How Your Church Can Start Sending Missionaries

David: I’m joined up here by Ken Mbugua and J.D. Greear. Would you welcome them with me? I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you start maybe by telling us a little bit about yourself and the church you pastor, setting the context for the conversation we’re about to have?

Ken: The Emmanuel Baptist Church is in Nairobi, Kenya. Mid-sized congregation, I would say. We have about 400 people who attend, mixed in ages, mostly younger, as opposed to the older. Multiplicity of elders; a united group of elders. I have the privilege of serving with very godly wise men. By God’s grace we are friends to different degrees, which has, I think, in many ways blessed the gospel work in the church. A delightful group of saints that we are privileged to pastor. A model of ministry that puts the work on them, so it’s not very driven from the staff team, but the elders see themselves as being given the role of equipping the members for the work. So that’s the work in Nairobi, Kenya.

David: From Nairobi, Kenya to Raleigh, North Carolina. 

J.D.: I pastor Summit Church. I’ve had the privilege of pastoring the same church for 21 years now. Only full-time job I’ve ever had, except I served as a missionary before that over in Southeast Asia. I came back, then while I was doing my post-graduate work, I served at sort of a sleepy, plateaued Baptist church called Homestead Heights Baptist Church. It was at the highest point in Durham County. Raleigh-Durham is not known for its mountains, but we were at the highest point, so we changed the name to Summit Church. God really gave us a vision to reach a lot of the university culture around there. Raleigh-Durham has a lot of young professionals, a lot of people coming in to study. So that’s what God gave us. 

Then he gave us a vision for church planting, particularly overseas. I’ve always kind of said my call to the pastorate began as a call to the mission field. When God installed me as a pastor, I don’t think he ever released the call to the mission field, he just changed the seat on the bus that I do it from. So we’ve kind of focused on this. For about 12 years now, we’ve had a goal of planting 1,000 churches out of our church within our generation. The college students and young professionals there are a big part of it. So we love working with Radical and other groups that help facilitate us doing that. 

David: So let’s dive right in. In those contexts you’re in, in Kenya and Raleigh, how do you view your local church’s role in global missions, specifically in the spread of the gospel to people who have never heard it? Either one of you guys, dive into that one first.

Ken: I think Piper mentioned we need to understand that the God we worship as a congregation in Nairobi is not a tribal God. He is not a Nairobi God. He is the God of the cosmos. He’s the one who created the heavens and the earth. That automatically means that there’s no faithful way to worship him without thinking about the nations. That’s who he is. He owns all of them. He has created all of them in his image. There’s coming a day when all of them, one way or another, will bend their knee and will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

That means whatever work we’re doing, as small as we are, as under-resourced as we might feel, it doesn’t matter. We are still called in one way or another to think about the nations. So what that looks like for us begins with a local work. Nairobi is a very cosmopolitan city. I have a Dutch neighbor on one side and a French guy who lives down the road. We have people from around the world who have come to Nairobi for one reason or another. So as a congregation, we’ve desired for a long time to reach our own people first. And that’s been hard. For pastors here, you realize some of the things you desire to do, sometimes you don’t quite feel like you have the opportunity of doing. Our church had a situation where, because of the lack of enough healthy churches in the city, we had people coming from too far away to come to our church. So in many ways we were filled up with people who were not from our neighborhood, but the goal was to reach the people who were there. That means the people who were there were local peoples and also people from other parts of the nation. So our first step was to seek to transplant churches that are farther out from where we meet, allowing the people who were coming from a long distance to have a healthy church to meet where they were coming from, allowing us to meaningfully be able to engage the people who were our neighbors. This has been a joy, particularly this year. 

Again, think about a small church here, celebrating many steps forward. It’s been a joy to watch people begin to come to church who have heard nothing about Jesus because they’ve been engaged by members of the congregation. There’s a lady who is from Germany; when we try to engage her on Christianity, she has no clue what we’re talking about. There’s not a Judeo-Christian basis to begin to engage with.

Or there’s a couple we did a wedding for, both of them are unbelievers. The condition was that we needed to share the gospel, so we offered to walk them through our premarital counseling program. I remember asking him about what he thinks about God; he replied, “Is it a he or a she?” He had no context whatsoever. 

