Adapted from the talk as a book chapter, in the speaker's voice. It keeps the argument, stories and wording where possible, but it is an edited retelling, not a transcript. Tap a time in the margin to hear that moment.
Before the talk
Brooks BuserAubrey Sequeira is a clear thinker and a pastor in the Middle East, where for ten years he has served in a very complex environment; by God's grace, what he has brought about there has strengthened that congregation. He has defended the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement against the so-called “3D gospel,” and he and I have worked together on a 9Marks series on church-centered missions. I love this brother. I'm thankful for how he pastors, how he preaches, and how he loves our King.
Let me introduce you to Missions Mike. Any resemblance to real persons or events is entirely coincidental, mind you.
Missions Mike was saved in youth group. He came to believe that God had a special purpose for his life and was calling him to something significant. He went on a short-term mission trip to Mexico and had what he calls a life-changing experience. Then he went off to college, attended a big missions conference for students, and became convinced that he was called to be a missionary. After all, he loves ethnic food, he makes friends easily with international students, and he does not want to settle for a quiet, boring American life. He doesn't want to waste his life.
After college Mike goes to seminary, and there he meets Ministry Martha. They marry, and they have “10/40” inscribed on the inside of their wedding rings. At seminary Mike takes a smattering of courses in intercultural studies and cultural anthropology. He does not sign up for Greek or Hebrew exegesis; learning the biblical languages takes too long, and the goal is to get to the field as fast as possible. Missions is urgent. Mike and Martha become members of a church, but they keep their involvement to a minimum, because there is no time to spare on the way to the field.
Finally they arrive at missionary training, where over six months they learn all about how to start a movement: the latest and greatest methods, church planting movements, disciple-making movements, Four Fields. Then, with a pocket full of dreams, they land on the field and meet their new teammates. They don't join the local English-speaking international church. They bypass any relationship with the national church. Their teammates tell them, “Don't get too involved with the church. The church will just slow you down.” Instead they gather once a week with the other missionaries for a little Bible study and a few songs.
At first it all looks encouraging. They meet a so-called “person of peace” in the community who opens doors to others. Two little Bible studies become four, four become eight, eight become twelve, and now they have a movement. They begin reporting big numbers back home.
Eighteen months later things take a turn. A number of their “partners” turn out to be spurious and join a cult that is also working in the area. Their person of peace betrays them, and more than betrays them: he defrauds them, because they have been supporting him with money, and now he is off to whoever will give him more. Mike and Martha begin to struggle in their marriage. With no church to support them, they talk to their team leader, who tells them, “Everyone goes through that. You just need to push through.” Martha becomes pregnant, and a couple of months later she miscarries. Overwhelmed with sorrow and grief, they are told again to push through.
Their grief is overshadowed by conflict on the team. Some of their teammates have become convinced that the best way to reach this culture is to present the atonement through an honor–shame paradigm and stop talking about penal substitution. The team splits in two over the issue. Mike tries to catch up. He reads blogs online, he works hard at it, but the arguments leave him confused. He never took enough systematic theology in seminary.
Broken relationships, the absence of any real fruit, the theological battles, and the grind of language learning all take their toll. Meanwhile Martha has grown lonely, isolated in her sorrow, and increasingly resentful. One day she breaks down and tells Mike she is leaving, with him or without him. They do not make it to the end of their first term. They arrive back stateside disillusioned and falling apart, never to return to the field.
By some estimates, half of career missionaries leave the field within their first five years. Even among those who stay longer, the average North American missionary serves roughly two terms, and comes home just when years of language learning and cultural adaptation have equipped them for greater fruitfulness.
And we could talk at length about those who do stay and the many problems they create: the spurious converts and phantom churches produced by an emphasis on rapid multiplication with minimal doctrine; the syncretism and heretical teaching that creep in through over-contextualization and compromise the gospel; the splits on teams; the unaddressed issues of personal holiness that leave the very people we are trying to reach disillusioned and the gospel discredited.
A Better Way
What shall we say to these things? I am here to tell you that there is a better way: a more faithful way, a way that honors our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord who sends.
