This is part six of a series on how your church can develop a missions program.
We Need to Enlist Our Comrades in the Local Churches (Genesis 24:49)
Eleazar knew his mission was not a one-man show. Prosperous people learn to have a healthy dependence upon one another. Are you a cooperative person? Have you learned to delegate?
Every snowflake is unique. One snowflake cannot do much, but when enough snowflakes get together, they can stop traffic. Billions of them can stop an entire city! Think what we could do if we worked together! At the Billion Soul Network, we have powerful resources to help you fulfill the Great Commission because we believe when God calls us to a task that is bigger than ourselves, He brings around us those people who can help accomplish the task together.
Keep before your congregation the sowing, saving and sending goals established for the church. Consider every six months taking time to reflect and recommit to the missions program. Many churches set missions pledges in January and July, or in fall and spring, each year. When someone leads another person to Christ, give a soul-winning gift or allow him or her to testify during the main worship service. Celebrate what heaven celebrates!
Create a “Sending Sunday” when you challenge young and old to answer the call into full-time ministry. Give your people the opportunity to answer God’s call on their lives. Imagine 10 percent of your local church going into full-time ministry each year for ten years! Developing a compelling missions program is more than just raising money. It is raising pastors, preachers and planters who will go where the gospel has never been.
One of the most compelling missions programs in the world is at the World Harvest Centre in Suva, Fiji. Pastor Suliasi Kurulo, founding pastor and Billion Soul co-chair: Oceania/Unreached People, envisioned a missions-sending church. In the last eleven years, they have sent missionaries who have planted more than 1,200 churches in more than 100 nations. Let us pray that the Lord raises up 10,000 such churches in America! Could you imagine a world in which just 10,000 churches planted 1,000 churches each in the next ten years? Let us prayer that your church becomes one!
In March 2009, I spoke with Richard Devos, founder of the Amway Corporation, about the Great Commission. I asked for his thoughts regarding the current economic challenges. He said, “When we began Amway fifty years ago, it was in a most difficult economic climate. We may not like the season we are in, but it is the only season we have. As Christians, we are called to do all we can, with the resources we have, to finish the Great Commission.”
How do we develop a compelling missions program? We will be successful when we establish our cause, examine our conditions, encourage our confidence, enforce our character and enlist our comrades.
James O. Davis
Founder of the Billion Soul Foundation
© 2009 Church of God World Missions