Churches with an effective mission strategy have pastors who not only cast vision but who are personally involved in the activities of the mission of the church. In this session, we will not share a specific model but rather biblical principles that any pastor of any church of any size can adapt to their context.
Audio from Impact Conference 2019
Hindrances
What are the major hindrances to pastors mobilizing their congregations for the mission?
- Complacency – Missions will always take a backseat if the fate of eternal souls doesn’t bother you.
- Ambiguity – Some churches never get behind a missions strategy because it is never clearly and regularly communicated.
- Inconsistency – Your church will have a difficult time following your lead if you are constantly changing directions.
- Imbalance – A failure to encourage a thorough
missions strategy could immobilize spiritually gifted members with a passionate yet directionless willingness. - Busyness – It will be difficult to prioritize outsiders if all of your time is busily spent pacifying insiders.
- Disregard – If you fail to address secondary issues, you will neglect your primary purposes.
Habits
What are the essential habits of a pastor mobilizing a church?
- Consistent Missional Preaching – If the mission is only highlighted as an occasional sermon series, it will never become a passionate lifestyle for a congregation.
- Intentional Missional Partnerships – Champion both local and global missions by developing a thorough Acts 1:8 strategy.
- Organized Missional Catalysts – It is rare to find a disciple who lives on mission at an organic level without having initial exposure on an organizational level.
- Compassionate Missional Shepherding – If a church neglects their missionaries after they are commissioned, they dramatically increase their chances of failure.
- Personal Missional Lifestyles – A church will rarely surpass the example of their pastor.
Helps
What are some practical ways to help your church take the next step?
- Pray – We show our church what we prioritize by what we take time to pray for.
- Testify – Every missionary agreed to go because of someone who already went.
- Highlight – Be relentless in your attempts to highlight where your church is getting it.
- Organize – Some people will never go because we fail to provide adequate direction.
- Delegate – Don’t limit your missions strategy to your organizational abilities.
- Escalate – Embrace the process of discipleship by creating longer on-ramps to mission work.
- Assemble – If you make the assembly of a mission team more daunting than Jesus did, you might be over-spiritualizing the process.
- Go – The most missionary churches are those with pastors taking the lead as they run towards the nations.
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
