The Greek verb “apoluo” (to send away) is used in a positive sense in Acts 13:3 when the church at Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. This blog is designed to help churches select, train, and send missionaries to the harvest fields of souls.
The sudden death of a friend caused Martin to stare out across the Black Sea and contemplate his own life as he sipped some strong afternoon coffee.* Martin was a successful importer of furniture from Thailand into Verna, Bulgaria for distribution all across Europe. Growing up as a missionary kid in rural Thailand, he would…
A Metaphor You can’t stop water with a fork. The water will get through, but it will look different than it did without the fork; the straight pour will be disturbed but the water will get through. You can’t stop missions with government interference. Missionaries will get through, but missions will look different than it…
When I was in Vietnam last year, I had the privilege of teaching in a Bible School for a week. The class was “How to be a Sending Church” – the topic that is my passion for national churches worldwide, including the national churches of America and the local church where you minister. The class…
The stresses that missionaries face necessitate a unique skill set that is both broad and deep. One manual I know of simply gives a five-page checklist of skills and character traits to evaluate in every potential missionary while others have written complete books on the topic. While some catalogs have more value than others there…
It’s not about what you are going to do… God has greatly blessed our nation for the flood of missionaries who have gone, and are going, around the world to bring the Gospel to the uttermost. Change has been a constant in our strategies to reach the world. Pioneer works developed into long-term investment of…
Note: This article originally posted April 2014 and is re-posted for our new audience–Editor. Jim was an owner of a large construction company. His local community was going to build a new hospital, and Jim wanted the challenge of building it. He was frustrated with the old hospital building because his father was confined to…
JD Grear’s book, “Gaining by Losing” he has a chapter entitled “Your church doesn’t need a missions pastor.” His argument is that the senior pastor should be the missions pastor. After all, the church only has one mission and surely the pastor should be leading in the direction of the church. For too many churches,…
There are two approaches to “doing” missions in a local church. Some churches seek to support a missionary in every country in the world so they take on support for dozens of missionaries at $25 each. Other churches are more targeted in their approach and choose a specific people or nation and they take on…
Someone has said that if your church doesn’t hurt when sending you as a missionary… they probably shouldn’t send you. There is a caricature of missionaries that they are people who couldn’t get a ministry in the States, so we send them “over there” where the natives will not realize they are incompetent. That…
We recently conducted five THINK-TANKS with pastors in four different states. The topic being discussed was how churches could identify, train and launch missionaries from their congregation. One of the questions we asked was: Why would a church NOT want to send missionaries from their congregation. Here is a summary of the pastor’s answers: …