Your Church Can Fuel Global Missions

David: If you know the Great Commission in the ESV, please say it with me: 

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

It is the most exhilarating, significant and everlasting undertaking in all of history to think that we have been commissioned by God himself to spread the grace, love and mercy of Jesus Christ and the glory of his name to every people group on the planet. Also to realize—specifically for us in this room—that during the time and place we are in this need is greater than ever before in history.

So what do I mean by that? Well, today—best as we can tell—over three billion people in the world are unreached by the gospel, meaning they don’t have access to the gospel. It’s not that they’re just not believers in Christ; it means they haven’t heard the truth about who Jesus is and how Jesus can save them from their sins. Nobody has told them—three billion people! The world population is increasing, so this number is continually increasing. Look at this map that reflects what we call Red Zones and Green Zones. 

The Red Zones are the areas of the world where there is little to no access to the gospel; most of those three billion people, if you look in the 10-40 window on that map, live there.  The need though is compounded by the lack of work to change that. Many people don’t realize, but just look at how we spend our resources. We obviously spend most of our resources on ourselves. We as Christians give some of our resources to churches. Those churches then spend a lot of those resources on making church more comfortable for themselves. Then they send some of those resources on to what we call missions to spread the gospel around the world. But did you know that only about one to two percent of the mission resources we give actually goes to the unreached in the world? In the church, most of our mission resources go to places like Latin America, parts of sub-Saharan Africa or parts of Europe where the gospel already has gone. It’s not that we don’t need to come alongside our brothers and sisters there, so that’s not wrong. But at some point, we need to lift our eyes and look at those who have the least access to the gospel. We need to give more than one to two percent of our missions resources to them.

As we send out missionaries, people think, “We’re going to send missionaries to places where the gospel has already gone.” Only about three percent of missionaries sent from churches actually go to the Red Zone. So we’re sending 97% of our mission forces to places that already have the gospel. Surely this needs to change in our churches. The need is greater than ever before. 

At the same time, the opportunities are greater than ever before in history. You and I today have more opportunities to take the gospel to the ends of the earth than ever before. Think about Paul. It took him months to sail from one place to the next and it didn’t always work out very well. He never could have fathomed a machine that could pick you up and take you through the air anywhere in the world in less than a day. Think about how long it took him to dictate a letter, then send it off, have it delivered and get feedback from that letter. I’m reading 2 Corinthians in my time with the Lord. It was a complicated process. He never could have fathomed communicating around the world in real time, in multiple languages, with anyone, through a device we hold in our pocket. Think about travel, technology and the globalization of today’s marketplace. Opportunities abound for work around the world, urbanization, the move of people toward cities. There are more opportunities today to get the gospel to the nations than ever before in history. There’s more need than ever before and there’s more opportunity than ever before. 

So how does that affect the way we live, and specifically, how does that affect the way we lead our churches? That’s what the next couple of hours are about, in a way that I pray will find you in a fresh way swept up in the call of God—the Holy Spirit’s movement in the church—for the spread of the gospel to three billion people who right now are being born, living and dying, then going to an eternal hell, but they’ve never even heard the good news that we’re singing about throughout this conference hall these few days. 

God, I pray that you would bless these next couple of hours and the conversations we have. We pray that we would all be directed by your Spirit, not just through what is said on the stage, but what is heard in this room. Jesus, you commanded us to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out workers into his harvest field. We pray that in the next couple hours that work might happen in this room, that there might be laborers sent to the unreached by your Spirit during this time.

Can we just say before the Lord right now, “Are you calling me to go?” Can you just say that before the Lord right now? “Are you calling me and/or my family to go?” 

Jesus, you are Lord of our lives. We put our lives in a fresh way on the table right now, praying that if your Spirit wants to set some of us apart today, we pray that you would do just that. If you don’t send us to go, we pray that you would help us see the unique, beautiful and wonderful part you’ve given us to play in the churches we’re a part of. We pray this won’t feel like a burden to us, but that this feels utterly delightful to us, being part of the greatest purpose on the planet. So please bless this time to bring us deeper into this purpose. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

We’re going to have a series of conversations during this time that will lead us into prayer in different ways. The first conversation we’re going to have is with John Piper. So would you join me in welcoming John Piper to the stage? [Applause]

As John is coming out here, let me just say that I’m not alone in saying this. I think maybe more than any other person in my own life—first from a distance and by God’s grace more personally—John has shown me in God’s Word a vision for the spread of his glory among the nations and the part my life has to play in it. So that actually leads into the first question I want to ask. 