My goal is not merely to persuade you. I want you to grow in passion to send your best to the nations, for the glory of Christ and the good of his church. And if you are one who hopes to be sent, I want you to give yourself to diligent preparation and to make the biblical qualifications your compass. My hope is that we will be convinced, and convicted, to raise up and send out those who have a track record of proven faithfulness, who have been trained and armed with sound doctrine, and who are zealous for the glory of Christ and the good of his blood-bought bride.
Our text is Paul's farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. On his way to Jerusalem, he sent from Miletus to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. Here is the heart of what he told them:
“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.” (Acts 20:28–31)
From this passage I want to give you three reasons to send your best.
1. Sound doctrine must be proclaimed and protected
In Acts 20 Paul is speaking from the depths of his heart to men he himself had raised up as elders, and he points them to his own life and ministry as a missionary pastor among them. In other words, this passage gives us a biblical portrait of a missionary. And notice where the emphasis falls: on words, on speech. Paul declared what was profitable without shrinking back, teaching in public and from house to house (v. 20). He testified to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ (v. 21). He testified to the gospel of the grace of God (v. 24). He proclaimed the kingdom (v. 25). He declared the whole counsel of God (v. 27). He admonished everyone with tears (v. 31).
The gospel we take to the nations is a message that must be declared. It is a doctrine, a system of belief. Paul calls it the whole counsel of God, a message of repentance and faith, the gospel of the grace of God, the kingdom. So what do we proclaim?
We proclaim our glorious triune God, who is holy and righteous, gracious and good, who created man in his image to glorify him and enjoy him forever. We proclaim that Adam and Eve sinned and rebelled against their Creator, and that as a result all peoples everywhere, descendants of Adam, bear his guilt and condemnation. We stand guilty before a holy God, sinners by nature and by choice, deserving the sentence of eternal condemnation pronounced against us.
And we proclaim that, in his infinite glory, love and mercy, according to the perfect plan of the triune God, God the Son, sent by the Father, took a human nature and came into our world, truly and fully God, truly and fully man. Our Lord Jesus Christ lived the perfect life as our representative. He died on the cross, pouring out his blood as a substitutionary sacrifice for sinners and taking on himself the wrath of God we deserve, and he rose from the dead. All who turn to him in repentance and faith receive the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and a place in his kingdom, which he inaugurated by his death and resurrection and will consummate at his coming. This is the gospel we proclaim.
It may be that you are reading this and have never trusted this Christ. Perhaps a friend put this in your hands. Or perhaps you call yourself a Christian but have been living for years in self-deception. Then let me proclaim this Christ to you: if you turn from your sin and trust in him, he is yours today.
This gospel, this message, must be proclaimed to the nations. So we send missionaries to preach Christ and him crucified, his kingdom and his gospel, to those who have never heard, so that they teach the Scriptures in public and from house to house.
But missionaries must not only proclaim sound doctrine; they must also protect it from those who wage war against it. Look again at Paul's warning in verses 28–31. Consider the seriousness of the charge: pay careful attention to the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. And consider the seriousness of the threat: fierce wolves will come in among you.
What are fierce wolves like? They are often very likable. On the mission field they look like the promising, charismatic, exciting prospect who is going to help you start a movement. They masquerade as a person of peace. Missionaries need a healthy skepticism and well-exercised muscles of discernment rather than being gullible. That is to say, the missionaries we send must be able to teach. As Paul puts it in Titus 1:9, they must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that they can give instruction in sound doctrine and also rebuke those who contradict it.
The fact is that modern missions is a cesspool of destructive theology and bad ecclesiology. If you want evidence, pick up the latest edition of the reader for the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course and read it.
In its desire to avoid colonialism, the missions world has introduced strange forms of contextualization: displacing penal substitutionary atonement in favor of honor–shame or fear–power models, or the so-called insider movements, which teach people that they can follow Jesus from within their own religious systems. What people don't realize is that this is itself a new form of colonialism, because these approaches rest on reader-oriented, Western, postmodern ways of reading the Bible. Or think of the pragmatism that marks modern missions: the homogeneous unit principle, which says churches should be divided along ethnic lines and so reinforces the status quo of society; the many movement methodologies; obedience-based discipleship, which subverts the gospel through legalistic obedience to commands and produces false conversions.
