Latest / Harvest After Sunday / "Go" to the Nations: Digging Deeper
Transcript
- Harvest Media: Harvest After Sunday podcast. I'm Natalie and I'm your host and I'm here with Stefan Wilson, pastor of preaching and teaching. And today we're digging deeper into Sunday's sermon about going to the nations. And hopefully if people are tuned in, they're here to stay. But I just want to say, like, keep listening. Don't count yourself out. Again, I want to reiterate this is not just for people that are ready to book an international mission trip. Go I mean, we we're reiterating this week after week, and hopefully at this point in our sermon series, People are understanding that it's not just this ministry spotlight. Hey, there's gonna be opportunities to sign up and go. this is a part of our DNA, not only as a church, but as believers. and we've talked about that. That being ransomed by Christ in our salvation means we are repurposed for God's mission. And so understanding God's mission so that we have mission mindset and that motivates how we live in a really holistic way is what we are talking about in this series. So I just wanna again like people again like I admitted before that are like me and have had this tendency to think of mission trips, mission opportunities and already make decisions about their participation to listen and let your mind be renewed by God. Mission that we can be participating in. and in order to participate, we have to have a compelling vision. I loved that. I mean, you went all over scripture this week, and I loved it. because I need to be reminded that God has been at work accomplishing his mission from the beginning of time, and it is the same that it was and it will be accomplished. And I need to think about how I'm going to participate in it instead of thinking of reasons to count myself out. And so I think let's talk about that in even more practical ways because there are people that for whatever reason they don't feel called or their life literally prohibits it. They're not going to go physically to the nations. So I want to talk about how people can think about how they can participate. Participate and partner in God's mission and how they can practically do it. Yeah. And I I think that when we are talking about missions as a church, the the wrong conclusion for a a church member to draw is that means I've got to get on a plane and go. because one, that's a specific call to a specific action. Two, to be called to the mission does not necessarily require that we're all called to the same thing in the mission. I mean, if we think about wartime, a wartime mentality for a nation Not everybody goes overseas. Not everybody goes to where the war is happening and fights. And even ev people who go to where the war is happening, they're not all fighting. They're supporting, they're doing logistics, they are doing care, like like a medic or the the you know Hospital back at the base, they're back home. You have people who are they're they're not spending on things that they don't need, they're rationing their food so that resources are more available. Companies that were that were making products and services for consumers have now shifted their production to things that are needed for the war effort. Like as we kind of think about that kind of mindset, you see that accomplishing the large mission. requires all kinds of different efforts, some of which are on the front lines, some of which are far in the background, all of which are important. Mm-hmm. And Paul makes very clear in Ephesians six that we're at war. We're not at war against other nations. We're not at war against other people. We are at war in a way where we are fighting not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces. Mm-hmm And so what does it look like then as the church to have a wartime mentality? Yeah. It looks like us prioritizing the mission and just finding our place, whether it's on the front lines, in the background, supporting, actively engaging. The the parallels are are numerous. Yeah, and we also have the the body analogy in in effusions as well, like parts of the body. And so it's not all gonna look exactly the same. We have different functions, but we're tis participating in one thing. Right. So I think the first place to start is not to say, well, that necessarily means I've got to get on a plane. It's to say that necessarily means I've got to do something. And so then we can say, okay, so what are the things that need to be done? Prayer needs to be happening. financial support of those who are on the front lines needs to be happening. pastoral care for People on the front lines needs to be happening. when when you have missionaries who come back for a season opening up your home, providing meals, like those are that's all a part of it. And not even globally, but if you think about it, we I I regardless of what your opinion about immigration law and immigration reform are, something that we cannot deny is that because people immigrate to this country, the nations come to us. That's a huge opportunity for the gospel that the nations are here. And when we recognize that they are here, I actually to reach the nations, I don't necessarily have to go to the other side of the world. I can go two blocks over where there's a small community of refugees which we have in this area. Yeah. That we can intentionally care for them, bring them the gospel, point them to Christ. That some who have immigrated and are going to go back at some point or they're gonna end up in a different country somewhere around. The world now they're able to take the gospel with them to those people groups that they come from, so we're to where their own national ethnic people group is able to hear the gospel. Like we start thinking about it that way. Totally. I even think of colleges and universities, which brings people and partnering with our ministry partners at GCU and being able to join the text thread for the month and get reminders of daily prayer. But talk about people coming internationally, I mean call. Colleges and universities are another opportunity that does bring people into our communities and where the gospel is being shared. I think that ASU has fifteen thousand international students this year. Right here in our city. Fifteen thousand people from all over the world who you don't have to go somewhere else. Like right here in our city you're able to participate in the mission of reaching the nations because the nations came to us. Now, does that mean that