Following Jesus' Strategy for Sending Workers

Suspicious of you because you speak Russian.

And if you went to a Russian-speaking church, everyone would be suspicious of you because you're Ukrainian.

Where do you go to worship?

Well, ABWE missionaries that were kicked out of Russia when the war began were able to plant a church in Moldova.

And this morning, if you were a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, you would have a place to worship in Moldova because of church planting that's happening despite wars and persecution.

That's the power of missions.

But what if you were a young Thai man?

One of the most difficult people groups to reach are Thais.

And specifically, young Thai men are difficult to reach.

What if, where would you worship?

What how would you hear the gospel as a young Thai man growing up and you're fascinated with your physique and working out and getting strong, and Mooy Thai boxing is your thing, and you're, and where are you going to hear the good news of the gospel?

Well, ABWE missionaries decided that they would reach young Thai men and started a CrossFit gym church.

And right now, if you go to Thailand, there are a group of young men who showed up early in the morning to work out, to pump iron, to do CrossFit and turnover tires and all the silly CrossFit things you people do that, you know, you're and they're doing all the all of those things, and then they stop in the middle of their workout, and the gospel is proclaimed, and a church service happens.

And as one by one, as young Thai men have received Christ, there is a church that has formed in that CrossFit gym.

That's the power of missions.

But what if you were in Tangiers, Morocco, an area 99% Muslim, where would you where would you worship?

Perhaps you would worship at Grace Baptist Church, a church that didn't exist 10 months ago, but is proclaiming the gospel today because of a faithful group of missionaries who have started and planted a church with national partners, and there's a thriving church that happens right there in Tangiers, Morocco.

Parkside, that's the power of missions.

Places where one year ago there were no churches, now in three very difficult places, the gospel is being faithfully proclaimed because of local churches taking a risk to send their best and their brightest to the nations for the gospel to be proclaimed.

That's missions.

That's the beauty of what local churches do when they activate the Great Commission in their midst.

But this morning I want to address a problem.

And I'm going to be a little bit transparent with you.

It's a problem that my wife and I have spotted as we've traveled around the United States.

I get the opportunity to speak in churches all over the United States, and we've seen something happen.

It's subtle, but it's a problem.

And it's this.

Many churches are enamored with missions, but refuse to activate for missions.

Many churches are enamored with missions.

They want me to come speak.

They invite me to come speak.

They welcome me.

They're excited that we're there.

They have missionaries and they're enamored with missions.

They like the idea.

There's a church in Tangiers, awesome.

There's a church in Thailand.

It's a CrossFit gym.

Church?

I kind of maybe I'd go there.

I don't know.

I don't know what the worship's like.

Let me check it out.

You know, and there's there's this enamoredness, there's this fascination with, there's this curiosity for missions, but there's not an activation towards missions.

So this morning I I want to look at what Jesus did to activate missions.

I I think one of the beautiful things that we have in Scripture is we have this wonderful example in our Lord and Savior of how He sent out people to do the mission of proclaiming the kingdom of God.

And if we as the church want to be faithful to the Great Commission, we've got to do much more than admire missions.

We must follow the strategy that Jesus Himself laid out for missions.

And so I just want to take a few moments to walk through this because Jesus didn't leave us without a global plan.

He actually gave us a pattern for calling missionaries, he gave us a process for training missionaries, he gave us a mandate for sending missionaries and an expectation of multiplication through generations.

And his pattern that he set for us is not outdated.

We see the pattern happening today.

We see the pattern happening today in places like Japan, where I shared with you earlier that we're seeing 22 new missionaries go to reach places in Japan that have not been reached previously.

We see the gospel being proclaimed in places like Togo, West Africa, where medical ministry is being powerfully integrated with the gospel presentation, and we're seeing unreached people groups reached through expansion of the gospel.

We're seeing places like working with national partners in Greece and seeing churches planted amongst people groups.

Greece has become kind of a hub of immigration throughout the world, and there's powerful gospel presence in Greece that we're seeing the gospel proclaimed.

Why is God working?

I think one of the reasons is because when his body activates and we participate with the Holy Spirit, we see God powerfully working in and among the nations.

So let's look at the very first piece of the pattern, okay?

So activated missions, what does it look like?

It looks like, number one, Jesus clearly identified people for vocational ministry.

So what do we see in Jesus' life?

We see that Jesus clearly identified people for vocational ministry.

