Prioritizing Missions in the Church E-Book

Aaron Menikoff

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: 9Marks Church-Centered Missions
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 234

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Pastors from America and India Share How They Patiently and Faithfully Lead Missions in Their Local Churches What role should the local church play in the mission to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth? Many Christians view missions work as a task for large churches or parachurch ministries. But God commands all believers in churches of all sizes to protect and proclaim his word. Working together patiently and faithfully, we can reach nations with the gospel. In this brief guide, pastors Aaron Menikoff from Atlanta, Georgia, and Harshit Singh from Lucknow, India, share their journeys leading missions-centered churches in two different settings. Through their personal stories, they teach Scripture-led methods for fostering missions-minded congregations. Emphasizing the importance of patient training and church planting—in terms of years, not months—Menikoff and Singh help pastors and staff overcome geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers to passionately start and strengthen churches around the world. - Biblical: Helps churches understand their God-given responsibility to train and send quality missionaries - Comprehensive: Examines long-term ways local churches can be missions-centered—through consistent evangelism, expositional preaching, prayer, singing, gathering, and ordinances - Accessible: Written to guide pastors, staff, and missions-minded Christians in developing a healthy view of missions - Part of the 9Marks Church-Centered Missions Series

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“As the pastor of a local church, I can tell you that this is a book important enough, practical enough, specific enough, wise enough, and biblical enough for me to use! The stories are challenging and instructive. Coming from two pastors on two different continents, the variety of examples are interesting and helpful. If you read one new book on missions this year, this one should be it.”

Mark Dever, Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC

“The local church is God’s primary instrument for the accomplishment of the Great Commission. I am grateful for pastors who prioritize the significance and urgency of the Great Commission. I hope this book inspires, encourages, and produces missions-minded churches around the world.”

Paul Akin, Provost and Associate Professor of Christian Missions, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Thoughtful, prayerful, practical. A helpful resource for any Christian community in a season of reflecting, repenting, equipping, and sending.”

K. A. Ellis, Director, The Edmiston Center for Christian Endurance Studies

“Do you want your church to raise up missionaries and have an impact on the world? Are you interested in proclaiming Christ in foreign lands and supporting those who do? If so, read this book! From vastly different backgrounds, Menikoff and Singh give biblical counsel that will enable churches worldwide to faithfully ‘hammer away’ at raising up fruitful missionaries and partnering with them for the Great Commission.”

Keri Folmar, pastor’s wife in Dubai; author; cohost, Priscilla Talk

“First, start at home! Too many well-intentioned, missions-minded Christians begin their journey by looking abroad, choosing a place and a people. Instead, they should start at home—with their own lives and their relationship to their local church. That’s where a strong, faithful, and sustained missions effort begins. Next, read this book! Menikoff and Singh get it. They grasp the vital role of the local church in the life of the missionary and the missionary task. Read. Learn. Commit. And attempt great things for God!”

Matt Schmucker, Director, CROSS Conference

“How can your local church become a missions-centered church? Aaron Menikoff and Harshit Singh provide a wonderfully accessible and actionable book for pastors and members alike. This book has everything you need to get started. It begins with a Bible-saturated, church-centered vision for missions, moves to how the local church raises up future missionaries, and ends with the hope of churches working together to see the gospel proclaimed among all nations. I highly recommend this book.”

Michael Lawrence, Lead Pastor, Hinson Baptist Church, Portland, Oregon; author, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church and Conversion

“If you care about missions, you should read this book. It’s biblical, practical, and proven, as Menikoff and Singh have already been doing what they are writing about. Churches are both the end and the means of missions. This book helps you understand how your church can be part of this glorious work. Read it and learn from it.”

Matthias Lohmann, Pastor, Free Evangelical Church, Munich, Germany; Chairman, Evangelium21

“Here is a book that captures the local church’s biblical place in prioritizing missions. Reader, be warned! This book might change you and your local church in ways that echo through eternity.”

Josh Manley, Senior Pastor, RAK Evangelical Church, Ras al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates

“The Great Commission is a mandate given to the church. All local churches must be committed to making disciples of all nations. In Prioritizing Missions in the Church, Aaron Menikoff and Harshit Singh make a case for a missions-centered church. What does such a church look like, you ask? Well, take up and read; you will find their argument refreshingly ordinary, liberating, biblical, and compelling.”

