The Lord Who Sends
Recordings, transcripts and study notes from three days on the mission of the church, for everyone who couldn't be in Fort Worth.
Before missions is something we do, it is something God does.
The title was chosen on purpose. The Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the Spirit, and through the church the Lord sends his people to the nations. No one is self-sent.
Missionary started the conference two years earlier in Jacksonville. This year it met at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, hosted with Radius International and Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Three days of plenaries, breakouts and panels: careful theology of mission, the lives of missionaries like Henry Martyn and Adoniram Judson, and plain talk about how local churches should send, test and care for the people they send.
“Mission exists because the nations of the world have nothing to sing about.”
Kevin DeYoung · The Son: Sent to Redeem the Nations
Program
Every session in the order it was given. Tap one to listen, read the transcript and study the notes.
Wednesday, Oct 14
01Six St Andrews students gave up their small ambitions for India. Duty was part of it, but the deeper reason was the love of Christ: the great need of mission is to lift high the grace and glory of Jesus.
▶ Listen · 49 min10:45AMSession 2 | Chad VegasThe Spirit's mission reveals who he is, bears witness to Christ in us, and bears witness to the nations through us, so the church goes out in his power, not with clever methods.
▶ Listen · 68 min1:30PMBreakout | Tim ChalliesChristian parents can make the church's missionary heritage their children's heritage: teach it so they value missions, model it in your own life, and teach it hoping they will be willing to go.
▶ Listen · 64 min1:30PMBreakout | Michael MoralesChurches should send missionaries with proven faithfulness, sound doctrine and tested character. Mission is urgent, but urgency is not speed.
▶ Listen · 59 min7:00PMSession 4 | Brooks BuserChurches that outlive the missionary are planted for the sake of his body, by means of the word, through rightly understood suffering, and by his power for his glory.
▶ Listen · 74 minThursday, Oct 15
02Henry Martyn shows a comfortable, man-fearing generation that the glory of God outshines the glory of man, and that we must glory in Christ before we can glorify him among the nations.
▶ Listen · 57 min10:45AMSession 6 | Kevin DeYoungAll mission flows from the Father's sending of the Son, so our missions must be Trinitarian, church-centered and dependent on God's own sending, and it exists because the nations have nothing to sing about.
▶ Listen · 61 min1:30PMBreakout | H.B. Charles Jr.The church fulfills the Great Commission through the ordinary means of grace, chiefly preaching: preaching that rests on Christ's authority, obeys his commission, proclaims his person and cross, explains the text, and leans on his presence.
▶ Listen · 52 min1:30PMBreakout | Dale Van Dyke, Mark Dever, Brad Buser, Eric BurnsActs 13 is the Bible's template for sending: the Spirit sets apart workers through a real, word-ruled church that sends its best and keeps watch over them. And through history, God has grown missionaries in seedbeds of ordinary teaching.
▶ Listen · 95 minFriday, Oct 16
03If you want to help world missions, teach the church about the church: the answers to how we live, believe, worship and live together are in the Bible, at home and on the field.
▶ Listen · 67 min10:45AMSession 9 | Paul SchlehleinPaul's model of missionary risk is an ordinary man. Godly risk is carried by committed Christians, leaves rescue to God, is restrained by love and wisdom, deserves honor, and is done for Christ alone.
▶ Listen · 70 min1:30PMBreakout | Chad Vegas, Brooks Buser, Jonathan MasterAsk anything about missions, and the panel keeps returning to a few convictions: keep categories clear, keep the local church responsible, and let Scripture, not numbers, set expectations.
▶ Listen · 62 min1:30PMBreakout | Mike RiccardiFive leaders on what keeps a church sending: a big, sovereign God preached every week, precise categories, a theology of suffering, and a church that owns and shepherds those it sends.
▶ Listen · 58 min7:00PMSession 10 | John PiperAdoniram Judson was a servant of joy: the hardest road is the happiest road, because Christ was not slain to fail, and every trial is ordered by infinite love.
▶ Listen · 64 minThemes
What was said across the conference, gathered by subject. Each theme links back to the moment in the recording.
The Lord who sends
The conference title was chosen deliberately. Before missions is something we do, it is something God does: the Father sends the Son, and the Father and the Son send the Spirit. Chad Vegas and Kevin DeYoung both argued that the word “mission” itself means sending, and that the eternal Trinity is revealed in these historical missions.