Now turn with me to Mark chapter 3 very quickly.

Mark 3 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 3, take your Bibles.

Mark 3 · chapter mention

I want to go to verse 13 in Mark chapter 3.

Mark 3 · chapter mention

Jesus, this is the first part of the pattern.

Jesus clearly identified individuals for vocational ministry.

Mark chapter 3, verse 13, we're told this.

Mark 3:13

And when he, when Jesus went up on the mountain, and he called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.

And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might, I want you to catch these two phrases here, that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach.

Now, very interesting turn of phrase here.

That they might be with him and they might send them out to preach.

So the very first thing that you see Jesus doing, Jesus is going to call some very specific people here.

And this is one of the few passages in all of Scripture where we get a list of names in the New Testament.

And look at Jesus as he's calling people first to himself and then out to preach, verse 15, and he, or verse 16, and he appointed the twelve.

And you see Simon and James and John, the brother of James, and Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James and Thaddeus and Simon and even Judas Iscariot.

A list of very specific people.

And Jesus does something very interesting in the passage.

We're told that he desires them.

This is a group of people that Jesus said he specifically desired them.

And he desired them to do two things.

One, to be with him.

And I think this is important.

Don't miss this, because when we think about missions, the very first thing that Jesus wants out of anyone or any body of believers that's looking at and cultivating missions is Jesus is calling them to himself.

We have a ministry of presence before there's a ministry of proclamation.

And so Jesus calls these 12 people individually to himself.

Those that he wanted, he called them to himself, ministered to them, and then he sent them out to preach.

According to his sovereign will, Jesus wanted these men to redirect their lives, to spend time with him, and then engage in the mission of preaching.

And family, that's what missions is.

Jesus taking whom he desires, calling them to himself, and then sending them out to preach.

That's what Jesus did with the 12 apostles, and it's what happens within a local church today.

Presence first, ministry next.

And this means that something practical and urgent needs to happen.

Jim and Susan have been in children's ministry for many, many years, and and faithfully, I was involved in children's ministry for many years, not nearly you, but there's something that you learn very quickly in children's ministry.

And that's this if you need volunteers for children's ministry, you don't go like this.

Hey, we need some volunteers for children's ministry.

You know how many volunteers you'll get if you do that?

Yeah, I guess somebody over here say shake your head.

None.

Zero.

Zero is the number of volunteers that you will get if you do that.

The way that you get a volunteer for children's ministry is you go to someone and you say, Hey, I've seen you work with your kids, man, and you do a great job with kids.

Would you help us on Tuesday afternoons to do this outreach?

And because you're gifted here, and you go individually.

And then you allow the Holy Spirit to work through giftedness to get people to help in ministry.

And when we see this in in Jesus' life, what he's doing, he's very specifically calling individual men out from where they were at to redirect their lives towards the ministry of proclamation.

And guys, let me I I see a few men in the room that have the same color hair as I do, the ones that have hair.

Can I just say very quickly that one of the things that I think is the responsibility of older men in the church is to identify younger men who are gifted in ministry.

Those that have the gifts and the abilities to proclaim the word of God, those that would benefit from some time with Jesus and could powerfully, if they had time with Jesus, powerfully proclaim the word of God.

When I was growing up, there was a man in my church who was a deacon in my church that I didn't know, but um uh he knew my father, and uh he I'd seen him around church, and he came up to me one morning in church and he said, Paul, uh I'd I'd like to take you out to breakfast.

I thought two things.

One, I love breakfast, so the answer is yes.

Two, the second thing I thought is like, what does he know?

What did I what I what did I get busted for?

And so I showed up on a Tuesday morning for breakfast with a guy by the name of John Pellow, again, just an older man in in our church, and and he sat down with me and spent some one-on-one time with me, got to know me a little bit, and began talking with me.

And and and of course, I had you know eggs and bacon and hash browns because that's what men do.

And uh, and and we're eating this meal together, and John began having what I now refer to as a I see in you conversation.

John said, I see I see in you some things, Paul.

I see in you some gifts that if you shed some of this out of your life and put some of this into your life, God could greatly use you.

Guys, I was 16 years old and I remember what I had for breakfast that day.

That's how powerful that conversation was in my life.

That's the type of individual choosing that I think makes a difference and activates missions.

And I think one of the things that, I mean, we could be in love with missions, but until we as older men, men, look at the younger men in the church and say, I want to invest in you, I see some things in you, you have some potential.

