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LET’S DEFINE “MISSIONS”

By: Woody Phillips

First of all, we need to see the difference between the “mission” of the church and “missions”. The church’s mission includes all which is outlined in Scripture for a church to be and to do in the world. This includes preaching, evangelizing, teaching and equipping, meeting social and emotional and physical needs, etc., through the coordinated use of the Spirit’s gifts. The mission of the church is both local and worldwide in scope.

“Missions” is a much more specialized term, and it has a more specific meaning. It is a Latinized form of the Greek work “apostle”, meaning “one who is sent out”. When a person is “sent out” beyond the borders and influence of the local church to make disciples, that is missions. “Missions” is a part of the “mission” of the church, and refers to the church’s obedience to the Great Commission.

Why bother with this delineation? Because if we do not clearly define missions, we’ll find ourselves not obeying Jesus’ final command. What are the reasons?

1. People tend to support what is closest to them, because they can see the results and the needs first-hand. But, supporting only what is close by neglects the 2.8 billion unreached people—very few of whom live close by.

2. If missions is not defined, soon any Christian endeavor is called “missions”, and the emphasis on reaching cross-culturally in “the regions beyond” is weakened. The unreached stay unreached because the church’s missions dollars are going to other local concerns.

3. A hazy definition will soon find the church funding some of her local programs from missions funds. This begins in subtle ways, but it must be guarded against very carefully.

The use of missions funds for Christian endeavors in the local area encourages the local church to abdicate her responsibility. When the local church allows missions funds to go to ministry she could and should be engaged in, she is pulling back from and minimizing her responsibility and potential.

There is an abundance of good work being done in the name of Christ. Much of this work is worthy of support. However, if it is happening in the arena of the church’s local influence—either by the church or an agency authorized and approved by the church—then it should be funded by the local budget. To use missions funds is to misunderstand what missions really is about. Missions has to do with sending people to disciple the unreached. It implies a cross-cultural dimension, and it has the incorporation of believers into churches as its goal.

Churches and missiologists have defined missions in different ways. Here is a sampling of some missions’ definitions:

Any endeavor aimed toward the goal of reaching beyond the needs of the local congregation for the purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission—by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, making disciples and relating to the whole need of mankind, both spiritual and physical.
–composite from the Association of Church Missions Committees

Missions is a specialized term…the sending forth of authorized persons beyond the borders of the New Testament church and her immediate gospel influence to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in gospel-destitute areas, to win converts from other faiths or non-faith to Jesus Christ, and to establish functioning, multiplying congregations who will bear the fruit of Christianity in that community and to that country.
–Dr. George W. Peters, A Biblical Theology of Missions, p. 11

Missions is the business of sending out particular members of the body of Christ from any given culture and geographical area to another cultural group in the same or distant geographical area for the purpose of sharing the gospel and discipling believers.
–James M. Weber, Let’s Quit Kidding Ourselves About Missions, p. 9

The missions program of the church includes those activities that take place away from the church facilities, are not directly under church jurisdiction, and are directed to evangelism, discipleship, church planting, theological training or meeting human needs.
–West Chicago Bible Church

There are five components which should be taken into consideration when a definition of missions is proposed:

1. SENDING OUT is implied in the very word “missions”. A missionary is one commissioned, authorized and sent out by the local church to make disciples in another place. Traditionally, missionaries are “sent out” because the gospel is already being proclaimed in the local area, but there is another area where the gospel is not yet known. This desire to go to the unreached is what prompted William Carey, Hudson Taylor, and Adoniram Judson to go as “sent-out ones” from there home countries.

2. GEOGRAPHY must be considered also in the definition. Missions begins where the logical and geographical influence of the local church ends. The local work of the church extends to the farthest reach of the gospel influence by the members of that church. Missions begins just beyond that point.

3. DISCIPLEMAKING is the goal of missions. The Great Commission clearly charges us to “disciple the nations”. Further definitions which accompany this Biblical imperative include “going”, “baptizing” and “teaching”. The unquestionable implication is that complete disciplemaking consists of going and proclaiming, winning and baptizing, and teaching and equipping. Going occurs before conversion, baptizing accompanies conversion, and teaching follows conversion. Any complete mission work must include these three components.

4. CROSS-CULTURAL EVANGELISM cannot be ignored. Missions has usually meant leaving one culture and going to another. A missionary is a “sent-out one” who leaves his own people and language and customs to incarnate another. How important this becomes today when we consider that the overwhelming majority of the world’s unreached are outside the U.S. culture. To reach them for Christ requires crossing cultural and linguistic barriers.

In my opinion, missions does not have to be cross-cultural to be legitimate missions. There are people who have not been reached within our own culture, and who are outside the church’s local sphere of influence. An attempt to reach them would be missions, although not all would agree on this point (see Weber’s definition). However, because almost all of the world’s unreached are outside of our culture, the bulk of the missions funds should go to foreign missions. If no priority is set at this crucial point, a too-large percentage of missions money will be spent trying to make disciples of people in our culture who have repeatedly heard the gospel. This is unfair when billions have yet to hear for the very first time.

5. CHURCH-PLANTING must be the test of true missionary work. Arthur Glasser writes, “The missionary task is incomplete if it stops short of planting churches…planting churches is ever the ultimate objective of all missionary work. Missionary labor, no matter how brilliant, will have little permanence unless this is accomplished.” (Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, pp. 102-103)