Church Missions

What is the role of the local church to fulfill the mission of the church?

God prepared a physical body in Bethlehem for His Son Jesus Christ to complete his mission to work toward fulfilling God’s plan of establishing His kingdom. God has also prepared a physical body through which His mission is to be carried out to fulfill His plan today. His body is the local body of believers through which the Holy Spirit works called the local church.

The heart of the Great Commission revolves around the ministry of the local church for God’s plan to carry out His mission and is centered in the church body (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4:11-16). It is the only vehicle seen in the New Testament for the completion of the Great Commission.

It is the divine duty of the church and should be at the heart of every local church. Every church must be involved in God’s mission to win and disciple the peoples of the world making disciples where they are. In order to make disciples, the church must be a participant in the mission.

Every healthy church will be involved in the mission. Every healthy and mature church should see God call out missionaries. There may not be hundreds, but every church should see at least one missionary called out. For every one soldier on the front lines, it takes ten behind the lines to keep that soldier there. It is just the same to keep the missionary on the mission field. This process is called “missions”. The study of global missions is called missiology.

Missions is defined by God’s mission and is all about making disciples as we have clearly seen. Some people have the idea that missions is what you do in another place. However, missions is not just going somewhere to a foreign place and preaching the gospel. It is not defined by geography and it is not just about foreign missions.

Missions defines the believers target as the peoples of the world and it can take place anywhere if it’s being done right. It reveals the reality of differences between peoples and the responsibility of delivering the gospel to different peoples. That’s where discipleship and missions takes place. If a church is not involved in missions, it is evident it is not healthy. The key to the health of a church is how it reproduces itself.

Anyone can participate in missions and any church can give to the mission, but the spiritual believer and the spiritual church will be involved in world missions.

This is important because there is no legitimate missionary activity apart from the local church. It is the focus of God’s plan as revealed in the scriptures:

* It is God’s idea, not mans. (Matthew 16:18)
* It is the object of Paul’s missionary work.
* It is the recipient of Christ’s letters in Revelation 2-3.
* It is the recipient of at least 10 of the 27 books of the New Testament.
* It is the clear intention at least 95 of the 114 mentions of the word “church” in the New Testament.

The local church is God’s vehicle in which He works through in this age to fulfill His plan of the Great Commission. The business of the church and the body of Christ is to be involved in church missions to fulfill God’s plan.

Learn More:

• Great Commission
• Missionary Church
• Holy Spirit in Missions
• World Missions

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Posted: 12|22|09 at 4:48 pm. Filed under: Christian Missions.
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