MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES: Are We Speaking the Same Language?
STATEMENT
Local churches send missionaries, who are faithful followers of Jesus, to the nations. They cross significant cultural barriers, such as language or geography, in obedience to and fulfillment of the Great Commission. Missionaries make disciples through evangelism and by teaching new believers to obey all that Jesus taught, starting with baptism. A missionary’s ultimate goal is to plant and strengthen healthy local indigenous churches to God’s praise and glory.
Article Written by Mack StilesStarting with William Carey in the mid 1800s and continuing to today, modern missionaries have advanced the gospel in ways that would have been unimaginable when Christianity began in the days of the Apostle Paul.
If the Lord tarries, the future golden opportunities for missions would shock Paul or even William Carey. Of course, there are still obstacles. There’s still much work to be done. But journeys that once took months now take hours. Communication across the globe is nearly immediate thanks to the internet. Modern medicines and vaccines make the world safer than ever before. And perhaps best of all, Bible translations are available to people in thousands of different languages [1].
But modern missions nonetheless faces a vast, overarching problem. When Christians speak about missionary work, we assume we’re all discussing the same thing. This assumption spans Christian academies of higher learning to Vacation Bible Schools in local churches. We may use similar words, but when it comes to any biblical agreement about what missions is or is not, or what a missionary is or is not, we are sometimes as far as the East is from the West.
As a result, we can say dumb, unbiblical things about missions. I know because I used to say them. I was in campus ministry for years and called myself a “missionary to the university world.” It sounded great when I said it at a fundraising event, and nobody challenged me—ever. But I was not a missionary. Of course, I did many things missionaries do. But when we look carefully at the Bible’s description of the work of a missionary, we see that I wasn’t a missionary in the biblical sense. It’s quite common for someone to call themselves a missionary when they are merely describing a faithful Christian witness. So a businessman calls himself a “missionary to the business world”; a soccer coach calls herself a “missionary to her team.”
To make matters worse, churches are tempted to leave these comments unchallenged because they sound noble and motivating. But this only adds to the confusion. Some churches even foster this thinking with signs at their exits saying, “Now you are entering the Mission Field.” I wish pastors would take down those signs.
Part of the confusion lies in the subtle distinction between world evangelization and missionary work. After all, many Christians relocate to other countries for reasons beyond mission work. The U.S. Department of State estimates that 9 million American citizens live abroad. Although there is no definitive count of evangelical Christians among them, the Pew Research Center estimates that 23% of Americans identify as evangelical. Simple math shows that roughly 2 million evangelicals from the United States have crossed cultural barriers with the gospel. Even if we halve that figure, hundreds of thousands of believers have shared their faith overseas, from America alone. This is as Jesus foretold in Acts 1:8 – “you shall be my witnesses ... to the ends of the earth.” Historically, the spread of the gospel has often occurred because many believers have moved to other lands, advancing the gospel through faithful Christian witness. Thus, these expatriates are a part of world evangelization, but they are not missionaries in a biblical sense.
So, who is a missionary if campus staff, businessmen, soccer coaches, and expats are not?
Let’s take a deeper look.
What Is Missions?
Defining missions is more straightforward than defining a missionary, especially if we take a big-picture view, so this is where we start. Missions springs from the heart of God to reach a lost world with the good news of salvation by faith for all peoples.
We see His missionary heart woven throughout the Bible. It starts in the first chapters of Genesis and continues through the book of Revelation. Missions involve us in that grand design.
But even as God's missionary heart is revealed in his Word and demonstrated by missionary examples, it’s doubtful the church would have a full-orbed understanding of missions without the Great Commission. This is why our statement declares the Great Commission as missions’ underlying foundation. Everyone who has an interest in missions must understand the Great Commission. Furthermore, they must understand both the Great Commission’s plain meaning and all that the Great Commission implies. The Great Commission is notable both for what it says and for what it doesn't say, so we'll explore both as we go. But the most important thing about the Great Commission is that it forms the missionary job description.
Here's how Matthew’s Gospel records it:
“[16] Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. [17] And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. [18] And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. [19] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [20] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:16–20
The Missionary Job Description from the Great Commission–in Six Parts
One issue that floats over any discussion about what missionaries do is that the term "missionary" is not found in the Bible itself. Still, like the term "Trinity," it is necessary to summarize and label a particular role or person presented in the Bible. Likewise, there are distinct and essential elements related to missionaries.
Before we take a deeper dive, here are six primary observations to keep in mind:
Jesus is speaking to his disciples (vs. 16).