John, you’re not a missionary. You’re a pastor and a theologian. Yet you’ve made global missions, specifically the spread of the gospel to unreached peoples, an essential, critical, non-negotiable part of your ministry as a pastor and theologian. Why is that?

John: Well, the short answer is God. That’s the why. He’s the ultimate why.

David: Okay. We can move on from that. Yes, that’s good.

John: God should never be taken for granted. In 1983, I was three years into my pastoral ministry. I had not preached a message on missions in those three years. We had been having a missions conference every year; I inherited that. We always invited guests for the  two Sundays and the week between. So I listened and they preached. Then in 1983, the missions committee said, “Why don’t you speak during one of those sessions?” What? 

I was in the middle of the series that became Desiring God. I thought to myself, “Okay. I wonder if that would fit.” Duh. The title became, “Missions: The Battle Cry of Christian Hedonism.” It landed on me like that asteroid that’s about to hit America. And it landed on Tom Steller, my associate, that our claim to have a passion for God’s glory has a disconnect at our church. That connection just never went away. It happened to Tom Steller at 2:30 in the morning, listening to John Michael Talbot sing about the glory of God among the nations. “Glory, glory, glory! I am who I am.” It’s a global glory or it’s no glory. 

That connection happened to me in preparing that message, because what came together was not just, “If you are God and your glory is your supreme passion and value in the world, then you mean for that glory to be known among the nations.” Not only that, but the Christian Hedonist that I am, I wanted to know how that connects to the gladness of the nations, right? I want to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy. And here’s Piper talking about the glory of God. If it’s true that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him…bam! There you go. If you want God to be most glorified among the nations, you must work for the gladness of the nations in God. So a problem was solved that I had struggled with for years. How does my compassion for people and their lostness, and my desire that they go to heaven and not to hell, relate to my passion for the glory of God? Should I be motivated by love for people and that they go to heaven? Or should I be motivated by God’s zeal for his glory? If I’m right about God being most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied in him, those are not at odds at all.

So the name of the book became, what? The Gladness…I don’t even know the name of my own book.

David: Was that Let the Nations Be Glad?

John: That’s it! Let the Nations Be Glad. When they are glad in God, then God will be glorified. So that constellation of discoveries in the early ‘80s put so many pieces together that I felt utterly inauthentic trumpeting the glory of God and not trumpeting world evangelization. 

Now, that’s my first part of the answer. But I’ve got lots more. 

David: I’m just here to put the golf ball on a tee and you to hit it out of the park. So keep going.

John: Okay, I’ll keep going and you can just adjust the question wherever.

David: As you keep going, I am sitting here thinking about other pastors, theologians, counselors, church leaders, Christians Must the gladness of the nations and the glory of God be critical for all of us, in all of our ministries? I don’t know if that takes you in a different direction. 

John: Oh, no. I mean, that’s a dangerous question, right? I mean, let me just try to think what the word ‘critical’ means in that question. Essential. Disobedient if you’re not that. I don’t want to say yes and have it mean everybody needs to be a missionary. You don’t mean that. I don’t mean that. But we do mean that to be an authentic, biblical, faithful Christian—especially a pastor—one must carry the nations on our heart.

We used to say at Bethlehem, “We’re trying to make everybody world Christians, not just missionaries.” ‘World Christians’ meant that they’re aware of and care about. They are engaged in being a goer, sender, or they are disobedient. That’s the way we talked about it. So I think the answer is yes. It is critical that you have the nations on your heart.

That does lead me to a thought. As a pastor, I was endlessly frustrated by the number of people who knew how to do my job and had ideas for how I should do it. I mean, I would open up Christian magazines and go from ad to ad, to seminars, to conferences. I’d close the magazine and feel like quitting. Everybody had an idea for how I was supposed to do my job. Everybody wanted me to be gangbusters behind their cause. 

Then here comes Platt. Good night. Giving us these statistics. I would go out of those events feeling horrible that I was not creating my own Radical ministry.

David: I just appreciate that you remembered the name of my book and not yours. That’s kind of encouraging. [Laughter]

John: Oh, is that a book? [More laughter] So here’s what happened. I really don’t want this to happen here, for you to hear him or me saying, “Here’s a burden, pastor. You’ve got broken marriages everywhere. You’ve got kids going crazy. You’ve got splits in your church. You’ve got a culture going to hell in a handbasket.” Then here comes Platt and Piper telling you, “Take the world on, by the way. Reach the nations.” It doesn’t work that way. God is so passionate about your enjoyment of his cause that he will give you wings. He won’t let it be a crushing burden. He will make it energizing.