Chopo Mwanza, Pastor, Faith Baptist Church Riverside, Kitwe, Zambia

“Whether in going or sending, every church member has a role to play. While agencies and committees can be helpful, they cannot replace the church. So, how can your church adopt a vision for all members to be engaged in our God-given mission? Menikoff and Singh provide a helpful guide in Prioritizing Missions in the Church. Rooted in Scripture and drawn from decades of pastoral ministry in America and India, this book offers biblical principles that will help churches engage in their mission to see Christ proclaimed among the nations.”

Geoffrey Chang, Assistant Professor of Historical Theology and Curator of the Spurgeon Library, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri; Elder, Wornall Road Baptist Church; author, The Army of God

Prioritizing Missions in the Church

9Marks Church-Centered Missions

Edited by Jonathan Leeman, Brooks Buser, and Scott Logsdon

Prioritizing Missions in the Church, by Aaron Menikoff and Harshit Singh

PRIORITIZING MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH

Aaron Menikoff and Harshit Singh

Prioritizing Missions in the Church

© 2025 by Aaron Menikoff and Harshit Singh

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2025

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-9342-0 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-9344-4 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-9343-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Menikoff, Aaron, author. | Singh, Harshit, author.

Title: Prioritizing missions in the church / Aaron Menikoff and Harshit Singh.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2025. | Series: 9Marks church-centered missions | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024016183 (print) | LCCN 2024016184 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433593420 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433593437 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433593444 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Church development, New. | Christian leadership. | Missions.

Classification: LCC BV652.24 .M39 2025 (print) | LCC BV652.24 (ebook) | DDC 254/.1—dc23/eng/20240807

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024016183

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024016184

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2025-04-02 09:40:46 AM

This book is lovingly dedicated to two churches whose faith in God has gone forth everywhere (1 Thess. 1:8): Satya Vachan Church in India and Mount Vernon Baptist Church in America.

Contents

  Series Preface

  Introduction

1  Ordinary Church

2  Bible for the Nations

3  Preach, Pray, Sing

4  Going Global at Home

5  Ordinary Christian

6  Fraternity of Churches

7  Raise and Send

  Conclusion

  Appendix A: Church and Missionary Covenant Partnership: Working Together to Reach the Nations

  Appendix B: Missionary Candidate Questionnaire

  General Index

  Scripture Index

Series Preface

Church-centered missions depends on four principles.

1. Christianity is church shaped. The gospel does not only promise God’s mercy and forgiveness to individuals; it also makes us a people (Eph. 2:11–22; 1 Pet. 2:10). Conversion signs us up for a family photograph. It makes us a “we,” and the local church is where we embody and live out the “we.” As such, the Christian life is a church member’s life. Following Jesus as disciples means doing so in the fellowship of the church. This principle is the foundation for the next two.

2. Churches are the means and ends of missions. If plank one is true, then our view of missions should also be church shaped. Among other things, that means the most important missionary training doesn’t occur in seminary or at a missions agency training center. It occurs in the years a Christian spends being a member of a healthy church. Who is the Great Commission for? Not just individual Christians, but churches. Movements are not the biblically ordained missionary method. Nor are unaccountable individuals. Nor are missions agencies. Churches are the Bible’s missionary method. They are the staging areas for missions. Missions happens when churches send elders, deacons, and members to plant churches, both locally and internationally. Missions is church planting across significant barriers, which are usually geographic, cultural, or linguistic.

3. Missions works best when churches work together. The churches of the New Testament pursued church planting across barriers—missions—by working together. The churches in Antioch and Jerusalem worked together in support of Paul and Barnabas (Acts 11; 13; 15). The church in Derbe sent Paul and Barnabas back to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch to appoint elders (14:21–23). Paul sent good preachers from one church to another (2 Cor. 8:18). John told a church to receive and send faithful missionaries (3 John 5–8). He also condemned one church leader who tried to “go it alone”(3 John 9–10). Churches should always aspire to cooperate. Two American or two Korean churches cooperate to send a missionary; or an American/Korean and international church cooperate to send a planter; or an American/Korean, international, and national-indigenous church partner to do the same. Agencies, when involved, facilitate; they’re aids, not ecclesial authorities. Ecclesial authority belongs to each church working in partnership with others.

4. Missions is Bible led. The Bible is our best and only authoritative manual for the basics of missions. Missions work should therefore be biblically led, shaped, and directed. Scripture doesn’t speak to all the methods a missionary might employ from context to context (working through an international church? working through an agency?). Nor does it address all the forms a new church might adopt (long or short sermons? Sunday school classes?). Yet it clearly establishes the necessary elements that make a church, no matter what the context. And it establishes the ordinary means of grace for our ministry (evangelizing, preaching, praying, singing, gathering, ordinances).