He sandwiches his commission between an assurance of his authority (vs. 18) and a promise of his presence (vs. 20).
He sends them to the nations. (vs. 19)
They are to evangelize; (vs. 19)
baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; (vs. 19)
and then teach these new believers to observe all of the teachings of Jesus. (vs. 20)
These observations lead us into the missionary’s job description.
1. Jesus is speaking to disciples.
First off, a missionary may have doubts at times, just like the disciples, but they must be people who have repented of their sin, put their faith in Jesus, and follow Him as Lord. One of the biggest surprises in my life happened on the mission field when I met people who called themselves missionaries, but as I watched their lives, I realized that they neither knew the gospel nor were genuine believers.
If a person is not a faithful follower of Jesus, then no matter what else they do, they are not a missionary.
2. Jesus reassures missionaries in the face of a daunting call.
Jesus knows that the missionary calling is tough. It is the kindness of Jesus that he so understands our fears, doubts, and fragility he sandwiched his commission between two assurances: the assurance of his authority (vs. 18) and the promise of his presence (vs. 20). And in the face of such an audacious command, the disciples needed reassurance. Imagine this group of bewildered and awe-struck disciples in backwater Palestine. They’re about to participate in a plan of such daunting scope (the world!). Yet, King Jesus entrusted them with this task. Today, we benefit from hindsight. We see how Jesus’ commission played out in world history, giving us confidence that it will continue unfolding until Jesus returns. Although the missionary call is as daunting today as it was then, we trust Jesus because we know the promises are just as firm today as they were then.
Missionaries trust that the outcome is secure. We are spurred on by Christ’s authority and protection.
3. Missionaries are “sent ones”
The very word missionary has at its root meaning “sent ones,” and we can’t be sent if there is no sender. Jesus issued His command to go to eleven disciples. However, in the book of Acts (Acts 1:4), Jesus also tells them to wait in Jerusalem for Pentecost, when the church was formed. In Acts 13, we see our best model of sending missionaries. The Holy Spirit moves the church at Antioch to set Paul and Barnabas aside as missionaries.
So, Jesus issued the command to go and the church approved and sent missionaries equipped for the task. Following the pattern of Acts 13, missionaries are sent by faithful local churches.
In the past, some thought that the Great Commission was only for those eleven individual disciples. Once they died, the Commission in some sense expired [2]. Thankfully, the church has largely discredited this idea. Today, we seem to face the opposite extreme: many think Jesus gave the Great Commission to all Christians. If that’s true, then any faithful Christian is a missionary in their context; after all, it’s not a “Great Suggestion” but a Great Commission. Yet, neither of these two extremes fits the biblical model.
The biblical model is that the Great Commission is given to the Church, and that all faithful Christians have a role in missions. There are two main roles; most send and some go. Each of these roles are superintended by the church.
This flies in the face of the modern missionary movement. If the local church is considered at all, it’s to give a rubber stamp of approval and hopefully a bit of cash. Today, the common understanding is that people become missionaries because God speaks to their heart, they sign up with a mission agency, and after some fundraising and training, they buy a plane ticket and head off to the uttermost. This is far from the biblical idea. The church is not an afterthought in missions; missionaries must be sent by the church. Self-appointed, lone ranger missionaries are not a biblical category.
Missionaries are approved and sent by a local church.
4. Missionaries go to the nations.
Going to the nations is what most people think about when they think of a missionary, and they should. And yet, it’s also a place of significant confusion about missions.
Since the 1970s, missiologists, usually following Ralph Winter [3], observation, that the word nations in Greek is the root word for our English word ethnic. They observe that the concept of nation-states today differs from whatever nations Jesus was referring to in first-century Palestine. Therefore, when we read the Great Commission, we should think more about ethnic people groups than nation-states [4].
In many ways, this observation was a good correction for missions. But it’s worth registering a few caveats. First, Jesus, just like other people in the first century, certainly understood the idea of nations—Babylon, Rome, and Israel, to name a few. Regardless, the precedent is clear: we don’t go to our own culture, but far beyond it. And so our statement asserts that missionaries cross major cultural barriers. This is what it means to go.
Now, “culture” is notoriously difficult to define. Some would argue that any variation from your home culture could fit the mandate of the Great Commission to “go,” but that’s not what Jesus is talking about. He says the nations, not the neighborhoods, to make it clear that there should be an intentional move to the ends of the earth. That’s why we say you are not a missionary if you work at Starbucks and are reaching out to your co-workers. Our statement upholds the intent of the Great Commission which is that missionaries cross significant barriers such as different geographies, different predominant languages, different political systems, and different cultures.
