The Great Comission and Reflections on the Church

Intro: Over the past few years I have been wrestling with the concept of modern missions, the great commission and more specifically the role of the local church as sender or receiver of missionaries. We are called to “make disciples of all nations” and the institution that our Lord gave us to do so is “His Body” the Church. My baseline for mission’s effectiveness has always been the question of whether or not what I am doing is assisting the local church, and how to do so more affectively in the future.

Current mental wrestling: From the perspective of someone who relates with various churches both on the sending and receiving ends of missions, I see a disturbing trend of US churches not maintaining direct contact with the missionaries they “send”, as well as the work they perform on the mission field. There are some shining examples to the contrary, but in general, there appears to be a “post missions era” creep across our country. The root of this is yet another disturbing topic on the state of many churches’ understanding as to the purpose of Christ’s body; but sticking to missions, this can have various end results from missionaries feeling detached from their “support base” (which can have various definitions from financial, to emotional to spiritual authority), to the sending/supporting church (not necessarily the same thing) having little or no input as to the work being performed on the field by their “representatives”, resulting in a different type of “detachment”. These are dangerous places to be for both a mission’s focused church as well as the missionary being sent. Christ’s call to his followers and the Church He established is to “Make Disciples”. The local church body is to make disciples and then have those disciples in turn make more disciples, be that in the surrounding neighborhoods or on the other side of the World. We should see an extended family being created from grandparents, to parents to children and beyond.

Please feel free to send me your thoughts on this or related topics, as I want to know what YOU think. Our supporters and churches are very precious to us, and you can look at this topic from a distinct perspective than my own.