God could reveal Himself to the unreached without us, just as He worked alone when He created the universe. But Jesus enjoys inviting His people into the things He is doing. He chooses to save the nations through ordinary people!
The best missionaries abroad were great missionaries at home. Telling people about Jesus, teaching them the Bible, and discipling them into maturity are all practices that are exercised in the local church and later deployed abroad. Since the missionary’s journey grows out of engagement in a church, foreign missions happen when local churches train, send, and support their own to become missionaries.
If you or your church want to know more about missions, we recommend Perspectives. Perspectives is a 15-week course that teaches people about God’s story of redemption and the practical ways you can get involved in missions. The Perspectives course can be taken online or in-person.
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IMAGINE
These are some of the challenges today’s missionaries face. Imagine giving up your career, asking your family to make tremendous sacrifices, and then failing in the work you set out to do. 60 to 75 percent of missionaries return home within two years of going to the field because they are not properly trained.
We at the Praise Project are devoted to empowering future missionaries to stay until the churches they plant no longer need them. We recommend Radius International for equipping people to become missionaries. Radius is a 10-month, pre-field missionary training program that operates out of Tijuana, Mexico. Not only does Radius equip students to effectively plant churches among the unreached by first mastering the local language and culture, the school does so in an environment that simulates as closely as possible what life on the field is like. You can learn more about the Radius training regimen here.
Go to Radius International
Before planting a church, missionaries spend years mastering local languages and building a local business.
Fluency in local languages is a must: missionaries teach and guard the truth by speaking into the deepest parts of people’s hearts. That work cannot be done through a translator, or by someone with an elementary knowledge of local languages and culture. If missionaries do their job poorly, they may simply add Jesus to a pantheon of existing gods.
In most unreached areas, missionaries are only granted a visa if they create a local business. Starting a business can take years of full-time work, especially in a foreign language and culture.
Missions sending agencies help missionaries overcome both of these obstacles, in addition to providing other kinds of technical and logistical support. We recommend Global Serve International as a sending agency partner. GSI is focused on going to people who have no access to the gospel and communicating to them in their language. They operate in the most challenging environments, and they do it without cutting corners.
Go to Global Serve International
IMAGINE LEARNING THAT...
How wonderful is the privilege of speaking truth and life to a people who have no concept of Jesus!
Church planters spend years mentoring new believers into maturity. They teach them how to live, guard, and proclaim the truth. They appoint elders, translate the Bible, and sometimes they even create a written language so natives can read the Bible. Their work is long and arduous, but when missionaries go home, they should leave behind a local church that is healthy, independent, and growing.
When Jesus first called people to follow Him, He promised that He would make them fishers of men. Then, when Jesus left earth, He commanded his followers to go to all nations and make disciples. Planting churches among the unreached is extremely difficult work, but it is the work Jesus called us to do. And it is work he promises will succeed:
In heaven there will be “a great multitude that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10)
God is worthy! He is worthy to be adored and honored in every language and land.
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