Discover Weekend - The Need for Missions and Why am I here?

Talk about the need for missions…

How many of you became interested in global missions because of a mission trip that you went on?

Talk about where you went, what you did, and at what point did you start thinking about serving in more of a permanent capacity?

Tell the story of going to Mozambique - and then leading subsequent years

Having my heart moved for mobilization

I loved getting to see our team members get rewired almost in front of my eyes.

SLIDE Stop Sending Missionaries

In the late 90’s, there was a full page ad in Christianity Today that stated “Thank you for not coming”

The point of the ad was to discourage people from becoming missionaries and instead to simply send money overseas

The idea was birthed out of the the idea that western Missionaries cost too much.

We should send $$ and empower nationals

The ad made the argument that with the money used to send one western missionary overseas, we could empower 50 nationals to labor instead.

Cancel your ST mission trip?

Several years later, around 2012, an article came out from The Gospel Coalition that was titled “Why you should consider cancelling your short term mission trip.”

The author made the argument that short term missions is ineffective at affecting true lasting change, that it costs too much, and that it creates a dependency culture.

Just think for a moment if your church, or your college ministry group decided that they were not going to do any more trips..

What if they made that decision before you had the chance to go?

Would you still be sitting here?

My argument is that this type of argument is flawed and leads us to being ineffective or even irrelevant in the global mandate to make disciples.

If we fast forward to today, what we are seeing is that many churches have farmed out missions.

They have found conduits by which they can send money overseas to empower locals, and then without any hesitation at all, they have “fulfilled” a major part of the Great Commission without even having to leave their office or upend the lives of those in their congregations.

There are many incredible problems with this mentality

SLIDE

First is the stewardship of the resources

Culturally, there is a massive difference in how money is viewed when comparing western culture with those in third world settings.

In the west, misappropriation of funds is a massive issue, whereas in many other places around the world, this is not seen as much of an issue.

the most pressing need at the time is the one that takes precedent - even if that is not what the money was sent over to pay for.

When we simply send money, we give up a massive degree of oversight to ensure that the funds are used appropriately.

What protections are in place to ensure that money for supported workers actually makes it to them?

This is especially concerning when we are sending enough money to make someone unbelievably wealthy in a third world setting.

I hate to think the worst of people, but this is a legitimate concern.

Second, we create a dependency culture

When we just send money overseas to support the work of the nationals, then we end up creating a scenario where the ministries can’t operate without western church benevolence .

They are not being set up to operate in a sustainable way.

This creates a virtual black hole where money will be consumed forever and ever amen.

Third, there is a massive portion of the world where there is no gospel witness, no church planting movement, or engagement for the gospel.

This represents in excess of a billion people who have no access to the gospel.

There are no nationals that we can support.

We will talk about this more in depth in a few minutes.

Fourth, no amount of money can atone for the sins of disobeying the Lord’s command to go and make disciples.

There is no qualifier or loophole that allows us to opt out of the “boots on the ground” work of the Great Commission because we sent money to someone who is doing the work.

Don’t forget Jesus’ call to His followers in Matthew 28:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

This was not a suggestion - or something that Jesus had decided it would be nice for churches and Christians to do…

All Nations = Panta ta ethne

All the nations/people groups

Globally, there are around 17K people groups

People groups = common language, culture, and history - or a group of people where the gospel can spread without hitting barriers of acceptance or understanding.

Jesus wants disciples among all of these 17,000 (or so) people groups

He wants us to lead people to become committed and passionate followers of Christ who in turn make disciples of others.

The command is clear - make disciples of ALL NATIONS. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We are supposed to teach them to observe ALL that He has commanded us.

He didn’t say, make disciples, and if necessary, hire someone else to do it for you.

Or

And if this sounds daunting - don’t forget, He is with us - even until the end of time.

There is still so much to do

SLIDE: Global landscape - Christians vs. Non-Christian

Location of Christians globally (blue Dots): The Americas, Sub Saharan Africa, Europe

Location of Non-Christians globally (red Dots): North Africa, Middle East, East into Asia.

Each dot represents 50,000 people

10/40 window

What do the numbers say?

Globally, there are around 17K people groups

People groups = common language, culture, and history - or a group of people where the gospel can spread without hitting some sort of barrier - language, culture, or something of that sort.

Of these, around 7000 of these would be considered Unreached - or less than 2% evangelical Christian.

That is about 3.2 Billion people or about 42% of the world’s population (Joshua Project)

SLIDE: Where the missionaries are going

Location of Christian Missionaries (Purple Dots): Americas, Sub Saharan Africa, Europe

Location of Non-Christians (Red Dots): North Africa, Middle East, East into Asia.

Before we get too excited about how many missionaries there are, each purple dot represents 10 missionaries while each red dot still represents 50,000 non-Christians...

SLIDE

There are roughly 400,000 “Christian missionaries” serving in the world today (this includes Catholics and protestants).

Of these 400,000, only 3% are going to that unreached portion of the world

For every 30 missionaries who deploy this year, only 1 will go to these places.

Currently, there are about 13,000 workers attempting to reach 3.19 Billion people…

If you are doing the math, thats about one missionary for every 245,000 people.

We could redeploy every one of the current 400,000 cross cultural workers to these people and there would still be only 1 missionary for every 8,000 people.

There is a need for literally hundreds of thousands of more workers.

Not just money to empower the nationals to do the work.

So what do we do?

We GO!

There are approximately 78,000 Evangelical Christians for each Unreached People Group.

years ago, it was estimated that there were 90 churches for each Unreached People Group.

That is just Unreached Peoples… What about others who do not know Christ?

Christians account for about 30% of the global population (including evangelical or otherwise), which means roughly 2/3 of the worlds population do not call Christ their Lord.

This is about 5.4 Billion people who when their lungs stop transferring oxygen to their blood, when their brain function ceases, and they die, they will spend eternity separated from the God who created them.

They will spend eternity in torment, under the wrath of God because they didn’t call out to the Lord for salvation.

SLIDE

Billions of people don’t know Jesus… We’re NOT ok with that.

Draw a strong question out - why am I here?

What does this have to do with you?

How does this need impact you personally?