The main reason I brought this book along is because I can’t remember how to quote a long quote. So I’m going to read a quote from J. Campbell Wyke [?], who in 1909 was the leader of the laymen’s missionary movement, alongside the student volunteer movement. Together they tried to mobilize laymen to be world Christians, to get behind what the students were feeling burdened by. Here’s what he wrote. When I read this quote in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement by Ralph Winter in the early ‘80s, I just thought, “If that’s true, this is the answer to my burden.”  

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within the followers of Christ except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasures, riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God in the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.

If you get this, it won’t be crushing; it will be sweet. You will be feeding on God’s use of you in mobilizing your people. And I would just add my personal testimony. I would never cease to be amazed, staggered and speechless about how people get called into missions. I don’t know if you’ve got this figured out. This is an abiding mystery to me. I have no doubt that at least a handful of people in this room are going to redirect your life after these sessions, redirecting your life into vocational, cross-cultural missions. That’s going to happen.

Now, if you ask me, “How is that going to happen?” I don’t know how that’s going to happen. You’re going to hear David, you’re going to hear these people sitting up here, you’re going to hear me, you’re going to read your Bible tonight. Then God will do something that you just can’t shake. It happens. Pastors, you can be a part of that. 

When you came to “Sing!” a few weeks ago, I was surprised the way you ended it. I was so happy, because I get it. I mean, David does a lot of end-of-Cross Conference calling to make the choice to go. So at the end of the Sing! message that he gave, he said, “I want you to commit to two things.” I forgot the first one, but the second one was, “Get down on your knees tonight and ask God if you are to be one of the goers. Just ask him. Now raise your hand if you’re willing to get down on your knees and ask him.” Now, I think that’s dynamite. Because most of you don’t do that. There’s just kind of a general, “I’ll do anything God says.” Yes, that’s true. But to take this seriously, with your wife or your husband kneeling beside you, it’s really dangerous. And if you both say, “I’m willing…” 

Pastors, periodically in your ministry, you can say to the people, “Have you considered…?” I was walking to a prayer meeting last week with a young man in his early 20s. He was going to get a job but he was kind of unsure of what to do with his life. [He’s probably watching this, so I won’t mention who he is.] I said to him, “Have you considered missions—just doing what you’re going to do here, there?” And he said, “Not really.” 

Now, if pastors do that often enough, we’ll get 100,000 people on their way to the mission field. There are 400,000 churches in the world, so if all of us do this everywhere to everyone, God will get this thing done. I mean, three billion people sounds like a lot. It’s not a lot. It’s not a lot. Those people aren’t all going to be converted. They’re not intended to all be converted. They are intended to be reached. Given the number of churches there are in the world, this is doable. I mean, all it takes is for a spark to land. This is doable within our lifetime. 

Okay, I’ll put my cards on the table here. I really believe Matthew 24:14:“This gospel will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” Now, I don’t know—and you don’t know—when this will be done. I just believe it’s finishable. I believe it’s finishable before you’re dead. Maybe not before I’m dead, but before you’re dead. It’s finishable.

Do you love the coming of the Lord? I do. Do you believe 2 Peter 3:10 that says, “Hasten the day of God…”? This is a really paradoxical thing to say, since God is fixed in his own authority on when he’s going to come. I think it means, “Be about the business of finishing the Great Commission.” 

I should pause and let you talk. I have more…

David: I’m just here, John. I want you to talk. While you’re thinking, I’m just going to…

John: I’m not thinking. I’m just waiting.

David: All right. Okay, I’ve got a couple thoughts.

John: No, you should give me your thoughts. It will be helpful. They want to hear you talk.

David: No, no, no, no. I want to hear you talk. Keep going. Keep going.

John: I’m a Calvinist. All right? Through and through, five-pointer; even seven-pointer sometimes. Now, here’s the deal. I came to Bethlehem longing to see what God might be pleased to do in a local church, in a neighborhood in inner-city Minneapolis, then eventually in missions, with a real Calvinist. I mean, a real Calvinist! So many people think that believing in the sovereignty of God, predestination, election and unconditional election that you can’t care about missions or evangelism or getting anybody saved. It’s just hellish to say that. It’s just hellish. Okay? I hate that statement. It’s false.

