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Stephen: So, you have finally gone to a missions conference, or maybe you have heard a stirring message about reaching the unreached for Christ in church or a youth group. Your heart has been opened and filled with new zeal for the Lord. But maybe it feels like anything other than missionary service is a failure, that nothing else will please God.
Chad, our question today is a great way to talk about this dilemma that a lot of us wrestle with in the missions world. Tate writes, “Why is sharing the gospel with the unreached more important than with my co-workers?”
Chad: Thank you for your question, Tate. Let me try to answer that as simply as I can. We do not believe, nor do we teach, that sharing the gospel with the unreached is more important than sharing the gospel with your co-workers. We believe that God has commanded His church to proclaim the free offer of the gospel to every man, woman, and child in every tribe, tongue, and nation. In Luke 24:47, Jesus said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” This should be preached to everyone. We are not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. We absolutely affirm that you should share the gospel with your co-workers.
And we do not believe that your co-workers are less important to the Lord than a person from an unreached language group. I am one of the founders of Radius International and Missionary. Yet I planted a church in my own hometown. I do local evangelism. I pray weekly from the pulpit that the Lord would cause our people to speak boldly and graciously about Jesus to their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers, and their family members. I pray that the Lord would be pleased to save those people. We pray for other local churches to be fruitful in evangelism. Our weekly Sunday evening prayer meeting includes prayer for unbelievers that our folks personally know. We encourage the same kind of prayers in all of our small groups. In other words, sharing the gospel locally is the duty of my church, both our members and our ministers, especially our gospel ministers.
Additionally, we have the duty of seeing the gospel go to those language groups who have no access to it. And perhaps this is where you hear our emphasis at Missionary. Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations. We take that to mean every language group. Truncated obedience, or partial obedience, is not true obedience. Thus, we want to emphasize that part of obedience that has been largely ignored or lost. What I mean by that is over 90%, and that is being generous when I say 90%, of all money, ministers, missionaries, and so on go to those who already have the gospel. There is very little effort in the church to reach those who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ.
Some churches send missionaries, and some churches in history sent missionaries who reached us. Now we have the gospel in our language. We have churches in our language. We have Bibles in our language, seminaries, podcasts, radio stations, colleges, and book publishers. We have an embarrassment of riches, maybe the greatest embarrassment of riches, no, in fact, I would say for sure the greatest embarrassment of riches in the history of Christianity. And we want to exhort our churches to share those riches with those who have none.
What is more, Paul says it was his ambition to name Jesus Christ where He has never been named in Romans 15:20. He understood that the Great Commission required that we carry the gospel of Jesus where it has never been. He expected the church to join him in this endeavor. And this ambition that Paul says he has is something that we are jealous for Christ’s church to recapture. We want Christ’s people to have a holy ambition to see Christ named where He has never been named.
Perhaps you also hear something from us about the nature of this ambition. That word Paul uses there is a compound word that carries the sense of honor. I have the unspeakable honor of proclaiming Christ in my hometown. I get to minister to people, see people saved, and walk with them through life. Brooks, on the other hand, had an honor, and has an honor, that I do not share. It was his honor to name Jesus for the first time in a language that had never heard the name of Christ. That is a sacred honor, one I do not share. I do not feel as though I am less than Brooks because of that, but I do recognize that I am different from him. And I am jealous to see many more people share the honor that Brooks has for the sake of the salvation of the lost and the glory of Christ. That is the emphasis you are hearing from Missionary.
Perhaps the Lord is calling you to share such a holy ambition and honor. May the Lord make it so among many of our listeners.
Stephen: To find out more about how you or your church can make Christ known to those who have never heard, consider becoming a Missionary partner. You will receive books, films, prayer guides, and more that are tailored to grow you and your church’s love for the Great Commission. Visit missionary.com/give to learn more.
If you have a question you would like to hear answered on Ask Missionary, drop a comment on this episode, get in touch with us on social media, or send us an email through missionary.com, and your question may be featured on this show. Don't forget to subscribe to the show to get notified when the next episode airs next week. Thanks for listening.