Missions and Evangelism

The Mission of God Will Be Victorious

Before Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, He said something significant to His disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20).¹ This exhortation is what Christians call the Great Commission, and the profound statement that follows it is what Christians depend on to accomplish the Great Commission. Indeed, Christians cannot evangelize without Christ and neither can they make disciples out of anything without Him. Christ with Christians is what makes missions possible, successful, and worth the difficult and costly task of evangelizing to the nations.

In the verses prior to the Great Commission, Christ says another profound statement. He declares, “all authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). The fact that Christ presently reigns from heaven is not only a huge comfort to Christians, but it is a promise that God will accomplish everything He has planned, including the Great Commission. Dave Mathis, in Finish the Mission, states, “not only is missions powered by Jesus’s universal authority, founded on His finished work, and modeled in His ministry, but also missions is sustained by the promise of His presence and the pleasure [Christians] have in Him.”² Because Christ reigns from heaven and with Christians, missions will not fail. He will be known among the nations because He has ruled it so.

The Great Commission is an invitation. Creation sings the praises of God (Ps. 148) and through the justification that the Gospel brings, the Christians of the earth join in. God, though able, does not choose to do His work alone, but he desires for the ones who worship Him to walk alongside Him in His work. He invites Christians in the Great Commission, “out of kindness and generosity and love, to get onboard with the things He is doing in the world right now, and until the end of time. He’s inviting [them] to walk with Him as [they] share a role in His glorious plan.”³ That is what missions is. Christians walk alongside the Lord as they steward what He has given them. He is responsible for all the work. After all, the word mission comes from the Latin root missio, which means “sending.”⁴ The subject of even the word mission is not Christians but the Lord Himself. He sends. The only thing Christians must do is go and participate in the work He has already planned.

Incarnational Ministry and Contextualization

While Christians must only go, there are a few practical things that they are responsible for. These things are laid out for them in the Great Commission. The first command is “go.” It is then followed by “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19). How do Christians do this? They simply must share the Gospel with the nations in order to make disciples. If and when the people come to faith, it is because God has worked regeneration in their heart. Like all things, “conversion is first God’s act, before it is even [theirs]. [All people] must be saved, and through Christ [they] are” if God has worked faith in them.⁵ Once this miraculous and glorious event comes to happen in those being witnessed to, they are to be baptized in the Trinitarian formula, and then they are to be taught all of the commands of Christ.

While evangelism to the nations is God’s work first, it can be very difficult to communicate the Gospel cross-culturally for Christians. In order to combat this difficulty, Gailyn Van Rheenen suggests that missionaries become incarnational. He states, “incarnation is redemptive identification, expressed through empathetic relationships used by God to transform the heart, the mind, and the soul.”⁶ Like Jesus, missionaries must become whom they witness to in a way, understanding them and taking on their own “culture, struggles, triumphs, defeats, and temptations.”⁷ Also like Jesus, they are to come in humility. They participate in the lives of the people “‘not as benefactors, but as co-workers.’ [Incarnational ministry] necessitates standing with new Christians, not standing over them.”⁸ While Jesus definitely had the authority and holiness over all of those around Him, He came like everyone else. He came as a man. Christian missionaries must do the same. They must become like the people around them in order to become effective and to love the people well.

Once the missionary becomes like the people, they can begin to share the Gospel with them. Once again, this can prove difficult. In order for the missionary to share the Gospel effectively, they must make use of contextualization. Contextualization is making the Gospel understandable to a particular culture without sacrificing the truth of Scripture. It is adapting words so that the people may understand based on their own worldview. The Apostle Paul is a near perfect example of contextualization in action. Rheenen states that “as more Gentiles became believers, Paul championed a view that allows Gentiles to become Christians without adopting Jewish customs or observing mosaic rituals… [he believed] that the new believers of a new culture did not have to speak the language, wear the clothes, or follow all the customs of the sending church.”⁹ This is contextualization in terms of those who are already saved, but Paul also contextualized to those yet to be converted. One example is when Paul witnessed the philosophers and stoics at Athens (Acts 17:16-34). He came across statues of their pantheon of gods and a statue to the unknown god. He contextualized the Gospel by stating that the unknown god was representative of Christ, who is Lord of all. Moreover, Paul was willing to become all things for the sake of winning some to Christ (1 Cor. 9:19-23). Missionaries must function the same when they share the Gospel.

Contextualization does have limits. In the case of the unknown god, “[Paul’s] Gospel was not simply the opportunity to add another immortal to the pantheon of worship.”¹⁰ Rather, he had to elaborate the contextualization with both reason and Scripture. Contextualization alone does not save unbelievers. It must be accompanied by the Word. The Apostle Paul tells Christians, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). Paul wielded both contextualization and “a sword—dividing people from their former religion [and] their previous way of life.”¹¹ A missionary must employ Scripture in an understandable manner to bring lost souls to Jesus.

Another strategy that missionaries should practice is to plant churches rather than to only seek the conversion of individuals. Discipleship multiplies exponentially. A disciple will have multiple disciples, and those disciples will have disciples of their own. A church provides an environment for this practice to be facilitated. Once a church is planted in a previously unreached area, it can serve as a “‘missional outpost’ in [its] neighborhood and city.”¹² It becomes a beacon to the surrounding area and a city on a hill.

Mission Plan for Westminster Presbyterian Church

A church that has done a good job of being a “missional outpost” is Westminster Presbyterian Church of Amarillo, Texas. Recently, the church has started an afterschool program for the neighboring middle school. Of course, the ministry started off as quite small and only a few children attended, but it has grown exponentially. Within the last couple of weeks, the church has received a forty-five thousand dollar grant to grow its program and to bring more middle schoolers to saving faith in Christ. This, of course, was the Lord’s doing and He will accomplish whatever He desires with the ministry as His hands.

While Westminster has been faithful in terms of witnessing to their neighbors, there is room to grow into a missional calling. The congregation, like many church congregations, is primarily composed of the older generation. While this is by no means a bad thing, it would be nice to have younger people in the church service. Perhaps Westminster could continue to invite children from the afterschool program to youth groups and then to Sunday service. Having a diversity in age would be of great benefit to the church. The older generation would have more opportunities to disciple believers, and the younger generation could learn quite a lot from the mature Christians. It would also unify the church in a way that it has not been unified in the past years. Intergenerational ministry reflects the unity that Christ had and has with children: “let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt. 19:14).

Not only should Westminster become more missional with the neighboring middle school, but it also should reach out to the surrounding community as a whole. Westminster is located in a historic neighborhood within Amarillo and there are many families within the neighborhood who do not know Jesus. Indeed, they may have never even heard of His great Name. A strategy to reach these people would be to participate in the neighborhood chats that are already established on social media, to reach out to families with many connections, and even walking door to door within the neighborhood. While door-knocking is an old method of evangelism, it has just as much power as any other sort of evangelism because it is powered by God. Because of the Holy Spirit, some families may decide to visit the church and become Christians. No work is done in vain.

When this new influx of people join the church or even think about joining the church, they may not understand how reconciliation to God occurs. Because of this, it would be missional for Westminster to practice reconciliation themselves in order to welcome in and display reconciliation to God for the unbelievers and newly-churched Christians. Westminster should practice “loving and forgiving one another, even when they can find lots of reasons not to do so.”¹³ This will be a light to all the visitors and a display of the Gospel of Christ. More importantly, the Gospel must be preached at Westminster in order for the reconciliation to truly occur.

It would also be helpful for Westminster to implement regular evaluation and planning in terms of missions if they are not already doing so. The elders, deacons, and church staff of the congregation should get together to discuss their current philosophy of missions in relation to the philosophy of missions found in the Bible. After evaluating, they ought to plan and discuss motivation for missions both inside and outside of their community. This time of planning would be focused on both vision casting and realistic expectations that are manageable under the current church budget.

Overall, Westminster has done a fairly good job in fulfilling the Great Commission. However, they are capable of doing more and expanding into new territories where evangelism will be more prevalent for every congregant of the church. Over time, Westminster will become more devoted to the Great Commission and missions as a whole, both inside and outside of their current ministry context.

Bibliography

Clark, Elliot. Mission Affirmed: Recovering the Missionary Motivation of Paul. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022.

Lawrence, Michael. Conversion: How God Creates a People. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017.

Mathis, David, and John Piper, eds. Finish the Mission: Bringing the Gospel to the Unreached and Unengaged. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.

Packer, J.I., Concise Theology. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1993.

Rheenen, Gailyn Van. Missions: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Strategies. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014.

Wilson, Jared C. The Gospel-Driven Church: Uniting Church Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019.

Footnotes

1. Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the New American Standard Bible (NASB) (La Habra: Foundation Publication, 1995). ↩

2. David Mathis and John Piper, eds., Finish the Mission: Bringing the Gospel to the Unreached and Unengaged (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 25. ↩

3. David Mathis and John Piper, eds., 45. ↩

4. J.I. Packer, Concise Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1993), 233. ↩

5. Michael Lawrence, Conversion: How God Creates a People (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 45. ↩

6. Gailyn Van Rheenen, Missions: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Strategies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), 215. ↩

7. Ibid., 212. ↩

8. Ibid., 213. ↩

9. Rheenen, 173. ↩

10. Elliot Clark, Mission Affirmed: Recovering the Missionary Motivation of Paul (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 160. ↩

11. Ibid. ↩

12. Jared Wilson, The Gospel-Driven Church: Uniting Church-Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), p. ↩

13. Lawrence, 44. ↩