7 talks · 9 passagesThe church at the center of missions
Nearly every speaker came back to the local church. Sending is the work of the church (Acts 13); the church is also the goal of missions, since missionaries go to plant churches like the ones that sent them. Mark Dever summed it up: the mission of the church is the church continuing, prospering and helping new churches be planted where Christ has not been named.
5 talks · 10 passagesSend your best: training and testing
Antioch sent its two most valued leaders, and the conference kept pressing the point: churches should send people with proven faithfulness, sound doctrine and tested character, not those they can spare. Aubrey Sequeira's “Missions Mike” is what happens when zeal skips the biblical languages, the local church and testing.
3 talks · 8 passagesFaster, or faithful?
One of the conference's sharpest threads was a critique of movement methodologies: church planting movements, disciple-making movements and similar strategies that promise rapid multiplication with minimal doctrine. Brooks Buser's test is simple: go back in five years with someone who speaks the language and see whether the churches exist.
6 talks · 9 passagesSuffering and risk
Suffering ran through the biographies and the testimonies alike: Judson's prison and his wives' and children's graves, Paton on Tanna, Livingstone's shattered arm, and Brooks Buser's malaria among the Yembiyembi. Paul Schlehlein defined risk as exposing oneself to danger for Christ, and insisted that to avoid all risk is to avoid the Christian life.
5 talks · 8 passagesThe love and glory of Christ as the motive
Why go? The conference's answer was rarely duty alone. Ian Hamilton showed that the St Andrews Six went because the love of Christ held them; Michael Reeves showed Henry Martyn driven by a longing that Christ be glorified; John Piper presented the Judsons as servants of joy, bringing the nations into joys exalted as the heavens.
5 talks · 9 passagesPreaching and the word
How is the Great Commission fulfilled? By the ordinary means of grace, chiefly preaching. H.B. Charles Jr. walked through Matthew 28 to describe preaching that mobilizes a church, and called expository preaching not a style but a view of Scripture.
4 talks · 9 passagesBible translation and unreached languages
The organizers' focus is what they call “fourth-lane missions”: minority languages with no church and often no Scripture. The other lanes, training national pastors, English-speaking churches abroad and national languages, are good work, but receive the vast majority of funding. Language and church are the two markers they find clearest in Scripture.
7 talks · 9 passagesThe nations sing
The conference was full of singing, and several speakers pointed out why that matters for missions. Kevin DeYoung called the Bible a hymnal and redemption a musical: missions exists because the nations have nothing of eternal significance to sing about. Brooks Buser framed it with Psalm 96 and Revelation 5: we go because they don't know the new song yet.
6 talks · 7 passagesLives worth knowing: missionary heritage
Biography was the conference's native genre: Chalmers and the Six, Henry Martyn, Adoniram and Ann Judson, John G. Paton, Amy Carmichael, Eric Liddell, and Ferguson's seedbeds of Geneva, Princeton and St Andrews. Piper said he wrote his biographies to dismantle the lie that Calvinists don't do missions, and found that all his heroes were Bible people who suffered greatly.
4 talks · 7 passagesParents, children, and letting them go
Children came up again and again: how to teach them the church's missionary heritage, how to raise them on the field, and whether parents are willing to let them go. Tim Challies asked parents whether they had ever prayed that their children would be willing to move far away, and warned about the “we'll miss you” that quietly discourages qualified goers.
5 talks · 9 passagesCaring for those we send
If the church sends, the church must also keep watch. Jonathan Master asked how many of us could name the missionaries our church supports, and warned that checks are not oversight. Chad Vegas described a church that prays for its missionaries in every service, contacts them monthly, visits them and introduces them in membership classes, so their support grows while they're on the field.
6 talks · 8 passagesWhat is a missionary?
Words matter, the panel kept saying. A missionary is someone sent, and the organizers reserve the word for those sent to lay new foundations where Christ isn't named, not to lower other ministry but to keep the category from dissolving. If everywhere is a mission field and everyone is a missionary, the Great Commission loses its meaning.
8 talks · 8 passagesPerseverance without visible fruit
Much missionary work moves slowly: Judson waited six years for a first convert, Martyn labored knowing he might never see a convert, and Bibi from Nepal described supporters who want numbers. The answer the conference gave was not a better method but a bigger view of God: his sovereignty is not the enemy of missions, it is its nerve.
Speakers
Worship
Every song we sang together, in the order we sang it. Tap one to hear it in the recording.