Perspectives Fastrak - Print Version

Someone once said, "all your life decisions are flawed unless you see the world as God sees it."

You are about to take a journey that may influence the rest of your life. You will be awakened to new insights about God’s purpose for you in this world. We pray that Fastrak will be a first step to discovering your specific role in God's plan.

Perhaps this on-line course will inspire you to go further and take the more advanced ‘Perspectives on the World Christian Movement’ course. Over 20,000 people have already completed this course at locations across the Globe.

Take this short, 9-lesson Fastrak course seriously and don’t underestimate its life changing influence. The sum of all the lessons will weave together a big picture of the world as God sees it. It will link you to the beginning of time and into the future.

We start with a good foundation—the Bible. Keep your eyes open to the discovery of a golden thread that runs through the Bible. Get a glimpse of how the spread of the gospel has impacted civilizations and shaped history. You will become optimistic as you see how God has been working.

Finally, let this course cause you to reflect on your life and career. Are you making the right decisions? What is the basis for your decisions? Do you have all the information you need to see the world as God sees it?

The Bible is basically a story about God. When we turn to the Bible as a self-help book, we end up bored or frustrated with what seems to be a rambling collection of stories. What if the Bible is more about God than it is about us? How thrilling to discover that every element of scripture—the reports of events, the verses of distilled wisdom, the lyrical prophecies—converge in one central saga of one worthy Person.

We’re used to the idea that the Bible is a true story. It’s so true that the story is still unfolding to this minute. We are used to hearing that the Bible is a love story. But we tend to see only one side of the love: how God loves people. If the main point of the Bible is that God is to be loved with heart, soul, mind and strength, perhaps it would be wise to read the entire story from God’s point of view. When we look at it all from God’s viewpoint, the grand love story finally makes sense: God is not just loving people. He is transforming them to become people who can fully love Him. God is drawing people as worshipers to offer freely to Him their love-inspired glory.

God can be loved only when He is known. That’s why the story of the Bible is the story of God revealing Himself in order to draw to Himself obedient worship, or glory, from the nations. With God’s passionate love at the core, the Bible is truly the Story of His Glory. —Steven C. Hawthorne

Think over the energy you're throwing into life now trying to be a better Christian, a better student, a better family member, and a better you. Why ask so often for God's blessing on your life? If it's to have a nicer, happier life, that's not a bad goal. Especially since that's what heaven will be, an easier, nicer, perfect existence. If that were God's purpose for you right now, He would simply take you home to heaven, right? NO! That’s because biblical discipleship is never described as nice or easy.

The Bible does not talk as though God is just out to save us as individuals or to save us from harm. God wants to make us His children with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities that come with this relationship. He wants us to become joint-heirs with His only Son, whom He sent to die for us, so that through His blood we might be brought into the house of God. Not as servants but as children, who are part of a family.

Being a part of God's family is the most wonderful blessing you can receive. But this blessing He gives us is intended for all other peoples as well! In fact, blessing all peoples is the father's business. Being a child of God is more like being born into a family business where everybody is naturally expected to take part in the Father's work!

So what are you doing? Are you setting your affections on things the Father desires? Or do you think that joining God's family is becoming a part of a nice, privileged Christian group?

Those who satisfy themselves with the lesser blessing of seeing the beauty of the lower slopes will never know the deep satisfaction of those who venture up to the pinnacles by joining God in His Family business. The few who dare will know the thrill and return exhausted yet invigorated. Go ahead, set your affections on things above and the perseverance, toil, and sacrifice will become a distant glimmer compared to the mighty blessings of obeying God's will.

How many times have you heard or given testimonies about God's wonderful purpose for your life? Look into your Bible. It spells out a clear, specific task God has for you in His historic plan. He does have a wonderful purpose for your life!

The story of the Bible has a simple unified theme: The Redeemer offers every ethnic group on Earth the blessing of joining God's family.

He is putting together a people from every people group on Earth. This theme appears throughout the Bible.

When God's intention to reach all nations is clear, the Bible fits together sensibly and purposefully. The presence of a mission mandate throughout scripture is settled.

Check out Jesus' summary of Scripture and His role in it in Luke 24:44-47: "that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem."

What you'll see over and over in these passages about God's purpose on earth are terms such as peoples, nations, families, languages, tribes, the Gentiles or even Greeks all signifying the idea of people groups. God has blessed us not just for ourselves, but to be a blessing to the nations. Scripture is full of this two-part theme.

God can transform. He will reduce the suffering and improve the lives of people. Prejudice and community division can be reduced. His blessings will flow upon those who turn toward Him and act to bring God's blessing to other communities. Some Christians will be called nation builders because the result of their work is a country that is better for everyone.

We are living at an exciting point in the history of the world! In China the church is growing by leaps and bounds. Estimates are that there are at least 100 million Christians in that country! In 1900, the continent of Africa was only 3% Christian. Today it is over 40%!

In 1900 Korea had no Protestant church; it was deemed impossible to penetrate. Today Korea is 35% Christian

God is sending nonwestern missionaries to areas where western missionaries would not be allowed. Thousands of these missionaries from Brazil, Korea, India, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala are being sent out to reach the unreached people groups!

The Good News is spreading worldwide. Where the church is planted it grows. Yet a gap remains.

While we're working so hard at improving our lives, deepening our fellowships and seeking God's healing for our families and our land, let's simply face the fact: We haven't yet given the same opportunity to many others.

God will accomplish his purposes. At the end of time Christ will be exalted with the song: Thou didst purchase for God with thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation [Revelation 5:9]. So it's only a matter of when and through whom.

The Gospel will be preached as a testimony to all nations or people groups and then the end will come [Matthew 24:14]. A great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language will be before the throne and in front of the Lamb [Revelation 7:9]. From this we see the vision of the future; as we imagine this glorious scene there is no room left to doubt. We know that the great commission will be completed. The question is: Will you participate?

When you get involved in God's plans, get ready for action. Your life may never be the same. God will fill you with challenges and great satisfaction. There are hundreds of ways you can be involved either as a layman or full time worker. Writers, businessmen, engineers, teachers, students, housewives, everyone can participate! You will learn how later on in this course.

Real discipleship costs. The price is giving up any agendas that detract from God's global cause. The cost is to forsake claims of ownership to affluence and security. The demand for communities is to serve other communities, breaking down prejudice rather than hoarding God's blessings. The cost for individuals is to take risks and get out of the comfort zone, seek new ways to communicate the Gospel in a culturally relevant and sensitive way.

The price of being a part of God's global purpose is losing your life for His sake. Active participation in the big picture of God's plan is difficult. It requires that one not entangle himself in the affairs of everyday life [2 Timothy 2:4].

Take some time to read about some of the great men and women in history who gave away their lives for the sake of lepers, criminals ,the poor and unreached peoples.

Are you thinking clearly about yourself? You need to ask God on your knees where you fit in. One key thing to realize is that the development of your career must not be your main concern. Yes, it will be in your heart of hearts again and again, a question of career vs. cause. Jesus today might have put it, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and your career will take care of itself." or "He that seeks to save himself will lose his life; he that will lose his life for my sake will find it."

Is your problem that you can't see very far into the future? If you can't see very far ahead, go ahead as far as you can see. Lots of people would be glad to follow God if He would only tell them in advance exactly all the wonderful things He would do for them and what high-sounding job titles they might one day hold. But, remember Genesis 12:1? It is characteristic of the Christian life that God asks us to go without telling us where! This is not unfair on His part. The fact is that when we walk in the little light we have, and keep taking steps in faith, the ways in which He leads us are almost always (as we look back) something we could have never been told in advance! Untold marvels lie beyond each step of faith.

You don't really have to know what is beyond the next step. Again, it is characteristic of the Christian life that we can’t see very far in advance. In fact, if you think you've got the next few years lined up you may be mistaken or you may be making your plans for God to bless. What does he ask? Nothing more than all we are and possess.

He doesn't ask us to do the easiest job we can think of but the hardest we are able to handle. He does not ask us to do what we cannot do, although He often enables us to do what we could not do without His special grace. It is amazingly true that when we are willing to do the most difficult thing we find that we are better off because of it.

You have a part in God's historic purpose to disciple the nations. Is there any good reason why you don't take this seriously? Will you align your life with God's unchanging purpose?

The Bible is, in essence, a storybook about what God is doing. As any good saga, the Story of the Bible has a simple, unified theme: The Redeemer offers every ethnic group on Earth the blessing of joining God’s Family. He’s putting together a people from every people group on earth.

Genesis 12:1-3 God blessed Abraham and through him promised blessing to all families of the earth.

Genesis 18:18 God blessed Abraham and promised blessing to all families or peoples of the earth.

Genesis 22:17-18 God again blessed Abraham and promised blessing to all nations of the earth.

Genesis 26:4 God blessed Isaac and promised blessing to all peoples of the earth.

Genesis 28:14 God blessed Jacob and promised blessing to all peoples of the earth.

By now it’s obvious God wants us to notice this twofold program of blessing!

Psalm 67:1-2,7 The passage is startlingly clear: God blesses His people to be a blessing to every people group on the face of the earth

Luke 24:45-47 Jesus emphasized Scriptures’ theme that the Gospel is to be proclaimed to all nations or people groups.

Revelation 5:9 God will accomplish His purpose of blessing every people. Some (Hell is a biblical truth) from every people group will be present in eternity.

The basic point: Throughout the Bible, God’s plan is to bless His people and, through them, bless every people on the earth with the offer of redemption in Christ.

Luke 2:30-32 Jesus’ birth was a fulfillment of God’s promise to give a light to all peoples

Luke 24:44-47 Jesus’ own definition of the Gospel includes the key phrase “preached in His name to all the nations, all the peoples of the earth”.

Acts 1:8 Jesus promised that Spirit-power would strengthen the church for its mission (among its own people and other people groups), , not for its enjoyment or ease.

Acts 2:5-6 At Pentecost every nation of the world was represented. Acts 8:1-4 God used persecution of the early church to spread its message of blessing among surrounding peoples.

Acts 15:12-19 Paul and Barnabas related the wonders God was performing among the unreached peoples. Unfortunately, the church leaders’ initial response to these events (which should have been easily recognized as part of God’s ongoing, unchangeable purpose) was negative.

Romans 1:5 We have received grace and apostleship for the sake of the peoples of the world.

Ephesians 3:4-6, 10-11 God’s processes involve not only blessing the earth’s peoples, the gentiles, but making them equal, ”fellow heirs” in the Body of Christ. This was a mystery the Church is now demonstrating.

Hebrews 6:11-19a God wants us to have ‘anchor-in-the-soul confidence’ about what He is doing. He swore that two things in life would be unchangeable: His blessing of His people such as Abraham and that through His people all peoples would be blessed.

Revelation 5:9 When the aged Apostle John peered into the future, he saw the evidence of the success of God’s purpose on earth. Gathered around the throne were representatives of every people.

Matthew 28:18-20 This familiar passage is foundational in our understanding of the Bible’s emphasis on people-group thinking. ‘Discipling the nations (ethne in the original Greek) is the epitome of our mission on the earth. Missiologists say it’s possible to have churches planted within each remaining unreached people within a few years. Then those churches can be discipled to bless their own individual people with the offer of the Gospel.

Matthew 24:14 Regardless of our eschatology God’s blessing of redemption in Christ to every people will be completed. Then the end will come. The work on earth will be done.

Lesson one introduced us to God's mission plan. That all peoples of the earth will be blessed through those who know Him.

Pause for a second, did you ever think God has a big plan? Isn't it incredible that He gave us the Bible and revealed it to us! Read this lesson to unfold His unchanging plan from Genesis to Revelation.

The Bible has a golden thread beginning in Genesis where God blessed the people of Israel. He blessed them not only for their own benefit but that through them all nations on earth could also be blessed. This thread continues through the New Testament where God’s desires for the nations is clearly seen and climaxes in Revelation.

This lesson will give you a solid Biblical understanding of the golden thread. You will get a sense of profound awe for God's faithfulness to His centuries-old promise. Starting with the mandate to Abraham, moving through history and even to your personal response in fulfilling that mandate.

To align your life with God's will, you must clearly know his plan. Get ready to discover it!

Genesis 1:1-11 forms an introduction to the entire Bible, and is the key to its understanding. These chapters make five essential points:

3. By not believing what God said, man sinned, and was alienated from God. [Genesis 3 to 6].

At the culmination of Genesis 11, God literally creates a new dimension to the problem of reconciling men to Himself. To keep men from further self acclaim and worship of their own accomplishments, God confused their language. He scattered them across the face of the earth creating distinct ethnic groups. As a result of this momentous act, what is God’s ingenious plan to reconcile all people groups to Himself?

God’s relationship to the world of dispersed ethnic groups is the background of the “incident” in Genesis 12:1-3. The call of Abraham, and the following history of the nation of Israel, is the beginning of the story of God’s acts to bring about reconciliation between Himself and all the nations of the earth. It is here that the theme of the Bible begins. In the Abrahamic covenant, God promised to bless Abraham and his descendants, and that through them all nations on earth would be blessed [See also Genesis 22:16-18; 26:3-4]. This is what happened, although in a manner far different than Abraham probably imagined!

Abraham’s descendants (Israel) were not selected to be God’s special people because they were superior to the nations around them [Deuteronomy 7:6-8]. Instead, as God dealt with the nation of Israel, the nations were to witness these dealings and recognize the hand of God in them [Psalm 22:24-27; 33:6-8; 48; 66:1-7; 67:1-2; 1 Chronicles 16:8; 22:5]. In fact, Israel was to be to the whole world what priests are to a people, and represent God among the nations [Exodus 19:5-6].

Israel expected all the nations on earth to acknowledge God one day. They expressed this future expectation through their prophets, and in their liturgy. [Psalm 47; 96; 99; 100; 117; Habakuk 2:14, 20; Isaiah 2:2-4; 40:5; 42:6; 49:6; Micah 4:1-3; Zechariah 8:2-23; 1 Chronicles 16].

The day when all the nations on earth will acknowledge God is closely linked with the coming Messiah [Isaiah 42:1-9; Daniel 7:13-14].God is Lord, and the Messiah will make His Lordship known among all the nations of the earth [Psalm 72; Isaiah 11:9, 10; 52:1, 2; 53:1].

Have you ever noticed that so much of the Old Testament is dedicated to narratives of Abraham’s descendants being a blessing to non-Jewish peoples? Just in case you haven’t noticed this, here are a few examples:

1. Abraham himself bore witness to the Canaanites, Philistines, Hittites, and (rather negatively) to the Egyptians

2. Joseph made up for his forefather’s lack of a clear witness to the Egyptian nation! He blessed Egyptians in truly amazing ways.

4. King David caused even his enemies, the Philistines, to acknowledge God’s greatness.

5. King Solomon was a blessing to the Sabaean, “Queen of the South” [Luke 11:31].

6. Esther and her uncle Mordecai were a blessing to the entire Persian Empire [Esther 8:17].

7. Prophet Elijah was a blessing to the Sidonian widow in Zarephath [Luke 4:26].

11. Ezekiel, Jeremiah and other prophets declared the Word of the Lord to various Gentile nations.

In the Old Testament Scriptures God clearly expresses His intention to be acknowledged among all the dispersed nations of mankind. In the Old Testament era, His acts upon the nation of Israel were to be the visible manifestation of His Lordship, and were to draw the nations to Himself.

The four Gospels record the single greatest event in human history. The supreme act by which God sought to redeem fallen men. The incarnation of the Son of God, destined to die for the sins of all mankind. The Messiah, who will make the name of the Lord God known among the nations, has come! But, consistent with our God of the unexpected, the way this occurred was not the way Israel, or the early church anticipated.

Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, and death were intricately bound up in God’s plan to draw all the nations to Himself.

Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, prophesied about the coming Messiah saying he would “shine upon those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,” (a quote from Isaiah 9:1-2, referring to Gentiles and recorded by Luke in chapter 1:67-79).

The righteous, old gentleman, Simeon, blessed the baby Jesus, saying, “...my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” [Luke 2:25-32].