Missionaries are taught (I am not making this up) to plant rabbit churches, not elephant churches. Rabbit churches have minimal doctrine and minimal ecclesiology, so they reproduce quickly, like rabbits; elephant churches take a long time to establish. The problem with rabbit churches, as a missionary friend of mine points out, is that they get devoured by hawks and wolves. The mission field is littered with their corpses.
When missionaries raise support and talk about their calling, what is the great buzzword in American missions? Vision. “Can I tell you about my vision?” A missionary comes to a church asking for support, and the church says, “We'd love to hear your vision.” But when Paul wanted to go to the nations, his missions manifesto, the letter to the Romans, begins with eleven chapters of doctrine.
So when you send missionaries to the field, send people equipped with sound hermeneutics and able to do exegesis. Make sure that they:
- know how to rightly handle the word of truth, and, if they are going to preach, teach, or translate the Bible, know Greek and Hebrew;
- are equipped in biblical theology, so they can proclaim the whole counsel of God and show how all of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Christ, so that hearts burn within as they are shown Christ;
- are well trained in systematic theology, so they can reason from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ and set out a Christian worldview over against other worldviews;
- are schooled in church history and historical theology, so they have learned from past errors, recognize how orthodoxy and heresy develop, and can make sure new churches on the field stand in fellowship with the universal church and are rooted in the faith once for all delivered to the saints;
- are armed with a biblical ecclesiology: committed to God's design for his covenant people in the local church, able to teach God's people how to behave in the household of God, the pillar and buttress of the truth, and able to teach churches to subscribe to and defend a confession of faith.
When I say these things, especially in missions circles, I hear, “That's all very academic. That kind of theological education is fine for the West, but the people out there in the villages just need Jesus.” Friend, do you not realize how patronizing that sounds? Why would you think so poorly of your fellow image-bearers of God? The Lord Jesus Christ whom we proclaim revealed himself in a book.
Think about it. If a missionary cannot explain the triune nature of the one true God in a Sunday school class in English, why would you expect him to explain it to Muslims in Arabic or Urdu? If she cannot say in English what penal substitution is, why would you expect her to defend it as the heart of the atonement against the Christus Victor model in a fear–power culture like the Kanuri, or against honor–shame models among Mandarin speakers? If they have never learned to assess someone's profession of faith in their own culture here in the West, why would you think they will tell true conversion from false in a patron–client culture in northern India? And if they know nothing about biblical church order, why would you think the churches they plant will be biblically faithful?
More than once I have said to missionaries, and once to a missions professor, “If we applied the regulative principle of worship, it would settle a whole range of debates about contextualization.” And the response I get is, “The regulative what?”
Here is a simple test. If there is someone whose preaching you personally would not gladly sit under for any length of time, why would you send that man to preach to people who have never heard? I want to speak to pastors here. If you are the main preacher in your congregation, and you personally exegete the Scriptures in Greek and Hebrew for your people each week, as you should, why would you send someone to preach the gospel overseas who doesn't, or can't, do the same?
Beloved friends, the Christ of the Scriptures must not merely be pondered; he must be proclaimed to the nations. But we cannot proclaim what we have not pondered. So please, before you send Missions Mike and Ministry Martha off to the 10/40 window, make sure they are well equipped to proclaim and protect the whole counsel of God among those who have never heard.
2. Godly character must be displayed and tested
Our missionaries must not only proclaim and protect sound doctrine. Their lives must display that doctrine, and especially so when they are tested. That is my second reason to send your best.
Look again at Acts 20. Paul does not only speak of his proclamation of the whole counsel of God, and he does not only urge the elders to guard sound doctrine. He points them to his own example, to the gospel on display in his life. We have already seen his tireless preaching. He also points to:
- his humble service: “You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials” (vv. 18–19);
- his faithful perseverance: “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit… imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course” (vv. 22–24);
- his hard work: “I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel… these hands ministered to my necessities… It is more blessed to give than to receive” (vv. 33–35);
- above all, his deep love and piety: he knelt down and prayed with them all, and there was much weeping; they embraced him and kissed him, sorrowing most of all because they would not see his face again (vv. 36–37).
The missionary's life must commend the gospel the missionary proclaims.
The missionary's life and example put Christ on display before the people he or she is trying to reach. Consider the staggering logic of 1 Thessalonians 1:4–6. Paul tells those believers, “We know that you are chosen by God,” and how does he know? “Because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord.” And in chapter 2 he says, “We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves.”