And if if if you would allow me, I would speak into some things and I would disciple you and spend some time with you.

And I think we would see a lot more men in missions if we followed Jesus' pattern for individually identifying people who are gifted for ministry and spurring that conversation on.

So here's the second thing we see in Jesus' pattern.

Um, and this is in the Matthew 10, 5 passage that we read during the scripture reading, Jesus equipped those he called through deliberate training.

So not only did Jesus clearly identify individuals, he equipped those through deliberate training.

In Matthew chapter 5, in that passage that we read, it's interesting if if you turn there, I'm not gonna read through the whole passage, but Jesus gives a ready-made discipleship evangelism missions training class in the entire chapter of Matthew chapter 10.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention Matthew 10 · chapter mention

If you study the passage, it's a, I mean, it's a it's a PhD dissertation and how to do missions well and how to do ministry well.

And there's multiple imperatives that Jesus gives his disciples.

He tells them to proclaim as they go, he tells them to heal the sick and cleanse and restore people, and and he does all of this training as he sends people out.

And I think, again, the difference between churches that are enamored with missions, I think churches that are enamored with missions do things like, hey, everybody should become a missionary instead of having IC and you conversations with individuals who are gifted for ministry.

I think churches that are enamored with missions think about doing discipleship and maybe have a Sunday school class, but churches that are activating missions are having a deliberate program of discipleship like Jesus did.

Jesus taught on gospel proclamation, on compassionate action, on spiritual discernment, on cultural engagement, on dependence on God, teaching the word, and entering and dis even entering how to enter a household and how to discern if a household is a place that you want to say.

He went into all kinds of very practical and spiritual things as he deliberately trained his disciples.

I was excited to hear, Pastor, as you shared the announcement.

You said a couple key things that I thought were crucial, that the elders got together and said, hey, we can do better on our intentional discipleship.

And so you tweaked your classes to be able to do discipleship intentionally better.

That's the kind of church that is activating missions.

That's the kind of church that says, we're done with just being fascinated with learning about missions, but we're gonna we're gonna actively prepare our people to do ministry well and to be sent well.

And so this isn't theoretical training, this is immersive spiritual formation that we need.

We focused on those people groups to be able to help the church be invested deeply in how to reach the lost for Jesus Christ.

Because training and equipping are not optional luxuries for the body of Christ, they're they're the pattern of what how Jesus did when he was sending out.

He identified and then he deliberately trained.

And I think three things this deliberate training looks like.

First of all, it looks like doctrinal strength.

When we train believers for ministry, we need to look for doctrinal strength.

And that's crucial now more than ever.

Because if you go to the fields, you will face all kinds of deception and all kinds of twisted theology.

We've seen entire fields where ABWE missionaries have gone and there have been missionaries that have been in places for years and years and years, and there's an established church.

But what has happened is because doctrine wasn't taught strongly, cults have come in and weaved their way through.

And so there's entire sections of Africa that were reached for Jesus Christ who have now become Jehovah's Witness or Seventh-day Adventists, or they've become Jehovah's Witness.

Because they weren't taught the doctrinal strength.

And so as we deliberately train, we need to train doctrinal strength.

We also need to train for spiritual maturity.

This is how to live a disciplined and self-controlled life and to use our gifts appropriately through spiritual maturity.

And lastly, there's got to be practical preparation.

How to be hospitable, how to have people into your home and do ministry, how to manage your house well.

What does it mean to be humble?

What does it mean to have well-behaved children and raise a family well?

All of these things are part of the discipleship program that activated churches have strong within them.

Here's the third part of the pattern.

Once Jesus identifies individuals and he equips them, Jesus sent his representatives to both distant and specific places.

I want you to catch this.

You know the Great Commission well.

Go therefore and make disciples.

Of what class?

All nations.

All nations.

Acts 1.8 tells us that we will be his witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the utter, what?

The uttermost parts of the earth, the ends of the earth.

Two things that Jesus is giving us here as he's sending out his disciples to do ministry, he identifies, first of all, distant places.

I think this is important.

The Great Commission starts with the word go.

And the word go doesn't mean that it means a lot of things, but the one thing it doesn't mean is stay.

Now let me be the first to say, according to Acts 13, when the Holy Spirit appointed two men in the church in Antioch to be missionaries, the Holy Spirit only sent out two, Paul and Barnabas.