we can be ignored ignore the global mission. No, because there are people who can't come here. There are people groups that are w mostly closed off to the rest of the world. Well they have how can they believe if they haven't heard? They have to be reached. So it's not an either or, it's a both and but given that we can see the variety of opportunities in front of us, I don't have to get kind of overwhelmed at the scope and in so doing say, well then I I'm just gonna sit on the sidelines. I can say, well what what can I do? If you're eighty-five years old, you're probably not gonna go to the Amazon. But what you can certainly do is say, because we're my place in life, because of of what I am able to do and not able to do, here is a tangible way that I can participate in the mission. I can pray for GCU with this this initiative that we have with them. Mm-hmm. I can pray for the leaders of our church to identify more opportunities for missions and reaching the nations around the world. If I have the means I can support ministry partners who are going to other places in the world, but I can also just see my own immediate sphere as an opportunity. Even even if it's you have grandchildren and great grandchildren that you can teach about the mission of God so that they can grow up having a passion for that that grandma or grandpa instilled in them. That's all a part of it. That's so good. I mean these practical examples are so good because I it is a compelling vision that motivates us to participate in God's mission. But the farther removed we get, it does feel less compelling. Like that vision. So I pulling these practical things down to our reality and saying, don't count yourself out just because you're not going to be going on an international mission trip. The nations are coming here. You're preparing the generations to go to the nations. And I think these practical examples are helpful for us all as listeners and you know in our church family. to reflect and connect and say how Am I participating in the mission? And so let's flesh out some more ways that people can think about global mission like opportunities and kind of break down into different components that large scope of national missions. Yeah, 'cause it can feel global. That's about as big as it gets when it comes to any human enterprise. and so that can feel really overwhelming. And it isn't our job as a church to do it all. Lord has not called Harvest Bible Church to singularly finish the mission so he can return. He has called us as local assembly of his people to be faithful to the broader mission that all churches are supposed to be faithful to. So what how can we think about the scope of the mission that we can then be strategic as a church in how we intentionally pursue it? And there are four categories of groups of people that the mission the the mission to the nations should should prioritize. We shouldn't neglect any of the four. And the first one is the the unreached. So unreached it means that there are either very few or no known believers in that particular people group. And are there still people groups that are completely unreach that's a little hard to believe in twenty twenty six where I feel like we've mapped the entire earth and Yeah. So it depends on one how you I d how you define people group. Okay. And then whose research you're basing it off of. there are a few different organizations that do research in this area. Yeah. And so if if you define people group, which I think is I think the way we should define it based on the Greek word ethne, which is what is translated as nations, that word means a unique people group with their own language and identity. So you think about that, like most countries have many people groups because there are different dialects, there are different there are things that make them distinct where they don't overlap with one another. There are anywhere from again, depending on who you who you're looking at, anywhere from thirty five hundred to about six thousand unreached people groups in the world. Hmm. Wow. Yeah. That's why we can't define it as like countries with borders. Because then it's then it's like two hundred and thirty. But but no, in terms of unreached people groups, you think about tribes in sub Saharan Africa or in the Amazon or areas in Indonesia where you have all these islands that though they're a part of a single country and though they share similarities in language and culture and their religion is predominantly Islam, like the the people groups across those islands are wildly different. When you start looking at countries like China where yeah you have a wide variety of people groups there even places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, like you have different different subsets of groups within those countries. It starts to it actually starts to make sense that there could be that many people groups in the world that are unreached because a tribe, a small tribe in the Amazon that's fifty miles from another small tribe, those are two different people groups. And how big is the Amazon? It's huge. So as we as you start kind of looking at it that way, you kinda go, there there actually are a lot that we haven't reached because there's no way to reach them without a plane or a boat going up the river. Yeah. Yeah. Again, hard to in our cultural context here in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Arizona, it's like with the internet and transportation and all the things, it's it's hard to imagine. But an unreached meaning truly have not heard the gospel. Have not heard the gospel. And and we we couch in that less than two percent our believers within unreached because we would say either they have never heard the gospel or even if they have heard the gospel, there are so few believers that that th they w it would be almost impossible for them to to be able to know that there were other believers around them. Like there's Perhaps you had a pioneer missionary who went into this place and one person believed. Wow. And that's all we have record of. And so we what we ha What if that person passed away? What if, you know, is the mission continuing in that area? So they kind of get lumped in with the unreached because it's like effectively we don't really know how reached that people group is. And while you could certainly say, we can check off the box, we reach them because one person believed, that's not the mission. The mission isn't do the bare minimum just to get the boxes checked. Yeah. The mission is multiply worship because God is worthy and so as many as possible. Absolutely. Let them believe. believe. So when you have unreached groups, the the way that we seek to advance the mission is we have to send people. We have to send people. I mean that's Romans ten. How will they believe if they have not heard? How will they hear unless someone is sent? So We ha that's where your pioneer mission movements come from. That was in the late seventeen hundreds and into the eighteen hundreds. You had the pioneer missionary movement that was largely birthed out of Baptist churches. William Carey was a pioneer missionary to Burma. Hudson Taylor was a pioneer missionary to inland China. People had gone to to the coast of China with the gospel. He went into like inland China, became like them in every way that he could, lived among them in order to to see them converted. When we think about missionaries, that's a lot of times what we think. Mm-hmm. But that can't be the end that can't be the primary means by which we reach the unreached, lest two two errors happen. One, we make missions a western effort that the rest of the world benefits from. As if, The West figured it out and now it's our job to take it everywhere else when it's the global church's job to take it everywhere. It's not it's not that that you know Africa receives the mission, but they don't need to participate in the mission. and if we if we make the pioneer missionary movement our primary way of doing the mission, we'll end up treating it that way. But then the the other piece is there are cultural, language, visible, physical Differences when you are not a part of a culture that just makes it very difficult to advance the gospel in that area. gotta learn a language, you gotta change how you dress, you gotta learn the customs, you gotta gain their trust. Mm-hmm. So while that isn't sometimes necessary, I've gotta as as this Caucasian person, I've gotta go into a place where nobody looks like me. Yeah. And it'll take a long time for someone to convert. What we want to get to is that the the the we c what we call them in missions is the the national believer. The one who is from there. Is equipped to be the one now to share the gospel. And we can partner with those people. Right. So the way that we the way that we participate in that as a church is one, we pray and ask the Lord where is the harvest needed? Two, we send people into the harvest. Three, we pray for the ones who are sent. That they would that their ministry would bear fruit and that they would identify local national believers and then we partner with that local national believer to see the gospel advance. And we all then do that as a church through how we pray, through how we give, through making sure that the needs of those who have boots on the ground are met, through celebrating the news that we hear. That's all part of of that mission. but if I haven't caught the vision for the mission, then I won't prioritize the unreached. I'll just say, well somebody else will take care of that. Yeah. And we can't do that. We have to prioritize it. So that's that's number one. number two, the second category are the ungathered. So you have unreached. Reached our no one's heard the gospel. Yeah. We don't really know if anybody there is a believer. The ungathered are we know that there are believers, but there's nothing there there's no church in their area for them to gather together in. I mean, there maybe there's a few that are gathering in this village, but in the surrounding villages that are a day's walk away. There's nothing that's bringing all of them together and now I just I just said something that just made me kind of chuckle in my mind. I just said that are a day's walk away. Mm and you know, we c we complain if a church is more than twenty minutes away. Totally. Drive, yeah. I was talking with someone a few days ago who he's he does missions work in Nepal and he's in Nepal regularly and he was telling me about how people will walk four days to get to a church because they're the only believer in their village and they'll walk for two days to get to the place where Christians are gathering, which means they have to walk two days back. So they've committed four days of their week just to being able to be with God's people. That's incredible, especially coming off of our episode on being united in community and the importance of being a part of a body of believers. Right. These are people that get it. And how I mean I don't I don't want to like to To beat this too hard, but like what an indictment against American Christianity sometimes. Of like, you know, man, I'm kind of tired. I elongate work. I don't want to go to small group. Totally. We talked about the excuses, what keeps people away. And you know, there are some real legitimate challenges, but yeah, to be comparing it to people that are willing to walk days to be in the presence of other believers is a real perspective shifting thought. And if not nothing else it should motivate us like, yeah, that's what it looks like. I will stop at nothing to be with God's people. That's what it looks like. So let's And then motivate us to how can we participate with these ungathered believers Making a way for them with resources. And I mean what kinds of things can you do? Like what how would you partner with a ministry to help ungathered believers? So if with unreached the action is to send, mm-hmm, with the ungathered the action is to plant. Okay. To plant a church. So it's not gonna look like church here. if you think if we're talking about Nepal, planting a church means identifying a a believer in that country who is who Can be matured in their faith so that he can lead a gathering of believers, and that gathering of believers will be very small. But what needs to happen is there needs to be a church, an assembly of believers that is led by qualified men. That's what the New Testament prescribes. So we have to first identify who are qualified men. If there are none, we need to invest in training up the these few men in this area so that they can be qualified, so that they can then gather the believers in their region, so that they can have a church where they are gathered together and all of the things that are supposed to happen when we gather are able to happen for them. I I somewhat regularly, do a Zoom call with a bunch of pastors from India and Nepal and Bangladesh and just the surrounding countries and they are all pastoring their own churches and they're very