of reaching the world’s burgeoning population in our generation is….” It would be wonderful if there were just one clear, precise, indisputable answer to that statement. Experienced pastors and wise missiologists have debated this challenging responsibility given by God to each generation. I hesitate to weigh in on such a vital topic, but since this is “The Pastor’s Perspective,” I will offer mine. I want to be careful to not sound like the only one with “the answer,” but I do believe that the following thoughts will be an encouragement to those who share my concern for world evangelism.

At its very root, we would all agree that the answer to the challenge of reaching the world must be found in the local New Testament church. Andrew Murray wrote a helpful book entitled Key to the Missionary Problem and he addresses the problem as both personal and corporate. We can conclude that the key to the missionary problem also unlocks the door to the solution. Our Lord founded His church and also gave us His commission. This article will not be a theological treatise, but I would like to offer from my limited experience some practical suggestions that I believe will help us fulfill our Savior’s mandate to reach the world.

Missions Philosophy Must Be Implemented In The Local Church

Missions must be more than just another “program” of our churches. It must be the heartbeat…pumping life into each and every aspect of local church ministry. At the core of our missionary philosophy lies our commitment to reach the lost with the Gospel. Our passion for foreign mission fields does not compete with our responsibility to be soul-winners and church planters in our local communities.

Biblically, the pastor is God’s chosen leader for the church. As such, he must take the leadership in this area of world evangelism. He must emphasize missionary philosophy in his preaching and teaching. It is his responsibility to educate the congregation concerning the contemporary concerns of world evangelism in contrast to the needs of previous generations. He must help his people understand the concerns of missionaries by encouraging them to read and reply to missionary prayer letters. The congregation should also be encouraged to utilize email and even an occasional phone call to the missionary. As church members become more personally involved in the lives of missionaries, they will become more active prayer and financial supporters.

The children and youth ministries of our churches are also fertile gardens for missionary ministry. Great opportunities exist for encouraging the youth of our churches to consider God’s will in vocational missions or to faithfully “hold the ropes” for those who go. Parents need to be encouraged to biblically rear children with an understanding and a desire to serve the Lord in this way if God would call them to do so.

Prayer meetings should reveal our obedience to Matthew 9:38 and Luke 10:2, praying for God to call laborers from our church congregations into the harvest fields of the world.

Missions Must Become Personal
To The Believer

The world is truly getting smaller, and though international travel is expensive, it is less costly than ever before. It is one thing to see missionary presentations in our churches; it is another thing to visit the field for a few days and experience the reality of missionary life and ministry.

It is vital not just for the pastor’s knowledge but also for his heart that he broadens his understanding of missionary ministry by visiting a mission field. In the past 12 years, I have been privileged to visit 15 different countries, each time visiting as many missionaries as I possibly could. Some of these trips were designed for evangelism, some for developing relationships with our missionaries, while others were to preach missions conferences in established churches. I have been able to preach in a remote village in Uganda where there is no local church as well as in a church meeting covertly in China. I have made visits with dear Kenyan pastors in the bush, sitting in a mud hut listening to the salvation testimony of a dear believer. I have also watched faithful Japanese Christians patiently give the Gospel to those seeking Christ following the preaching service. I have participated in baptisms in Lake Victoria and in a child’s inflatable pool behind closed curtains and locked doors I have observed the hardness to the gospel in Europe and the sweet openness to that same gospel message in certain countries in Africa and South America. Each of these experiences has changed me and challenged me with the desperate need of our world for Jesus Christ.

On several of these trips it became obvious that God had ordained the timing of the visit to just come alongside the missionary and his wife for prayer, encouragement, and counseling in a time of great burden. Often the missionary’s wife is the loneliest individual on the field, and so as often as possible my wife travels with me on these trips. I do not go to “check out” what the missionary is doing but rather to gain an understanding of what God is doing in that place. I always come home with a greater burden, clearer understanding, and more intense passion for the mission field. My prayer life has been changed because of these trips as well. As I pray for the different missionaries I have visited, I see the faces of their people, I remember discussions that we had, and I pray with greater fervency as I attempt to bear their burdens with them.

Not only is it essential for the pastor and his wife to go to the mission field, but getting the members of our churches to go on missions trips will bear much fruit as well. Whether it is a teen mission trip emphasizing child or youth evangelism or an adult work project or a trip for young couples, God has used these experiences to touch hearts and reveal His direction for a life. A trip that is thoughtfully prepared and carefully administrated will have an impact that no video or power point presentation could ever have. A camera cannot capture the full impact of spending time in the missionary’s environment, seeing his struggles and feeling his burdens. God has used these trips in phenomenal ways. If we neglect these opportunities, we do so at great cost to the cause of Christ.

I am certain that there are those who may argue that mission trips are a frivolous use of our limited resources when it is taking so long for missionaries to raise their needed support. Our experience has been that when our people return from mission trips, if they have not been called of the Lord to go to the field, they become the strongest supporters of our mission program.

For the past twelve years, God has been doing a work in the body of believers at Fostoria Baptist Church for which only He can receive the credit. We have increased the number of missionaries that we support from 21 to 106 families. Our faith promise giving has grown from $9,500 a year to commitments of $240,000 for this year. More importantly, we have sent two of our church families to the mission field; we have another beginning deputation to go to Senegal. We also have two families that surrendered their lives to the Lord in our last missions conference and are presently in Bible college preparing for the Lord’s service. I know that other churches may be doing much more, and for that we are thankful, but if each local church had the missionary mandate as their heartbeat, producing a passion to send their own families to the world, this may be at least a part of the answer to the question, “How can we reach this world in our generation?”

Often I have wondered why God did not direct my life to the mission field. But since that has not been the case, I must do all I can with what influence God has given me to be a part of the solution.