The rest of the church was just as obedient to the Great Commission when they laid hands, fasted, and prayed over them and sent them out.

They were just as obedient to the Great Commission as the two that were sent.

Okay, so let's establish that first and foremost.

But the idea of go in the Great Commission is the idea of initiative.

A church that is activated towards missions is taking the initiative to go someplace that we haven't gone before.

To go, therefore, to take the initiative, to take the first step.

We don't wait for disciples to come to us.

We go to them.

We don't wait for people to come to us from Ukraine.

We go to Moldova and we plant a church.

Young Thai men are not going to travel over here to the United States for us to reach them.

We need to go there to reach them.

We take the initiative to go.

And so Jesus specifically sends his disciples to distant places.

Every Great Commission, Mark 16, all of creation, Acts 1.8, the uttermost parts of the earth, the Great Commission, all nations or every ethne, all places.

Jesus sends to distant places.

Do we neglect Western Indianapolis area?

No, we don't neglect our area.

But we also don't neglect where Jesus has sent from the very beginning to distant places.

The second thing that he's second place that he sends there's not just distant places, but he sends to specific places.

It's interesting to me that Jesus names places.

In Acts chapter 1, verse 8, he tells his disciples, you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, a city that they knew well and were in.

Acts 1:8

Judea, a region around Jerusalem.

Samaria, a place outside of the region around Judea, a place that was distant and foreign, and a place that quite honestly didn't fit well with polite society at the time.

And then to the nations or to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Jesus specifically mentioned places.

And I think that's important again for a church that wants to be activated.

It's going to take individual attention to gifted individuals.

It's going to take individual attention to disciple intentionally.

It's also going to take a church thinking, where are we going to go?

Let me just say this transparently.

There's a lot of churches that just have no idea of where they would go or what they could do.

And it's like they're just waiting for something to fall from heaven that tells them where we should go or what we should do.

Instead of again looking intentionally to individual giftedness, what are we gifted to do?

What's built right into Parkside Bible Church?

What's built right into us that we could go someplace and immediately begin establishing?

It's one of the things that we as a missions organization, when somebody comes to us and says, look, I've had a conversation with my pastor and uh I feel a call to missions.

My pastor thinks that I've been called to missions, and now that you begin talking to ABWE, one of the first things that we look at is we go, like, who are you connected to?

What are your gift sets?

What do you bring to the table through your life experiences that that would show you where God could use you greatly?

Well, you know, I speak a little Spanish or I speak a little.

And so we begin looking at those things.

How has God directed in the path, past, and how can he begin directing in the future?

So Jesus sent with direction, intention, purpose into real cultures, real languages, real cities, and real villages.

And I think again, activated churches do the same.

We need to be thinking: what are the real peoples?

What are the real people?

Not just, and again, this is the difference between being enamored and being activated.

Enamored, there's this general love, activation is specific targeting.

We talk to individuals, we disciple individuals, we go to specific places with specific ministries.

I think I learned this.

I think I learned this with our open initiative and what's happened in Japan.

When I became president, we had not sent a new missionary to Japan in a decade.

It's a difficult field.

Culturally, to receive Jesus Christ is a huge hurdle.

Because you're rejecting your ancestors, you're rejecting your community, you're rejecting everything that you've ever believed in and following Jesus Christ.

And it's a difficult place to be a missionary, it's a difficult language to learn.

And so I get why there were no new missionaries.

And one of the things we began doing is talking to local churches about a very specific we wanted to target the Kanto region of Japan.

And we began specifically praying for that field.

And if if I'm transparent with you, I kind of joked about it at the beginning.

If God had sent us two missionary families, I would have been very pleased.

Owe me of little faith.

Talking and recruiting individuals, discipling them deliberately for a targeted place based on gift set and life experiences and praying for the Lord to move.

I would have been, four families?

And if you had told me six families were going, I would have been like, yeah, okay, whatever.

No, I believe you.

I believe you.

But we've got 11 new missionaries on the field.

My wife and I were able to go to the first meeting as they're forming a team together, and the missionaries haven't even met each other yet.

And a new family came in the night before, just flew in.

It was their first day in Japan, and and the team's meeting, and there's an excitement, and one by one, each team and each family member and part of the team was sharing how God had brought them to this region to work with this team and to be together.