In light of these four principles, we define missions as church planting across significant barriers. To fill that out just a bit, missions involves churches sending qualified workers across linguistic, geographic, or cultural barriers to start or strengthen churches, especially in places where Christ has not been named.

Neither this definition nor the 9Marks Church-Centered Missions series covers every topic that’s important for missions. And the authors in this series may not agree on every jot and tittle when it comes to the many debates among missionaries such as what kind of priority should be given to the unreached. Should we have emphasized those with no access to the gospel in our definition? The authors across this series might not agree with each other. Still, we do agree on the basic paradigm offered in these four principles. Therefore, we have sought to write these books somewhat together, with authors using common, agreed-upon language for defining the church-centered missions paradigm. We’re attempting to offer a team vision, not just the solo perspectives of the individual authors involved.

We have also sought to involve both sending pastors and missionaries in writing nearly every volume. That’s because our primary audience is the churches sending missionaries (pastors, missions committees, general members). Our secondary audience is the missionaries who are sent.

These short volumes don’t say everything that needs to be said about missions. Still, we pray the series as a whole will help churches and missionaries everywhere recover a vision for the central role local churches should play in fulfilling the Great Commission.

Jonathan Leeman with Brooks Buser and Scott Logsdon

Introduction

My (Aaron’s) friend Riley is funny—really funny. He tells the kind of stories that make you grab your sides and bend over because your gut is about to explode. I tell dad jokes; he tells real jokes. He knows how to live and how to laugh.

But Riley can be serious too, and one thing Riley is serious about is missions. One Sunday morning, Riley taught a class on that topic at our church. I’ve never forgotten what Riley said that day: “If you are a Christian, you are either going to the mission field or sending others to the mission field. There is no in-between.”

Why did his words cut so deep? I think it’s because I’ve never thought seriously about going overseas. From the start of my journey into ministry, I wanted to pastor in America. I became convinced before the turn of the century that my country needs more healthy churches. Eventually, that desire took me straight to the buckle of the Bible Belt—Atlanta, Georgia. This is the home of Coca-Cola, Chick-fil-A, and megachurches.

When I took the pastorate at Mount Vernon Baptist, where I still serve today, I remembered Riley’s words. I wanted to be the kind of Christian (and pastor) who sends missionaries. If I was going to stay in America, I knew I had to lead my church to be missions centered.

But I wasn’t sure how to do this. I didn’t grasp what it means to raise up and send out missionaries. I knew how to lead my church to share the gospel regularly—that’s evangelism. I taught people to open up their homes—that’s hospitality. I even led us to fund workers who move overseas—that’s generosity. But is that enough to consider your church missions centered—share the gospel where you live and cut checks for those who go? No, it’s not. Evangelism is good. Hospitality is good. Generosity is good. These are all excellent things, but they fall short of actually raising up and sending out missionaries.

Whether or not your church directly commissions a missionary to go overseas, you can help create a culture in your church of raising and sending—that’s what this book is all about.

The World’s Greatest Need

In the following pages, we will argue that prioritizing missions in the church means being a missionary-sending church—a congregation that joyfully owns its God-given role of making disciples of all nations. And this is what the world needs more than anything else—the disciple-making gospel of Jesus Christ that can make us right with God.

I (Aaron) once sat on an airplane between a Hindu and a Muslim. Seizing the moment, I asked if they’d mind sharing the biggest problem facing humanity today. The Muslim answered, “War.” The Hindu said, “Poverty.” I argued our greatest problem is sin, which separates us from a holy God. Though God made us to enjoy fellowship with him, our sin rightly deserves his just wrath, and the only way of escape is faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the God-man himself. The gospel I shared on the plane that day is humanity’s only hope. This gospel message must be the heartbeat of every local church.

Though some insist that a focus on gospel proclamation is out of step with the times, we agree with George W. Peters, who argued that evangelism “is the heart of Christian missions.” Peters acknowledged that such an emphasis “may sound strange, old-fashioned, outdated, and irrelevant to an activistic and irritated generation bent more upon social action than gospel proclamation.”1 Still, the most loving act of kindness anyone could ever perform is to deliver the saving message of Jesus Christ.

As such, this book is not about ending childhood hunger and disease—the mission of UNICEF. It’s not about working against environmental destruction—the mission of Greenpeace. It isn’t about disaster relief—the mission of the Red Cross. Scores of organizations are devoted to alleviating human suffering. Christians should minister to people’s physical needs as they have opportunity, but only one institution in the world is called to steward the gospel message: the local church. Only the gospel has the power to save sinners from everlasting destruction; only Christ can rescue us from suffering in the next world. And that gospel is the stewardship of churches.

We’re grateful for resources that point to disciple-making as the mission of the church.2 With that foundation established, then, we write to help you see that the local church is ground zero for the missionary task and then to help you discover what such a church is like. We want to equip local churches to better respond to the eternal catastrophe that awaits everyone who dies without knowing Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. This book is about reclaiming the idea that churches—not agencies or even individual Christians—must take the lead in bringing the gospel “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). And it explains how to be such a church.

Local churches are responsible before the Lord to raise up and send out missionaries who will publish the good news, so that one day we will all see what John saw: “A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9). We want to equip churches for this work.

We are both pastors who are committed to shepherding Christians in our local congregations. But we’re writing from opposite sides of the planet. Harshit serves a church in north India in the city of Lucknow. Aaron pastors a flock in the United States of America. Sometimes we specify when just one of us is writing. Usually we just write “we” because we wrote this book together—two pastors from two parts of the world with one heart for the nations.

Our churches are different in many ways—the food we eat, the style of music we play, the clothes we wear. But the mission of our churches is identical: to evangelize and disciple all the nations. This is because we have one authority, God’s word, and the message of the Bible transcends time and geography and culture.

We wrote this book to call local churches to recover their God-given responsibility to make Jesus Christ known all over the world. If the problem of sin really is greater than the problems of war and poverty, and if the church really is the only steward of the gospel, then we must renew our efforts to make that gospel known everywhere. In short, prioritizing missions requires becoming a missions-centered church.

What Is a Missions-Centered Church?

A missions-centered church recognizes that its mission begins with the Great Commission:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt. 28:19–20)

A missions-centered church takes the Great Commission seriously. Such a church doesn’t simply pay lip service to Jesus’s command to make disciples of all nations. No, a missions-centered church rolls up its sleeves and gets to work.

Our Savior spoke these words to men who had been with him for three and a half years. They’d seen his ministry, heard his message, and witnessed his miracles. Many of them concluded that he was the Messiah they’d been waiting for, even if they didn’t fully understand what that meant. They expected an earthly king to reign immediately over them, but Jesus intended to inaugurate his rule in their hearts. Jesus had a bigger plan than defeating Caesar; he came to conquer sin and death. Risen from the dead and standing before his disciples, Jesus gave them a mandate that they—and the churches they would start—were never to forget, a mandate to “make disciples of all nations.”

This kind of disciple-making is at the very heart of being a Christian, which means it should be at the heart of every church. Our churches have the duty and the delight to strategize how to get the gospel not only to nearby neighborhoods but to faraway nations and into different languages.

But what is a church? Here’s our definition: a church is a congregation of baptized Christians who have covenanted to gather weekly for preaching the Bible, celebrating the ordinances, loving the saints, witnessing to the lost, and, in all this, glorifying God.

Of the Bible’s many images for the church, one of the most compelling is that of family. Paul calls the church “the household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15), which is why he refers to believers as brothers and sisters in Christ. We become family through faith in Jesus who died and rose in the place of everyone who has turned from their sin and trusted in him. Through this faith we are united to Christ, our older brother, and we become members of his family. We enter the universal church through conversion, and we enter the local church through the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (sometimes referred to as sacraments). Baptism into a local church—one of these covenanted bodies—is the sign of entrance into this household. The Lord’s Supper is the regular reminder that we belong.

How then might we define missions? You won’t find the word mission in the Bible. Our English word is derived from the Latin missio, which we often translate as “sent” or “sending.” This concept of sending is all over the New Testament. Acts ends with Luke stating that the “salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles” (Acts 28:28). When the Lord called the twelve, “he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:2). And at the right time, the church in Antioch prayed for Barnabas and Saul and “sent them off” to share the gospel and plant churches in Asia (Acts 13:3).

Missions, then, is church planting across significant barriers. To be more specific, “missions involves churches sending qualified workers across linguistic, geographic, or cultural barriers to start or strengthen churches, especially in places where Christ has not been named.”3

Church planters are sent by local churches to establish local churches. They’re supposed to plant gospel seeds which will grow into churches that are deeply rooted and standing strong. Such churches will bear witness to Christ and raise up more workers to plant and water more gospel seeds for generations to come.

Sending church planters is what Jesus had in mind when he issued the Great Commission. After all, Matthew 28 must be read in the context of Matthew 16 and 18, where Christ gives the authority of the keys to local churches (Matt. 16:13–20; 18:17–20). The church that gathers in his name has the authority to baptize in his name (18:20; 28:19), and those with whom he dwells now, he’ll dwell with always (18:18–20; 28:20).4 The book of Acts, then, is a chronicle of church planters from Jerusalem and Antioch sowing gospel seeds in an unbelieving world. The Bible requires churches to own this process of raising up and sending out qualified missionaries. Just as Paul was sent to the Gentiles, crossing the Jew and Gentile divide, so missionaries today walk through the geographic, cultural, and linguistic walls that separate unbelievers from the good news of Jesus.

There is no “missions” without a gospel to share, people to go, and a church to send. This is where the church and missions come together. Peters called the church “the mediating sending agency of God” and “the responsible missionary body.”5Missionaries are sent out by the “missionary body” of the local church to plant churches because missions is not only about people being saved; it is also about people being gathered into a local church. The new local church then bears witness to Christ, putting the nations on notice that he is the King, and then turns around and sends more missionaries to cross more barriers to make the name of Jesus known in more places.

In this sense, churches are both the origin and the end of missions. They are the origin in that churches send missionaries—missions originates in the local church. Churches are the end in that the goal of missions is faithful, healthy churches. Therefore, since churches are both the start and the goal of missions, we consider the local church to be the “method.” This means that, even in parts of the world with no established church, the missionary should be tethered to a local church—sent out by a congregation to make and baptize disciples. Of course, a network of churches will often be involved in this work. Praise God! Still, the partnership of a multitude of churches must not eclipse the responsibility of individual churches to be actively involved in the missionary task.

We’ve written this book to encourage local churches to reassume ownership of the Great Commission and not outsource that work entirely to missions agencies or other parachurch ministries. The authority to make disciples has been given to the church—it is the church who teaches the gospel that saves and who baptizes those who are saved (Matt. 28:18–20). Sending people to make disciples of all nations is at the heart of missions. Therefore, a missions-centered church is a missionary-sending church.

Moving in the Right Direction

We believe every true church wants to be missions centered, but we all fall short to some degree. No church is perfect; we simply want to move in the right direction.

The first step is to acknowledge that missions is hard. The unreached are unreached for a reason. Our efforts to go where the gospel is absent may be stymied by political opposition, geographic hurdles, false gospels, or satanic warfare. The missionary task is not for the faint of heart. Parts of the world are inhospitable—to say the least—to missionaries. For example, we know of an Algerian pastor who fled with his family to America because the authorities shut down his church in 2019. The police are locking church doors, imprisoning shepherds, and harassing sheep. Algeria desperately needs the gospel, but it is not a safe place for Algerian pastors or visiting missionaries.

Nonetheless, now is the time for churches to recommit themselves to the task. Not out of guilt—that is a terrible motivator. Not to usher in the last days—no one knows when our Lord will return (Matt. 24:36). Instead, churches ought to devote themselves to missions because the gospel is the best news ever preached and Jesus is the best King ever known.

If you really believe the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16), then your church will labor to send missionaries where Jesus is not known. Paul’s aim will be our aim: to “preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named” (Rom. 15:20).

Maybe you picked up this book because you’re disheartened that no one else in your church seems burdened by the spiritual darkness of the world. They say they care, and you occasionally hear someone praying for the lost, but your church seems to focus only on shepherding the saints and not on reaching out to lost sinners. Maybe it’s hard to envision your church moving in the right direction.

Perhaps your congregation would rather build a playground than labor to see Muslims evangelized. You may wonder if your pastor is interested only in preaching a good sermon and not in sending out missionaries. How can my church become missions centered if I’m the only one who cares? Don’t be discouraged! Who knows how God might use your prayers and your words and even your reading of this book to spark a heart for the nations in the congregation you love?

Maybe you’re concerned that your church is a little too focused on missions, and you’re reading this book to figure out what the fuss is all about. We hope and pray that you’ll see it’s possible (and important!) to both focus on shepherding the flock where you are and work to spread the gospel among all the nations. A faithful church will, by God’s grace, do both.