Over half a century later, the Apostle Paul interpreted the importance of Jesus’ death for the reconciliation of the Gentiles when he said, “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles...were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”[Ephesians 2:11-13]

As the descendant of Abraham, Israel was granted the opportunity to receive the greatest of the blessings of Abraham, the gift of the Messiah, before it was offered to the Gentiles. Israel’s rejection of this gracious invitation, and God’s response to their rejection, is aptly portrayed in Matthew 22:1-10.

Despite Jesus’ primary focus on Israel, His compassion for the Gentiles, and unwavering commitment to draw them to Himself, bursts forth again and again throughout His earthly ministry.

Jesus used his encounter with Nicodemus as an opportunity to state clearly that He was sent into the world, because God loved the world.

Jesus witnessed to a Samaritan woman, causing her and many other Samaritans to believe in Him.

Jesus healed the servant of a Roman Centurion, praising the Roman for his faith, and commenting that many would “come from east and west” (an allusion to Gentiles) and dine with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Jesus healed ten lepers, praising the one who returned to give thanks (who was a Samaritan).

Jesus gives one condition that must be met before His return, “And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.”

Before His ascension, Jesus strove to make His purpose for the nations unmistakably clear. He gave His disciples the “Great Commission”. In this, Jesus turned the tables on Israel and the early church:

They expected Jesus to set up an earthly kingdom.
They expected Jesus to use His power to establish the kingdom.
They anticipated that the nations would stream to Israel to worship God.
They wanted Jesus to do the work.

But...He offered them entry into a spiritual kingdom
But...He promised them power to extend the kingdom But…He commissioned them to go to the nations with the gospel, and disciple them. But…He told them they would do the work.

The Great Commission, in fact, is not one command but a composite commission found in all four Gospels and the Book of Acts. None of these writers gave it in its entirety, but they beautifully supplement each other.

Matthew 28:18-20
The authority, the all-inclusive goal, and the time-extension of the work are stressed.

Mark 16:15,16
The urgency, the method, and the personal responsibility are emphasized.

Luke 24:44-49
The foundation, the forgiveness of sins, the universality, and the personal responsibility are highlighted.

John 20:21-23
The spiritual equipment and the spiritual nature of the work are stressed.

This Great Commission was spoken to the apostles as representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ. That means us! We are commanded to complete Christ’s unfinished task.

Like much of the church today, even though Jesus made it very clear that His disciples were to go and preach the gospel to all the nations, the disciples did not obey this command immediately.

Oh yes, the church began well enough. On the day of Pentecost, dispersed Jews, representing nations from all over the world heard the gospel and believed in the Lord Jesus [Acts 2:9-11]! However, this international gathering was not an event planned and executed by the apostles as a means of taking the gospel to the nations! These representatives of the nations already lived in Jerusalem. After Pentecost, this good beginning sort of fizzled out, while the church “put itself together”.

Progressively, however, with the assistance of some unwanted persecution that scattered many of the members of the Jerusalem church, the evangelism of the Gentile world began in earnest.

Phillip spent some time witnessing in the city of Samaria. On his return trip to Jerusalem, God sent him on a side-road to Gaza, where he met and converted an Ethiopian court official [Acts 8]. After these exciting events, however, it appears he returned and settled at the church in Jerusalem.

After seeing the same vision three times and being sent for by three messengers, Peter witnessed to his first Gentile, a devout Roman centurion named Cornelius [Acts 10, 11]. Although he remained in Jerusalem for quite some time after this, Peter became an important supporter of the Gentile missions effort because of his experience with Cornelius [Acts 15].

It took the apostle Paul, led along by Barnabas, to make a dedicated effort to go and witness to the Gentiles. Paul was blind and hungry for three days and nights after encountering the risen Christ. Then Ananias informed him of the awesome fact that God had set him apart to be a witness to the Gentiles [Acts 9:15]. About 12 years later Paul joined Barnabus at a crazy church in the city of Antioch, where large numbers of Greeks were actually meeting the Lord [Acts 11:19-20]. Soon, Paul and Barnabus became the first (others soon followed) missionary band sent from a local church to evangelize the Gentiles [Acts 13:1-3].

The theme of world evangelization appears again and again in other New Testament passages [see Romans 1:5; 15:15-29; 2 Corinthians 5:19; Ephesians 2:11-19; 3:2-6; Philippians 2:10-11; II Thessalonians 3:1; II Peter 3:9, for a start]. In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John provides a glimpse of the future, when representatives from every people, nation, tribe, and tongue, will gather together at the feet of Christ, and call him Lord [Revelation 5:8-10; 7:9-10; 13:7-8; 14:6-7]! God’s desire for the nations will be fulfilled, as the Church takes the gospel to the nations.

In the light of this evidence, from the Old and New Testament, we see that throughout history God intended to reconcile representatives of every people, nation, tribe, and tongue to Himself. How should today’s Christian church respond, when more than two billion people are still unaware of the good news of Jesus Christ, particularly when many of these are found within “people groups” that are “unreached”?

The objective of world missions is to establish a healthy, reproducing, evangelical church in every indigenous people group in the world, reducing the number of unreached people groups to zero! The gospel of Matthew, quoting Jesus, says; “And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations (ethnos, or “people groups”), and then the end will come.” [Matthew 24:14]. The second coming of Christ waits while the church takes the gospel of the Kingdom to all the peoples of the earth! World missions is the “reason” for the continued existence of the church in the world today.

If this is so, missions is not “one of many programs in the church, like Sunday school or potlucks.” Every Christian should be informed about, and involved with, world missions. Missions is not the domain of a select few!

Missions will only become an integral part of your church’s life if it is integrated into the total education program of your congregation. The learning experience of your children, many of whom will be future leaders in the church, must be flavored with God’s heart for world evangelization. Youth and Young adults must be helped to discover how their gifts and abilities can contribute to world evangelization. Adults must be equipped to lead the church in fulfilling its role in world missions.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis cover just four major events: the sin of Adam and Eve; the slaying of Abel by Cain; Noah and the Flood; and the Tower of Babel. In each of these four events the characters ended up in sin. Despite being warned of its consequences, these human beings persisted in rejecting God; yet God's faithfulness and love for His people stayed constant. Sin reached such a peak that God unleashed the Flood to destroy evil and started all over again with Noah [who] found favor in the eyes of the Lord. [Gen 6:8]. At Babel, God intervened when men began to glory in their own achievements. He confused the languages of the whole world [and] the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth [Gen 11:9]. Because of God's grace, the people were not wiped out, as in the Flood. They were scattered and, in Genesis chapter 12, we see the culmination of the Babel story.

Abraham: Blessed to be a Blessing God's grace is reflected in Genesis 12:1-3;The LORD had said to Abraham:

"Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; .. and you will be a blessing all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

God is blessing Abraham, not just because he is obedient, but also so that he will be a blessing.

Who is Abraham supposed to bless? "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." This is the most important part of God's Word for us, and so I am going to repeat it to you. God was blessing Abraham so that he could, in turn, bless all the people who had been scattered by God over the whole world - with different languages, different cultures, different groups, nations and kingdoms.

Israel: Blessed to be a Blessing From the very beginning of the Old Testament, the burden on God's heart is the desire to reach all people. God blessed Israel so much so that the people around her would notice it. They would then ask about Israel's God and come to obey and worship the true God.

Sadly, it did not work out this way. Why? Because most of the time the people of Israel disobeyed God. While they received, and appreciated, their own blessing, they selfishly refused to follow up on the other half of God's promise - they failed to become a blessing to others by giving them the message of God.

Yet in the reigns of King David and his son, Solomon, God's blessings to Israel reached the high point of her history. Israel became one of the most powerful nations and the whole world at that time heard of the grandeur of Jerusalem and its temple.

David himself never forgot the reason why Israel was being blessed; so that they could be a blessing to the rest of the peoples and nations of the world. We can see this in David's, and Israel's, hymns - the Psalms. There are some seventy-six references in the Psalms to the "nations." As well there are references to "peoples" and "all the earth" - making it clear that during this time Israel worshipped God as the God of the entire world. Psalm 67 beautifully reflects Israel's understanding that she was to be a blessing: here are the first three verses;

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine upon us,
that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
May the peoples praise you, O God;
may all the peoples praise you.

This was the desire on God's heart; a Heart which is for all the peoples of the earth. Yet Solomon lost his focus - and his directive from God - and led Israel away from her part in God's plan for the world.

The Early Church Keeps it Going! The first disciples of Jesus, and the Early Church, carried out the Great Commission aggressively. Beginning at their starting place in Jerusalem, they carried the Good News to peoples in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth [Acts 1:8]. Paul's life is a witness to following the path outlined by his Savior as shown towards the end of Romans:

“So, from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Rather, as it is written‘Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.’ [Rom 15:19-21]'”

Although the regions Paul visited still needed lots of evangelistic work and follow-up, yet Paul moved on. Why? Because He knew the love for all peoples in the heart of God.

Paul's conception of the missionary task is not merely the winning of more and more people to Christ but the reaching of more and more peoples or nations. His focus was not primarily on new geographic areas. Rather he was gripped by the vision of unreached peoples.

Clearly Paul's heart beat in rhythm with God's heart - he helped the Early Church keep Jesus' Commission urgent and alive.

These resemble actions Jesus took. He did the unexpected. What you'll learn in this lesson will help to explain this unexpected behavior. It will reinforce what we learned in the first two lessons about God's plan. Also look for how the Jews misunderstood that plan. Learn how you can avoid the same mistake.

The Lord Jesus is central to our Christian faith and the mission of the Church. So the way He relates to the peoples of the world is vitally important in understanding God's purpose for the Church.

One of the best ways to study the ministry of Jesus is from the writings of Luke. Luke, as a Gentile, was an outsider to Israel. He gives us a unique perspective of Jesus' involvement with Gentiles.

Four thousand years ago, God chose Abraham to begin His redemptive activity toward the nations. In Genesis 12 Abraham was promised that Christ would come. Jesus is the Seed, the unique descendant of Abraham though whom all nations were to be blessed. When Christ appeared, the fullest meaning of the blessing of Abraham came into focus.

In the very wording of Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus makes it clear that He was not giving the people of Israel some new revelation. He was actually quoting the mandate given to their father Jacob, which is recorded in Genesis 28:14-15. Click here to see that comparison.

Observe that in both passages it says, "I am with you," indicating that the Lord will continue working with them until something is completed. In Genesis God says He will be with the descendants of Abraham until He has done all that He promised. The key element of the promise is the blessing of all peoples. One aspect of what the Lord was saying is that He intends to keep working with His people until all peoples are penetrated with His power. Similarly, in Matthew He says He will be with them until the end of the age. They would know what that meant because in Matthew 24:14 Jesus told them the age would not end until all nations (ethne) were reached.

Although Jesus spent most of His time ministering to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, amazingly Gentile nations often times received Him with more faith and acceptance. Prime examples are the Roman centurion [Luke 7:1-10] and the Syro-Phoenician woman [Mark 7:24-30].Jesus marveled at both and said He had not found faith like the centurion's even in Israel.

To ensure his disciples learned His saving grace was available to all, Jesus ministered to Samaritans, people of Decapolis, Tyre & Sidon, Phoenicia and Galilee - all areas with large concentrations of Greek-speaking Gentiles. In fact, many scholars believe Jesus was bilingual; ministering both in Aramic and Greek.

Sadly, despite all he did to reach the Jews, His own did not receive Him. Yet, to all who received Him He gave the right to become the children of God [John 1:11-12].

Who did receive Him? Luke makes it clear that the Gentiles did. This is brought out in many of Jesus' parables and very graphically in the parable of the great banquet and the parable of the vineyard tenants.

From the very beginning of his Gospel, Luke stresses that Jesus was to be not just Messiah for Israel but for all peoples. He tells of Simeon, a godly man, who was looking for the fulfillment of Israel. Simeon quotes Isaiah 49:6, declaring Jesus to be a "light for revelation to the Gentiles...glory to your people Israel," declaring the fulfillment of the purpose for which God had chosen them.

In Chapter four Luke continues to develop his portrayal of Jesus as the Messiah for all peoples. Picture Jesus as a young seminary graduate, having come to His home town to give His "graduation sermon." He preached a message which pleased everybody. He could have left it at that. But He then added a few words which turned the happy group into a mob determined to kill him.

What did Jesus say to cause such a reaction? He spoke of two prophets, Elijah and Elisha, whom God used to bless two Gentile nations, the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian. They were upset because they felt that He was betraying His people, Israel, by speaking of blessing for Gentiles. If they had not already betrayed the purposes of God, they would not have exploded in anger. They had forgotten their "missionary responsibility" under the Abrahamic covenant; and their hearts had become hard at any mention of foreigners being blessed.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus hoped to change this attitude [Luke 6:26-37; Matthew 5:39-42]. Many miss the importance of what Jesus was saying when He declared that it wasn't enough for people to be friendly to their friends. He was introducing the radical concept: they love their enemies, even to pray for them.

Most of the Jews did not listen. Even today people feel resentful of foreigners in their land. "They are taking away our jobs; overcrowding our cities; they don't speak our language." Are we responding in the same way as the Jews did? Are we eager to pass on Jesus' blessing to any newcomer to our hometown. It is God's way of providing us with the opportunity to obey His commission.

Besides the episode at Nazareth, there were constant attempts on His life. However, as Messiah for all peoples, He was ready to give His life that the nations might live. In Luke 9:23 He utters the challenge that if anyone follows Him he would have to deny himself and be willing to die. From that point, right up to Calvary, the Bible contrasts the self-centered attitude of the disciples with the "peoples-centered" attitude of Christ.

During His long walking trip from Galilee to Judea, in Luke chapter ten, His disciples realize that Jesus is heading into trouble both for Himself and for them, and eventually into His own death. When Jesus clearly tells them He is going to die, Peter rebuked Him. Jesus told Peter he did not understand the purposes of God. This will always be the case when we are worrying about ourselves rather than about God's purpose for all peoples. [Matthew 16:21-25].

On three different occasions Jesus makes it painfully clear that He was going to die. The third time found James and John arguing over prospective positions in the kingdom. How similar is this to power hungry Christians today. Jesus corrected His disciples, saying they didn't know what they wee asking.

Have we fully understood Jesus' statement that positions of importance in His kingdom come when we are ready to be servants of all. Willing to sacrifice ourselves for others. Giving our lives to save those beyond our world concern, the unreached peoples? [Mark 9:30-35; 10:32-45].

In the twenty-fourth chapter, after the resurrection, Luke again makes it clear that Jesus' followers had still not caught the idea. Two disciples walking along the Emmaus Road were discouraged and almost certainly grumbling. Gone were grandiose hopes that Jesus would overthrow the Romans and set the disciples up in power. Jesus joins them and asks the reason for their disgruntlement. Snarling, they ask, "Are you the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't understand what happened?"

Actually, Jesus was the only person who did understand. Their worldly selfish focus prevented them from "seeing" who Jesus was and what the Old Testament had clearly taught about His death and resurrection.

A short time later Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples to remind them of the fulfillment of what was actually written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms. These were things they should have known! Things our churches should know and act upon today!

Opening their hardened hearts, Jesus made very clear the primary message of the entire Old Testament Scriptures, saying, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" [Luke 24:45-47]. He doesn't let them believe for a minute that this was a brand new idea. All the peoples have always been within the love, concern and purpose of God.

Incredibly, in Acts chapter one, we find the disciples still do not understand the nature of the Kingdom. They are still focusing on their own small corner of the world called Israel. Paraphrasing Acts 1:8, Jesus said, "If you people are still after power you will receive power, but only when the Spirit of God takes over your life, and your lives are refocused on the ends of the earth." The power they received was not an end in itself. It was to be available to those who spent their energies on the unreached peoples of the earth.

Today, we too want to claim the purposes and power of the Great Commission - the "Lo, I will be with you always." But, as someone has said, if there is "no Go, then there is no LO." If you don't GO into God's purposes, then the "Lo, I will be with you" doesn't follow. It is all part of one picture; missions to the nations and receiving God's power are inseparably linked.

Throughout His ministry in the New Testament, Jesus continues to show His interest in the little people; the poor, the sick; the Greeks and the Samaritans. Not just the people from the race he was born into, but the world around Him, was His concern. In fact the most repugnant feature of Jesus to the Jews was His continued focus on God's love for the Gentiles and not just for them.

Perhaps Jesus makes this clearest during His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Many were singing "Hosanna," - meaning save (us) now, - putting out palm branches to signify their hope that Jesus would seize power from the Romans. They were undoubtedly thinking that "when this happens, then WE (the Jews) will be in power again"!

Christians can also be like this - thinking that all God should be interested in is giving them power in their own lives; over sin, over their material problems, over their circumstances. Power to get something they want for themselves. In other words seeking spiritual power without understanding the intended purpose of His power—which is to be used to disciple the nations. To do this is to be like Simon the Sorcerer who wanted spiritual power for his own gain.

Jesus, our Forerunner, is a lesson for us. He did not go to the Roman barracks to seize power from the governing authorities. NO. Instead he went to the Temple, to the court of the Gentiles. The place set aside by God from the very beginning where all peoples could come and seek Him. What did He find? He found the religious establishment of His day had failed to reach out to the peoples of the then world and were, instead, busy changing money and selling animals - for the benefit of the Jews.

Here we see recorded our Lord expressing anger. It was the religious establishment's failure to each out to the peoples of the earth, that occasioned on of the few instances the Bible recounts of our Lord expressing anger. Let us all take heed that we refocus our priorities for Jesus - the Messiah for all peoples! [Luke 19:45 and Mark 11:17].

In Matthew 28:18-20 Jesus says His followers are to enable the blessing of all nations as those nations are "discipled." The Greek word for nations is ethne, which refers to an ethnic or people group, but clearly not to a political nation. In Genesis He says that through the children of Israel all peoples on earth will be blessed. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, widely used in Jesus' day, the word for peoples is, again, ethne.

Parables of Gentiles receiving Jesus
The parable of the great banquet in Luke fifteen shows those who were first invited (the Jews) were too busy with other things, so others from the country roads were invited (the Gentiles).

In the parable of the vineyard tenants, the Bible makes it clear that the kingdom of God would be taken away from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, whom Jesus said would bring forth its fruit (Luke 20:9-19, Matthew 21:33-46).

God's grand purpose in summing up all things in Christ, who is our all-in-all. Satan sets out to deceive mankind in order to lead him also into disobedience and rebellion. God, in his mercy and true to His redemptive nature, cursed the Enemy and promised his ultimate defeat. Nevertheless, mankind continued to sin .

At Babel man desired to become like God and built a tower to exalt themselves. In one more effort to save mankind from self-destruction, God scattered His people into a wide array of ethnic groups called People Groups (referred to as "nations" in Biblical translation), or communities.

God's plan now was to win them back to Himself, one people group at a time. From out of this ethnic-linguistic mosaic and diversity, God chose one man, Abraham, and made a covenant of redemption with him. In this covenant we find two parts. God's intention to bless His people and the purpose of this blessing which was not for personal enjoyment but to reach others. The blessing contains the charter of God's missionary purpose and provides the foundation on which all the rest of the Biblical story revolves.

After the period of Egyptian bondage, God renewed His covenant through Moses. He reiterated their unique relationship and purpose for all the peoples of the earth. Sadly, the chosen people mostly rebelled and, as a result, suffered the consequences.

The pattern of God's dealing with disobedient disciples can be seen throughout Christian history and so, as we realize this, biblical stories take on new meaning. Furthermore, Israel was to be a royal priesthood a holy people - mediators between God and man. The kind of holiness God meant for Israel had two important aspects: separation and sanctification. As the custodian of the Name of God they were to be separate from other nations in behavior and practice so that the difference and supremacy of the Israelite's God could be recognized. Set-apart-unto-God, they were to be obedient to His absolute authority and dominion over them.

God's missionary mandate has two forces: one that draws people in and another that sends them out. The attraction force is illustrated by the way God placed Israel geographically and strategically so that the nations might come and call upon Him. This is most illustrated geographically in the Temple which was to be a house of prayer for all nations. Jesus' anger when the Court of the Gentiles was abused by money lenders shows His concern for this place of worship.

Another means that God uses to spread His glory is that His people should go to the nations and bless them with a knowledge of God. The Old Testament contains many such journeys, some voluntary and others, like Jonah's, which were not. Despite God's clear warnings, rather than remain apart as a testimony to the uniqueness of their God, they sought instead to become like the other ethnic groups with whom they came in contact.

Because of unabated sin, God released judgment on Israel and Judah, causing them to go into captivity in Assyria and Babylon, while others migrated to other parts of the then-known world or even to what would in time become the Roman Empire.

This dispersed nation, called the Diaspora, established an extensive network of synagogues, which drew not only Jews, but Gentiles as well. The extensive Roman road system and a common language of the then predominant empire, set the stage for the efficient and effective spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the Church and her disciples.

At the coming of Jesus, the Jewish people mistakenly assumed the Messiah would usher in a new kingdom which would overthrow the yoke of Roman slavery, judge the Gentile nations and reestablish Israel as a great power. However, rather than judge Israel's enemies, God was instead to judge the enemies of His kingdom; the unrighteous. Because of the hardness of Israel's heart, Jesus focused His teaching on a small remnant to whom it was granted to understand this mysterious kingdom, hidden to others.

Jesus preached that the Kingdom - then, and in the future would include Gentiles. The "mystery" concerning this kingdom was that the Gentiles could follow Christ just as any Jew. God's never-changing purpose in setting up His kingdom was to purge the world of all sin and unrighteousness and establish an earthly throne from which Christ would reign over all nations. Secondly, the Kingdom of God was for the present, that moment in time but not in the manner expected by the Israelites. This now kingdom was instituted by a Suffering Servant whose shed blood and resurrected life would crush all principalities and powers of darkness.

The "mystery" concerning the kingdom of God was that Jesus meant the Good News to be freely available to every Jew - and Gentile. We are now in the interim period when the Gospel is actually being preached to every culturally-distinct group before the End comes [Mat 24:14]. This gives the Church today the motivation it needs to carry into effect the plans of the King. The Church is shaping history as it fulfills the Great Commission and makes disciples of all ethne [people groups or communities].

We have learned that Jesus began His ministry by identifying with Gentiles to reinforce God's purpose for all nations to know Him as clearly established in the Abrahamic Covenant. He clearly understood His role as the Savior to all peoples. Yet His disciples were - and sometimes still are - prejudiced or often blind to His example.

Before His ascension to the Father Jesus went through the Scriptures to clearly reinforce God's eternal purpose for all people groups to be equally blessed with salvation. He made sure His disciples understood that their salvation was more than just a personal ticket to heaven. Rather, it was a blessing to benefit the world; an ongoing strategy to be used by His followers today. Walking in the steps of the Master; as the Father has sent me, so send I you.

Likewise the Day of Pentecost was actually the birth of the modern missions movement. The power of the Holy Spirit was for those who brought the lost back to His Kingdom. However, despite the fact the Church began as a missionary enterprise, many believers appear to still be reluctant to actualize the vision of becoming a blessing to the Gentiles and seldom venture out of their modern-day equivalent of the city of Jerusalem. By using the involuntary GO method, God permitted persecution to scatter His people preaching throughout the world.

The newly formed church in Jerusalem wanted to meet its own needs and failed to think about going beyond its own cultural boundaries. Then God raised up the apostle Paul as His instrument to bear the name of Christ to the Gentiles. It was chiefly due to Paul's tireless efforts that many of them turned to the Lord. A great controversy ensued over circumcision which was actually a misguided effort to maintain conformity to a particular ethne. This led to the Great Council meeting recorded in Acts 15, when the Spirit-guided church embraced the Gentiles without any necessity to adopt the culture of the bearers-of-the-Good News. This great ruling freed the Gospel from the Jewish or any other nation's cultural baggage and allowed it to become mobile so as to be relevant to the people they served.

Paul's example as a missionary remains for us to emulate even today. He firmly resisted the opposition from those of the Circumcision. He continued until his final days to concentrate on proclaiming the Gospel to those who had not heard of Jesus. Paul left the administration of churches to its own local members and continued, with God's guidance along the road He had ordained for their feet to follow ever since Barnabas and he had set out from Antioch. Tradition tells us that many of the other apostles were inspired by Paul and they continued to travel within and outside the Mediterranean regions.

Fortunately God has spelled out his intentions and purpose for history. People who get on board with his plan will enjoy the thrill of seeing Him work out His purposes. Spreading like wildfire even today, the Gospel of the Kingdom proclaimed in the Book of Acts continues to reach out to men and women from every tongue, every tribe, every nation and every people so that His Word shall accomplish the task for which it first went forth!

Were you one of those students who hated history in school? The next two lessons are guaranteed to change that forever. Discover how familiar people and events caused God's kingdom to expand in unfamiliar ways.

This section answers the question: How has Christianity spread to more people groups in spite of hostile forces from within and without? Hisotry also shows us what happens when people are not obedient and they hoard their blessing. God usually brings another group to bring judgment on these people.

Lesson 5, Four Men Three Eras, explains a common pattern among missionaries and mission agencies: staying too long and not moving on to pioneer fields. Each time this happens, you will learn how an important leader emerges to proclaim that new frontiers or waiting.

As you read try and think of the many ways the Gospel has spread throughout the world. Consider the historical events taking place today. How believers respond in these events can determine whether or not unreached peoples are receiving God's blessing.

How has Christianity spread to so many people groups
in spite of hostile forces?

Step back and see the big picture of the history of global civilization and how God has worked through it! Get linked to the beginning of time and then into the future! Discover how people and events caused God's kingdom to expand!

God blesses a people that they may share this blessing. God seems to shower more blessings upon a people who turn toward Him and are obedient to His missionary purposes. History also shows us what happens to people who are not obedient and who hoard their blessings. God usually causes another group to bring judgment upon this people.

History viewed from a Christian perspectives reveals how the expansion of the Gospel flourished despite killing influences. Ever since the fall, God has been concerned about bringing people back to Himself.

Gain a new view about history and how you fit in! See God's purpose behind current events. You may even decide you want to influence history!!

God Uses Current Events
Adapted from 'A New View Of History' by John Holtzman

Don Richardson was a missionary to Irian Jaya (Indonesia). When he returned there on a visit, he found himself in the middle of a hot debate.

The Indonesian Government planned to relieve the overcrowded conditions on Java. They offered Javanese families a chance to resettle in Irian Jaya with a grant of 2 acres of cleared land and seed for the first year's crops. The Javanese spoke another language and were of a different race and religion (mostly Muslim). The Irianese (who were either Christian or Animist) were unhappy with this policy.

To soothe the anger of the Irianese, the Indonesian Government said that, for every three Javanese families who moved to Irian Jaya, it would give one Irianese family a home, a parcel of cleared land and seed. The Christian leaders asked Richardson whether they should encourage the people to take the Government's offer.

To help the Irianese pastors reach their decision, Richardson asked them to turn to Acts 17:26 and 27, and read: "From one man, God made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth. And He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live." Based on God's Word, Richardson asked them who it was that was moving Javanese Muslims to Irian Jaya. "Is it the Indonesian Government?Is it the powers that control the Islamic faith? Is it Satan? Is it God?" Reluctantly, they finally acknowledged it was God.

Richardson asked them to continue reading Acts 17:27, "God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him." Knowing this to be the truth, Richardson asked them whether the coming of Javanese Muslims meant Christians had to convert to their faith, or was it so that they could become Christians like the rest of the local inhabitants.. Gradually they began to realize that God had arranged a means by which the Christian faith could spread.

The church leaders decided to train their people to become effective missionaries. They found they had actually been provided with an opportunity, funded by the Government, to witness to Jesus Christ!

As you read through this true story, perhaps you have found that you are now being confronted by an opportunity to make certain decisions because of personalities, events and realities that surround you. Let God's Word help you make the right one.

Every day our newspaper brings reports of plane hijackings, missiles and overthrown Governments. Tune into TV and you view people groups all over the world suffering famine, after affects of nuclear exposure, torture and displacement because of inter-communal violence. In the face of such sad and disquieting news, can there be any real purpose behind all that happens in our world today?

The Scriptures say "YES"! We are taught that, from the beginning, God's purpose was to "bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" [Eph 1:10]. Why? "That God might be all in all - that is, be everything to everyone, supreme, the indwelling and controlling factor of life" [I Cor 15:28 Amplified].

God's purpose is to make His name known to every people group so that His glory may be shown and His Kingdom set up, on earth as in heaven. God set out on His mission at the very beginning of the Old Testament and He continues to be faithful to His plan throughout history.

God has set before us a whole kaleidoscope of history (His-Story of Mankind). He has given us a record clearly showing us how this story has evolved so far. He promised Abraham, "I will be your God, and you will be My people. I will never leave you or forsake you." God clearly states, "I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.

Two thousand years after Abraham, Christ was born, lived on earth, died and was resurrected. Through Jesus Christ, we are heirs of this assurance given to Abraham. But, was that the sole and complete fulfillment of the promise? Knowing God's character as revealed in His word, that is not the end of the line. We often have a tendency to forget the responsibilities that go along with the blessings.

God promised Abraham a great name, descendants, land Abraham certainly acquired great wealth in Egypt. What about the Egyptians? Was the promise not to be for them as well? What was Abraham doing when he sought to deceive the Egyptians [Genesis 12:13]? I believe it was because Abraham failed in his responsibility to God that Pharaoh was cursed. Abraham was to bless the nation but he was more concerned about keeping the blessing for himself.

Happily, in Genesis 14, Abraham paid closer attention to God's call upon his life. Instead of taking advantage of the chance to acquire wealth and fame, at the expense of the Sodomites [vs. 22-23] he said, "I have raised my hand to YHWH, God most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you so that you will never be able to say, "I made Abram rich."

These terms continue to be available to His New Testament People Matthew 28:18-20 restates God's Old Testament constitution. Jesus sandwiches the responsibility in the middle of the blessing.

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me," says Jesus. That portion is the bottom slice of bread. The top slice of bread says, "I will be with you always, even to the very end of the age." The same blessing God gave Abraham and his descendants; "I will be your God and you shall be My people." Sandwiched in the middle of this two-part blessing is the responsibility: we are to make disciples of all nations and peoples. The Greek word, ethne today translates as, ethnic (people) groups.

By baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are helping them come into a living relationship with God. He can then reveal His glory among them and their people group. That is one part of our responsibility.

The other part is to teach the ethnic groups to obey everything God has commanded us. By submitting their hearts to His sovereignty so that He can establish His Kingdom among them.

God is actually prolonging History so that His purpose can be accomplished [Rev 5:9 and 7:9]. He is holding back the day of judgment, "not wanting any to perish but everyone to come to repentance"[2 Peter 3:9].

"This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations [ethne] and then the end will come" [Matthew 24:14].

How does this insight help us? As we realize our part in the Big Picture, we will view four things differently:

Our insight will guarantee us a new view of Scripture. We will ask ourselves, and others, are we trying to keep the blessing for ourselves, or are we giving it away? Are His people today living in obedience to His command?

An example of how we will rethink Scripture is given in the story of David and Goliath. Why did God tell us this story? So that we would be unafraid to tackle the giants in our own lives? Perhaps, but read 1 Samuel 17:45-47; David's goal was not merely to slaughter a giant; he was concerned that God's name should be glorified throughout the earth.

Are we glorifying God in what we do in His name? As we read Scripture we need to ask ourselves:

Next, after Scripture, we need to see history and current events differently. We are not to ask, "who won" or, "who lost?" We should not merely be concerned about who may currently be in danger. Instead we need to focus upon God's purpose. "What does he want to achieve through this event/circumstance? Why has He set this leader in charge of our nation? What does God want to make happen as a result of this communal riot? Why have we been refused permission to hold an open-air seminar?"

Thirdly, our prayers will be different if we understand God's purpose in history and for our personal lives. When we look at terrorism, murder, rape, Governments which seem to threaten our choices and scourges like the AIDS virus; we are to say, like our forerunner, "Father, may Your name be glorified, and your Kingdom established in all the earth." We are asked by our Father in heaven to use these events to "bring glory to (His) name."

Praise God the Communists are coming! Can you pray like that? To be honest, I have a hard time even imagining myself doing that. But it is what we are called upon to do - it is never an easy road we were called to walk. As the Master, so shall the disciple be. Let us pattern our responses to everything that happens around us on Jesus. We cannot do that in our own strength. We need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We need to continually call upon His promise: "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Our prayers need to be transformed.

This new view is best illustrated by a story which is told of a man who walked into a quarry.

"What are you doing?" he asked one of the workers there.
"Can't you see," the man replied. "I'm chiseling stone."
Another stonecutter, when asked the same question, said, "I am just trying to make a living."
A third man was asked, "what are you doing?"
His answer was, "I'm building a great cathedral."

On the surface, each of the workmen were doing the same thing; only their perspectives were different. Hearts surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus march to the sound of a different drum beat.

Busy mothers - Cleaning the home, changing diapers, helping with homework and sorting out differences. What are you doing? You are raising up soldiers for the Lord's army; world-changers who will bless the nations.

Businessmen - What are you doing? Building up your empire? Entering new territory? Neglecting your wife and children? Or are you putting representatives into the harvest field? Members of your firm who are lights, through their lives to others with whom they come in contact?

Are you trying to make a success of your life - for yourself? Do you act as though the blessing is just for you, and your family? Or are you trying to give it away? To try and retain it is to lose it. We have seen that happen many times in the Old Testament. God has given us an ongoing picture of what He wants us to do with the blessing.

His purpose for your life is to make His name known. To reveal His glory to others who do not, as yet, know Him. To establish His Kingdom among the different people groups who do not know Him today.

Jesus came to give us life - abundant life. Let us drink from the very Fountain of Life and use a large enough vessel to give Him to others to drink as well. Jesus has promised that, when we surrender our lives to His will, rivers of living water will flow out to the thirsty nations.

"Whoever finds his life will lose it," says Jesus. "But whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." [Mt 10:39].

We usually don't think of present day events or even history with God in mind. Yet God has a plan to redeem all nations and is working through history towards this. Looking at history in this way shows us the many ways in which the Gospel spreads even in current events.

In history we see cycles where God's people did not reach out. Periods of darkness followed, including invasion by pagan people, wars or plagues. If the Gospel was not advancing it was because Christians were not being obedient to God's plan to be a blessing to the nations. However, God will not allow His Kingdom to stop advancing. Throughout history He has taken away His blessing and passed it on to others, thus expanding the Christian faith over the centuries. The blessing of the Gospel is to be passed on or it will be taken away.

With a new view of history or current events you can now pray for what is best for the advancement of God's kingdom even if this may not be the best for you personally. Pray that God's will be done.

In each era the Gospel spread to different cultures & people groups. The story of the expansion of the Gospel tells us that God is still anxious for us to spread the message to all peoples of the earth. We aren't to focus only on our own spiritual growth. If we don't bring the Gospel to others God may bring others to us, sometimes in painful ways. God is sovereign. The events of history are used for His purposes.

You can change world history! How? Check out the lives of four men whom God used to change the world!

You are a part of the final phase of a historical movement! Do you feel inadequate, or think that your education or work background rules you out? Wrong! Anyone can be used mightily by God. You need not even be a full time Christian worker. College students, women, business people, parents, professionals... each of us have a role to play in God's global army.

As you go through the following article, notice the roles (whether prominent or behind-the-scenes) played by various people in this historical movement.

Over the past two hundred years three new mission strategies have refocused missionary effort to neglected people. Each new thrust to bring the Gospel where it had never gone before, was lead by a pioneer with a passion to pursue God's heart for the nations.

Recently, Christians have thought a lot about trends in history and their relationship to events to come. People are responsive to a "where are we going" approach to life.

Christians actually have a lot to look back on, backed up by a mass of hard facts and heroic deeds. Yet for some reason, Christians often make little connection between discussion of prophecy (and future events) and discussion of missions. They see the Bible as a book of prophecy, both in the past and for the future. Yet, as Bruce Ker has said so well, "The Bible is a missionary book throughout. The main line of argument that binds all of it together is the unfolding and gradual execution of a missionary purpose."

The story of missions begins long before the Great Commission. The Bible is very clear: God told Abraham he was to be blessed and was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth [Gen. 12:1-3]. Peter quoted this on the day he spoke in the temple [Acts 3:25]. Paul quoted the same mandate in his letter to the Galatians [3:8].

Israel, as far back as Abraham, was accountable to share that blessing with other nations. Since the time of the Apostle Paul, every nation which has contained any significant number of children of Abraham's faith has been similarly accountable. However, both Israel and the other nations have mainly failed to carry out this mandate.

The greatest scandal in the Old Testament is that Israel tried to be blessed without trying very hard to be a blessing. However, let's be careful: the average citizen of Israel was no more oblivious to the second part of Gen. 12:1-3 than the average Christian today is oblivious to the Great Commission! How easily our study Bibles overlook the veritable string of key passages in the Old Testament which exist to remind Israel (and us) of the missionary mandate: [Gen. 12:1-3, 18:18, 22:18, 28:14, Ex. 19:4-6, Deut 28:10, 2 Chron. 6:33, Ps. 67, 96, 105, Isa. 40:5, 42:4, 49:6, 56:3, 6-8, Jer. 12:14-17, Zech. 2:11, Mal. 1:11].

Likewise, today, nations which have been singularly blessed by God may choose to resist and try to conceal any sense of their obligation to be a blessing to other nations. But that is not God's will. Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required. [Luke 12:48]

How many times in the average church today is the Great Commission mentioned? Even less often than it comes up in the Old Testament! Yet the commission applies. It applied then, and it applies today. I believe it has been constantly applicable from the very moment it was first given [Gen. 12:1-3]. As individual Christians and as a nation we are responsible "to be a blessing to all the families of earth."

This mandate has been overlooked during most of the centuries since the apostles. Even our Protestant tradition plugged along for over 250 years minding its own business and its own blessings (like Israel of old) until a young man of great faith and incredible endurance appeared on the scene. Let us focus on the 1800-2000 period in which his life and witness kicked off. No other person can be given as much credit to the vibrant new impetus of the last two hundred years. He was one of four such influential men whom God used, all of them with severe handicaps. Three great "eras" of fresh outreach into newly perceived frontiers resulted from their faith and obedience (it took two of them to launch the third and final era). Four stages of mission strategy characterized each of these eras. Two perplexing "transitions" of strategy inevitably appeared as the last stage of one era contrasted with the first stage of the next. It is easier to see this in a diagram. Better still, the story.

An "under thirty" young man, William Carey, got into trouble when he began to take the Great Commission seriously. When he had the opportunity to address a group of ministers, he challenged them to give a reason why the Great Commission did not apply to them. They rebuked him, saying, "When God chooses to win the heathen, He will do it without your help or ours." He was not permitted to speak again on the subject, so he patiently wrote out his analysis, "An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens."

The resulting small book convinced a few of his friends to create a tiny missions agency, the "means" of which he had spoken. The structure was flimsy and weak, providing only the minimal backing he needed to go to India. However, the impact of his example reverberated throughout the English-speaking world, and his little book became the Magna Carta of the Protestant mission movement.

William Carey was not the first Protestant missionary. For years the Moravians had sent people to Greenland, America and Africa. But his little book, in combination with the Evangelical Awakening, quickened vision and changed lives on both sides of the Atlantic. Response was almost instantaneous: a second missionary society was founded in London; two in Scotland; one in Holland; and then still another in England. By then it was apparent to all that Carey was right when he had insisted that organized efforts in the form of missions societies were essential to the success of the missionary endeavor.

In America, five college students, aroused by Carey's book, met to pray for God's direction for their lives. This unobtrusive prayer meeting, later known as the "Haystack Prayer Meeting," resulted in an American "means", the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. Even more important, they started a student mission movement which became the example and forerunner of other student movements in missions to this day.

In fact, during the first 25 years after Carey sailed to India, a dozen mission agencies were formed on both sides of the Atlantic, and the First Era in Protestant missions was off to a good start. Realistically speaking, however, missions in this First Era was a pitifully small shoestring operation, in relation to the major preoccupation's of most Europeans and Americans in that day. The idea that we should organize in order to send missionaries did not come easily, but it eventually became an accepted pattern.

Carey's influence led some women in Boston to form women's missionary prayer groups, a trend which led to women becoming the main custodians of mission knowledge and motivation. After some years women began to go to the field as single missionaries. Finally, by 1865, unmarried American women established women's mission boards which, like Roman Catholic women's orders, only sent out single women as missionaries and were run entirely by single women at home.

There are two very bright notes about the First Era. One is the astonishing demonstration of love and sacrifice on the part of those who went out. Africa, especially, was a forbidding continent. All mission outreach to Africa, prior to 1775, had totally failed. Of all Catholic efforts, all Moravian efforts, nothing remained. Not one missionary of any kind existed on the continent on the eve of the First Era. The gruesome statistics of almost inevitable sickness and death that haunted, yet did not daunt, the decades of truly valiant missionaries who went out after 1790 in virtually a suicidal stream cannot be matched by any other era or by any other cause. Very few missionaries to Africa in the first 60 years of the First Era survived more than two years. As I have reflected on this measure of devotion I have been humbled to tears, for I wonder if I or my people today could or would match that record. Can you imagine our Urbana students today going out into missionary work if they knew that for decade after decade, 19 out of 20 of those before them had died almost on arrival on the field?

A second bright spot in this First Era is the development of high quality insight into mission strategy. The movement had several great missiologists. In regard to home structure, they clearly understood the value of the mission structure being allowed a life of its own. For example, we read that the London Missionary Society experienced unprecedented and unequaled success, due partly to its freedom from ecclesiastical supervision and partly to its formation from an almost equal number of ministers and laymen. In regard to field structure, we can take a note from Henry Venn who was related to the famous Clapham evangelicals and was the son of a founder of the Church Missionary Society. Except for a few outdated terms, one of his most famous paragraphs sounds strangely modern:

Note: unfortunately no thought here of the national church launching its own mission outreach to new pioneer fields! Nevertheless we see here something like stages of mission activity.

Slow and painstaking though the labors of the First Era were, they did bear fruit, and the familiar series of stages can be observed which goes from no church in the pioneer stage, to infant church in the paternal stage, and to the more complicated mature church in the partnership and participation stage.

Samuel Hoffman of the Reformed Church in America Board puts it well: "The Christian missionary who was loved as an evangelist and liked as a teacher, may find himself resented as an administrator."

By 1865 there was a strong consensus on both sides of the Atlantic that the missionary should go home when he had worked himself out of a job. Since the First Era focused primarily upon the coastlands of Asia and Africa, we are not surprised that literal withdrawal would come about first in a case where there were no inland territories. Thus, symbolizing the latter stages of the First Era was the withdrawal of all missionaries from the Hawaiian Islands (then a separate country). This was done with legitimate pride and fanfare and fulfilled the highest expectations, then and now, of successful progress through the stage of missionary planting, watering and harvest.

A second symbolic event of 1865 is even more significant, at least for the inauguration of the Second Era. A young man, after a short term and like Carey still under thirty, in the teeth of surrounding counter advice established the first of a whole new breed of missions emphasizing the inland territories. This second young upstart was given little but negative notice. Like William Carey, he brooded over statistics, charts and maps. When he suggested that the inland peoples of China needed to be reached, he was told you could not get there, and he was asked if he wished to carry on his shoulders the blood of the young people he would thus send to their deaths. This accusing question stunned and staggered him. Groping for light, wandering on the beach, it seemed as if God finally spoke to resolve the ghastly thought: "You are not sending young people in the interior of China. I am." The load lifted.

With only trade school medicine, without any university experience much less missiological training, and a checkered past in regard to his own individualistic behavior while he was on the field, he was merely one more of the weak things that God uses to confound the wise. Even his early antichurch-planting missionary strategy was breathtakingly erroneous by today's church-planting standards. Yet God strangely honored him because his gaze was fixed upon the world's least-reached peoples. Hudson Taylor had a divine wind behind him. The Holy Spirit spared him from many pitfalls, and it was his organization, the China Inland Mission, the most cooperative, servant organization yet to appear that eventually served in one way or another over 6,000 missionaries, predominantly in the interior of China. It took 20 years for other missions to begin to join Taylor in his special emphasis, the unreached, inland frontiers.

One reason the Second Era began slowly is that many people were confused. There were already many missions in existence. Why more? Yet as Taylor pointed out, all existing agencies were confined to the coastlands of Africa and Asia, or islands in the Pacific People questioned, "Why go to the interior if you haven't finished the job on the coast?"

I am not sure the parallel is true today, but the Second Era apparently needed not only a new vision but a lot of new organizations. Taylor not only started an English frontier mission, he went to Scandinavia and the Continent to challenge people to start new agencies. As a result, directly or indirectly, over 40 new agencies took shape to compose the faith missions that rightly should be called frontier missions as the names of many of them still indicate: China Inland Mission, Sudan Interior Mission, Africa Inland Mission, Heart of Africa Mission, Unevangelized Fields Mission, Regions Beyond Missionary Union. Taylor was more concerned for the cause than for a career. At the end of his life he had spent only half of his years of ministry in China. In countless trips back from China he spent half of his time as a mobilizer on the home front. For Taylor, the cause of Christ, not China, was the ultimate focus of his concern.

As in the early stage of the First Era, when things began to move, God brought forth a student movement. This one was more massive than before. The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions was history's single most potent mission organization. In the 1880's and 90's there were only 1/37th as many college students as there are today, but the Student Volunteer Movement netted 100,000 volunteers who gave their lives to missions. Twenty-thousand actually went overseas. As we see it now, the other 80,000 had to stay home to rebuild the foundations of the missions endeavor. They began the Laymen's Missionary Movement and strengthened existing women's missionary societies.

However, as the fresh new college students of the Second Era burst on the scene overseas, they did not always fathom how the older missionaries of the First Era could have turned responsibility over to national leadership at the least educated levels of society. First Era missionaries were in the minority now, and the wisdom they had gained from their experience was bypassed by the large number of new college-educated recruits. Thus, in the early stages of the Second Era, the new college-trained missionaries, instead of going to new frontiers, sometimes assumed leadership over existing churches, not reading the record of previous mission thinkers and often forced First Era missionaries and national leadership (which had been painstakingly developed) into the background. In some cases this caused a huge step backward in mission strategy.

By 1925, however, the largest mission movement in history was in full swing. By then Second Era missionaries had finally learned the basic lessons they had first ignored, and produced an incredible record. They had planted churches in a thousand new places, mainly 'inland' , and by 1940 the reality of the "younger churches" around the world was widely acclaimed as the "great new fact of our time." The strength of these churches led both national leaders and missionaries to assume that all additional frontiers could simply be mopped up by the ordinary evangelism of the churches scattered throughout the world. More and more people wondered if, in fact, missionaries weren't needed so badly! Once more, as in 1865, it seemed logical to send missionaries home from many areas of the world.

For us today it is highly important to note the overlap of these first two eras. The 45 year period between 1865 and 1910 (compare 1934 to 1980 today) was a transition between the strategy appropriate to the mature stages of Era 1 (the Coastlands era) and the strategy appropriate to the pioneering stages of Era 2 (the Inland era).

Shortly after the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, there ensued the shattering World Wars and the world-wide collapse of the colonial apparatus. By 1945 many overseas churches were prepared not only for the withdrawal of the colonial powers, but for the absence of the missionary as well. While there was no very widespread outcry, "Missionary Go Home," as some supposed, nevertheless things were different now, as even the people in the pews at home ultimately sensed. Pioneer and paternal were no longer the relevant stages, but partnership and participation.

In 1967, the total number of career missionaries from America began to decline (and it has continued to do so to this day). Why? Christians had been led to believe that all necessary beachheads had been established. By 1967, over 90 percent of all missionaries from North America were working with strong national churches that had been in existence for some time.

The facts, however, were not that simple. Unnoticed by most everyone, another era in missions had begun.

This era was begun by a pair of young men of the Student Volunteer Movement: Cameron Townsend and Donald McGavran.

Cameron Townsend was in so much of a hurry to get to the mission field that he didn't bother to finish college. He went to Guatemala as a "Second Era" missionary, building on work which had been done in the past. In that country, as in all other mission fields, there was plenty to do by missionaries working with established national churches.

But Townsend was alert enough to notice that the majority of Guatemala's population did not speak Spanish. As he moved from village to village, trying to distribute scriptures written in the Spanish language, he began to realize that Spanish evangelism would never reach all Guatemala's people. He was further convinced of this when an Indian asked him, "If your God is so smart, why can't he speak our language?" He was befriended by a group of older missionaries who had already concluded the indigenous "Indian" populations needed to be reached in their own languages. He was just 23 when he began to move on the basis of this new perspective. For almost a half century he waved the flag for the overlooked tribal peoples.

Surely in our time one person comparable to William Carey and Hudson Taylor is Cameron Townsend. Like Carey and Taylor, Townsend saw that there were still unreached frontiers, and for almost half a century he has waved the flag for the overlooked tribal peoples of the world. He started out hoping to help older boards reach out to tribal people. Like Carey and Taylor, he ended up starting his own mission, Wycliffe Bible Translators, which is dedicated to reaching these new frontiers. At first he thought there must be about 500 unreached tribal groups in the world. (He was judging by the large number of tribal languages in Mexico alone). Later, he revised his figure to 1,000, then 2,000, and now it is closer to 5,000. As his conception of the enormity of the task has increased, the size of his organization has increased. Today it numbers over 4,000 adult workers.

At the very same time Townsend was ruminating in Guatemala, Donald McGavran was beginning to yield to the seriousness, not of linguistic barriers, but of India's amazing social barriers. Townsend "discovered" the tribes, McGavran discovered a more nearly universal category he labeled "homogeneous units", which today are more often called "people groups." Paul Hiebert has employed the terminology of "horizontal segmentation" for the tribes which each occupied their own turf, and "vertical segmentation" for groups distinguished not by geography but by rigid social differences. McGavran's terminology described both kinds even though he was mainly thinking about the more subtle vertical segmentation.

Once such a group is penetrated (diligently taking advantage of that missiological breakthrough along group lines) the strategic "bridge of God" for that people group is established. The corollary of this truth is the fact that until such a breakthrough is made, normal evangelism and church planting cannot take place.

McGavran did not found a new mission (Townsend did so only when the existing missions did not properly respond to the tribal challenge). McGavran's active efforts and writings spawned both the church growth movement and the frontier mission movement, the one devoted to expanding within already penetrated groups, and the other devoted to deliberate approaches to the remaining unpenetrated groups.

As with Carey and Taylor before them, for twenty years Townsend and McGavran attracted little attention. But by the 1950's both had wide audiences. By 1980, 46 years from 1934, a 1910-like conference was held, focusing precisely on the forgotten groups these two men emphasized. The Edinburgh-1980 World Consultation on Frontier Missions was the largest mission meeting in history, measured by the number of mission agencies sending delegates. And wonder of wonders, 57 Third World agencies sent delegates. This is the sleeper of the Third Era! Also, a simultaneous youth meeting, the International Student Consultation on Frontier Missions, pointed the way for all future mission meetings to include significant youth participation.

As happened in the early stages of the first two eras, the Third Era has spawned a number of new mission agencies. Some, like the New Tribes Mission, carry in their names reference to this new emphasis.

More recently many have begun to realize that tribal peoples are not the only forgotten peoples. Many other groups, some in the middle of partially Christianized areas, have been completely overlooked. These peoples are being called the "Unreached Peoples" and are defined by ethnic or sociological traits to be people so different from the cultural traditions of any existing church that missions (rather than evangelism) strategies are necessary for the planting of indigenous churches within their particular traditions.

If the First Era was characterized by reaching coastland peoples and the Second Era by inland territories, the Third Era must be characterized by the more difficult-to-define, non-geographical category which we have called "Unreached Peoples" people groups which are socially isolated. Because this concept has been so hard to define, the Third Era has been even slower getting started than the Second Era.

We know that there are about 8,000 people groups in the "Unreached Peoples" category. Each individual people will require a separate, new missionary beachhead. Is this too much? Can this be done?

The task is not as difficult as it may seem, for several surprising reasons. In the first place, the task is not an American one, nor even a Western one. It will involve Christians from every continent of the world.

More significant is the fact that when a beachhead is established within a culture, the normal evangelistic process which God expects every Christian to be involved in replaces the missions strategy, because the mission task of "breaking in" is finished. Thus, establishing a beachhead in each "Unreached People" group is a goal readily within our grasp.

Meanwhile, key Second Era mission agencies are turning their attention to new fields. Dozens of examples could be given. More than 70 mission agencies are networking with the Adopt-A-People Clearing House. In well over half of all remaining 8,000 groups work has already begun or is soon to begin.

But our work in the Third Era has many other advantages. We have potentially a world-wide network of churches that can be aroused to their central mission. Best of all, nothing can obscure the fact that this could and should be the final era. No serious believer today dare overlook the fact that God has asked us to reach every nation, tribe and tongue and intends for it to be done. No generation has less excuse than ours if we do not do as He asks.

History reveals in a dramatic way the great success of the Gospel and how great movements began as pioneer efforts. Each missionary movement to new areas, as it matured, resulted in resources being given for the expansion of the newly formed church. Although good, this attention on growing the church distracts the church from going where it is not. Fortunately a frontier mission movements have always emerged to send the Gospel where it has never gone.

Sometimes this task seems overwhelming but history reveals the great progress of the gospel. This brief historical tour is encouraging as we see the big picture of the great advances of God's Kingdom.

Many mission experts think that we are in the last era of missions. The missionary task of establishing a church in each people group can be measured and completed. The task is getting smaller and smaller while at the same time the resources of the worldwide church are getting larger.

The momentum is growing. Now more than ever missions are targeting the unreached people groups. The newer mission agencies are able to apply all their resources towards frontier missions. Many of the Indian mission agencies started in the third era of missions are focusing on reaching the unreached people groups.

The mission field has become the sending base. Korea, Brazil, Singapore, India , Indonesia and many other countries are beginning to extend the blessing they have received.

The great success of the spread of the gospel has changed the world. No other movement has: shaped the way people think, developed such an educational system, done so much humanitarian work, alleviated so much suffering, ended wars and transformed individual lives. We can be encouraged that God is at work. Let us not miss out on His plans.

From the end of the book of Acts until today, the Gospel of the Kingdom has spread geographically as well as culturally down the centuries. Despite setbacks and human failure along the way, God has been faithful to ensure that His purposes are accomplished - that men from every tongue, every tribe, every nation, and every people should be blessed in Him.

During the present era we see that the Two-Thirds World missions have taken up the baton from their Western missionary counterparts. Through all these stages we are always aware of one thing; that the people who received the Light of faith had to either pass the Blessing on or have it taken away. God has remained true to His Word which has continued to flow through each epoch of history. Starting like a small stream it has grown into a mighty river.

The Church has spread, not only to different countries but, to different "pockets" of people within them, of many varied cultures. The Protestant tradition launched several great mission pioneers, one among whom was William Carey. Carey was the first to be convinced that world evangelization was a priority with God and the very basis for Biblical revelation. He published a pamphlet entitled, An Enquiry Into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, in which he challenged his contemporaries to form the first Protestant mission agency and then went himself as a missionary to India. Carey was to face great opposition. The British trading company viewed the Indian people purely from a commercial point of view and so they feared the influence Carey had on them. Carey's Enquiry challenged the hearts of many throughout Europe and the United States. His life's work in India inspired people and resulted in the birth of dozens of mission agencies and his ministry inaugurated the First Era. (focused on the coastlands of the world.)

The mid 1800s saw Hudson Taylor arrive in China. After some time Taylor discerned that there were many more millions in the interior who had no way of hearing the Gospel. His concern for inland China led to the formation of the China Inland Mission in 1865. This burden for the interior of large countries constituted the beginning of the Second Era (focused on the interior of large countries) in Missions History.

Other mission agencies caught the vision and the Gospel spread through the interiors of Asia, Africa and South America. Churches were planted all over the world. Alongside this successful era of mission expansion, an almost unnoticed Third Era (focused on language, ethnic, racial and social barriers) began.

Two men were to make the greatest impact on this era. One of them was Cameron Townsend. While serving as a missionary in Guatemala, Townsend began to realize there were many unreached tribal groups within that geographic nation, who spoke languages different from Spanish. They were being overlooked because linguistic barriers kept them from understanding and receiving the Gospel.

The other was Donald McGavran in India who discovered another obstacle to the spread of the Gospel - ethnic or socio-cultural barriers. He noticed that the Gospel could spread significantly within one particular cultural group but not cross that cultural barrier into another different group. That second group needed to be penetrated separately.

These two men focused the attention of the Christian world on the unreached or hidden people groups who, because of linguistic, racial, social or cultural barriers could not, as yet, be reached by the Gospel.

There was always a period of transition from the focus on the present era to a new one. While new agencies continued to mushroom and meet the need in unreached frontiers, older missions remained in the participating stage of church building, educating and socially developing new Christians.

The apostle Paul had a good balance of always moving forward to meet those who had not heard the Good News while leaving behind those who would build the new church as a mission-sending base. The spread of Christianity has served to improve education, business ethics, alleviate suffering and improve social conditions in a variety of ways throughout the world. God has been working among, and through, His people.

New research helps us today to strive for self-propagating, self-governing, self-supporting, culturally relevant churches. Earlier, some cultural misunderstanding by missionaries caused them to separate their converts into mission stations that prevented the Gospel from permeating the mainstream of their societies. It also created unhealthy dependency and paternalism. Let us learn from the lives of great men and women of faith who accomplished great things for God. Their examples provide models of inspiration and insight into actual mission work. Their obedience to the Call has changed the history of the world.

Culture and communication are vital to the mobility and spread of the Gospel. Most people are familiar with the embarrassing mistakes some early missionaries made by imposing their culture rather than Biblical truth. Their intentions may have been pure but their understanding of culture was limited. Today one would think these mistakes would not be repeated yet culture is so much a part of who we are that often we often don't even realize how much of what we do is out of habit. Can you distinguish your superficial beliefs that are cultural and not Biblical?

Consider the following lesson just a taste of what is involved in communicating and understanding culture. The article will give you a few clues to help you unlock the hearts and minds of others

Lloyd Kwast was a missionary in Cameroon West Africa and had many books published on the subject of cultrual anthropology.

Looking at a map of the world reminds us that Christians must study the world to be effective in communicating the gospel to so many peoples who have so many different languages and cultures. The missionary task comes down to one basic responsibility: to effectively present the gospel of Jesus Christ in a cross-cultural situation.

The apostle Paul raises a series of questions in Romans 10:13-15, but he begins that passage with this statement: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32 and Acts 2:21). Then he asks, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” Missionaries must preach so that others may hear. But they must be sent out. Paul continues, “And how can they preach unless they are sent?” Paul then quotes Isaiah 52:7 when he states, “As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” Missionaries are those willing people with beautiful feet.

To be effective, missionaries must work at communicating in culturally appropriate ways in order to impact others’ worldview.

Preaching the Gospel should be done using the proper analogies, idioms, metaphors, and figures of speech. Missionaries find they have to become sophisticated in the proper uses of symbols, stories, humor, philosophy, poetry and even imagery.

It’s a mistake to believe that vocabulary is all a missionary needs to preach effectively. Vocabulary is only verbal and written. Although written communication is important in western society, missionaries often go into cultures that don’t have written systems. Some cultures respond to pictures. Effective cross-cultural communication also includes the following dynamics:

Kinesics refers to gestures, body language, and facial expressions, which vary greatly from culture to culture.

Audio sounds such as soft music, whistling, whining and laughing communicate as well. When former President Nixon went to Latin America, people whistled at him, which is positive in America. He discovered that there it meant they were jeering at him. To speak in a whiny voice may sound wimpy to us, but in other cultures this has sacred overtones.

Silence is important in many cultures for example. In Cameroon, a student sat in silence for fifteen minutes, which was his gracious way to signal that he had something very serious to say. Most Americans would not want to wait but they should be reminded that when Job's friends came to share Job's great sorrow, they remained silent for seven days (Job 2:13) or that some people pause for a few seconds to make a point.

Artifactual communication is sending messages through the arrangement of objects. We communicate different ideas by how we arrange our bedroom and living room, for example. In African cultures, the arrangement of stripes and colors on the robe of the chief communicates who he is. In the military, uniforms communicate military personnel and their achievements.

Touch might be a kiss, a hug, slapping of hands, holding hands, laying on of hands or even exchanging “high fives.” Paul said to give one another a holy kiss, but in our culture it isn’t appropriate for men to kiss other men (Romans 16:16; 1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:26). We have to be careful about touch. In Cameroon, it’s highly offensive to pat a cute little boy on the head. In some cultures, it’s wrong to cross your legs in public because it’s rude to show the bottom of your foot.

Optical communication includes the use of lights and the color of lights. We stop at red lights in traffic but not red lights in red-light districts.

Spatial communication involves how much space we allow between ourselves and others. for example Latin Americans talk so close that their noses almost touch and the think North Americans are aloof and unfriendly because they don't talk so close and feel ill at ease if someone gets too close.

Time is viewed differently in different cultures. In some cultures, being late indicates social status. In America, it's rude to be late, whereas in the culture of eastern Europe, being fifteen minutes late is being on time.

Olfactory communication is popular, as evidenced by how television advertisers spend millions of dollars on perfumes, which often communicate romance. In our culture, there are even male and female smells. Men smell like musk or pine or spice, but never like a lemon or a rose.

Oculesics communication is the use of eye contact. In the western world, we use direct eye contact to communicate sincerity and intensity. In some cultures, that is highly offensive. To stare into someone’s eyes means you’re trying to overpower them, show superiority, or give them even an evil eye of intent. Dropping eyes may show respect. Because eyes direct attention, eye contact is a powerful means of communication.

God has the power to change others’ perception away from the darkness and toward Himself, but missionaries must preach the gospel in such a way that it doesn’t touch just the superficialities of their behavior, but cuts through to their perception of reality.

Missionaries have tended to take note of superficial behaviors and preach about them. In Cameroon, one missionary preached against dancing and chewing the kola and beetle nuts. If the Cameroon people stopped doing those things, they would be Christians. Other missionaries bypassed these behaviors and spoke to the heart about reality. When these listeners did change their behavior, they were truly changed from the heart.

Some American pastors have preached sermons about how women shouldn't wear earrings and lipstick. " A person chewing gum in church looks like a cow chewing its cud. Perhaps it is better to focus at the heart of what sin is and why we get involved in it rather surface issues.

The apostle Paul was skilled at looking at the heart instead of superficial behaviors. In his sermon to the philosophers at the Areopagus on Mars Hill, he said, "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you" (Acts 17:22-23).

Jesus also avoided superficialities, whereas the Pharisees didn't. They cared about keeping all the rules of the Sabbath, but Jesus went out of His way to violate their sensitivities. When Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27-28), this shook up their worldview. Another time someone told Jesus that His mother and brothers were standing outside. He replied, "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother" (Matthew 12:46-50). That offended people, but He was expressing the reality that family in Christ is closer than blood relationships. Jesus was trying to take them by the collar and shake them. The important issue is not whether people chew gum in church, but whether they see who their brothers and sisters really are.

People do wrong not by failing to wash their hands ceremonially, but by the garbage that flows out of their hearts (Matt. 15:2; 23:25-26). It's what's within that counts. The Pharisees theorized that murder results in judgment, but Jesus said that those who are angry will be judged (Matthew 5:21-22). Jesus said that if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he commits adultery in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28). When the rich men put a lot of money in the treasury, Jesus stopped everyone to say that the poor woman who put in just a mite had given more than the rest (Mark 12:41-44). He avoided superficialities and offered perceptions of reality such as, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30) and "You must be born again" (John 3:3). These are perceptions of reality, and they avoid superficialities. That is the task of the missionary in presenting the good news of Jesus Christ.

Ethnocentrism is at the root of our perceptions of other people. It causes us to view other groups as inferior to our own and to criticize the way another person lives, works, behaves, eats, etc. based on our own way of doing things. Koreans, Americans, Bengalis, Tamilians, Malayalis, all have this weakness—no people group is exempt. Ethnocentrism seriously hurts the missionary cause. Here is what historian Stephen Neil has to say about this.

"Nevertheless, the servant of Christ does not cease to be a member of a particular race and a citizen of one country. He believes that the institutions of his own country are the best, and that other peoples can only be benefited by the introduction of these institutions. The French, in particular, have an unshakable belief in the value of French culture. When the great Cardinal Lavigerie (1825—92), Archbishop of Algiers, was sending out his White Fathers into the undiscovered depths of Africa, he said to them, Nous travaillons aussi pour la France— “We are working for France [as well as for the kingdom of God].” The British are not far behind the French in their conviction that the British way of doing things is always the best. When the missionaries won positions of influence in the Pacific islands, one of their first thoughts was to replace what seemed to them the chaotic disorder of native justice, or injustice, with something remarkably like the British system of trial by jury. It is not unknown for Americans to suppose that the American way of life is something earnestly desired by those who have it not."

Culture, though affected by mankind's sin, is neither all good or all evil. Culture is "neutral" in many of its aspects. But all culture needs to be brought under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. If God is the Originator of Culture then every single culture on earth has God's permission to exist. Gen 10-11 God involves himself redemptively in culture. The heart of the incarnation of Christ is not only that he took on human form, but that he subjected himself to the constrictions of a human culture. God uses culture and expects us to use it to communicate and transform it to bring healing to mankind and glory to himself.

Just as Christ identified with people so too everyone and especially missionaries need to listen, understand, identify and feel for the people they wish to reach before they can effectively communciate. Communicating is not so much what is said as what is understood.

The credibility of the messenger and his or her understaning of their culture is also important. But even this is not enough if the messenger does not u understand his own culture. Transferring ones own culture rather than the pure Biblical Gospel is another common consequence of not learning and studying culture and communications.

Bringing the Gospel to an unreached people group is not easy, it is as difficult as brain surgery. Therefore it should involve just as much preparation and ongoing learning. Learning from past history and willing to try new methods.

Congratulations, you have almost finished the Fastrak course! We hope that you have a new perspective. By now you should feel a renewed sense of purpose. You should have developed an awareness that you are part of a global movement and that you can play an important part no matter who you are. In fact, if you feel inadequate, don’t worry; God has always used the weak to confound the wise! World Christian obedience requires sacrifice, commitment, responsibilities, changes—if adopted will lead to a more fulfilled purposeful and joyful life.

Much is required of those who have been blessed. Receiving the insights in this course demands good stewardship—obedience is expected. You can be obedient right where you are—going to an unreached tribe is not necessary—world Christians help fulfill God’s missionary plans anywhere they are—fully using their God given gifts, skill and positions—their every decisions is influenced with a desire to reach the unreached people groups of the world—whether businessman, doctor, student or housewife.

The only choice is surrender to God without reservation or be left behind. When we do surrender, out of repentance and humility, God will do great and mighty things with even the weakest people. Eye has not seen and ear has not heard all that God has prepared for those who trust and obey Him.

It is the potter who molds the vessels. We are to be willing carriers of the water of life. We are to pour ourselves out for Him. Our joy will be to hear him say. “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

Every decision we make is important. It is surprising how easily we can be distracted from being obedient . As a result we are like a ship without a compass with no direction or purpose. We should be running to win the race [Phil 3:8-14]. Each step should have a purpose.

To be a "Global Christian" means to be focused on God's unchanging purpose that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through those who know Him.

So far in this course you have learned God's unchanging purpose. You now have a compass to guide you. Now the challenge before you is to stay on course. Pleasures and distractions hit you from every direction. What do you do? How do you prioritize your time?

To make this more difficult sometimes it is not even "pleasures" that distract us. Is the "good" the enemy of the "best"? As we strive towards seeing a church established in those groups that don't have access to the gospel, we will face obstacles. Some of them may be obvious but some may be very subtle. Some good opportunities may become available to us. Will we be able to make good decisions and stay focused on the best?

GROWING SPIRITUALLY WITH A KINGDOM MINDSET
based on an article by Ted and Annette Elder

Does God save us and leave us on earth simply to know and worship Him, or to gain health and personal wholeness? Certainly these are things He desires for us, but surely we could worship and love Him far better if we were in heaven with Him right away! Why then has He left us here?

It is because Jesus calls us to the awesome privilege of fulfilling the Kingdom work He began on earth!

Christ so pursued the things of God that He refused to turn away from pain and suffering. This seemed strange to His first disciples!

When Peter suggested fleeing from imminent death, Jesus strongly rebuked him for not having in mind the things of God [Mk 8:31-33].

The apostle Paul joyfully set aside his own personal ambitions to follow Christ [Rom 1:5; 5:20]. He was so set on following his King that he had a hard time deciding whether to live and advance the Kingdom or go to be with Him in heaven [Phil 1:21-24].

For both Christ and Paul, their life choices flowed out of a Kingdom mindset. All their values and beliefs determined the choices they made.

Many Christians today want to seek first the Kingdom of God in their daily choices. However, most struggle with what it actually means to live for one kingdom, rather than the other. There are at least three reasons why it is true that we struggle to have a kingdom mindset:

Satan actively prevents worship going to God. As we look around the world today we notice that, when two adjacent nations are at peace, their citizens mix so that culture and language tend to blend. However, when two nations are at war, mixing and blending do not occur. Each opposing party is aware of the distinctions between them. Christians can go through life unaware of the two opposing kingdoms, the distinctions between them and the battle which is continually raging all around. Although we do not hear bullets whizzing past our heads, nor the sound of bombs exploding, Satan is constantly waging war against the army of our God and King. Not only does this destroy our relationship with God but it also prevents non-Christians from coming into God's Kingdom.

Although Christ's victory is sure and His sovereignty is working in every situation, we must fight bravely for our victory. What is this victory? The victory is more than a safe, Bible-believing, growing church. The victory is God being glorified in our lives so that His glory is shared with all peoples through us. As Rev 7:9 tells us, world evangelisation will then be completed! Depending on the decisions we make, we are always siding with one or other distinct kingdom. Ignorance of the existence of both kingdoms results in making wrong choices.

We do not have a mindset for God's kingdom because of a lack of role models. As we look around, it appears that most Christians are living and making decisions just like we are. Unconsciously, many are living according to the values and standards of the world around them. There are few who live in the world, yet are not an actual part of it.

Sometimes, the problem lies within ourselves. While we profess to live for Christ we still don't want to give up control or comfort to do this. We explain away Christ's words, "whoever wants to save his own life will lose it" and instead believe Satan's lie that we need to take care of ourselves. This way the Enemy not only destroys the joy of knowing Christ but also the impact we make in His Name!

It begins with acknowledging the fact that trusting our lives to Christ for work in His Kingdom is the wisest and most rewarding choice we can ever make.

Trust is the very foundation of the spiritual house we build. Our mindsets are transformed when we enter into a relationship with Christ [I Cor 2:16, II Cor 5:17]. His Spirit instructs us how to live for Christ [Jn 16:13] . "Thy Kingdom come!" becomes the cry of our heart. We want to see the glory of our Lord fill the earth [Hab 2:14].

Paul tells us how. "Do not let the world squeeze you into its mold, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" [Rom 12:1-2]. To retain His values we saturate ourselves with His Word which, in turn, guides us to fulfill His redemptive purpose among all the peoples.

Our renewed mind first shows itself in our day-to-day choices. Previously we made decisions in the light of our own ambitions and goals in life. Now we first look to how our decisions affect our contribution to the fulfillment of His desires. Slowly, as we surrender our wills, we come to realize that God is not a "kill joy." Rather, in losing ourselves in Him, we find life. Now let us look at how we would approach a few decision areas, and compare possible choices with kingdom mindsets.

1. CAREER/ JOB/ MAJOR

Possible Mindset

a. I should do my studies in whatever area I'm most gifted in.

b. I should get a job as a __. Since that's what my training is in.

c. Missionaries are usually spiritual people. I'm not gifted or spiritual enough to become a missionary.

d. If I am not called to become a missionary I need not be concerned about missions, as it is not my purpose in life.

e. We need a call to be a missionary but a call is unnecessary for any other vocation. Until I receive a call from God to be a missionary, I'll just choose my own career in the secular world.

f. I need to take on a job with a reasonably good salary in order to provide for myself and my family, and to ensure a comfortable future.

Kingdom Mindset

a. While a gift is important, it is not the only factor I need to consider. I am willing to study any subjects, and serve in whatever position God wishes to place me in His global army.

b. I am willing to change my career even if it seems foolish according to the values of this world.

c. Missionaries are not "super spiritual" Christians; they are normal people seeking to be used by God among the unreached peoples of the earth.

d. No matter where I am, I will always try to see that His name is known among all the peoples.

e. I need God's direction to be an engineer, a lawyer, or a nurse, just as I do to be a missionary.

f. I will seek God's direction for my career, trusting that as I follow Him, He will provide for the needs of myself and my family [Matt 6:33].

2. RELATIONSHIPS

Possible Mindset

a. I can make friends with whomever I please, just as long as they are Christian.

b. If my parents arrange my marriage, He'll lead my partner into missions just like He led me.

c. I need to be married to serve on the mission field. So I cannot go; until my marriage is arranged.

d. I am so busy with my career in a really competitive field that I do not have any time to give to relationships with other Christians.

e. Why establish relationships with unbelievers? We don't relate anyway.

Kingdom Mindset

a. I'll only make friends with someone who has the same commitment to Christ and His purposes as I do. My partner will need to have a vision compatible with the one God has given me.

b. God has given me responsibility for my heart. I should steward it well by not marrying someone who does not share my vision.

c. I'm willing to serve God, whether I am single or married. Yet I recognize that God has created me with a real need for a good relationship. I know as I seek His purpose I can trust Him to take care of my needs.

d. I'm purposefully investing in relationships with other Christians so that I'm a part of a thriving, challenging, supportive community.

e. Establishing relationships with unbelievers can be hard but it is worth it to be able to eventually share Christ with them.

3. FAMILY

Possible Mindset

a. It would be too difficult for me to serve God overseas and be away from my family.

b. I cannot consider a cross-cultural ministry, nor a counter cultural lifestyle. My parents expect me to succeed in a career and they would be disappointed in me otherwise.

c. Who cares about my family; they just don't understand me. They hurt me too much anyway. Forget them.

Kingdom Mindset

a. It will certainly be difficult to serve God overseas so far from my family, but I am willing to go where He sends me. As I work in His vineyard He will provide for my family needs.

b. I am willing to honor my parents, just as God has commanded me. But I am also willing, if necessary, to make career and lifestyle choices with which my parents disagree, so as to follow Christ first.

c. I'm working hard on my relationship with my parents and other family members. I'm seeking to include them in my journey to God.

4. POSSESSIONS/ FINANCES

Possible Mindset

a. As long as I give ten percent to the church, I can do what I want with the rest of my money.

b. It is my right to live a comfortable life with a big house, nice car and all the trimmings.

c. God blesses me financially; it's a personal benefit to me.

d. Poor people are poor because they are lazy and don't work hard enough. I don't really feel sorry for them.

e. I should be careful with my money and not waste it. I should only give after I have first provided for my own family needs.

Kingdom Mindset

a. All that I have and own is God's. He has entrusted it to me and I shall always seek His direction when I invest it.

b. I cannot claim a right to comfort when the average income of most of the world is far below mine. The advance of the Kingdom of God takes precedence.

c. If God blesses me financially, it is so that I can be a blessing to others.

d. I'll seek to care about the poor in the world whenever and wherever it is possible. Christ is my example. Many of the poor are victims of a more powerful segment of society and many are also unreached.

e. While Scripture teaches us to wisely steward money (Luke 16:11), it also teaches us to "cast our bread upon the waters" (Eccles 11:1) and give without expecting anything in return.

5. LEISURE TIME

Possible Mindset

a. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die (If it feels good, do it!).

b. As long as I go to church on Sundays I can do whatever I want for the rest of the week.

c. There's so much work to be done, I've no time for rest or relaxation. And there's a world of need out there.

d. Why exercise? God's only concerned with spiritual things. OR

e. I exercise to keep my body in excellent physical shape. It's important to look and feel good.

f. My entertainment habits (TV, eating out, movies) are determined by how much money I have to spend or by what my peers like to do.

Kingdom Mindset

a. While modern living says I should seek to be as comfortable as possible, like Jesus, my food is to do the will of God and accomplish His purpose [Jn 4:34].

b. I am careful to use my time as well as I steward my money. Life is from God, to be lived for Him and His Kingdom.

c. We need times of refreshment so that we will have something to give others.

d. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and I should care for it.

e. Physical exercise is important but it is secondary to spiritual exercise and fitness (I Tim 4:8).

f. Rest and relaxation are a healthy part of God's design but all I do is ultimately done for Christ. So His purpose determines how I spend my time and my money.

6. LOCATION

Possible Mindset

a. I want to live in ____ because I like this town/city/region best.

b. I'm willing to minister for Christ as long as I can live____.

c. I could never live in ____ It's too cold, and no one speaks my language nor eats the same food I do.

Kingdom Mindset

a. I will choose to live where God can use me the most to work towards His worldwide purpose.

b. I am willing to live wherever Christ sends me, trusting Him to provide for me and care for me there.

c. Recognizing the difficulty of going far from my comfortable home environment, I trust God will help me to adjust and also minister effectively where He has sent me.

The difference between the possible mindset and a kingdom mindset is not necessarily the actual decision reached. Rather it is in the ambition and end goal. When our desires (rather than God's will) are considered first. Two people could end up making the same decision, one seeking his/ her own kingdom first and the other seeking God first.

An example: Two students want to know what they should study as a major. The first, not considering God's Kingdom purposes decides to study electrical engineering, and then on for a masters in business administration. He likes it, knows he can excel in this field and will become financially comfortable. These are not wrong desires per se, but he has left God out of His decision. He is pursuing his own ambitions and putting his trust in the world system rather than God.

The second person brings the decision to God. Making sure he is clinging to nothing, He asks God to guide his decisions. Then he evaluates the option in the light of how each decision he makes would enable him to grow closer to his Master and contribute to the Kingdom. He checks if there is anything in his options that hinders his relationship with God and also the natural desires God has given him.

He may be unclear as to his long term role in God's plan, but he pursues his studies believing God will use the things he learns, whether as a missionary or in the secular world. Rather than grasping choices tightly he opens his hands before God, ready and willing to be redirected at any time.

As Jim Elliot, martyred missionary, testified, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Everything in this world will turn to dust in the end, only what is holy and Christ like in our lives endures. Let us live in such a way that speeds that fulfillment [II Pet 3:11-12; Hab 2:14 and Rev 6:9-11].

Donald A. McGavran was known as perhaps the worlds foremost missiologist. He was born of missionary parents in India. He returned to India as a third-generation missionary in 1923. In his later years he traveled extensively and developed a good understanding of global priorities. He gave us this illustration in an article called Today's Task: Opportunity or Imperative, of how all the functions of the church should have a common goal of missions.

"It is difficult to speak about today's task when hundreds of tasks lie before the Church and God calls her to every one of them.

Internal tasks abound: raising church budgets, helping Christians grow in grace, erecting new buildings, training lay leaders, teaching the Bible, and many more.

External tasks abound: building brotherhood in the midst of racial strife, giving underprivileged youth a chance, working for peace and justice, reaching unevangelized men and women with the Gospel, establishing new churches in suitable locations, and scores of others.

The calls from across the seas were never more numerous. Great numbers of persons die each year of hunger and malnutrition. Yet there are still refugees to house, illiterates to teach, the sick to heal and three billion who have never heard the name of Christ to flood with knowledge of their Savior.

In spite of all, for the welfare of the world, for the good of mankind according to the Bible, one task is paramount. Today's supreme task is effective multiplication of churches in the receptive societies of the earth.

The many tasks that lie at hand should be done, there can be no two opinions about that. Preaching good sermons, teaching illiterates to read, working at planned parenthood or the world's food supply, administering churches skillfully, applying Christianity to all of life, using mass media of communication, and hundreds of other activities are not sinful. They are good. Some are urgent. But are they all of equal importance?