Now, here’s what happened. In the early ‘80s, I was thinking, “I’ve got to clarify Calvinism for my people,” eventually using the TULIP acronym.  I believe in total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement (or definite atonement), irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. And as I worked through each point, every single one of them became dynamite for world missions. 

Total depravity—they’re lost. We’ve got to go. There’s no way for them to be raised from the dead except through faith. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. The Holy Spirit does his miracle through the preaching of the Word. We’ve got to go.

Unconditional election. When Paul was in Corinth, he wrote Acts 18:10: “I have many people in this city. Don’t be afraid. Get up. Preach. The sheep hear your voice. They know. Preach. I’ve got people. All these people. Go. I’ll bring them to the Word when you go.”

Definite atonement. Right there in Revelation 5:9, he purchased people from every tribe. He didn’t purchase every tribe—he purchased people from every tribe. It will be  through His irresistible grace. “Piper, open your mouth. God will do his irresistible work.” 

Perseverance. I mean, you’re going to be a missionary? No, you won’t ever finish. You will not finish in your own power. But God keeps his saints. God preserves his people.

So every angle of Calvinism became a mission angle for me, which was totally liberating, because that’s why I’m part of TGC from the beginning. This is a Reformed movement. If we lose that, I’m probably out, you know? So I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad we do what we do. 

So now I think I’m done. I mean, I’ve got more, but I’m going to have to look at my notes.

David: So take a minute and look at your notes, because I really just want you to say whatever you want to say. I want them to hear whatever you want to say. 

I will say, I’ll never forget that moment when John Piper looked at me, as I was getting to know him, and said, “When did you become a Calvinist?” He was just staring right at me with that question. I was trembling. 

John: I think it probably was, “When did you come to believe in the definite atonement?” 

David: Yeah, that was the question.

John: Because that’s the point everybody gets hung up on. Like, did Jesus die for everybody or just die for the elect? That’s what people get hung up on. The right answer is that Jesus died for everybody one way and he died for the elect in another way. You can invite every single human being on the planet to believe in Jesus. Don’t you write a book against Calvinism and call it “Whosoever.” That’s not fair. Every Calvinist says, “Whosever will may come.” Then the question is, “Why do people will? Why do dead will?” But this is not a seminar on Calvinism.

David: Well, but it is the picture of the high view of God and the gospel that drives us to mission. So what else is on your heart to share with these brothers and sisters? 

John: Okay. This is really for pastors. I got so fired up. I was quoting mission biographies in every sermon for two years. That became a problem because the people who loved our city were not going anywhere. They were just trying to remake Minneapolis and turn it into a livable place. We’ve got crime, homelessness, abortion, drugs. They’re just trying to rescue families and do righteousness right here. I’m all for those people, but they’re feeling like second class citizens in our church. We became so globally and mission oriented that they said to me, “Ah, do you know we’re here anymore? Is the only thing you care about is getting people to leave, but not Phillips neighborhood anymore?” So I really got serious with God and decided, “I need to figure out the relationship between domestic ministries and global missions.” This is the language we used in those days and I still think it’s really useful.

So you fill in the blank with whatever your burden is for your neighborhood and your city.: drugs, homelessness, single moms, crime, poverty. That’s domestic ministries. Or maybe it’s just teaching Sunday School, raising kids, doing all the things Christians have to do. That’s domestic ministries. 

Then there’s frontier missions. Frontier. Leave. Get out of here. Go to the place. Be a Paul-type missionary and go preach the gospel where it’s never been preached. Now what brought peace and excitement into our church was for these two groups to realize how much synergy there is in that relationship and how mutually dependent they are on each other. 

For example, where do missionaries learn to do anything they do in another place? They learn it by being embedded in a local church, doing domestic ministries. Caring for kids. Caring for marriages. Caring for neighborhoods. They’re embedded in that local church, doing that for 10, 20, 30 years, then they go do it somewhere else. So missionaries grow out of domestic ministries, then missionaries export domestic ministries. So who’s the winner in this? I mean, everybody’s absolutely essential. Everybody is essential. If you have a group in your church and they’re all fired up for pro-life. praise God. I pray in front of Planned Parenthood and I’d bring down judgment upon them if I could. I’ve got a lot of people in our church who love pro-life.

