I’m reflecting on the study for tomorrow morning - The Church as the Missionary. Today, in a fitting exercise of this truth, a group of 25 from KCBT began the long flight to China for a potentially life-transforming experience of teaching English as a second language (ESL).

Over the past few weeks I have intentionally made statements and shared statistics designed to awaken complacent American believers to the realities of today’s world. We are no longer the leaders in world missions and have not been for some time.  But, there has never been a better time for the church to grasp its true biblical role as a missionary church.

For centuries Christendom (in the sense of those predominately Western countries where Christianity has dominated in a formal or informal cultural hegemony) has seen itself as the heart of culture and everything in its periphery as the mission field. With the decline of Christianity and its influence in the West, those of us in the United States are now standing on the periphery of the world Christian movement and smack in the middle of an emerging mission field. Such a situation demands a radically new understanding of how we view the world around us.

If all you understand from this is that the church is no longer growing here but is in the rest of the world, you miss the most significant point of all. Peruvian missiologist Samuel Escobar expresses the point well by the title of his book The New Global Mission: the Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone.

In a massive, landmark new volume called Invitation to World Missions, Timothy C. Tennent says,

The major point to recognize, however, is that never before has the church had so many dramatic and simultaneous advances into multiple new cultural centers. It is not as if the story of our time were the withering away of Christianity in the West and the dramatic growth of Christianity in Africa, which will become the new standard-bearer of Christian vitality. Instead, we are now experiencing what John Mbiti calls multiple new “centers of universality.” Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Latinos, and Africans, among others, can all legitimately claim that they are at the center of the world Christian movement. … The new reality of the church is that it can only be fully appreciated from a global perspective. (p. 37)

Amidst all the talk of doom and gloom, God is orchestrating amazing advances of the Gospel on multiple fronts. What a fantastic time to be alive!

A couple of years ago (October 5, 2008), I wrote about the church as missionary. I first heard the term from Pastor Bob Roberts and it continues to fascinate and challenge me. I am not even sure at times if I fully understand what this phrase means. There are other times when I think, “Yeah! Now, that’s what I’m talking about when I say that the church is to be the missionary!”

My fascination with this phrase is probably 50% frustration and 50% inspiration. The frustration is that so many people just “don’t get” The Mission. They are content to throw in an occasional offering for the missionaries (or not!) and then get back to their lives – real life. The more spiritual even pray for the missionaries – sort of. My frustration is that they just don’t get that The Mission is for all of us. We are in this thing together.

The inspiration part is dreaming what can happen if we all really move together in The Mission as the church. What could happen if we really understand that every single one of us is needed in The Mission. All Summer long I have been pouring out my little heart about The Mission. This Sunday I am going to give my best shot at explaining what I mean (at least what I think I mean) by the church as the missionary.

Meanwhile, tomorrow morning, a group of 25 is leaving KCBT for China to teach ESL. In a group that size, experience, skepticism and wisdom tell me that a few are on this trip because it is very cool to go to China. Others are going because someone else is going. Some are going because of a profound sense of The Mission. Still others are sincerely seeking their place in The Mission.

I’m just thankful that they are all going on this mission together. Right motives, wrong motives, semi-right motives – whatever – I am thankful that this group is going together. I know that God will work in their lives together and accomplish all he wants to accomplish.

I mean, isn’t this what God does each and every time his people assemble together as the church? We assemble together for all sorts of motives – good, bad and indifferent. But, when we assemble together, there is God in our midst just as he has promised. Without fail, he does his work in us and uses us to accomplish his mission.

Whatever your spiritual condition and whatever your motive, let’s assemble together Sunday morning and allow God to do whatever he wants to do among us. If we can get our heads around what it means for the church to be the missionary some amazing things can happen!

I am truly appreciative and grateful for the feedback received during our current series this Summer on The Mission. Our leadership team felt it important that we all understand the focus of the church as we opened the new children’s wing and lobby.