We must not oversimplify the situation, as if Christians could do one task and leave all others undone. We can and should do many tasks together. When Nehemiah built the wall, some carried stone, some brought water, some mixed mortar, and some laid the stones in place. All were controlled, however, by the overriding purpose: all were building the wall. The supreme aim guided the entire enterprise. Stones and mortar arrived at the wall in the right proportions at the right time to guarantee maximum wall-building.

One of the purposes of this course is to help you answer Donald McGavran's question about priorities. You must make good decisions. Decisions to help you set priorities and be good stewards. To do this you must become a constant learner.

All of us, I am sure, remember the clear awareness we receive, of the amazing love of God through Jesus Christ, when we first commit our lives to the Lord. I had a deep desire to live only for what was important to Him. But, like most new Christians, I was not sure what that meant. What is it that is important to Jesus?

The answers came as I began to read and hear about God's plan. To redeem for Himself a people from every tribe, people and nation. I realized that my life would only become meaningful when I found my place in history as it related to the Great Commission.

I wanted to make my life count for something. When it hit home to me that almost half the world's population still had no knowledge of the Christ of God, I was shocked. I, together with God's people, certainly had a lot of work ahead of us! Yet, when I looked at my own life I realized how it only revolved around self-centered concerns - growing in a knowledge of the things of God for my own spiritual well-being. I realized I had to develop life patterns that would help me, consistently, to reach out to the unreached.

My prayers, gifts, lifestyle and planning all needed to be changed so that they would line up with God's goal in history.

When I prayed, it was for my family and those people who were my friends. I never prayed for the millions who were without a Christian witness. Even my prayers for missionaries was for those I had met personally or heard talk at my church or at a meeting. Then it was for them and not for the people they interacted with.

When it came to giving, it went to local Christian work. Besides my church I would invest in fund-raisers such as book sales. Spending reflected that I thought were needs rather than Christ's kingdom values.

As I reflected on my life, I knew I wanted to change. My life would count only as it revolved around things that touched the heart of God. I had to begin somewhere.

For me, that somewhere was in my daily praying and spending. A few friends and I got empty jars, stuck labels on them to remind us to pray for the unreached and empty our loose change into the jars at the end of each day. At that time, we would stop to pray for the unreached.

We tried different tools to help us pray. We started with Operation World and prayed for a different country each day. As the unreached gained a place in our hearts, we began to leave notes in the jar instead of just change. Instead of a coke we drank water. We learned many practical ways to invest what we owned in what was most important to God. As the jars filled up, we would send our savings to a group who were attempting to make a difference for the unreached.

In this way, the unreached people touched our wallets, thoughts, prayers and lifestyles each day! These were some of the first few steps in my journey and it was most encouraging to take these steps with like-minded friends.

This journey in God's spiritual kingdom for His purposes will work out differently for each one of us. We begin at different places, at different ages, and take varied steps in really diverse circumstances but all of us actually contribute to the same end. The really encouraging thing is we can be significantly involved right where we are. We can center our lives to become an active part of Christ's purpose on earth.

Let us together think through four areas in which we can grow spiritually, taking encouragement from Paul who says, "For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building." [Corinthians 3:9]

Work on prayer habits that lead you to constantly invest in the lost, as well as those unrelated people who do not have a relevant church in their own culture. When Christ was deeply moved over the sight of the lost, He did not command the disciples to go and rescue them right away. Instead, He commanded them to first pray [Mat 9:37-38].

Prayer is meant to be our first strategic action in aligning our lives with God's plan for the world and to discern His will [I John 5:14]. Only as we receive Christ, to that degree can we communicate Him.

Only through prayer can we resolve issues such as: Who are the unreached and what do I pray for? How do I pray for people I do not know and don't feel compassion for them? How can I fit prayer into my already-crowded life?

Today there are many tools that help us pray in an informed way about a specific people. We could use one of these - such as Operation World (to which I have already referred) to answer, the 'Who' we pray for.

Compassion and Christ-like love are traits which develop in us as we yield our lives to Christ. We can, however, choose to pray for them and ask the Lord to work on our hearts. Compassion is not a prerequisite for prayer. It is a reward which will come as you invest time caring for a people in need.

We really do have full programs. Begin by setting it up as a priority. Then plan time for this priority in your schedule. Set a goal, starting with perhaps five minutes, going on after a week to fifteen and eventually, making an hour your goal. A country a day, a people group a day, or a page of a prayer tool a day. Besides the allotted time, you can whisper a short prayer throughout the day whenever you remember this new and exciting facet of your spiritual life!

Take to the Lord the questions which will come up in your mind; Who or what do I give to? How often? How much? [II Cor 9:7]

Make investments among unreached people by supporting Bible translation, the training of potential workers and by sending out church planting teams.

You can even adopt one people group and, as you invest in them, you can watch them grow over the years. How often you give is up to you but it is important to give regularly. Pray about the amount. Pray about ways of economizing - you may be agreeably surprised by how the Lord can release this area to enable you to give even more than you felt you could, originally.

If giving to missions is new to you, you might begin giving to one missionary once a month. Eventually you may decide to give to different aspects of Christian outreach whose work fulfills the Great Commission.

Develop a lifestyle that reflects Christ's values and purposes. It is possible to live within our own communities with as much commitment as those who are called to be missionaries among a different people group.

The Christian discipline of Simplicity is an inward reality that results in an outward lifestyle. Jesus waged war on the materialism of His day when he said, "No servant can serve two masters - you cannot serve God and mammon." [Luke 16:13]

Those who become missionaries, and live cross-culturally, sacrifice friendships, family and many comforts, as they give of themselves. Back home, by choosing to live economically, we can release resources for the Kingdom. There are also other ways of giving, such as interceding, mobilizing others and encouraging those who go. Each play different roles in fulfilling the Great Commission.

Your first step should be to ask God in what ways He would want you to contribute to His kingdom purposes. At the same time, begin reading about the unreached and learning all you can about the world of Mission. God rarely guides us on the basis of information we do not have. Talk to your pastor about what you are doing. Keep an open mind on whether you will 'go' or select another career option. Pray as Isaiah did, "Here am I, send me". As you listen you will receive guidance that will make you an effective tool in the hand of your Master.

Kingdom living is challenging, with periods of uncertainty and pain. It is stimulating but always deeply challenging. It will meet the needs of your heart. To become a member of God's army is an honor indeed!

An excerpt from the book "In the Gap". In 1979, David Bryant published a book titled “In the Gap” which revived the concept of living as a World Christian. The book has recently been revised and abbreviated under the title, “Stand in the Gap.” In the full-length book, Bryant uses the imagery of “the Gap” to describe the unfulfilled global purpose of God. “The widest end of the Gap” describes situations in which Christ is known and followed the least. Christ is seen as the sole mediator in “the Gap.” This excerpt of the original book remains one of the clearest statements of what it means to be a World Christian.

What, then, shall we call this discovery that can change us so radically and yet make us so healthy? And, what shall we call those who have experienced it?

By now it should be obvious that all Christians are born again into the Gap between God’s world-wide purpose and the fulfillment of it. But there’s more than one kind of response to that Gap.

Some are asleep, some are on retreat, and some are determined to stand in the Gap, particularly at its widest end where billions await the opportunity to hear of Christ for the first time. Some are heading into the “sunrise of missions” while others huddle in the shadows. Many move along at a sluggish pace, changing little in the Gap because of their own internal gap-of-unbelief. Others run the race before them setting no limits on how, where, or among whom God will use them.

Some are trapped in boxes of pea-sized Christianity, full of myths about missions that rob them of incentive to care about the unreached. Others have broken though into cause-Christianity, ready to reach out with God’s love to the ends of the earth. They are determined to make Christ’s global cause the unifying focus—the context—for all they are and do in the Gap. Yielded to the mediator, they are willing to be broken and remolded to fit in the Gap wherever they can make the most strategic impact. In turn, they’re growing to know Christ, obey Him, and glorify Him as the mediator.

So, what shall we call the discovery that redirects Christians toward the needs of the Gap? And how shall we distinguish those who have made it?

Some Christians in the Gap are stunted by selfishness and petty preoccupations or by a cautious obedience and love reserved for the closest and easiest to care about. How shall we distinguish the others in the Gap whose growth in discipleship is unmistakable, with a vitality that comes only to those who help bring lost sinners from many nations home?

What shall we call this distinct group of Christians who have taken a stand that says:

For a moment, let’s call them WORLD CHRISTIANS. Of course, any new term might be misunderstood. For example, some might think I said “worldly” Christians, not World Christians. By now we know, however, if you are one, you can’t be the other. If you are one you don’t want to be the other!

No, the term is not in your Bible concordance. Don’t worry. It isn’t another cliché like the words of the bumper sticker that read “Honk-if-the-Rapture-starts.” Nor is it an attempt to label some new spiritual elite who have a corner on a super-secret blessing. Rather, the term describes what all of us are meant to be and what some of us have started to become.

The term “World Christian” may have been coined first by Daniel Fleming in a 1920 YMCA book entitled Marks of a World Christian. More recently the term has appeared in publications of such groups as the World Team missions, Conservation Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, United Presbyterian Center for Mission Studies, the Mission Renewal Teams, Inc., and the Fellowship of World Christians, as well as Campus Crusade for Christ and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

A World Christian isn’t better than other Christians. But by God’s grace, he has made a discovery so important that life can never be the same again. He has discovered the truth about the Gap, the fact that he is already in it, and the call of Christ to believe, think, plan, and act accordingly. By faith, he has chosen to stand in the Gap as a result.

Some World Christians are missionaries who stand in the Gap by physically crossing major human barriers (cultural, political, etc.) to bring the gospel to those who can hear no other way. But every Christian is meant to be a World Christian, whether you physically “go,” or “stay at home” to provide the sacrificial love, prayers, training, money, and quality of corporate life that backs the witness of those who “go.”

World Christians are day-to-day disciples for whom Christ’s global cause has become the integrating, overriding priority for all that He is for them. Like disciples should, they actively investigate all that their Master’s Great Commission means. Then they act on what they learn.

World Christians are Christians whose life-directions have been solidly transformed by a world vision. This is not a term for frustrated Christians who feel trapped into the world missionary movement and sporadically push a few buttons to say they’ve done their part. Having caught a vision, World Christians want to keep that vision and obey it unhesitatingly.

World Christians are (in Corrie Ten Boom’s phrase) tramps for the Lord who have left their hiding places to roam the Gap with the Savior. They are heaven’s expatriates, camping where the Kingdom is best served. They are earth’s dispossessed, who’ve journeyed forth to give a dying world not only the gospel but their own souls as well. They are members of God’s global dispersion down through history and out through the nations, reaching the unreached and blessing the families of earth.

By taking three steps we become World Christians. First, World Christians catch a world vision. They see the cause the way God sees it. They see the full scope of the Gap. Next, World Christians keep that world vision. They put the cause at the heart of their life in Christ. They put their life at the heart of the Gap. Then World Christians obey their world vision. Together they develop a strategy that makes a lasting impact on the cause, particularly at the widest end of the Gap.

Many years ago a World Christian named John R. Mott, leader of the Student Volunteer Movement that sent out 20,000 new missionaries, outlined similar steps:

Catch! Keep! Obey!—these are the three steps to becoming a World Christian. Let’s examine them a little more closely in outline form:

How can someone know if they’ve taken these three basic steps toward becoming a World Christian? Here are some important clues:

Ultimately, however, becoming a World Christian goes beyond “steps” that we take. It is the gracious work of Christ Himself! Our faith must always be in Him, not in any simple three-step process. It is Christ who opens us up to catch His world vision. He alone anchors us to that vision and then empowers us to effectively obey it. With the hymn writer all World Christians appeal to Christ: “Be Thou my Vision, Oh Lord of my Heart.”

When you decided take the Perspectives FastTrak you may not have realized what you were getting into—that it is more than a course— it is an introduction to a movement. You are being invited to join a movement—the World Christian Movement!

But what are the next steps beyond spectator status? What God has in mind for you may not be clear. You don’t want to make a false start. What can you do for sure? What do you need to learn next? How is the calling to mobilization different from, but as important as, that of being a front-line missionary?

Most people think of the cause of missions as a bunch of missionaries out there in a tropical forest working with their bare hands. Well, for that matter, some people think wars consist of boys out there on the front lines popping away with guns. But wars are usually a “war effort” encompassing many more people than those right at the front. So, missions is a “mission effort” involving, necessarily, far more people in the support structure than those right at the front.

To be more specific, suppose you grew up with a great interest in the drilling of oil wells. You saw a video as a young person of the “wildcatters” who sometimes strike oil in unexpected places. You decided you would like to become a well-driller.

But, as you studied the subject you discovered the “oil industry.” You learned all about oil refineries, oil diplomats who dicker with foreign governments, geophysisists who make precise measurements of feedback from deep under the earth, etc. So, whoopee, you decided you would rather be a geophysicist! But you wouldn’t have known such a possibility existed if all you knew about were organizations apparently recruiting only well-drillers.

In the same way, the World Christian Movement has become a highly developed international enterprise. At the core of this historic global movement are professionals and hundreds of dedicated, seasoned organizations. It’s proper to look upon this core of the World Christian Movement as the “mission industry.” In the USA alone it’s a two to three billion dollar per year activity—and its influence is far beyond what that money would do in any commercial venture.

To find your way into this incredibly influential enterprise, it is helpful to distinguish the roles of front-line teams who labor cross-culturally, let’s call them missionaries, and those who marshal support for them, let’s call them mobilizers. Whatever your role may be, as a missionary or as a mobilizer, you need a working relationship with others in the mission industry. William Carey wasn’t a loner.

Next to doing nothing, the most certain way to squander your life’s work would be to maintain an ignorant detachment from this astounding movement of dedicated mission professionals. Most of the important mistakes have been made. Most of the crucial matters of missiological wisdom have been explored. If we ignore this seasoned wisdom, the tempered courage, the proven ideas, and the heartfelt prayers of the generations before us, we are simply consigning ourselves to beating the air for quite a while. This may apply even if all you do is join an organization that has not been around for some time.

Never concede to doing something so small that it could be accomplished entirely in your lifetime. Be a part of something that began before you were born, and will continue onward toward the fulfillment of all that God has purposed to accomplish. God has uniquely formed you to be part of this significant movement. You cannot participate in what you do not know. Becoming a student of the mission industry is the best way to become a valuable part of the World Christian Movement.

As soon as possible begin to get acquainted with the astounding array of different mission agencies.

“Service missions” serve other agencies. Some are purely technical, like Mission Aviation Fellowship, with work ranging from jungle air strips to a marvelous internet service open to all agencies. Others are literature missions, tape-recording experts, or Bible translators, or radio experts. Missionary radio today outranks all secular radio systems for blanketing the earth with the greatest sophistication and highest-powered transmitters in use anywhere.

“Standard missions” concern themselves with every aspect of human need, ranging from medical, educational, church planting, etc. Place great value on these incredible organizations. No one need start from scratch. Since agencies are designed for teamwork, they are not only able to sustain efforts over many generations, veteran workers are able to pass on to newcomers the cumulative know-how and field knowledge of generations of earlier workers.

Springing from, but feeding the mission agencies, are mission training institutions, seminaries and Bible colleges which have long offered programs in many disciplines (such as theology, linguistics, anthropology, history, and many more) which together undergird the grand discipline of missiology. Those offering formal degrees in a residential setting are most visible, but it is getting more common for training to take place away from campuses through “Distance education”. Distance Education brings the instruction not only to where the trainees live and work, it often brings to learners the material that they most need and the optimal moment for them to take it in. Internet connections are fascinating and helpful, but the most effective training resource will continue to be local, face-to-face mentoring.

All of the people in these various missions and schools are intentionally networked by organizational associations and professional societies. Be a student of the mission industry. No missionary or mobilizer can be fully effective without an awareness of the IFMA and the EFMA. Avail yourself of their meetings and publications, which are the cutting edge of missiology. Jointly they publish the Evangelical Missions Quarterly.