Now, if they love the impact of Jesus on the cause of life here, if they think Jesus makes a difference here, well guess what? There are cities in this world where way more abortions happen than here, but there’s no Jesus to make any difference at all. So to be authentic, if you really care about babies being conceived and being killed in their mothers’ wombs here, then you’ll care about them there. You’ll be so happy that a pro-life missionary is taking the gospel to plant a church that will grow up, then in 10, 15, 50 or 100 years that will make a vast difference in what happens in that culture regarding pro-life. 

So it was a huge pastoral breakthrough for me to know that I don’t have to have this tension in the church between domestic lovers of justice and righteousness, and the goers to the frontier peoples. 

David: I was telling our church leaders this last Sunday, just two days ago, that even if I just cared about getting the gospel to the Red Zone, I would want disciple makers all over this church and our city doing the kind of ministry you’re talking about—in our families, in our workplaces. Because we’re not going to do there what we aren’t doing here. But I don’t care just about that. Our God cares about our city and the nations, and everywhere in between. 

I want to ask you in just a moment, is there anything else on your list that you really want to say, before I ask you to pray?

John: Um, we live in a moment of great controversy concerning Christian nationalism and the appropriate place of patriotism and our role in politics. These are things that will blow churches to smithereens right now. Look at 1 Peter 2:8-9: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God’s own possession, that you may declare the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light,” I think that implies that a church that is appropriately passionate about all the peoples and all the nations will be given a suitable freedom from inappropriate ethnocentricity and Americo-centrism. I really want Christians to love God’s kingdom more than they love America. I think that will make people better citizens, not worse. It will keep us from idolizing any political party, getting our back up about too much political dominance. There is an interesting and helpful and God-centered connection between world missions and what’s going on at the ground level culturally here. So that would be one thing I think that might be useful for everybody to think about as they ponder what their priorities are going to be.

David: I want to disagree with you on one thing and then put an exclamation point on another. The disagreement is I actually do think this is possible before you die. Obviously only the Lord knows though.

John: Before I die? I’m happy to be corrected because I would like to live that long.

David: I’m not trying to estimate how many more years you or I have, for that matter. We don’t know. We’re not guaranteed tomorrow.

John: Amen. You need to hear that. That’s amazing. You know, when you said three billion, they’re not feeling encouraged. Go ahead and say what you were going to say now.

David: You sure? I would just say that we have the opportunity to finish translating the Bible into all the languages in the world in the next decade. That’s possible. Obviously, that necessitates an army taking that Word to people, but the resources are in the church. 

The exclamation point I would like to add is this and I would like this to lead us into prayer. In light of what you shared about when we were together a couple weeks ago, I would like to ask the people in this room if you would be willing, before you lay your head on your pillow tonight, to kneel by your bed and just pray, “God, do you want me or my family to go where the gospel hasn’t gone?” 

You mentioned pastorally. A couple times a year, we have what we call our Acts 13 week. It’s a weekend where we fast and pray together. We all put our lives on the table in a fresh way, just saying, “Lord, are you leading us? Who are you calling out?” Every time we do that, God’s calling people out. So I would encourage you, in your church, have these kinds of times built in, where you giving the Spirit of God the opportunity—and the people the freedom to go before the Lord—and see what he’s saying.

I ask also you if you would be willing to say that in your own life before you go to sleep tonight. Just to kneel, if you’re physically able, by your bed, and say, “Lord, are you calling me to go?” 

I think the second part you said was, “And to pray that he would call some of the people in your church to do that, as you’re asking for that in your own life.” So if you’d be willing to do that before you put your head on your pillow tonight, would you raise your hand? John and I are both raising our hands with you.

John: You’d better put it in your watch or your phone, because you’re going to forget otherwise. 

David: Would you pray for us?

John: Father, I pray that all of us would be able to join Paul in saying, “I do not count my life of any value, nor as precious to myself, if only I might finish my ministry that the Lord has given me, to bear witness to the gospel of the grace of God.” May that be the priority of every person in this room, finishing our God-appointed, lay ministry or pastoral ministry, not counting our lives of any other value than ultimately that. I pray that you would be blessing David and the Radical team to keep lifting up the banner, and that more and more churches would lift up the banner of going as well as sending.

I pray that you would empower us to have an eternal perspective so that we would say that although this outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day, for we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, to hell, heaven, eternal joy and glory, and the triumphs of the gospel through weak people. Make it happen, I pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.