So we have opportunities like that to start engaging people with the gospel who are within our vicinity, who have come from the nations. It’s not just Africa. Germany is the nations. The Czech Republic is the nations. The Lord has brought all those people to us. Nairobi has a ton of Somalis right now. They are taking over portions of the city. We’re wanting to help folk be able to see the Somalis as our brothers. We are all descendants from Adam and Eve. We are all descendants from Noah. There’s a unity here that we share as humans, those who are created by God to image him and to fill the earth. 

So we’re helping our folk get the point of not being racists. It’s not just an American white problem. I’m preaching through Genesis and getting to the portion with the table of nations. This has an application point in Nairobi, Kenya. Are we racist? How do we think about our Somali neighbors? They’re very different from us. They look different from us. They have a different culture from us. So that makes them stand out. It can be very acceptable within the city to be snobs, to chafe at the thought that there’s a large group of immigrants who now live in the city, to lose the opportunity entirely, to not see this as an absolute grace that has been given to us. They have been brought out of a very hostile place and have been brought right next door. So in the preaching of God’s Word, I’m making very direct application to our people, then prayerfully asking for the opportunity to be opened up for us to meaningfully begin to engage them. So that’s one of the ways in which we’ve gone about this.

David: By show of hands, how many of you—where you live, where you do church, where you lead—have significant populations of people from Red areas in the world that are in your community right now? That’s most of us in this room, in an Acts 17 way—I won’t go into a sermon here. It’s troubling how Christians in our country are the most resistant to refugees in our communities when God is bringing people right to our doorsteps from places where they have never heard the gospel. We should be the most wide open to love them and reach out. We can reach the nations right in front of us. Not to the exclusion of going and sending, like we’re talking about, but it would be foolishness to ignore the nations, the Somalis. It would be foolishness to say, “We’re going to try to reach Somalia,” but not be intentional in all the ways we’re talking about to reach them right around us. 

J.D., in your local church, how do you view global mission?

J.D.: I love what Dr. Piper said earlier, when he was up here, that not every believer is called to be a missionary, but everyone is called to be a global Christian. God creates in the heart of all his followers a desire to see his glory go around the world that can only be fulfilled when you’re actually part of that. So I feel like part of my role as a pastor is helping equip people—whether they’re going or whether they’re engaged here—to have the same level of interest in what is happening there. That starts, of course, with the preaching. 

Consider C.J.H. Wright’s book titled Mission of God. I know there are some things in that book I would not necessarily approach the same way he does, but one of the things I love is where he pointed out that every passage in the Bible is essentially about the global mission. So we shouldn’t be looking for one or two golden passages to preach on global mission. If you’re not naturally getting to the global spread of the gospel in whatever text you’re preaching, you’re preaching it the wrong way. That continues then into inculcating in the people an awareness of the refugee next door, challenging people to—this is language I’ve borrowed from you, David—give 2% of their year to go on a mission trip, just to see what God is doing there. Even if you are 100% confident that you are called here, something about the awareness of seeing that and feeling that opens your eyes in a way that enables you to pray.

How do we disciple people to do quiet time? We actually have it built into our church app. Part of it is working through texts, plus praying through part of the Joshua Project for unreached people groups. Then we pray specifically for one of our missionaries. So we’re trying to build that into what they do. 

The last piece of it is the mobilization piece, where you’re just saying, “Yeah, God’s not calling all you to be missionaries, but he’s calling a lot more of you to be missionaries than you’re probably  thinking.” So for us, it’s not exclusively with college students and young adults, but it kind of starts there. From middle school on, we start building this pipeline that is going to lead to them spending significant time overseas. We meet with all of our college students and say, “Unless you’ve heard from God audibly by the time you graduate, then you need to plan on spending the first two years in one of our churches that we’re planting around the world.” Now, not all of them do it, but we tell them, “You’ve got to get a job somewhere. Why not get a job in a place where God’s doing something strategic?”  

