The Call to Mission

Then it’s a second category of calling that we see in scripture is the call to mission. So first was the call to salvation. Second is the call to mission. So the call to salvation includes a call to mission because we’ve talked about this and other messages in this series, every person who responds to God’s call to be a disciple of Jesus receives Christ’s command to make disciples of Jesus.

What Does The Call to Mission Mean?

So disciple-making, we talked about this in the last message, is the God-given spirit and power, duty of every disciple, whatever his or her station location, vocation. So it doesn’t matter who we are, we’ve been called to mission in Christ. Every disciple in this way plays an integral part in the eternal purpose of God to glorify his name through disciples made in every nation.

So just realize, and we won’t belabor this too long because we talked about this a good bit in the last two messages in this series, but the call to mission is not just for a couple of people, for a select few people. I told the story about Dr. Rankin and his counsel to me and helped me realize just because I’m passionate about the spread of the gospel to the nations, that doesn’t make me a missionary, that actually just what it means to be a Christian. So now people will come up to me as I’m now leading the IMB, and they’ll say, oh, I’m so passionate about the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth, and I know there’s so much need. So I think I need to be a missionary.

And I’ll look about it back at them and say, “Well, what you’ve told me actually doesn’t make you a missionary. It makes you a Christian, which is a really good thing. I’m really glad you’re a Christian.” But just because you’re passionate about the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth, that is what it means to be a follower of Christ that’s not just for missionaries. We’ve got to get out of this picture we have that’s so prevalent in the church where mission is a compartmentalized program in the church over here for select few people who are called to that, but the rest of us aren’t, that’s not true, it’s not biblical.

We Are Called To Mission For Christ

Every one of us who’s been called to salvation and Christ has been called to mission for Christ. We’ve been called to make disciples of the nations. And so the question is that’s going to be different in our lives is how do we do that? Where do we do that? In what way? What place? That’s going to change. We’re going to get to that. But fundamentally, we’ve all been called to mission. So that’s foundational, and that’s going to affect the way we understand calling in other ways.

So we’ve got to start here. Call to salvation, flowing from that call to mission.