As a church leader, one of your most important heart-cries is equipping your church to engage in their God-given mission. Whether your congregation is local or global, missions is at the heart of the Gospel and God’s purpose for His people. Yet, many churches struggle with how to inspire and empower their members to embrace this calling fully. This post will explore practical, simple ways to equip your church to understand, embrace, and prioritize missions, helping them respond to God’s command to love and serve others with the Good News. By making missions accessible and actionable, you can create a movement of disciples who are passionate about fulfilling their role in God’s Kingdom.
Equipping Your Church to Understand the Heart of Missions
I grew up in a church where we did not often talk about missions. On the rare occasions that we did, the conversation was vague and difficult to follow. It certainly went over my head. So, you won’t find it surprising that I made it to 19 years old without ever legitimately engaging international missions. Not only did I not understand cross-cultural missions, but it also scared me. In high school I remember mocking the kids going on mission trips. I would say, “Don’t you know about all the need we have right here in the USA.” I was ignorant, and when you mix ignorance with fear, you get an insane quote like the one in the previous sentence.
What makes this whole story even more terrible is that missions is perhaps the most important topic in scripture. A wise person once said, “If you take missions out of the Bible, all you would have left is the cover.” It’s true! The fact that God wants everyone on earth to know Him is at the very center of the Gospel. It is a message written on every page from Genesis to Revelation. God’s heart beats for those who don’t know Him—God’s heart beats for missions.
(Not sure what Jesus meant by ‘the harvest is plentiful’? Start here.)
Embracing God’s Call
I suspect there are many others out there just like me—people who believe they understand the Gospel, but who have missed the message of missions. They know what God did for them but missed the part where He calls us to respond in some way—in obedience to His call to love others and share the Gospel with them.
In Ephesians 4:11-13 we learn that a significant role of church leaders is “to equip [God’s] people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Practical tips for equipping your church for their God-given Mission
One of the things included in “works of service,” and “attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ,” is missions! Loving our neighbor and sharing the Good News with them is the role of Church leaders to not only do this themselves but to equip others to do it as well. I hope that the ideas below may encourage and empower us to engage missions!
Here are a few things I have learned:
- When you equip your church, keep it so simple. When I travel and equip others to share the Gospel, the most frequent feedback I get is that the training is “so simple” and “easy to implement.” Simplicity is key. There are tons of good reasons to equip the church in a simple way. First, if it is easy to understand, people are more likely to use it—which is what we care about. Second, if it is simple, people are more likely to share it with others. You can create a movement of reproducing disciples if what you pass to them is simple enough to pass to others. Third, if it is too complex, people will miss the message in the first place, much like I did for 19 years.
- When you equip your church, make it practical. Preaching has two components: study/preparation and building/delivering a sermon. Some preachers are really good at the prep but fail to put the information together in a way that is deliverable and hearable. Others can deliver a compelling message but don’t do the prep work to give that message any meaning. The most effective preachers do both. We cannot just deliver the knowledge that missions is important to God; we cannot just preach a passionate message that compels people to nothing. We need to make sure that as we share the truth, we are sharing it in a way that is hearable and implementable. Help people take their first step.
- When you equip your church, be sure to de-mystify missions. If your congregation is anything like me, they look at missionaries and think they are some kind of special breed of human. Like Christian superheroes. We must dismantle this world view. Of course, missionaries put a lot on the line, and we respect them, but they shouldn’t be celebrities. The moment people start thinking of missionaries as celebrities is the moment that they start thinking they could never be one.
- When you equip your church, make sure everyone knows that missions is for everyone. Every Christian is called to missions. I mean this in two ways. The first is that every Christian has a crucial role to play in cross-cultural missions. As one man said, “You can either go, send, or disobey!” (For church leaders wanting to mobilize their congregation, we have a practical guide.) And may I just say, more people need to go! The second way I mean this is that every Christian is called to share the Gospel with the people around them. Many in the Church will use the word missionary to describe this person. But at Forge, we usually use “missionary” only for those who cross cultures. Instead, we call ordinary people sharing the Gospel in their everyday places, laborers (Matthew 9:35-38).
- When you equip your church, make missions as much of a priority as Jesus does. Missions is at the very core of the Gospel and God’s heart. It is encoded onto every page of Scripture. In light of this, we should probably talk about it, a lot. And we should probably encourage people to engage it, a lot. And we should probably create missional opportunities, a lot.
If you are looking for a FREE tool to start equipping your church for missions, consider Multiplying Movements. It is a simple, easy to implement, easy to understand, practical encouragement to all followers of Jesus. Check it out here!