So over the years we’ve seen a number of our students and young professionals who have answered that call, serving as part of these church plants all around the world. They come back often and continue to infuse vision into it. It’s one of those things that preaching is a big part of. But it’s a cycle. You just feed this ecosystem, but you can’t do it in one year. You can’t do it through preaching some of David Platt’s best sermons, or not even by bringing David in. It’s a culture you build. You know, they always say pastors consistently overestimate what they can accomplish in five years and underestimate what they can accomplish in twenty. I think that would be the case here. 

David: That’s a good word, especially when I think about all those practical things you were just listing out: preaching not just a mission sermon here or there, but showing those connections, challenging people to go, praying. If you and the church you lead or are a part of are not familiar with the Joshua Project app, it’s super simple. Go to the “Unreached of the Day.” If you don’t have it on your phone, I would encourage you to get it on your phone. I don’t know what apps are on your phone, but I’m trying to think of one that would be more valuable than this one, just to help you pray every day for an unreached people group in the world and be able to share that with others, including in family worship. There are so many practical things we can be doing. 

I hope one of the takeaways—just to connect the dots—it’s not that your church is going to make a difference for the global glory of God when your missions pastor or missions director finally gets it together. Yes, that’s important. But you just talked about kids’ ministry. You talked about student ministry. You talked about college ministry. You talked about discipleship. You talked about how we are reaching our city. All those things are connected to the spread of the gospel.

J.D.: One of the phrases we use is, “Every pastor is our missions pastor.” Now, we actually have a missions pastor, but we say, “Every pastor is a missions pastor.” So for example, as Baptists, we don’t do baby baptism or baby dedication, so we do a commissioning service—commissioning the parents. We actually build missions into that by saying, “So one of the vows you’re making as the parent is one day, when and if God calls this young man or woman to go overseas, that you are saying right now, before the church, ‘I will not stand in the way, but I will encourage it.’” The number one thing that keeps young people from going overseas is their parents. Christian parents, who just say, “Not my kid. It’s going to be somebody else.” So we’re trying to do that from the very beginning. 

Even when we built our facilities, we went down to our airport and brought in the architect and said, “Would you build it like that?” so it just feels like sending. Everything is about sending and going. We want it to be part of the air we breathe.

David: Very good. I was just talking with 30 students last night who are a part of Summit and are zealous for the spread of the gospel among the nations. They’re wide open to what that’s going to look like. They see that as normal Christianity. I thank God for the day when that will be normal Christianity. 

What else comes to your minds when you think about practical ways to encourage cultivating a culture of sending to the nations, going to the nations and playing the part that God’s given to all local churches? Are there any other practical things that come to your mind, or just practical encouragement you would give?

Ken: So take this seriously, especially if there are any pastors here with smaller churches. Take it seriously when somebody shows interest in the work of missions. Take the time to meet with them. Take the time to set them up on a discipling track, whether it’s meeting with you or someone else. Ask the very basic broad questions about the individual. Because as local churches, we want to do this work well.

I have been on the receiving side of missions in many cases and in some cases it’s been a blessing. In other cases, I wish the church that sent them did the work of sending well. So do that work well and know that you’re participating in the work of pursuing the spread of the fame of his name by investing in the individual and assessing them. 

Ask questions like, how are they performing as an ordinary church member? Do they understand the statement of faith of this congregation? Would they be able to give a basic defense of it? Have they shown a character trait of being willing to inconvenience themselves for the good of others? Are they evangelizing in this very community? So if they’re not being a blessing to you in the church that you’re in, they will likely not be a blessing to the people group that you’re sending them to. So that work that feels slower, that feels less programmatic, is also very important.

I’d also add, try to do something to encourage people who are willing to be sent out. There are many programs we’ve done, but I’m not sure I would advise you to do. There are programs I’ve started, then I’ve gone, “That was a really terrible idea.” 

David: Let’s pause for a second. How many of you have ever led a program at church, that afterwards you said, “That was a terrible idea.” Can I get just a show of hands? All right, so we’re all together on that.

Ken: There you go. In many of these attempts, if they’re being handled for the right reasons and you’re trying to be careful in the way you’re doing them, the Lord in many ways uses the things we’re trying to do, not because they’re perfect or divine, as though they’re inspired by God. But it’s simply as a pastor, as a group of believers, you’re trying to be obedient. This is the way you’ve seen elsewhere. Those efforts that we’ve tried in the church have succeeded in many ways, not because of the quality of the program, but because of the grace of God, who just chose to use them. 

