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Bryan: One might assume that if they are not going to the nations as a missionary that they don't need to be involved in missions. But we are all called to obey the Great Commission—some to go and some to send. We must desire to serve Christ's Kingdom. Those who send must support those who go. But one might not know where to start or might think donating money to your church's mission fund is the only way. McKenzie asks, "What would you say to someone who doesn't feel called to go, but still wants to be involved in spreading God's word to the world? How can we support the goers?" Today, Chad Vegas answers her question with a discussion on calling and offers 10 ways to support those who go.
Chad: Thank you for your question, McKenzie. First, I want to say that your question is a completely legitimate one. And I want to say that because I also want to challenge it a bit. Let me provide some context. I would argue that there is both an internal and external call to gospel ministry. What I mean is that a gospel minister, whether in the United States or in a foreign field, will sense a desire to know Christ and to make Him known. This internal call is not really a desire to go, to leave one's home, and head off to a particular country. It's a desire to proclaim Christ, to serve His Church, and to see Him known by those who do not know Him. The external call is a call from the Church—in other words, the elders of the Church see that this person is set apart for gospel ministry by the Lord. So we see that for example in Acts 13 as the Holy Spirit calls Paul and Barnabas through the church at Antioch. We see that in 1 Timothy 4:14 as the council of elders have laid their hands on Timothy. In other words, no gospel minister self-sends. We are sent by the church.
So both this internal call, this desire to know the Lord and to lay your life down in service to making Him known and caring for His Church, and this external call, where the Church recognizes the graces and gifts in you to be this sort of minister, both of those things are necessary to being sent.
Now, this line of reasoning is leading me to an answer to your question. I would assume it's a rare experience for someone to feel called to go to a distant and foreign land, language, and culture to suffer in making Christ known. But if anyone claims that they are being called by the Lord to gospel ministry and is unwilling to go wherever the Lord sends, then that person is not qualified for gospel ministry at all. No one is qualified for gospel ministry who says to the Lord, "I will follow you thus far and no further." Rather, as Abraham was called by God to leave behind his whole past—think about it, his land, his country, his kindred, and his family of 75 years in Genesis 12, leave them all and go––and then to sacrifice his whole future by placing Isaac on the altar in Genesis 22, so every Christian ought to follow the Lord unreservedly, leaving no remainder.
Therefore, I think it's especially true that every ministerial candidate should say, "Here am I, send me. There is no place too far or too difficult to follow You, Lord." Therefore, not feeling called to foreign missions is really irrelevant if you're called to gospel ministry.
At the same time, if you do not have an internal call to proclaim Christ and to serve His Church, and if you do not have an external call from Christ's Church to do so— and both matter—then what role do you have? Well, 3 John 8 says that whenever we support those who go, we are fellow workers for the truth. We are co-laborers in the gospel. We're sharing in this gospel ministry with them. We must have people who are sent, those who go, and we must have people who send them.
So how do we send well? Let me provide you with 10 ways we can send well.
First, we pray. We pray for the Lord to raise up workers for His harvest.
Second, we pray—and yes, I know this is going to sound redundant—we pray for the Lord to give boldness, grace, faithfulness, and fruitfulness to those who go.
Third, we pray for the Lord to give sight to the spiritually blind and hearing to the spiritually deaf. So we do a lot of praying, and that is above all the most important thing that we do in supporting.
Fourth, we support those who go, financially. We make sure they are well supplied, that they don't have to be concerned with the cares of this present world, but they can give themselves fully to the work of the ministry.
Fifth, we support those who go with our time, not just with our money. We check in on them. We ask them how we might pray for them and what needs they have.
Sixth, we support those who go by advocating for them. Are they coming home on furlough and in need of a car to borrow or a place to stay? Who will help them secure those things? Do their older children plan to come back from college and need a family to be like their parents to them while their own parents are back in the field? Who will fulfill that role? Do they need some supplies to be sent to them on the field? Who's going to send that?
Seventh, we participate in our church's missions team, offering any help or support that we can to the overall mission of our church and to our missionaries in particular.
Eighth, we learn about the task—how we can encourage, challenge, and care for our missionaries. Sometimes our missionaries need us to lend them an ear to hear their struggles. Sometimes they need us to press them by way of reminder of why they're doing all this. To encourage them to be in the word and prayer, to commune with the Lord, to grow in godliness, to encourage them to love their spouse and their children well.
Ninth, depending on your role in support, you and your missionaries may well be served by your involvement with the agency that the church is partnering with to send them. We call these sending agencies, but really they're assistance to the true sending agency, which is the church. And we must always remember that this is our responsibility first. So we want to get to know the sending agency, have a relationship with them, maybe go to their deputization of our missionaries, maybe go to conferences they offer, build relationships with them, and make sure that sending agency knows that our local church wants to take the responsibility of shepherding and care for our missionaries and that we want to work with them to help with the things that our local church can't deliver—for example, like translation checks or language fluency checks, or assessing unreached language groups and whether a language group is viable and ought to be sent to, and how to operate in a foreign context or to get a visa in a closed country.
Tenth, we support our missionaries by being good church members. Now, this one might sound unrelated, but the bottom line is that healthy and godly churches send well. We want to be of help to our churches so that the whole church sends well. So what your missionaries need above and beyond all else is for you to be prayerful, supportive, godly church members so that your church flourishes and so that they always have a lifeline back home to a body of Christ who loves them well, who supports them well, and to whom they can return for great encouragement when the task is finished.
Bryan: You can read more about how to support goers in Luke Waite's article "Hold the Rope" and other articles at missionary.com/articles. 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. And don't forget to subscribe to the show to get notified when the next episode airs next week. Thanks for listening.