Is it realistic to expect busy churches to focus beyond their local areas? Rupert Shelley, Director of Mission Partnerships, discusses the surprising impact of engaging globally on your church.
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. Revelation 7:9-10
Compared with the present-day enmity and disharmony that the nations of our world currently experience, John’s beautiful vision of that certain future day when all people groups are assembled is breath-taking. His vision is truly one of the United Nations. Yet while we echo a loud ‘Amen’ to the great multitude declaring ‘salvation belongs to our God’, we may subconsciously find ourselves thinking ‘as salvation is all of God for all the world, I need only concern myself with what I (and my church) do locally.’
But if local churches are to be healthy biblical churches, they need a truly global vision – because that is the heart of God and where his world is heading. We need a way of regularly understanding ourselves to be part of God’s purpose in fulfilling his promise of ‘bringing unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ’ (Ephesians 1:10), or we are only half the followers Christ calls us to be.
Rarely is the metric for the health of the local church how engaged they are in world missions. Usually it’s how faithful and effective the Bible teaching is, or how many ministries are running. Yet Charles Perry, the first Bishop of Melbourne, said in 1851 that ‘the best means of ensuring
the health of the local church is a vital commitment to world missions’1. Read that sentence again! World missions and global gospel engagement can never be detached from a church’s faithfulness to the Bible. Wherever we cut into the Bible, and therefore into the heart of God, we see his desire is for the nations – not just our neighbours.
Data is emerging that fewer men and women are going into full time gospel ministry in the UK. There are many reasons for this: across Great Britain and Ireland, church attendance is declining; churches are contending against liberal denominations; local needs are overwhelming; the already overstretched resources of people, prayer and pounds are feeling squeezed. If we are honest, it can feel a bit of a ‘risk’ for church leaders to push global engagement. Consequently, the numbers of men and women wanting to serve in full time gospel ministry are not only down for the UK, but also for cross-cultural overseas mission.
But if we don’t lift our eyes to see what God is doing in the regions beyond, and see the needs and opportunities there, we risk not only being sub-biblical but our churches being far from healthy.
‘But’, you might say… ‘the nations are coming to us! Just live in an urban area and you need only walk across the street to engage cross culturally.’
Yes, changes in modern migration patterns do mean many nations are coming to the UK (and provide huge opportunities for our local churches). But there are still so many (approximately 40% of the planet’s population2) who are currently in unreached people groups. They cannot or will not come to us; we must go to them.
Our experience at Crosslinks is that when churches engage globally, they are blessed locally. The healthiest churches are those who are obedient to the word of God as they reflect the heart of God and live out the Great Commission. And far from harming local evangelism, we’ve seen that global engagement has a stimulatory effect on local engagement. For example, hearing about the evangelism cross-cultural mission partners are doing is always an encouragement and often a spur for us to keep going with the evangelism in our local contexts.
Our prayer is that as you engage globally with mission – and please do get in touch if you’d like help thinking through what that might look like in your context – you will therefore be blessed locally in your ministry.
God’s heart is for both the nations and our neighbours. We are praying yours is too.
1 https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/redeeming-babel
2 The Joshua Project
By Rupert Shelley, Director of Mission Partnerships