Category: Missions & Evangelism

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Is The Commission Still Great?

By Steve Richardson (summary by Jeffrey Bush)

  • It’s often thought Jesus gave the Great Commission at the end of His life, almost like
    an afterthought right before He left. This is not the case. The Great Commission was
    the plan of God before Jesus was born in a manger.
  • Many Christians are not sure how crucial the Great Commission really is.
  • Reaching the nations is not just one of the ways to please God.
  • The Great Commission is the central of God’s message, and the primary
    responsibility of His church.
  • You’re not responsible to finish the Great Commission, but you are responsible to be
    faithful to the Great Commission.
  • Drifting from missions is a great threat to both the Christian individual and the
    church.
  • A difficulty is when missionaries start churches in other countries without teaching
    them missionary DNA. In other words, they teach how to be a witness in their
    community, but not the need for sending missionaries.
  • The church is not short on missionaries because they are too expensive, but
    because we have not given missions proper priority in our decision-making and
    finances.
  • If we stop sending missionaries, we become disconnected from the work.
  • We will not all be missionaries, but we should all have a missions mindset.
  • There’s a healthy tension we should feel to get the Gospel to the nations. If you do
    not feel the tension, consider whether or not you’ve lost the vision for your
    community and the nations.
  • Discipleship is a process, not an event.
  • Every pastor and staff member should take an international missions trip at least
    every other year. Your congregation is not the field. The field is the world. Your
    congregating contains a force given by God to help reach the world.
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Before You Go

By Emily Bennet (summary by Jeffrey Bush)

  • Since we don’t hear God’s audible voice, how can we know or decide on God’s
    leading in our lives? When the Bible, your internal desires, external circumstances,
    and church’s affirmation all align, then it is a great indication to take the next step of
    faith in obedience.
  • Seek counsel from your local church when considering where you will serve.
  • What character traits should you seek to develop as you seek to serve as a
    missionary?
  • Though it is not easy to leave home or the familiar, remember that leaving is part of
    the Bible way.
  • Let Scripture be the loudest voice you listen to or hear. It is the only voice that is
    always truth and will never lead you astray.
  • Abiding in Jesus is what will sustain you.
  • Learning to let go is very important. When you release things you love, you can make
    room for other things God will teach you to love.
  • Remember, it is Jesus who asked you to go, so do not have a spirit of “do you know
    what I gave up for you” towards those to whom you minister.
  • Pray big prayers and expect for God to work.
  • Language is not a party trick you will use to impress people back home, it is the
    vehicle you will use to carry the saving message to others.
  • You will face suffering, but will it cause you to run to Christ or flee from the hard
    times?
  • You will walk through seasons of suffering, but you will not be alone.
  • Missions and motherhood. One of the greatest things in life is raising children. One
    of the hardest things in life is raising children.
  • Don’t let fear or “This has never been done” to stop you from involving your kids on
    the mission field.
  • Having a passion for the Lord and a plane ticket does not prepare you for the trials
    you will face on the mission field.
  • So many of the missionaries that leave the mission field do so because they were
    caught off guard by the difficulties of the field.
  • Good missionary training does not mean you will avoid all trials, but it does mean
    you prepare as best as possible and trust God with the rest.
  • The best way to reign in the madness is to focus on the truth.
  • You can detect if something is an idol by your world falling apart when that area is
    touched by adversity.
  • Loving the Lord drives serving the Lord.
  • The missionary life might look like dying to your preferences, but it is for the Lord and
    well worth it.
  • Let your choice for a place and people be out of your love for God.
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A Third of Us

By Marvin J. Newell (summary by Jeffrey Bush)

  • Unreached means they have no access to the gospel.
  • The three “no’s” of the unreached:
  1. No Bible
  2. No church
  3. No known believers
  • it could also be said as
  1. No believers
  2. No Bible
  3. No body of Christ.
  • According to Joshua Project, there are 17,468 people groups in the world. Of these,
    7,419 (41%) are unreached.
  • We have people around us that are unsaved, but we cannot classify them as
    unreached. People in America have some form of access to the gospel, whether they
    have believed or not. They may remain unrepentant, but they are not unreached.
  • The five different times that Jesus gave the great commission were sequential, but
    not synoptic. It was not the same account spoken about five times, they are five
    different occasions that Jesus said these words. He is stressing the importance of
    taking the gospel by repeating it over and over.
  • God is a missionary God. What does it mean to be sent on mission? The word
    mission has four components:
  1. As sender
  2. A person sent
  3. Those to whom one is sent
  4. An assignment
  • Have you thought about what Jesus did not say in the great commission? He did not
    tell them where they were to go, how far they were go, how long they were to go,
    why they were to go, nor the specifics of the message, rather He was informing them
    that they were being sent.
  • People believe the message because they believe the messenger. Make Christ your
    evident passion that others can detect in your life.
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The Cry of The World

By Oswald J. Smith (summary by Jeffrey Bush)

  • When Jesus left this world, He left us one job and one only – world evangelization.
    Everything else is of secondary importance.
  • It is only when the most important work of the church is given to everyone in the
    church that the church will indeed be a missionary church.
  • The only reason we are Christian is because they took it (the Gospel) to others. If you
    and I keep it for ourselves, it will die with us. God‘s plan is that we should proclaim it
    to those around us until at least all mankind will have heard it. What you keep spoils;
    what you sow bears fruit.
  • Why should everyone hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once? Why
    should anyone have two meals until everyone has had one meal? There should be an
    absolutely equal distribution.
  • Just to show how much greater the need is in the foreign field than at home, I am
    going to give some statistics. Do you realize that in Africa there are 56 missionaries
    for each million, and in South America there are 30 missionaries to 1 million. In
    Korea, there are only 20 to 1 million, and in Latin America there are 19. Then, when
    we turn to Japan, we find only 14 missionaries to 1 million people, and in all India
    and Pakistan only 9, while in Indo-China there are about 3. Now compare this, if you
    will, with the number of ministers in the United States. Will you believe me when I tell
    you that there are no less than 1,448 ministers of the gospel to each million in
    America? What a contrast! What a difference! Is it right that there should be so many
    in the United States and so few in the other countries of the world? No wonder we
    stress missions, and especially foreign missions.

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  • Ghandi’s grandson – Gandhi of India – said the other day in Los Angeles, “The
    missionaries taught us to read, but the communist gave us the books.”
  • Missionaries have become pastors of native churches instead of Pauline Evangelists.
    They should follow the example of Paul. They should keep the evangelization of the
    entire country constantly in mind, adopting the scriptural methods that would make
    this possible. The business, the one and only business of the foreign missionary, is to
    train native workers, and put responsibility on them. They should be appointed as
    evangelists or teachers according to their gifts and sent forth to evangelize their
    country. They should be ordained as pastors and elders, and placed in charge of
    churches. Each church should be self-governing, and like a hive, it should repeatedly
    swarm. Thus new churches would be constantly springing up and in a short time the
    entire country would be evangelized.
  • If a country is to be evangelized it must have Evangelists.
  • The reason so many missionaries are content to settle down as pastors is because
    they only see their own local work; whereas their vision should take in, not merely the
    village or town in which they labor, but the whole country. Their task is not only the
    evangelization of their community, but a nation.
  • The fact is, we have built “up” instead of “out.” Such has ever been the policy of
    Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism has made the same mistake. In organization,
    we have gone from laity and priest to pope, and in buildings, from homes and halls
    to cathedrals. God told us to build out, to evangelize, but, ignoring His plan, we have
    built up. And, so, today we are over-burdened with property and top-heavy with
    machinery and organization.
  • In the average meeting for prayer they center around the local church and the
    individual needs of the people. In fact, the whole prayer could be summed up in one
    petition: “Lord bless me and mine.” But when a church has caught a world-wide

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vision, the prayers of the people will be worldwide in scope. Petitions will be offered
for various missionaries, missionaries whose names have become familiar. Many
countries, still unevangelized will be included.

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Planting a Church Without Losing Your Soul: Book Review by Jeff Bush

By Tim Morey 

  • Spiritual competencies are as important, if not more, as other competencies.
  • You as the pastor are not meant to hold all of the church problems. If you try to do what only God can do, you will live anxious and exhausted. Be the Pastor and let God be God.
  • When Elijah was discouraged, God spoke to him about the physical: food, water, and sleep. The physical is connected to the spiritual.
  • Overeating and unhealthy eating is common for those in ministry, but it is not good.
  • Don’t wait until you break. Let God and others help you with your emotional needs.
  • Many church planters started a church, hoping for the story of someone else, but God might want to write your story differently.
  • God doesn’t always meet us in the way we want or expect, but He does always meet us how we need.
  • The number one problem of pastors is isolation.
  • The main thing you will give your congregation is the person you become – Dallas Willard 
  • Church planters become professionals at “winging it.” The problem is you cannot “wing” your spiritual life.
  • The church’s strengths and weaknesses mirror the pastors strengths and weaknesses.
  • Suffering contains the seeds for success.
  • Church planters often have a mixture of confidence and self-doubt. Humility is needed.
  • Suffering keeps me humble and aware of the things I do not know.
  • We fear suffering, but we should probably fear more the absence of suffering.
  • It seems in 2 Corinthians 12 that Paul’s greatest asset was his greatest weakness – and that very likely could be the case with each of us.
  • Are you able to embrace the difficulties as a gift from God? 
  • Without suffering, how could we develop empathy – helping people in an understanding way.
  • Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic.
  • According to a survey at Duke University, 43% of US churches run less than 50 people. Another 24% are between 50-100 people. 21% are between 100–200 people. 10% are between 250-1000 people. And 2% are 1000 or more.
  • A study from Harvard Institute for religion says the median size of a church in the US is 80 people. Only half of 1% of churches in the US are mega churches (2,000 plus people). 
  • We should focus more on making big Christians instead of trying to make big churches.
  • We must move from being superheroes to equippers.
  • If you as the pastor are doing the bulk of ministry, you are doing it wrong. Ephesians 4 teaches that the pastor is to equip others, not just do all the work.
  • Teaching others to do what you do means you don’t get to be the hero. 
  • Before we deal with difficult people, we must face the issues with the man in the mirror.
  • If you lose your family, you lose your ministry as well.
  • Do you want your kids to grow up loving church or hating church? Do you want your spouse to be thankful they married someone in the ministry, or regret it?
  • To succeed in church and fail in your family is to fail.
  • As a church planter, you will likely not have as much money as the people in your church, but you do have more power over your schedule than others do. You can use this to your strength to make sure you have time for your family.
  • Most church planters feel like they can’t get away, but a healthy church needs their pastor to be absent so they can learn to take care of areas. Your family and your church need you to get away.
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Perspectives on Missions Book Review by Jeff Bush

by Dr. Don Sisk

  • There are many enemies. If you do not believe it, consider this: there are more than 5 million fundamental Baptist Christians in America today. But these 5 million Christians have fewer than 5000 foreign missionaries., Which means it takes 1000 fundamental Baptist to go to get one missionary on the field. Last year, less than $75 million was given through all fundamental Baptist mission agencies for worldwide evangelization. This represent approximately $15 per fundamental Baptist per year for foreign missions. This is enough to convince anyone that to the average person, missions is not considered obligatory, but optional. Many show a token interest in worldwide evangelization, but only a few our whole heartedly involved. — page 21
  • When He directs people, He has a purpose for them. God prepares the fields before He directs the workers. — page 23
  • The Moravians had such a missionary zeal that 1 out of every 92 members of their congregations were serving God on a foreign mission field. It was not long before the Moravians in foreign countries, outnumbered the Moravians in Germany by 3 to 1. I do not know that there has ever been a more intensified effort on any group to get the gospel out around the world than this group. — page 25-26
  • I believe the missionary should plan his furlough around his work, instead of planning his work around his furlough. — page 39
  • In June (1990), BIMI will be 30 years old. I try to check our pulse regularly. I have a phobia of being a part of something that has lost its purpose. I have a fear of having a name that we live, but are dead (Revelation 3:1). A wise man once said, “Many Christian institutions are dead, but we can’t bury them because they are too heavily endowed.” — page 63
  • As I check our pulse, I must say: “Praise God, we’re alive! Let’s not go to sleep on the job. Let’s not rest on our past and become useless for the present and lose our opportunities for the future.” 
  • I have some visions for our 30th anniversary year:
        1. A gain of 30 missionary couples per year for the next 10 years. (Since every mission loses missionaries each year by death, retirement, etc., we must have at least 60 new missionaries each year.) This would give us 1200 active missionaries by the year 2000.
        2. Thirty new supporting churches for the home office each year. (Administrative cost increase each year. We must have help from churches to keep down the cost for the missionaries.)
        3. Thirty new fields opened in the next 10 years. (There are more opportunities now than at any time in the history of BIMI.)
        4. Thirty new churches established by our missionaries each year for the next 10 years.
  • We are alive! Will you allow us to help you? As your church thinks about missions, would you let us suggest some missionaries? Could we help you in your missionary conference? As you consider the mission field, would you consider BIMI as your mission? Pastor, would you recommend to your church BIMI for monthly support? — page 63-64
  • Someone has well said, “God accepts us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us as we are.” — page 67
  • How sad, but throughout Christian history, some have come to believe “If I said it, you should believe it.” No man should assume that, and none of us should give any man that kind of allegiance. Any man can make a mistake, and any man can be replaced. We are instruments. God changes instruments, but God does not change. He buries his workmen, but his work goes on. — page 78-79
  • The cry of a Mexican pastor, Brother Enoch, continues to ring in my ear as I remember hearing him say, “There is enough of the Bread of Life to feed the whole world. There’s enough of the Light of the World to enlighten every person who lives on the face of the earth. There’s enough of the Water of Life to quench the thirst of every thirsty soul in the whole world. But the great majority of the people of the world know nothing about the Bread of Life. They know nothing about the Light of the World. They know nothing about the Water of Life.” — page 138
  • Perhaps there are 200 Bible-believing, Gospel-preaching churches in this (Mexico City) city. There’s about 1 Christian worker for every 300,000 people. In contrast, there is about 1 for every 150 people in Chattanooga, Greenville, Dallas, Jacksonville, and Memphis. On we could go naming cities in America, where the Gospel has been preached. — page 139
  • I have a dream… that pastors from all over America can come here to the World Missions Center and, in modular courses, be trained in worldwide evangelization by pastors and mission personnel, who have experienced firsthand what missions is all about. — page 148
  • God never commands the impossible, and He has commanded us, “Go, ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). — page 148
  • We (BIMI) are not a fellowship, we are not a denomination, we have no authority over any church anywhere. It is not our job to keep everybody straight or even to determine who is right and who is wrong. It is our task to serve. To that purpose, we want to get in totally dictate ourselves. — page 152
  • Available! The laborers are in the Bible-believing, fundamental Baptist churches in our country. There are at least fifteen thousand fundamental Baptist churches in North America. However, there are fewer than ten thousand fundamental Baptist missionaries. Thousands of churches have never sent one missionary to the mission field. Thank God for good sending churches. However, this is not a task for a few, but for all. Every church should be sending forth missionaries. — page 170
  • I often say to people, “It is always too early to quit.” The great difference between winners and losers is not that winners never fail – they do. There will always be failures in any endeavor. The difference between winners and losers is that winners never quit. — page 174
  • Approximately 80% of the independent Baptist churches in America do not have a missions conference. That is, they do not have a time during the year that is set apart for the emphasis of worldwide evangelization. I am aware of the fact that we need not to emphasize world evangelization every Sunday; however, churches that are being used by God to make an impact in world missions set aside some time every year for missions is the main emphasis. — page 184
  • The problem is not with the harvest; the problem is a lack of laborers. After making that great statement, Jesus commanded his disciples, “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest” (verse 38). What if you and I would go before God daily, and pray to Him that He would send forth laborers into this great harvest field? — page 185
  • Someone has well said, “We should not pray unless we are willing to be the answer to God’s prayer.” — page 186
  • It was not until God allowed the persecution of the church to come that the fulfillment of Acts 1:8 began to be unveiled. — page 220
  • It would be impossible for anyone to read the Bible, and not realize that God is interested in the whole world. — page 229
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Peeking Through the 10/40 Window Book Review by Jeff Bush

By Johnny J. Esposito

  • Many of the countries in this window (10/40) are either officially closed or informally opposed to Christian ministry within their borders. Citizens have limited knowledge of the Gospel, minimal access to Bibles, and Christian materials, and extremely restricted opportunities to respond to and follow the Christian faith. 
  • Of course, the people who are lost in the 10/40 Window are not “more lost” than your neighbor or family member who does not know Christ. But, they are unreached in the sense that they have not had an opportunity to hear the Gospel. “The issue is not their lostness, but their access to the Gospel.” People can be unevangelized without being unreached. There are people in the United States who have not heard the Gospel by their choice. Most people living in the 10/40 Window could not learn about Jesus even if they wanted to! These are unreached people who do not have access to the Gospel!
  • One-third of the planet’s population, over two billion people, has never heard the gospel. And of that number, over 50,000 die daily, separated from God forever. As has been said, one definition of a missionary is someone who never gets used to the sound of pagan footsteps on their way to a Christless eternity. The sounds of those footsteps echo in their minds and haunt their waking dreams. One should not go driven by the need alone, but God often uses the need as a starting place to awaken us to Hs call. — The Missionary Call by David Sills
  • Jesus has not given us a commission to consider; He has given us a command to obey. That command involves sacrifice on all our parts. If we have this much access to the Gospel in our culture, and there is this much absence of the Gospel in other cultures, then surely God is leading many more of us (maybe the majority of us) to go to those cultures. If God calls us to stay in this culture, then surely He is leading us to live simply and give sacrificially so that as many people as possible can go. — Counter Culture by David Platt
  • The United States, with its 600,000 congregations or groups, is blessed with 1.5 million full-time Christian workers, or one full-time religious leader for every 182 people in the nation. What a difference this is from the rest of the world, where more than 2 billion people are still unreached with the Gospel. The unreached or “hidden peoples” have only one missionary working for every 78,000 people and there are still 1,240 distinct cultural groups in the world world without a single church among them to preach the Gospel. These are the masses for whom Christ wept and died. — Revolution in World Missions by K.P. Yohannan
  • It has been said that in India alone there are 500,000 villages without a Gospel witness. None! Not one. In China, Southeast Asia, and the many islands in the great Pacific we are unsure how many there are. In the country of Cambodia, where my wife and I are presently serving, it is said there are nearly 14,000 villages without a Gospel witness. A statement has been made that it would take a million workers to finish the task at hand in the 10/40 Window.
  • If the church in America isn’t giving and our church members aren’t going, the task will remain undone!
  • God has always used people to get His work done. Therefore, if this area (10/40 Window) of the world will be reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is going to be because men and women choose to leave the comforts and conveniences of home to deliver the message of Christ’s love.
  • There’s only one thing worse than being lost, and that is being lost and having no one trying to find you. – David Platt
  • Today, more than a billion people in the world live and die in desperate poverty. They attempt to survive on less than a dollar per day. Close to two billion others live on less than $2.00 per day. In other words, almost half of the world lives on less than two dollars per day. That is nearly half of the world struggling to find food, water, and shelter with the same amount of money that I spend on fries for lunch. — Radical by David Platt.
  • We are told that the average Cristian gives only 1.8 percent of his income to the church and the cause of Christ. Study after study has revealed that the richer we are the smaller the percentage of our income we give to the church, the mission of the church and to the poor.
  • Did you know?
          • If your income is $25,000 per year, you are wealthier than approximately 90 percent of the world’s population!
          • If you make $50,000 per year, you are wealthier than 99 percent of the world!
  • Does this shock you? Remember, of the 7 billion people on earth, almost half of them live on less than two dollars a day. If you don’t feel rich, it’s because you are comparing yourself to people who have more than you do – those living above even the 99th percentile of global wealth.