Walking the Tightrope: Right Motivations for Missionaries You Send
STATEMENT
Churches should motivate missionary service through sound biblical teaching and thoughtful assessment and training of candidates, which undergird wise decisions and faithfulness on the field, rather than emotional or pragmatic appeals that may lead to unwise decisions.
A good friend of mine attended a mission conference as a university student. She knew very little about missions at the time, and as she listened to the talks, attended breakouts, and spoke with various mission agencies, she became overwhelmed with the task's urgency. Billions of people could not hear the gospel if more missionaries didn’t go. Thousands of people groups had no Bible in their language. The absence of indigenous churches was shocking. On the final evening of the conference, a well-known evangelist spoke passionately about all these needs and concluded with an imploring challenge to answer the call to missionary service. She tells me she can still see him in her mind, pointing his right index finger around the crowd and asking people to stand if they were willing to go. So, she stood, along with thousands of other students. She was undoubtedly motivated, but was she making a wise and informed decision at that moment?
Over decades on the field, I’ve met people who felt called to missionary service in different ways. Some met or read about missionaries when they were young and wanted to follow in their footsteps. Others grew up on the mission field and wanted to go back. Still others desired to do something challenging for the gospel's sake. Or, like my friend, they’d gone to a missions conference and responded to a call.
Nothing is wrong with these reasons for wanting to take the gospel to the nations. Yet I worry that a decision made subjectively or based on human desire alone won’t withstand the rigors of missionary life and sustain in times of opposition and hardship. So, how do we motivate people to do missionary service well.
Recently, I’ve participated in a conference that I believe presents the call in a full-orbed way: educating people about the needs and encouraging those who have a desire to go while presenting two primary and essential components of the missionary call: the biblical basis of missions and the biblical role of the church in missions.
Most missions-minded churches and organizations prioritize sending more and more missionaries. Jesus told his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38). There is no debate whether God’s people should be more involved in missions. Christians are mobilized to reach the nations like never before. The number of mission opportunities and resources organizations provide for global missions is at an all-time high. We are seeing unprecedented financial giving to missions. Praise God for all the work in missions over the last century. And we should all pray that God continues to raise up people to go.
It is not that pragmatic reasons, emotional pleas, or personal desires aren’t important in motivating people for missions. Self-absorption is an idol that keeps people from acknowledging the plight of the lost in the world. We must confront this passivity and complacency. Christians should feel compassion for those cut off from access to the gospel. And we shouldn’t allow one another to be sidetracked from taking the gospel overseas.
Affirming God’s sovereignty while still highlighting human responsibility is challenging. We don’t want anyone to disengage, thinking God will accomplish His purposes without them. Yet, we must be careful not to compel Christians into missions based solely on urgent needs or a desire to do something significant. Passionate pleas have succeeded in more Christians signing up to go overseas, but they can be unintentionally manipulative. Besides, a decision based on pure emotion will unlikely be sustained over the long haul.
It can also be tempting to get people overseas as soon as possible. Slowing down to evaluate readiness or taking multiple steps to prepare may feel like a misuse of time and resources when the need is urgent. However, this approach risks sending the wrong people if those individuals aren’t biblically prepared for long-term, faithful ministry. Eagerness to quickly send people to the field can translate into impatience and discouragement on the mission field when the work is hard, and the ministry doesn’t go as they thought it would.
Sadly, my colleagues and I have seen that many missionaries who’ve responded to a subjective call as the primary basis for their decision or “fast-tracked” to the mission field are ill-prepared for their task. Field churches and missionary teams receive missionaries who don’t have the ministry skills or experience needed for their work. Others return from the field after a short time of service because the assignment proved too challenging for them. These things can hinder the progress of the gospel.
We believe that understanding God's heart for the world and the role he has ordained for us in his sovereign plan should be a primary motivation driving our commitment to missionary service. Churches and missions motivators need to teach from Scripture about the missionary mandate. Secondly, the local church needs to exercise its biblical role to evaluate who should go and what preparation is required before they do.
Biblical Motivations for Missions
God reveals His heart for missions in the very first pages of the Bible and continues to make His love for all peoples known throughout His Word [1]. God’s desire for His Name to be glorified in all nations didn’t begin with the Great Commission; it was always His plan. A prospective missionary needs to understand God’s purposes in the world in the arc of all scriptures, aligning their heart with God’s heart.
