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A call to believers and pastors to reclaim the missionary thrust of the gospel throughout the United States and beyond.
Being convinced that there is no salvation apart from faith alone in Jesus Christ alone according to the promises of God in His written Word, we must aggressively proclaim this gospel message to every man, woman and child so that they have a clear opportunity to respond in faith to the grace of God.
Why does your church exist? If the only purpose is to perpetuate business as usual, then you are committed to mediocrity. If your church hasn’t grown this past year through the salvation of non-believers (and not merely the transfer of Christians into your church family), you have forsaken the mission of your church. You have allowed yourself to be marginalized by your failure to grasp your primary mission as the church of Jesus Christ and by your failure to align all the activities of your church with Christ’s mission.
For the past 20 years, denominations across America have taken significant steps to start new churches. Yet we have failed to see existing churches orient their activities to fully embrace this vision. Why hasn’t this happened? It’s because most churches exist for the wrong reasons. Instead of putting maximum effort and resources toward reaching lost people, churches focus on the symbols of success: more people, happy people, and more money.
The rapid expansion of the gospel is the key to becoming a disciplemaking “movement.” It’s not about how many churches we start, how much money we raise or how happy (healthy) these new churches are. Those are the wrong standards. Churches must repent of the sin of self-absorption and church-centeredness and turn away from these secular measures of success. Christians must reclaim the missionary thrust of the gospel and proclaim the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ to every man, woman and child within their neighborhoods and community.
Our mandate is to fulfill the mission of God! The only hope of the world is the saving grace of Jesus Christ! And the only hope for Christ’s church in this world is to unashamedly and uncompromisingly proclaim this hope of salvation.
Churches must not view the planting of more churches as the main objective. In fact, this falls miserably short. Church planting is merely the means to an end, which is the radical transformation of lives by the power of the Holy Spirit through the cross of Christ! Don’t view methods (sending missionaries and planting churches) as the reason for your church’s existence.
I want to unite with leaders, churches and Christians who choose to be missional! I want to be a part of a network/movement of Christians that are compelled by the Great Commission and can’t get reaching the 300 million people in America off their minds
How can we fall so short of Christ’s mission to make disciples that we’re tempted to define success as more churches, more money and healthy churches? Success for the church in America can be nothing less than the complete evangelization of the United States, and ultimately the world! When will we commit ourselves to do absolutely everything it takes to achieve this mission? Until we do, we are not going to become a missional movement.
If we network together as missional Christians in missional churches that are driven to proclaim the gospel to a clearly exegeted community with the love and compassion of Christ, then lives will be transformed – and other missional Christians and missional churches will be drawn to join us, partner with us and sacrifice together to pursue the mission!
Salvation brings radical life transformation! That’s what Jesus introduced to His followers and expected after His death and resurrection. Somehow and somewhere the focus on the power of the Gospel to transform lives has been lost in America. Are lives being transformed in your church or are people simply adapting themselves to Christian norms that result in a happier life but not a holy life.
I was told that I can’t expect every church in the denomination where I have served for the past 17 years to become missional or even every district to become missional. I want to strongly protest such an idea. If we are a denomination of churches “on mission” – sent by God to reach a lost and dying world apart from Christ, then we must expect all churches (every single one) to become missional. To fail to expect this of every local church is to settle for mediocrity and to abdicate the responsibility we have as the Body of Christ to partner together in reaching the lost.
I believe that God longs for each pastor and each congregation in America (and around the world) to embrace His mission here on earth. Missions is not simply what we do overseas. It must be part of the DNA of every church. Being a missional church demands that the people of the church see themselves as God’s sent people. If churches are not defined by God’s mission, they will fail to fulfill their God-given mandate to make disciples.
I invite churches to reclaim the mission of God as their primary directive/mandate as a church. This requires that a church will exegete its community and proclaim the gospel with urgency to their given geographic context. In doing so, missional churches are so compelled to reach every man, woman and child with the gospel that they focus energy, people, resources and prayer on this priority. Missional churches develop creative strategies to accomplish this objective. Missional churches choose to network and partner and pray together with other churches and leaders and individuals to advance God’s mission.
What could happen if churches started making evangelism/discipleship their #1 priority – instead of church planting or teaching or worship or fellowship? What if every Christian in every church was equipped to share their faith story in personal and practical ways? What if people became Christians so frequently that new believers were getting baptized every week? What if Christians were making it a priority to spend time with their neighbors so that they could proclaim the gospel? What if every member of every ministry saw evangelism as their priority and not simply the pastor’s job? What if everyone in your church understood that they were “on mission” with God and found meaning and purpose in fulfilling that mission?
I believe churches would be more missional if they stopped taking responsibility to “do evangelism” by offering seeker-services and encouraging members to invite their friends to “come to church” so that they might be saved, and then they started training every Christian how to not only trust in Christ for their salvation but to actually understand how to communicate the gospel message with the power of the Holy Spirit? What a difference this would make.
Jesus told His disciples that He came to seek and to save what was lost. That was His mission! He told His disciples to make disciples. That is our mission! He has sent us to be witnesses. He didn’t send us to plant churches – that is not our mandate. He didn’t send us to build His church – that is His job. He sends us in the same way that his Father sent Him – to accomplish His mission. The mission of the church is to make disciples of non-disciples by baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Every Christian needs to know the mission of God and then participate in God’s mission. When this starts to happen across the nation, the church will truly be missional!