So I’d encourage you to say something. Start somewhere, then see how the Lord blesses it. 

J.D.: Yeah, I would just add on two fronts. One is about the heart of the pastor or the leader themselves. I mean, it’s just impossible to lead your people in something you’re not passionate about. Peter Drucker famously said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. So it’s not the programs you’ll pick up from Ken or me or David or anybody else. It’s just when it beats in your heart, it just comes out. 

One of the things I try to do every year is read one, if not two or three, good mission biographies to keep me aware, to disciple myself to think of  overseas things. It’s part of my daily quiet time. I want that to not be something somebody reminds me of, I want to just bleed it. If it’s important to you, it will become important to them.

The second thing I would say is about strategic investment with your leaders. When I first started at the church, when we were 300 people or whatever, we took 40 people on a mission trip. It was extraordinarily expensive and distracting. We couldn’t afford it. No church growth person would tell us that it was the right thing to do at that stage in the life of our church. But I’m telling you,  those 40 came back, after being there and meeting with missionaries, then our giving the next year toward missions was exponentially bigger than it was before. They had seen it. They had tasted it. They were coming to say, “We want this to be a part of our church.” It made them better church members. They’re like, “Why are we raising $3,500 to go and do over there what we’re not doing here?” 

Here’s a little trade secret. You pastors probably already know this. The best way to actually microwave discipleship is to get people to go on a mission trip, because you can put all these requirements on them. Like, “You have to do your quiet time and turn in the chart that shows me that for six months you’ve done your quiet time. You’ve got to read these three books, memorize these ten verses and write this paper.” All of a sudden, they’re doing all this stuff, because they’re going on this mission trip. They paid do it, right? They raised their own money and they’re like, “Wow, that was an amazing experience. Thank you.” You know, the cliché: “The light that shines the farthest will also shine the brightest at home.” There’s a connection between them. 

I can’t think of anything strategically, as I look back over the last 21 years at our church, most important than requiring our pastors to go on mission trips. We have a time when we budget for that, and say, “I need you to get out there and do it.” So it’s part of who they are. 

David: So good. I’ll close with this, then I’ll ask you guys to pray. You were just talking about this, J.D. Your church is strengthened by sending. Would you say that your church grows more in Christlikeness as a result of sending missionaries? Or that a church will be hindered in growing in Christlikeness if we’re not intentional about sending missionaries?

J.D.: Yes. I want to just add this. You know, one of the biggest hindrances to this is the sense that we have to protect our churches. We don’t want to give away our leaders. We don’t want to give away our best people. In this area, as in any other area in the Christian life, you really cannot outgive God. We know as pastors how to teach this to our people regarding their money. I don’t care what your theology of tithing is, none of us stand up and say, “Hey, if you’ve got leftover money at the end of the month that you can’t figure out what to do with, God would be a good candidate for that.” We never say that. We say, “Give him your first and your best, then watch him multiply, bless and strengthen that.” Well, I think the same thing is true with us as leaders. It’s like, why would we expect our people to do that with our money, but us not to do that with our money, our time and our leaders? You give away your best. As you give away your best, then God fills the twelve baskets left over to overflowing. The same principle applies. The reason our people don’t believe what we say about tithing is they don’t see us do it when it comes to our leadership and our resources as a church. You give him your first and your best. Just give it away as fast as you can and you’ll be amazed at the blessing God pours back of multiplication as you give it away. You can almost say you’re “gaining by losing.”

David: There’s a product placement plug from J.D. Greear. 

J.D.: Well, at least I remembered the name of my book.

David: It’s a very helpful book. I seriously would recommend it. 

Ken: One of the ways in which I think churches grow in their sending is very counterintuitive. If you’re trying to build your own kingdom, you do not want to give up. You do not want to grow weaker. At any point when we have meaningfully let people go and let resources go, it’s been humbling for me and even for church members, because it’s at that point that our idolatry of ministry, of self-kingdom building, has been challenged by God’s purpose to spread the fame of his name. Oftentimes that comes at a great expense to yourself.