In 2 Corinthians 5:10-21, Paul says Christians are Christ’s ambassadors and gives five gospel understandings that should drive us in that role. While these things should be true of all Christians, they are vital to a missionary’s motivation. First, in vv. 10-11, Paul tells us that the fear of the Lord, who will judge every human being, should move us to persuade people to follow Jesus.
Second, he notes that Christ’s love compels him. Paul focuses on Jesus’ death and resurrection, through which He accomplished salvation for those who trust in Him. His understanding of the greatness of what Christ did through his sacrifice motivated his mission. It’s no different today; the love of Christ shown on the cross is sufficient to dispel indifference and sustain Christians in difficult circumstances on the mission field to make him known.
Third, Paul tells us not to view people with worldly eyes but as people who can become new creations in Christ by repenting and believing in the gospel. No one is beyond God’s saving power, and that should propel us to take the gospel to those who haven’t heard or seem unresponsive. God chooses to use His people to spread the gospel.
So, fourth, prospective missionaries must recognize that God uses them to fulfill his purposes. As Paul teaches in vv.18-20, God, in His wisdom, appeals to the lost through believers. He entrusted the message of reconciliation—the gospel of Jesus Christ—to them to be ambassadors for Christ.
Last, the message missionaries bring is good news; they urge people to be reconciled to God because they can be in Christ, so there must be clarity on what the gospel is and what it isn’t. Paul ends this portion of his letter with a beautiful summary of what God did through Christ. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (v. 21)
The Role of the Local Church in the Missionary Call
While a biblically motivated desire to go is critical, it shouldn’t be the only consideration. That desire should be thoughtfully examined, advised, and confirmed by a missions-minded church where the candidate is well known [2].
Churches should send properly motivated and qualified missionaries. They must be the primary ones to teach and reinforce the biblical underpinnings of missionary work and not be persuaded by urgency or statistics that shortcut such biblical teaching. Missionaries are “sent ones”; in this sense, the Great Commission is given to churches. Churches should see themselves as responsible under God for those they send out.
In Acts 13:1-3, the church at Antioch laid their hands on Paul and Barnabas and sent them as missionaries. The church had several qualified leaders, but as they sought the Lord’s will, it became clear that these two men were the ones to go. Churches should consider if they are affirming and sending out people for missions who are biblically qualified, mature disciples, and gifted by the Holy Spirit for such ministry.
Missionaries affirmed and prepared well by their sending church form a partnership that protects them from deep discouragement. Together, the church and the missionary understand that God is faithful in his eternal purposes. They can withstand challenges, knowing God is unthwarted by difficult circumstances or impossible odds. When missionaries and their sending churches are convinced that Christ's authority underpins the Great Commission, they will depend on Him and His Word even when there is little fruit. And they rejoice together when they see the gospel go forth.
Conclusion
Individual Christians today speak of being 'called' to missions; sometimes, that’s seen as the only necessary confirmation that they should go. Once, a student told me she was “called” to go on a short-term mission to a nearby country. But after discovering that this trip was to a dangerous area and physically challenging, she informed me that she no longer felt “called.” Her reliance on subjective feelings wasn’t enough to sustain her (even to the point of getting on the plane) in the face of hardship.
Instead, Christians should focus on a biblical understanding of God’s heart for the lost and His plan to use His people to spread the gospel message to the ends of the earth. Missionaries confident that Christ's authority undergirds the Great Commission will depend on Him and His Word, not their desires and feelings. Prospective missionaries should seek affirmation from their church leadership regarding their suitability for service. The church’s responsibility is to determine a candidate’s qualifications and readiness to go. Those assessed, taught well, and sent out by their church are resilient against discouragement and difficult circumstances because they understand that God is always faithful and will accomplish all He has ordained.
Footnotes:
[1] Sam Emadi gave some excellent talks on God’s heart for the nations at CrossCon 21. You can listen to them at https://www.crosscon.com/speakers/sam-emadi
[2] For more on this see the GCC article “Who Makes a Good Prospective Missionary?”