For better or for worse, people form their opinion of Jesus, of the God we worship, from the way missionaries live. I speak from experience. I could tell you many stories of unbelieving friends who grew disillusioned with Christianity, and of the gospel being discredited, because of the poor witness of missionaries. But I can also tell you that the Lord brought me to faith in Jesus Christ through the faithful witness and life of a missionary, a man who patiently loved me and gave his time and life and energy to share the gospel with an arrogant, foolish twenty-one-year-old Indian kid who had never heard it. I saw the gospel in that missionary.
“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time,” Paul says in verse 18. Yet how many of the new movement methodologies emphasize the missionary's distance from the people being reached? The missionary becomes a so-called “trainer of trainers” who meets with a handful of leaders and imposes legalistic obedience to commands in the name of discipleship, instead of setting an example of covenant life before them, with them and among them, through commitment to a local church.
If you are sending missionaries to share the gospel and gather disciples into gospel-preaching churches that glorify Christ, shouldn't they show an exemplary commitment to the local church here before they go? If a man or woman does not love and live a life centered on the local church where they are, why would you send them to serve among the nations the church Christ purchased with his own blood? And when they arrive on the field, shouldn't we make sure they join a local church there at once, so that the gospel they proclaim is commended by the Christian life they live?
If you are going to send missionaries to live among the lost, send those who have lived faithfully among you: people you have taken the time to know, in whom you have observed the character qualifications of an elder or a deacon laid out in God's word.
If you are sending a man to be the primary church planter, make sure he meets the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9. Send men who are above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach; not drunkards, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not lovers of money; men who manage their own households well, with all dignity keeping their children submissive. Do not send recent converts, who may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Send men who are well thought of by outsiders, so that they do not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.
If you are sending a man or a woman as part of a support team rather than as the primary church planter, I think the qualifications for deacons in 1 Timothy 3:8–10 are a helpful guide. Our churches may differ on whether women can serve as deacons, but surely we can agree that those character qualifications are a good guide for a woman going to the field. Make sure they are dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain, holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. “And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.”
Is that too much to ask? And remember that these qualities take time to grow, to nurture, to observe, to examine and to test. Make sure they have been tested, and send them if they prove blameless. Make sure you have seen a strong and healthy marriage here before you send it out there.
In North America we sometimes act as though missionaries are made in a microwave. Instant. In reality, missionary preparation is more like a crock pot. And, to use one more cooking image, the mission field is a pressure cooker.
Missions Mike and Ministry Martha will be tested. Either you will test them before they go, or they will be tested when they get there: with trials and tears, heartbreak and pain; in the cauldron of suffering, rejection and fruitlessness; with the severe trials of language learning, life-threatening illness, betrayal, team conflict and persecution from outsiders. Out of love for the souls of those we send, out of love for the church of Jesus Christ, out of love for the lost people we are trying to reach, why would you not make sure their character has been tested, examined and seasoned before you send them? If you have never seen them walk through suffering and endure it, why would you assume they will endure the cauldron that awaits them on the field?
All of this goes back to the very beginning, to the motivation to go. Sadly, the North American missions enterprise is rife with an individualistic, self-fulfilling ambition. “I feel a calling. God has called me. I want to go. Send me.” “Oh, you feel called? Let's send you as soon as possible! Let's see what we can do to get you there.”
We have mistaken self-fulfilling ambition for an inviolable divine calling. And make no mistake: that ambition will pop like a balloon when pricked by the challenges of cross-cultural living and witness. The motivation of the true missionary is the one Paul names in Romans 1:5: to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations, for the sake of his name. So send those who have a burning passion for the glory of Christ and the good of his church, who are compelled by his love, and whose convictions and character will carry them through every trial, so that they endure all things for the sake of the faith of God's elect and the glory of Jesus.
3. Christ is worthy of worship
That leads to my final reason. Send your best because sound doctrine must be proclaimed and protected; send your best because godly character must be displayed and tested; and send your best because Christ is worthy of worship.
Look once more at verse 28: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock… to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” Missions is urgent. The earnestness with which Paul labored, and the earnestness of the charge he left behind, rest on this: the Lord purchased his church, a people from all nations, with his own blood.
Yes, missions is urgent. But don't confuse urgency with speed. In their very helpful book The Path to Being a Missionary, which I commend to you, Ryan Robertson and Matt Bennett ask us to imagine that you need emergency open-heart surgery. Do you want the first available first-year medical student interning at the local hospital to perform it? Or would you rather have a cardiothoracic surgeon who has prepared for fifteen years and has a wealth of experience? They write that they are concerned that the world has higher standards for doctors, lawyers, plumbers, electricians and accountants than many churches have for missionaries, who are sometimes sent with no qualification but their willingness to go and their ability to raise funds.
I would add that churches tend to be far more careful about the pastors they call for themselves than about the missionaries they send to others. Urgency does not mean speed. Urgency demands carefulness, diligence in preparation and discernment in approach, because our urgency is driven by the knowledge that Christ is worthy of the worship of the nations.
I serve as a pastor of an international church in the Middle East. People sometimes ask me what the hardest part of my work is, and I can answer easily: recruiting. That surprises people. But it is genuinely hard to find biblically qualified workers who are willing to move their lives overseas. I can name open positions right now, English-speaking international churches that need pastors, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Cairo, Egypt; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Islamabad, Pakistan; and in Kurdistan, Iraq, positions that have gone unfilled for years. Meanwhile American evangelicalism keeps pulling missionaries, pastors and theologians off the field into supposedly more strategic roles: the enormous seminaries here in America, or the big church that needs a missions pastor.
When I was a young man in India and needed clothes, we would often go to big warehouses where you could buy them very cheaply. Walking in, you would be surprised to find all the big brands, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Versace, because they are all made in India, and yet you could get them for next to nothing. The reason was that these warehouses held what were called export rejects. One button was out of place, so the shirt didn't make the cut; one cuff was longer than the other, so it couldn't be exported. The flawless pieces were shipped abroad, and the flawed ones ended up in the warehouse, where people like us bought them cheap.
Sometimes I feel that is what is happening in missions, only the other way around: we keep our best at home and export the ones who didn't quite make the cut. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers, especially the biblically qualified ones, are few. Will you pray to the Lord of the harvest? And praise God for the faithful ones who are there.
There is a cost to sending our best. Think of the church in Antioch in Acts 13: it sent out its main preacher and its most encouraging pastor, Saul and Barnabas, both at once. Our church in Abu Dhabi has felt the loss of sending out some of our most faithful and fruitful elders. We miss them; I miss them. But we also share the joy of seeing the gospel advance, the church flourish, and Jesus glorified where we sent them.
Worship is the fuel and the goal of missions, which means that sending our best is itself an act of worship.
When we send our best, we are saying that our triune God is worthy. Consider whom God sent: he sent us his Son. He did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. God the Son took a human nature and came into our sin-sick world. He suffered, he died, he poured out his blood, and he purchased his church from the nations with that blood. When we send our best, we are saying, He is worthy. You are worthy, Lord.
So, Lord, send us men who will not count their lives of any value or as precious to themselves, if only they may finish their course and testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Send us workers who will work hard and set an example for those around them. Send us those who will rightly divide the word of truth. Send us men and women of prayer, who trust not in their own abilities but in the grace of a sovereign and omnipotent God. Send us those of whom this world is not worthy, whose lives will commend the gospel, who will risk their necks for the glory of Jesus. Send us those who will persevere through persecution, trials and afflictions. Send us the sober-minded, who do not think of themselves more highly than they ought. Send us those who will not bear a tarnished testimony to so worthy a Redeemer.
For Jesus is worthy. He was slain, and by his blood he ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign with him forever and ever. He is worthy to receive the worship of the nations. He is worthy of healthy churches that display his glory, worshiping him in Tagalog and Telugu, in Arabic and Urdu, and in every other tongue under heaven. He is worthy of sound doctrine that rightly represents his saving work and the glory of his person. And he is worthy of the loss your church will feel when you send your best.
Lord, by the power of your Spirit, move in our hearts so that we see Christ as so glorious, so beautiful, so magnificent and majestic that we would go, and that we would send those whose feet are beautiful with good news, for your name's sake, Lord Jesus, Lord of the church you purchased. Amen.