Also this Summer, we are doing something we have never done before. I am teaching the same series on La Misión in Spanish on Wednesday evenings. This has been very interesting. I was thrilled to see such a good group in our Spanish study tonight.

Now, here is the really neat thing that is happening in the background. As we go through this series on The Mission, the podcast appears on our website immediately after the service. By the next day, The Mission is up in streaming video. Not long afterward, the Spanish version follows. Very cool.

You would be amazed at the visitors to our website from the Spanish-speaking world. Many are completely fluent in English and do not have to wait for the Spanish version to be posted. From Morelia, Mexico this week I heard from a pastor friend who has been profoundly affected by the series. Others have also weighed in with comments and thanks.

A young woman from Costa Rica visited us a few weeks ago. She is involved in a wonderful ministry to college students in San Jose. The ministry has a thorough and systematic approach to making disciples not unlike what we do here at KCBT. The leaders of this ministry asked my friend to add a missionary component to their teaching. Having just been with us, she is teaching the same series to them!

Monday night she taught lesson #1 to a group of about a dozen students in San Jose. Tonight, as I taught lesson #5 here in Spanish, she was repeating lesson #1 to a different group of students. Last Sunday in English I taught lesson #8. This is fun! This is the biblical concept of reproducing ourselves and making disciples of Jesus Christ. This is The Mission!

No, that’s not taken from a Batman comic strip. It’s an acronym that you spotted in your notes on The Mission. I didn’t have time to touch on it this morning, so I thought I would give you a brief explanation of BAM.

This morning’s topic was The New Missionary in the Mission. We learned that the new missionary really the old missionary, the biblical one. We often have a lot of add on’s in the way of tradition, methodology and techniques that, over time, rise to the level of sacred doctrine. Pretty soon we are doing things because that’s just the way we’ve always done them.

Every so often it’s a good exercise to the examine what we are doing and be sure it’s still close to what the Bible teaches. Our current model of missionary is between 200 and 300 years old. It has been an fine model, but even your old Honda might need to be replaced after that many miles!

We examined four characteristics of the new/biblical missionary this morning, the last of which was that they live our their faith through their natural spheres of influence, whether that be economics, family, the arts, medicine, justice, governance, education or agriculture. In other words, instead of dividing their lives up into spiritual and secular, they see life as a single integrated system.

Instead of loading the kids into the minivan and spending a couple of years going from church to church raising support, the new missionary sees this as only one of any number  of viable possibilities. Paul received support from his sending church of Antioch of Syria, from partner churches like that of the Philippians, from wealthy individual like Philemon or from the exercise of  his own vocation of making tents.

A few decades back, tent-making became a trendy way to think of entry into creative access areas to minister among least-reached peoples. The idea was to find some business, educational or medical opportunity, for example, that could justify their presence to be able to plant churches.

Those who engaged in tent-making were soon reporting that it was extremely difficult to work a secular job and plant a church among a people of a different language and culture at the same time.  Working a “secular” job and trying to engage in a “spiritual” activity as tough as planting a church is a very hard act to juggle!

Enter BAM – Business as Missions. Rather than viewing business as a “cover” to be in restricted access areas, those engaged in BAM prefer to see their vocation as the sphere through which they normally and naturally live their faith and take advantage of the opportunities God gives them to interact with others and share their faith as appropriate. In many cases it is not long before they are engaged in making disciples.

BAM also offers potential as a means to make contact with identified people groups, provide employment opportunities for new believers as well as community development. There are many other aspects to BAM that merit serious consideration.

The pressure of trying to plant a church while working is lessened as the new missionary understands another point I was sharing this morning. If we make disciples, Jesus builds his church, not us. If  missionaries focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ will build his church even though it make not bear much external resemblance to the church in the missionary’s sending culture.

Entire books are written about BAM, and this is nothing more than a scratch on the surface of an encouraging movement in the world of missions that is helping us gain what I consider a more biblical perspective on the task of going about the mission in challenging areas.

Next week, the church as the missionary!