And it was an amazing kaleidoscope of people being individually spotted in their church and pastors pouring into these families and discipleship taking place, and then a clear strategy and a clear people group to go to, weighing in on all of that, bringing now 22 people together.

But that's the type of thing that God is doing.

Jesus didn't scatter his workers randomly, he sent them strategically.

And churches that are activating missions are going to move from enamored to activity by careful and specific planning.

It doesn't mean that you weed out every place to go.

It just means that you look at the giftedness, you look at how God is already moving, and you begin planning accordingly.

There's one last piece of the pattern that I want us to see, and that's this.

Jesus expected this strategy to continue through the rest of the church.

Spotting individuals, diligently discipling, choosing specific places to go, and then creating a pattern.

2 Timothy 2.2, Paul writes, What you've heard from me, entrust the faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

The verb in this passage, entrust, means to deposit a treasure, to entrust something so precious that it must be passed down intact.

And that's certainly referring to doctrine.

Hear me.

But I think it's also referring to this challenge to go and take the good news around the globe.

Four generations appear in this verse Paul, Timothy, faithful men who teach others.

And this is, I think, the expectation of Christ is that every generation would raise up the next generation to not just be enamored with missions, but to be activated for missions.

And this is why I'm here.

This is why I target men with gray hair.

Men, we are the Pauls of our church.

Say, well, I'm not an elder.

The pastor said, we're all sent, right?

We're all living as sent ones.

Be faithful.

To look for the next generation.

Say, I I can't, I can't go and and maybe you maybe you can't be a second career missionary.

But what you can do is on Sunday morning when you're sitting here, you can look over the auditorium and look for people who are gifted and pray for them and have a conversation with them.

And maybe in small ways make sure that they are getting discipled.

And you can help your church look for ways that God is already moving and steering people into those channels and streams.

That's the pattern that Jesus used.

Let me leave you with a couple of hand holds.

I I what when I leave a sermon, I want to just walk out with a couple things that I can just hold on to.

So I'm just gonna very quickly blitzkrieg through some things on each point that I think we as a church could have as practical intermediate steps.

Under identifying the call, listen, ask God to highlight right here in church those that God is gifting and calling.

In a church this size, in a church as longstanding as Parkside, over 150 years old, I think God is gifting and calling individuals from within your body.

Who are those individuals?

Who's looking for them?

Who's praying for them?

Who's identifying them?

And listen, there's no reason why you can't name them in your heart and begin praying for them.

Begin encouraging them.

J.D.

Creer said this: we don't cling to our best people, we release them for the sake of the gospel.

Encourage them, pray for them, give them an opportunity to respond.

How about preparing the identified?

What do we do to prepare them?

Disciple intentionally, deepen and develop your doctrine, teach evangelism, go to pastor's evangelism class, offer ministry opportunities.

I was excited to see that this morning at the prayer meeting, there was a call to action for men's basketball.

Just to and the guy was just like, just come and uh and and hold on to a clipboard for me and run and run games.

That's an opportunity to prepare for ministry.

What about sending the prepared?

Adopting a place, a city, a country, a region, and to begin investing in those, adopting fields and teams and missionaries.

One of my great delights is that Parkside has had such a long ministry partnership with ABWE, and we've been able to not only trust each other, but but use each other to benefit the kingdom and to grow missionaries and to grow fields and commitments of long-term people.

And the last thing, let's expect God to raise more than one generation here at Parkside.

And we saw this just even this morning as Pastor, it was so heartwarming to see you say, Dad, I love you, as your mom and dad are kind of transitioning into a different ministry.

There's a generation right there, and it's a beautiful thing to see in the body of Christ.

But there's more than one generation here in this room.

There's multiple generations in this room.

And Parkside, I want to encourage you.

You have this legacy of faithfulness that has been handed down to you.

Don't just be enamored by it.

Don't just enjoy it.

Activate it.

Go for it.

Start a CrossFit gym in Thailand of all things.

Like, who thought of that?

He who is faithful will be faithful to you.

Let us be faithful to the nations.

Father, we're so grateful for Parkside, a church that has been active in missions for so many years.

Father, I pray that as we've seen so many churches just kind of grow cold, enamored with missions, but not activated towards it.

Lord, I pray that Parkside would do the difficult things.

That you would continue to be faithful with the word of God and identifying young men and women of God and discipling them intentionally and sending them strategically and then repeating it generationally.

Amen.