Missions Exists Because Worship Doesn’t

let the nations be gladWe have been having a lot of conversations around the office about our missions strategy as a church. Our church focuses on three environments: worship, community, and missions. Worship is how we live pleasing to God. Community is how we love other believers and build each other up. Mission is to seek and to save those that don’t have a relationship with Jesus.

Worship and community will still take place in heaven; missions will not. We will continue to live lives of worship to God once we die. We will still enjoy the benefit of our brothers and sisters in Christ in heaven. But there will be no missions in heaven.

That’s why we must focus on it so heavily now.

A great read that I picked up in college (and am rereading now) is John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad. Read the beginning of chapter 1:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.

Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God.

Good stuff. Pray for us. God is doing some pretty amazing stuff and giving us some pretty amazing opportunities.