Today is the start of our mission’s emphasis month. Being ‘mission-minded’ is on every church’s lips and in our statements of core values, ministry plans and such like. However, it is one thing to say we are mission-minded but another to embody ‘missions in motion’. It’s sometimes true that the more we assert we are mission-minded the less motion we have for missions.
What is mission-motion? It’s going beyond talk to actions to fulfil the command that we make disciples from of all nations (Matt 28:19). Three mission actions come to mind:
1. Pray for missions. Disciple-making is spiritual warfare on the front line. Only God can move people to believe in the Lord Jesus (1 Cor 12:3). We need action to pray consistently and specifically for this work. This includes praying for more missionaries and for missionary workers to be protected. Just today I received an email from my missionary brother speaking of his underlying weariness from serving on a field where 1,000 plus people have been killed in the last 12 months. This work needs prayer!
2. Pay for missions. Most mission works and missionaries need to be entirely supported by people outside that mission field. It’s expensive. Missionaries need to eat, educate their children, have medical attention and travel to see their folks just as much as any of us. Their costs in all these things are often higher than for those who stay at home. And there’s the cost of the mission projects themselves. This work needs money!
3. Go for missions. There are mission fields at home and we need to be intentional about going to them. Think about the many non-believers among our fellow-Singaporeans and also the outreach opportunities among foreign workers and students here. However, the larger and needier mission fields are abroad and we also need intentionality to go to them. This includes short-term missions exposure visits (such as our PaCE trips) but goes far beyond that. We need people who make a long-term commitment to go from home comforts and familiar things and serve the Lord in strange lands. This work needs people!
Because God is mission-minded, all his people should be mission-minded. God also shows mission-motion. The prayer of his heart is that all are saved (1 Tim 2:4). He paid the price of sending his one and only Son to the mission field (Jn 3:16). The Son left the comforts of his heavenly home to go and then come among us as a servant on the father’s mission (Phil 2:6-8). Let’s imitate our father God and add missions-motion to our talk of being mission-minded. Let’s pray, pay and go!
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