Secondly, the journey oftentimes is not straightforward. One person says, “I want to go out,” so they’re quickly trained and sent out and everything goes well. In other cases, there’s a lot of resistance. In a few cases we’ve ended up having the individuals come very early on, share their desire to go, then as they begin their journey, it’s been challenge after challenge after challenge after challenge. Yet to watch God overcome all of those challenges has in many ways built up their faith, not only of the individual who is going, but of the church that is partnering with that individual as they were sharing with us their desire to go. So those are two specific ways we need to strengthen each other. 

David: And the church sees, “Hey, we’re a part of this. We’re part of the spread of the gospel.” I think of one Kenyan sister at the Radical training center right now, in the heart of the unreached. The fruit of a local church among the unreached through the sending of a sister we love and we cherish. It’s pretty awesome.

So I want to ask both of you brothers to pray; I’m not even going to give you guidance; I just trust the Spirit will lead you. So Ken, then J.D., will you pray over this group of leaders specifically in this room?

Ken: Father, we thank you that it has pleased you to not only save us, but to make us a part of what you’re doing in the world for your own glory. We confess that we are unworthy ambassadors to be able to take your name on our lips and to share it with those who have not yet heard. We confess that of the little funds you have given to us, there is nothing of a greater priority than us spending it toward funding the work that you’re doing around the world.

We thank you that it pleases you to use weak vessels, ordinary people, to see this work advance. Lord, as we look out at this room, we confess that that’s what many of us see ourselves as. We read of the giants of the faith and feel like we do not compare to them. Yet we rejoice that you are the God who takes pleasure in displaying your power through our weakness. 

So Lord, we ask that even now you would be at work to cause us to turn away from ourselves, to turn away from looking at the puny resources that we have, the puny faith that we feel like have, and that you may instead allow us to look to you and see that indeed it is you who works through ordinary vessels to do your work, so that all the glory returns back to you again. We ask that you would grant to us humility to stop looking at ourselves, offering ourselves for this very work.

You who asked us to pray, asking that you would raise up laborers for the harvest, we ask that even now those who are listening to this simple conversation, that your Spirit would move mightily to put a conviction in their hearts and allow them to set themselves apart for this very work that you have called us to. 

We pray for local churches. We ask that you might strengthen local churches, that they might not become healthy for their own sake, but that they might become healthy for your sake, for the joy of the nations, for your glory and fame amongst the nations. We ask that you might allow churches here that are simply pursuing the sanctification and  maturation of believers who make up those congregations, that you might allow that effort to lead to the sending out of even healthier missionaries who have caught a picture of what you’re seeking to do among the nations, so that the very work they’re doing here of shepherding, of caring for the saints, of setting up clear liturgies that point to your glory, of preaching clear sermons that exalt your Son, that they might be well educated from the normal day-to-day applications to the normal means of grace you’ve given to them. We pray that as they leave, O Lord, that it would be a healthy sending that would lead to healthy churches being planted amongst the nations.

We plead with you, O Lord, that you might accomplish all of this for our good and for your glory. We pray this in your Son’s name. Amen. 

J.D.: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor labor in vain. We were reminded, Father, that this is your work from start to finish and that you can accomplish more through prayer around the haystack than you can accomplish in all of our conferences, all of our books and all of our preaching. Lord, do this in our generation again. God, I pray that you would build your church so the gates of hell would not prevail against it. I pray that from the churches of these brothers and sisters here that you would raise up a movement, God, a people who will go to the ends of the earth. I pray that we will see the Great Commission completed in the sense of a thriving church in every people group.

Father, I believe that there are people in this room right now, or maybe listening online, that you’re calling to go. I pray that they would know right now that it’s them and that they would not be able to rest until they’ve said yes. God, for those of us to whom you are not calling in this way, I pray that you would show us practically what we should do tomorrow to begin this movement, whether it’s reading a book, preaching a sermon series or beginning to go ourselves on some kind of trip. I pray, God, that you would show us the practical steps. Let this not die the death of good intentions but help us turn it into practical steps that will result in you making this movement. 

God, have mercy. Be merciful to us, bless us and cause your face to shine upon this generation of Christians, so that your way may be known in all the earth and your salvation among all nations. So that the peoples may praise you, that all the peoples, God, may praise you in our generation. We ask that, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen.