74 (part 1). A Missionary Church

With Jesus in their lives people faraway will have hope, dignity and purpose

See The Lessons

In Your Bible Read This
Acts 11, 19-30; Acts 20, 1-6

Here Is Your Memory Verse
While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,
"Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which
I have called them to. Acts 13, 2.

Afterwards Talk About This
If you have a vision from God, less people will perish.
What vision for the lost is there among you ?

Something To Do Before Next Time
Form a team appoint a leader, and quickly organise for yourselves
an event which will make use of the all the gifts and talents among you.
Pray, plan and go out and do it.

Written Diploma Work
Imagine yourself to be a pastor with a church of 80 people and you want
to see world ministry beginning. Write your goals in a detailed paragraph for each one.

Meditate Word By Word On This Verse
Acts 8, 4-8

Spend a Minute to Change the World

Pray For Pakistan - Nearly 145,000,000 Asian people

97% Muslim, fundamentalist bias, huge social, economic problems

Persecution of 2-3% Christians, many unreached peoples

 

Be sure to teach this lesson to others.

Always pray and prepare well adding your own verses and stories to bring it to life.

Missionary enterprise is best born in the local church, supported by an envisioned congregation and plants new churches wherever it goes. Your local church can be a world changing church with a world class ministry, and here is how.

What Is The Church?
Timothy Chen is the pastor in lesson 1 who taught 15 men every 2 months and together they saw over 100,000 new believers. He says that his churches in China are, "reservoirs of people in preparation for the Great Commission."

What Do You Need To Do To Launch The Church Into World Ministry?

A Church Needs Proverbs 29.18 Vision
because without a vision the people perish. Above all the senior leader needs to pick up God’s heart for a world of different people, and go see for himself, every year. What impresses him or her will impact the whole church.

You Need Leadership And Ownership
Recognise those who God is raising up for world ministry in prayer, giving or going. Give them responsibility and release them from all local work. That’s what "sent away" means in Acts 13.1-3.

You Need Wisdom For World Ministry
Pray like Paul in Col. 1.9 for ongoing ‘sunesis’ which means the ability to put pieces together like a puzzle with Godly understanding and knowledge.

Partnership Is Wisdom
Involving the whole body on one hand, and working in partnership with other churches and missions is good ‘sunesis,’ because in unity the blessing is commanded. No one church can change the world or even an unreached people by itself.

You Need To Set Goals With Dates.

Goals release energy and set direction. If you aim at nothing you will hit it every time, and decisions without dates are surely delayed. You need goals for ~

1. Prayer cover for missions, say a special hour or so once a week.
2. Pastoral contact and care for vulnerable frontline missions workers.
3. Awareness training for the church, say an information slot every Sunday.
4. Giving and the creating of funds, with definite targets. The faith offering has proven very effective. This is where each member pledges a certain gift for missions to be paid over the following year as God provides in answer to their prayers, over and above their normal income. Business and missions have always been two peas in the same pod.
5. Short-term mission trips, for visiting other cultures each year
6. Missionary sending, say at least a tithe, 1% of the church might go. See the next lesson.

You Need A Spirit Led Strategy

In 1 Cor. 3.10, Paul said he is a Master Builder, a "sophos architekton," that is a wise architect or planner who gets wisdom from God through the Word and the Spirit. What was that wisdom?

Paul’s Strategy For Mission
Paul’s missionary strategy was to go down the main roads to the main idolatrous cities, discover where and amongst which people group God was moving and work with them till they were saved, and mature and ministering themselves. His model foundation for missions had only two major parts ~

World Minded Mother Churches
In the Bible the only differences we see between churches are geographical ones like the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Philippi and Ephesus, who gave birth to and supported local and missions activities to spread the gospel. Antioch was Paul’s mother church. He was sent out from there and he returned there for much of his missionary career.

Apostolic Teams
"Apostolic," means sent by God not necessarily led by an apostle as even Paul was not recognised as such at this time. When God called him to go on his mission he formed a small apostolic team of three with its own clear strategy for the unreached, Acts 13.1. This was his practice from then on, and in Acts 20.4 men from different churches are working together in his mission.

Twins Of Church And Mission

The church was the church, and the mission was the mission, right from the beginning. The missionary team had the authority of a local church, in fact they were a travelling church. Once away Paul was very much on his own, supported by, but not controlled, by Antioch, Jerusalem or Philippi. The team had to be economically self-sufficient. Once on the road, they were self governing, self funding, and self propagating as they in turn formed new churches, schools and mission teams. One goal, two approaches.

Suggested Steps As God Guides.

1. A team goes, sees, spies and returns.
2. The team prays a lot, then goes again, worships on site, talks to people, learns about them, and returns.
3. The team now goes and stays. First of all the members learn the local ways and slide into to the new culture, adapting their message so locals understand. They begin to witness and win the new believers who they form into a church.
4. The team disciples the new believers and as soon as possible appoints local elders. Then the church sends a team of locals to the next village and so the new church is a missionary church from day one.
5. The last step is to hand over the new church to the local people and for the original team to go to the next place.

See also lesson 64 The Harvest Church
See also lesson 74 part 2 A Sending Church

To Close Pray For The

World's Most Unreached Peoples By Name

 

Taken from the Joshua Project 2000 Unreached Peoples List

at www.ad2000.org these people have no church and as yet

no cell, church or mission has committed themselves

to prayer, adoption or church planting among this people.

 

© Dr Les Norman | School of Christian Leadership, UK
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