So, missionaries generally become cross-cultural experts. They understand biblical contextualization, learn the language, live with the people, eat the food, study the people's religion, take public transportation, and so on.
Not only is this the common understanding of missionaries, but it is where missionaries spend most of their time. Living in a foreign place and learning a new language and culture can be a lifelong process. All of this is a part of going to the nations.
Missionaries go to the nations and work to become cross-cultural experts.
5. Missionaries make disciples.
Disciple-making requires two parts: evangelism and teaching.
Evangelism
As we established in the previous point, missionaries go to the nations and work to become cross-cultural experts. But hear me on this: this is not the end of missions; it’s only the start. As much as I long for missionaries to be cross-cultural experts, I want to convince everyone that missions is not primarily about sacrificing comfort, learning a language, getting visas, growing in cross-cultural sensitivity and contextualization, living among foreign people, telling people not to distribute their prayer letter, alleviating suffering, or eating exotic food. These things are good and vital. But they’re not the primary goal.
Why? Because you can do all that and never share the gospel! Sadly, many missionaries are cultural experts but don’t, or won’t, share their faith [5]. They may speak the language but don’t know how to disciple a young believer. They may live with the people but never invite them to a gathering of believers[6].
If you never share the gospel, you are not a missionary.
So missionaries must evangelize. This is the start of making disciples. Evangelism is preaching or teaching the gospel with the aim to convert or persuade (2 Corinthians 5:11). So, the missionary knows how to overcome objections to the gospel, answer questions about the gospel, and call people to respond to the gospel.
I know this sounds obvious, but I say it because many who call themselves missionaries have forgotten this—or never knew it. You may do many other things on the mission field, such as mercy ministries. But if you are not evangelizing while working at a hospital, distributing aid, or digging wells, then you are not fulfilling the work of a missionary.
missionary must explain to the watching world how what they are doing is fruit that grows from the gospel, but not the gospel itself. The bottom line: the missionary must understand the gospel and how it applies to all of life.
However, some see the work of the missionary as only evangelism. As important as evangelism is, there’s more to making disciples.
Teaching
The second part of making disciples is teaching those whom the Lord adds to the church. Jesus is specific in the Great Commission about both how we teach and what we teach. How? We teach believers to obey Jesus' teachings. We’re not merely transferring cold data; we’re calling people to follow Jesus as Lord. What do we teach? We teach everything Jesus taught. Teaching everything is a big task. It takes time and effort. As Paul outlines in 1 Corinthians 3–4, this work is like building a house, not setting up a tent.
Some missionaries say we should give new believers a Bible and let them sort out the church and the Christian life in their context. Though there are well-intentioned reasons for this, in the end, it’s a dereliction of the missionary’s duty. After all, we don’t raise our children that way; neither do we raise new Christians without helping them grow. So, we teach and explain; we answer questions; we live with them to model discipleship; we establish qualified leaders; we write them once we’re gone. This is all part of what Jesus means when he calls his disciples to make disciples. Clearly, when Paul speaks to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:20-27, he repeats that he never shrank back from teaching the whole counsel of God. In effect, Paul is recasting the need to apply the words of Jesus in the Great Commission. Notice, too, that as Paul recounts his missionary work in Acts 20, he refers to both evangelism and teaching.
Missionaries make disciples through evangelism and by teaching new believers to obey all that Jesus taught.
6. Church Planting: The Aim of All Missionaries
This is perhaps the most needed part of our job description for modern missionaries. Healthy churches are an essential goal in missions work because a healthy local church is both the context and the consequence of disciples obeying all that Christ has commanded. And yet, planting healthy indigenous churches on the field is modern missions weakest link. The aim of all missionaries should be planting healthy indigenous churches. When we say indigenous, we mean a local church whose majority language, membership, and leadership are native to a place.
When we say healthy church, we mean it in a technical sense. It’s a local church shaped by the biblical principles of expositional preaching, gospel doctrine, biblical conversion, biblical evangelism, membership, church discipline, discipleship, leadership, prayer, and missions. No church is perfect, yet churches grow in health as they align themselves with these principles [7]. We measure a church’s health by its maturity in Christ and witness to the world (Ephesians 3:10, 4:11–16). In other words, “healthy church” is not a method of missions but simply a focus on those things the Bible outlines for the church.
When we say the aim of all missionaries is to plant churches, it does not mean you can’t do other things on the field. Missionaries can be doctors, teachers, agricultural engineers, and more. However, any missionary not directly involved in church planting must show how their work and life fosters church planting. That’s because the goal of missions for any missionary is a healthy, indigenous church.
Now let me explain how we get church planting from the Great Commission.
Church planting is implicit in the Great Commission because one of a new disciple’s first acts of obedience is baptism, and when we baptize new believers, we don’t baptize them into nothing; we baptize them into a church [8]. So when we baptize, we are planting new churches, or we’re adding people to existing churches. We see this most clearly with the baptism of 3,000 converts in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Put simply, you can’t be baptized without a local church. Moreover, we don’t merely baptize believers and trust them to figure out how to do church. Baptism is simply the beginning of a long process that involves more teaching.
Even a cursory overview of the New Testament, post-resurrection, shows the missionary’s work of teaching is almost always centered on, or directly about, the church. Paul outlines the pattern for us in I Cor. 3-4: the gospel is preached, and the church is formed on top of that gospel foundation. Much, if not most, of Paul’s missionary work and writings, involved instructing churches over the years about living in obedience to Christ and his gospel. Missionaries, therefore, aim to plant churches that apply foundational biblical principles [9]. There is much freedom in how worldwide churches structure the elements of a fellowship. However, missionaries are not free to ignore, or worse, oppose, the Bible’s clear expectations for a church [10].
Furthermore, if we are to obey everything Jesus taught (as we established in section 5), we find obedience to Jesus impossible without the church. How else can we love in community despite our differences? How else can we submit to our elders or be members of a local body? I could keep going.
Rock-solid biblical teaching about the church and its practices are especially vital in places where there are few churches. In frontier settings, a single church will have an outsized influence on generations of Christians to come. It’s common for missionaries to argue for the “church of the lowest common denominator.” In other words, they mean to bend certain biblical principles because of a church’s unique cultural context. I’ve heard well-meaning missionaries ask, “Who am I to tell people of another culture what they can do in church?” I’ve heard other missionaries assert, “I don’t want to export Western culture.” But without clarity on the church, missionaries tend to plant churches that allow the local cultural context to override clear biblical principles and expectations.
Ultimately, these reasons tend to be smokescreens that obscure obedience. For example, in our church in the Arabian Peninsula, a member once told me that since he came from a shame-honor culture, he couldn’t practice church discipline. He learned this from a missionary! He even swayed some younger believers to agree. But some people (from his own culture) pointed out that church discipline is a biblical principle. It’s hard in any culture. After all, Jesus himself came from a shame-honor culture, but he felt no hesitation in commanding churches to practice church discipline (Mt. 18:15–20).
Sadly, many missionaries have never seen a church plant or thought much about it. So when believers arise, they’re often at a lost about what to do. Sending churches should be aware of this and help missionaries understand the foundational principles of a church before they’re ever on the field. A missionary’s sending churches must also be aware of the critical nature of planting churches with firm biblical foundations. Unfortunately, too many sending churches give a pass to unbiblical practices on the field that they would never allow in their own churches. This is a shame. Churches on the field, as I’ve already mentioned, have an outsized influence on future generations. So they must nail down biblical principles into the DNA of a new church.
So, baptism is the doorway to a church. Furthermore, teaching Christians to “obey everything” Christ taught necessarily includes the church – a healthy church. That’s why we assert that the Great Commission implies church planting. It should also be said that though baptism is the doorway into a church, the connection between what it means to be a disciple and what it means to be a member of a church is strong. In other words, in the New Testament, being a Christian disciple means being a member of a church. A missionary’s responsibility and obedience, is to plant healthy churches a la 1 Corinthians 3–4.
If we get this wrong, we introduce serious errors in missions, especially when combined with the aforementioned confusion about the gospel and its implications. When these two errors (confusion about the gospel, and confusion about the church) come together, they make a powerful, misleading argument about missions that can reduce a missionary’s aim to social action. Establishing an orphanage or advancing creation care is not as valid or as important as church planting. There’s nothing wrong with orphanages. I’ve worked in them myself. But they are not the chief aim of a missionary [11].
There’s another confusing issue. Missiologists point out that missions is a cycle: a church sends missionaries; missionaries then evangelize, baptize, form a church, teach, and finally obey the Great Commission by sending new missionaries to plant new churches. This is undoubtedly God’s plan. The problem is that when missiologists draw a chart of this cycle, it appears as if the parts are equally weighed. But they aren’t—or at least they shouldn’t be. The most important element in the cycle is the church. A healthy indigenous church centered on the gospel becomes self-replicating and self-sufficient. It does not require endless cycles of missionaries or untold resources to prop it up. So when a missionary leaves—and they always leave—what they leave behind shapes what’s next.
When a church launches ministries, those ministries look like the church that started them. If they are unhealthy, then they will plant unhealthy churches. Unhealthy churches send unhealthy missionaries who then plant more unhealthy churches. It’s the negative cycle of missions. I say this because I’ve seen it.
The church is not merely one piece of the missionary calling but the missionary’s ultimate aim. The end goal of missions is a healthy indigenous church full of disciples who worship God and glorify Christ, making the gospel attractive to the watching world. We must make sure that we have this right.
So, regardless of the other things missionaries do, they must aim to plant indigenous healthy churches.
A Foundational Understanding of What the Church Is:
I have asked missionaries on the field who told me that they were church planters to define a church, and they could not. A missionary must know what a healthy church is and how it functions. So, before anyone leaves for the mission field, here are three definitions that every missionary should memorize.
What the Church is:
A local church is a gathering of baptized, born-again Christians who covenant together in love to meet regularly under the authority of the Scriptures and ordinarily enjoy the leadership of the elders. They mutually commit to worship God, be a visible image of the gospel, and, ultimately, give God glory (John 3:1–8; 13:34–35; Acts 2:41; 14:23; Eph. 3:10; Col. 3:16; 2 Tim. 3:16–17; Heb. 10:24–25).
What the Church Does:
A church must do only a few things to be a church: the people must regularly gather in gospel love to hear the Word preached, to sing, to pray, to give, and to practice the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Members build each other up in faith and faithfulness (1 Cor. 12:12–26) and guard each other's lives, even, if needed, through the practice of church discipline (Matt. 18:15–17).
The Mission of the Church:
The church is God’s strategic plan with one overarching mission: the Great Commission. Its mission is to go to all peoples, make disciples, and teach them to obey everything Christ has commanded, including forming new churches (Matt. 28:18–20) [12].
That’s it. Missionaries need to nail these three principles down, aim for them, teach them, and live them.
In Conclusion
We began this chapter by asking, “Who is a missionary?” As we examine the Great Commission, we see that there are some defining characteristics of a missionary.
We see that sharing your faith in your neighborhood, at work, or as a soccer coach is being a faithful Christian witness, and you should be celebrated as an evangelist. However, you have not crossed a significant cultural barrier.
Being a campus minister who makes disciples among students is a wonderful and God-given privilege, but your aim is not to plant a local healthy church made up of college students – at least it shouldn't be.
Living overseas for work is an exciting experience. Praise God for the opportunities you have. Put your hand to the plow and join a local church to support and encourage. Work well as a good witness on the job; be bold in sharing your faith with colleagues. However, unless you have been commissioned by a local church, sent to the place where you live to make disciples, be cautious about calling yourself a missionary.
On the other hand, every person who wrote the following chapters in this book is a faithful follower of Jesus. They have been commissioned by local churches and specifically sent to cross significant cultural barriers. They are long-term cross-cultural experts. They have worked hard to make disciples though bold evangelism with the clear goal of teaching those they see come to faith to obey all Jesus taught within the context of a healthy, local church. Many have planted indigenous, healthy churches – all aim to. It’s wise to listen to them.
footnotes:
[1] Wycliffe.net reports that the full Bible has been translated into 736 languages, 1,658 of the New Testament, and 1,264 with smaller portions of the Bible – and counting.
[2] Martin Luther, for example, though some scholars dispute this.
[3] Ralph Winter’s Plenary address at Lausanne I,1974
[4] See the GCC article “Unreached People Groups or Unreached Language Groups?” for a more in depth look at this issue.
[5] See GCC article “The Priority of Proclamation”
[6] As Paul desired (I Corinthians 14:23-25)
[7] Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, 4th edition, Crossway, 2021. c.f. The Church, the Gospel Made Visible, B&H, 2012.
[8] Yes, Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, but I would argue that the 3,000 on the day of Pentecost is the clear example for the church over the one exception–and praise God, he gives the grace for exceptions.
[9] See “Healthy Church” entry in the GCC Glossary
[10] See GCC article “How Should Church Look in This Culture?”
[11] For a quick look at the concern of the holism/proclamation debate, see this review written by a member of the Great Commission Council. https://www.9marks.org/review/book-review-the-essence-and-implications-of-missio-dei-by-peter-pikkert/ or simply read Peter Pikkert, Missio Dei, ALEV, 2017.
[12] Definition taken from Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus, by J. Mack Stiles Crossway, 2014