You may never become a professor of missions at a graduate institution, but you will likely mentor many others in your lifetime in crucial matters of missiology. What you will do as a missionary or a mobilizer is so important that it is foolhardy not to gain professional skills in your pursuit of this high calling. Why not become an eager participant in the mission industry by joining a professional mission society? The ISFM (International Society for Frontier Missiology) might be the place to start.

Mission Frontiers talks about the cutting edge of missions in the form of a 60-page newsprint bulletin that goes to 100,000 people all over the world.

Churches obviously play a crucial role in the missionary enterprise. Many churches offer components of training beyond normal catechism. Some ambitious churches have attempted to send their own mission teams. To succeed, of necessity they form new mission structures. Such overachieving vision is commendable, but is usually best expressed in alignment with existing mission structures. The entire complex tapestry of the mission industry is affected by the vision and knowledge of the sending churches.

The good news is that, more than any other force, the cause of missions unites an enormous variety of otherwise separate church traditions. It is truly amazing what unity and understanding has flowed back from the field to the disparate church traditions at home. It turns out that all our home church traditions shine best on the mission field. Seemingly dead traditions often have marvelously devout and competent missionaries on the field. Surprising to many people is the fact that missionaries on the field from many traditions cooperate very readily in all kinds of joint projects.

Church people back home don’t know all this. You don’t very often find congregations holding joint picnics—like Presbyterians with Nazarenes. Yet their missionaries cooperate on the field with no trouble at all.

The bad news is that congregations usually need to be extensively educated and mobilized to remain effective in the World Christian Movement. The cultural momentum of church traditions, when imposed elsewhere—on the mission field—is where the World Christian Movement has often been impeded. It is illusory for any group anywhere to come up with some new emphasis and make it seem so important that all the other traditions are considered wrong or inadequate. Read the story of the last two thousand years in the most balanced account ever written—Kenneth Scott Latourette’s A History of Christianity. You will see that every age has been marked by all kinds of spurting out in many different directions as godly people have struggled and groped for better light. We can look back and “improve” on practically everything that we see, but meanwhile our own form of Christianity may be bogged down by all kinds of cultural baggage!

For example, missions itself is a “new” emphasis in the Protestant tradition. Why didn’t the Reformation leaders, who so highly prized the Bible, find the Great Commission in the Bible? It took William Carey, a kid in a poverty-stricken backward gulch in rural England, to come up with clear-eyed questions as to what the Bible plainly said about God’s concern for all of the peoples of the earth. Sure, his elders had all the “right theology” but failed Bible 101 in regard to the main theme of the Bible.

Why do the widely-respected Westminster Confession of Faith, the Lutheran’s Non-altered Augsburg Confession, and even the Nicene Creed (to which we all pledge allegiance) say nothing whatsoever about the Great Commission? It is a wonder that missions ever came up at all. In few Christian traditions around the world is the call of missions anything like a major or even minor concern for the vast majority of their adherents. How strange!

This strange situation brings us to the very reason mission mobilizers are so crucial for the advance of the World Christian Movement. It is evident that the World Christian Movement has moved forward by a dedicated few calling the church to its central mission. Over the centuries the Church has occasionally exhibited powerful passion for Christ’s global cause, and then, within a few years, sunk into a self-absorbed morass of disobedience.

Congregations which have set their heart on other things need a heart transplant! How would you like to have a heart transplant done by an untrained person? Unthinkable! Transplanting a heart is too important to leave to an untrained person. But, the task of reaching the nations is the most important task which God has assigned to His Church. And this requires transplanting a heart of vision and understanding in order to do it right. A mission mobilizer owes it to the church and the nations to acquire the skill and knowledge necessary to help do an effective heart transplant of vision and understanding.

This is equally true of the role of a field missionary. The mobilizer who stays home may need to learn about more parts of the world, but the missionary needs different tools. Missionary skills are different. Mobilizers and missionaries have two very different kinds of jobs, both of them essential—equally essential—to the World Christian Movement. Many people unthinkingly equate “missions” with missionaries. But there would be few missionaries unless there were also intensely committed and skilled mobilizers.

The famous “Cambridge Seven” stayed home long enough—a whole year—to visit the universities of England before they went out to China. Who knows, perhaps 500 missionaries went out because of their pre-field work as mobilizers! We have already read about one of those students. C. T. Studd’s older brother never did go as a missionary. But he went from campus to campus in the United States and, among other things, persuaded John R. Mott to go to the Mt. Hermon meeting. What if that had not happened? Or, what if Mott had decided to be a missionary rather than a mobilizer? Probably no two people in history are traceably responsible for more missionaries going to the field than Mott and another SVM student, Robert E. Speer, who also stayed home to be a full-time mobilizer.

But were they qualified to do that without field experience? Oh, they eventually traveled all over the world. In fact, they gained a more comprehensive view of global needs than was possible for any one missionary. Mott could plan and lead the 1910 meeting at Edinburgh in a way no missionary was qualified to do.

But they had signed the pledge to go. That meant that they were qualified to stay—if only because they were willing to go! Note, however, if they had not been willing to go they would not have been spiritually qualified to stay. Why? Because those who are not willing to stay, if that is God’s will, are not—and cannot—be qualified to go!

Yes, being a mobilizer is just as much a spiritual calling as being a missionary. After all, missions is a cause, not just a career. In the end, as we shall see, a mobilizer needs to know a whole lot of things a missionary does not usually know. And vice versa.

But, beware! Just as missionaries face special problems in their cross-cultural work, so do mobilizers. In some ways it is much more difficult to be a mobilizer. Most churches will not readily support mobilizers. Or, worse still, they can “survive” missionary letters but it is too much to have to cope with resident, local mobilizers, constantly reminding them of their global obligations!

Look again at these two different types of work within the World Christian Movement: the mobilizer and the missionary.

Which one is for you? God obviously does not want everyone overseas. In the days of the massive Student Volunteer Movement four out of five who volunteered to go to the ends of the earth ended up staying home. That’s right: 20,000 out of 100,000 volunteers were able to make it to the field only because four out of five were willing to continue to believe and work for the cause of missions back home. Stirring up the church and keeping it envisioned is a much larger task than the front-line work itself.

I can’t believe that God is content with mobilizers that are not the Bible students and prayer warriors missionaries have to be. I can’t believe that a person doesn’t need to be as committed to the Lord if he stays home to mobilize. Mobilization, either as a full or part-time task, requires intense prayer, vision and commitment. By contrast the missionary task is a relatively well-accepted “calling,” while mobilization is not!

All pastors are mobilizers of many good things and can be superb mission mobilizers. They are certainly worthy of support. We think ministers of music and youth workers are worthy of support. Why not mission mobilizers?

More basic than anything else: you cannot be a mobilizer if you are not yourself mobilized! But how do you become mobilized?

Feed yourself: Get to conferences, subscribe to periodicals, buy the key books, study the issues for yourself or you will never be all God wants you to be as a mobilizer. You yourself must be caught up in the drama of the global countdown of the kingdom of God. It is not enough to be caught up in local church goals for next year.

Support missions yourself: “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21).

Pray for specific missionaries: Nothing that does not occur daily will ever dominate your life. Being a World Christian is of little value, really, unless you are a daily World Christian! The Global Prayer Digest can change your life more in one month than many “drive by” experiences that gradually fade away. Everything grows slowly. How can you keep growing without daily renewal of vision?

Write missionaries: Be aware of their problems and needs. They may want you to buy something for them and bundle it up and send it to them. Take them in overnight as they pass through your area. Go on picnics with them and their children. Debrief them. Share with them from your studies. Compare notes from one field to another.

Of course, don’t wait to begin mobilizing in your local congregation. Also, be ready to visit other local congregations. Become active in denominational policies and mission strategies as well as interdenominational mission events.

And, are you thinking clearly about yourself? You need to ask God on your knees where you fit in. Maybe the place God has for you is teaching a Sunday School class with a relentlessly international perspective. Maybe God wants you to be one more globally-minded pastor—that kind of pastor is worth more than quite a few missionaries. God will likely ask you to do the hardest thing you are capable of!

The key thing is to realize that the development of your own career must not be your main concern, but rather the development of the mission cause. The question of career vs. cause will be an issue in your heart of hearts again and again. Jesus, today, might have put it, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and your career will take care of itself.” We have already said a lot about preparations, especially those which can be pursued right on the job. But if you are willing to prepare and work, simultaneously, for the rest of your life, God may indeed reward you with a startling career—but you will probably not know the details in advance.

Someone has said, “God reserves the best for those who leave the choice with Him.” Another (the founder of the Navigators, Dawson Trotman) said, “Don’t ever do something that others can do or will do if there are things to be done that others can’t do or won’t do.” See, getting what we want—by going after it—is not in the cards for Christians. Jesus turned it completely around the other way: “He that seeks to save himself will lose his life; he that will lose his life for my sake will find it” (Luke 9:24). God’s will for us is not mere advice. We can’t “take it or leave it;” we must “accept it or reject it.” His will is His command. Make no mistake. God honors those who seek His work above their worries. One of our staff members once said, “Now I think I understand what faith is; it is not the confidence that God will do what we want Him to do for us, but the conviction that we can do what He wants done for Him and let Him take care of the consequences.”

Is your problem that you can’t see very far into the future? As Trotman said, “If you can’t see very far ahead, go ahead as far as you can see.”

Lots of people would be glad to follow God if He would only tell them in advance exactly all the wonderful things He would do for them and what high-sounding job titles they might one day hold. But, remember Genesis 12:1? It is characteristic of the Christian life that God asks us to go without telling us where! This is not be considered unfair or capricious on His part. The fact is that when we walk in the little light we have, and keep going on and on taking steps in faith, the ways in which He leads us are almost always, as we look back, something we could have never been told in advance!

Untold marvels lie beyond each step of faith. You don’t really have to know what is beyond the next step, and you can’t find out without taking the next step. Again, it is characteristic of the Christian life that we do not know very far in advance. In fact, if you think you’ve got the next few years lined up you may well be mistaken, or you may still be trying to make your plans for God to bless.

Wouldn’t His will inevitably focus on your doing “your utmost for His highest?” It is not a question of how much of our own desires we can get away with. Some young people make the final, dramatic decision “to be a missionary” and immediately begin thinking where the climate would be nicest. You can’t be any kind of a solid Christian if you are unwilling to do anything He asks. What does he ask? Nothing more than all we are and possess. That’s all. He doesn’t ask us to do the easiest job we can think of but the hardest we are able to handle. He does not ask us to do what we cannot do, although He often enables us to do what we could not do without His special grace. He is not a tyrant who doesn’t care about our welfare in the task.

It is amazingly true that when we are willing to do the most difficult thing, we find that we are better off because of it. Oh, sure, missionaries have their share of disease and pain, but some of the most diseased and pained are people who stayed home in order to avoid all that!

Jesus said, “Are you burdened and weary? Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; you will find me gentle and kindly, and you will find rest for your souls. My yoke fits perfectly and my burden is light.” Jesus Himself “endured the cross and ignored the shame for the joy that was set before Him.”

But we sometimes seem more geared to do our “utmost,” than we are to seek out patiently, deliberately, and painstaking that role which will make the maximum contribution to “His highest”—the coming of His kingdom and power and glory to all the peoples of the earth. Again, beware of how easy it is to make that difficult choice to live for Him rather than for ourselves, throwing away our secular aspirations, and then turning aggressively to try to find out the most pleasing assignment within the new arena of life. It is not to please ourselves that we give our lives to Christ. Yet, we may find that His will involves greater pleasure and fulfillment than anything we ourselves could have chosen!

A famous missionary wrote back to fellow students and pled with them: “Give up your small ambitions and come East to proclaim the glorious gospel of Christ.” For me to give “My utmost for His highest” is no guarantee of health, wealth, or happiness—which, incidentally, is true of any choice one can make—but that kind of crucial choice is, in the experience of thousands who have tried it, the most exhilarating and demanding path of all callings. You don’t lose if you go with God. But you have to be willing to lose or you can’t stick close to God.

By now you should feel a renewed sense of purpose with a new perspective on your life. And a new perspective of God and His story.

Now that your eyes are open to new possibilities you have new responsibilities. This short course may be your first step in your missions learning. Taking the course Perspectives on the World Christian Movement will open your eyes further. In this course you will explore new ideas and be challenged by existing mission patterns.

God-given and guided strategic thinking is vital for completing the task of world evangelization. We must have a clear understanding of, and appreciation for, the nature of the task before us. Strategy helps us prioritize and allocate resources. It helps us know where we are going and how to get there. Put simply, it is good stewardship. Wealth and materialism can easily distract us from the Great Commission. A consecrated life is not only for missionaries but for all who are serious about being a World Christian. This may mean that anyone committed to the missionary task at home or on the mission field should consider a simple lifestyle. Much is required of those who have been blessed.

You can be obedient right where you are. Going to an unreached tribe is not necessary. World Christians help fulfill God's missionary plans anywhere they are fully using their God given gifts, skill and positions. Businessmen, doctors, students, housewives are a part of reaching the unreached peoples when every decision in life is influenced by a world Christian perspective.

Now that you have a new vision... you may want to run with it! Motivating your church to become involved in frontier missions is a great place to start. We learned that this mobilization role is just as important as a missionary. In fact if a lay person inspires and helps several missionaries get to the field this may be more important than going oneself.

In the same way a mission-minded pastor is as important as a missionary. He is in a position to motivate a whole church to pray and give to missions and eventually many may serve the mission cause. An individual or a small group can build mission awareness in their church. They can even help other churches in the area gain a mission vision. Mobilizing means getting others involved in mission and getting them involved strategically. This process can be done in many ways but it should include facilitating teaching the Biblical basis of missions combined with cultural and strategic insights.

It is doubtful if a church can sustain its prayer, giving and sending of missionaries without constant stimulation in the form of ongoing mission education. One proven method to help the church is to form a mission committee. This group can strive toward an ongoing mission education program for all age groups in the church. Even children should be taught about missions. Many famous missionaries felt called at a very young age as a result of reading mission biographies.

The pastor holds the key to missions involvement. He can help the church see their responsibility in the Great Commission. He can inspire them and teach them to pray, to give and to go as missionaries. The Church is not an end in itself but a means to an end. It is God's instrument to become a base for missions not a social organization for its own self improvement. To be used fully by God the church therefore needs to be infused with what it really means to worship God. Only then will effective prayer and a properly motivated outpouring of lives come forth for missions. John Piper's perspective:

God does not want us to go blindly into missions. He has given us a history of hard facts and heroic deeds which few Christians look back upon to learn. World Christians cannot make good decisions without good information. They need to be constantly learning. Clearly defined goals and mission policies should be written to provide continuity, stability, priorities and direction so that the church is not wandering from project to project and making uninformed emotional decisions. This learning of missions must be an ongoing process. There are always new things to learn and new people who need discipling in missions.

The church should also look to the mission agency is a highly specialized task oriented organization. They have the expertise of coordinating missionaries, providing them with training and giving effective guidance. These tasks are usually beyond the abilities of the local church. To help the church maintain its mission zeal it is suggested that every church and organization form a "frontier fellowship" to meet monthly and learn about unreached people groups and discuss and pray effectively for them. These could be formed as youth groups, women's groups, groups within seminaries, family groups etc.

There is no greater and clearer truth from God's Word than the glorious truth that God desires men from every tribe tongue and nation and people to worship Him at the throne. From Genesis to Revelation, God demonstrates in the boldest and clearest terms that His passion and purpose is this end. This task is not busy work to fit into our spare time, rather it is a radical cause that demands a radical commitment. World Christian obedience means new attitudes, from being blessed to being a blessing. It means losing your life for His sake and seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness.

To whom much is given, much is required. God help you if you refuse to obey what you have learned. Our only choice is surrender to God without reservation or be left behind. When we do surrender, out of repentance and humility, God will do great and mighty things with even the weakest people. Eye has not seen and ear has not heard all that God has prepared for those who trust and obey Him. It is the potter who molds the vessels. We are to be willing carriers of the water of life. We are to pour ourselves out for Him. Our joy will be to hear him say. "Well done my good and faithful servant."

DISCLAIMER: This material has been assembled over several years and some may be pulled directly so please contact us if you have any objections as we do not intend to infringe on any copyrights.