small churches. Then what they're doing is they are taking what I teach them or anybody else who's teaching in that training on a given week. Whatever is taught, they then take it and they teach it to someone in their own language. So I'm teaching them in English, then they're taking it and teaching it in Tamil or in Hindi or whatever language they're going to be speaking. And it's meant to be to replicate out so that there can be more and more qualified men who can lead churches that that gather the believers that are presently ungathered because they're in a in a relatively unreached part of the world. So the question then for us is okay, so then like how do we how do we partner in that as a church and you know it's gonna it's gonna sound kind of repetitive but we pray we pray for those leaders that we know of we pray if the Lord has put on our hearts to seek to advance the gospel in a particular part of the world and there are no church there are no churches in that area, like there are believers but there aren't very many and there aren't gathered Lord raise up a leader. Yeah help us to to identify that leader. Let us invest in that leader whatever is needed so that he can be a qualified shepherd of your people who can gather your people together and be a church. We can give to organizations that do this. Training Leaders International is a great organization that trains up local pastors in the majority world. five percent of pastors globally have received any training whatsoever. And of those five percent, the average training they've received is one hour. Wow. So there's a need. there are organizations that do that. Yeah. And we can give to them. We c we can say, I see what you're using the gifts for. Mm-hmm. It's to advance the mission through the training of leaders. I'm gonna give to you. That's awesome. Because I want to see that advanced. Yeah. but then even like I I hope, I pray, I I am mindful of That the Lord would identify a place in the world that we presently are not working, that He would raise up a leader in that country that we could then bring here for six months or a year, and he and if he has a family, he and his family could be here and could be trained, could be built up, could be supported, then we could send them back home ready to be able to advance. the mission in that country. I I spent I spent time in Turkey as I was a quote unquote English teacher because you can't be a missionary in Turkey. and and Turkey is the least percentage wise it is the least Christian nation in the world. Wow. There are Christians there, but because of the population the number of Christians makes it per s in percentage wise the least Christian nation in the world. But Turkey is the crossroads of the Muslim world. They share v similarities with a lot of other language groups in the Muslim world. And because it's the most western of all of the Muslim countries, people from other Muslim nations will come to Turkey, especially like right now, lots of Iranians have come to Turkey. you'll have lots of lots of people who are fleeing things that are happening in places like Afghanistan and Iran to come there. Yet there's a gateway into Europe and into Africa from Turkey. Well that's a place where people aren't gathered. But Where people being gathered will reach the nations because those people are gonna go out from Turkey back to their homes with the gospel if if we will make it a priority. So that's the second one. And then the third and fourth ones are more church-oriented, so you have under-discipled. Okay. So you've got unreached, ungathered, under discipled. These are churches that are gathering, but there isn't strength of of maturity. There isn't strength of of Helping them to grow up in the faith. Because the leaders themselves are are relatively immature themselves. And untrained as we heard before. So if you think about it, I mean just that that statistic I gave you, about five percent, none of those five percent the average is an hour. Well, how equipped are they to be able to train their people? And so pouring into those churches to provide them the training, that's where like the thing that we do with India and training leaders international, like those that is a very obvious inroads there. But we should have some kind of mind toward we want to see churches matured, not just churches planted. Want to see the unreached reached. We want to see the ungathered in churches. We want to see churches matured. And then the fourth is we want to see mature churches sending. So if there are mature churches in sub-Saharan Africa who have Are in let's say Uganda and there are tribes in Uganda that are unreached, that we would see mature churches in Uganda send someone, that they would partner together to send someone to the unreached in their region. And now missions isn't a Western endeavor, it's a global endeavor. As the global church is is grown by the unreached being reached, the ungathered being gathered, the under discipled being matured, and the unmobilized churches partnering together so that they can then start the process all over again in their part of the world. And while that thirty five hundred to six thousand unreached people groups, that's a massive number if we're the only ones trying to reach Mm-hmm. But if if those people groups that have been reached partner together to reach the people around them, it will not take very long to reach all the nations. Yeah. If people have been around at Harvest for a while and been listening, I hope they can be connecting the dots that each of those kind of categories, the unreached, the ungathered, and just the need to be matured and and then planting more churches, going, they can hear that Harvest has connections to each of those groups in the ministries that we partner with here. locally, internationally, like you said, involved in training other pastors. We we have opportunities for our people. You guys as staff and leaders have identified these organizations and these opportunities. They can go on trips and we do have trips, but there are ways that you're constantly putting in front of us that we can engage in giving in praying and in participating. And so there is a way for every single One of us to be participating in God's mission. And I think that's a great reflection question for people this week. And am I participating? How am I participating? Or should I be? is this my vision that God alone is worthy? I loved that second point in the emphasis in the sermon that God alone is worthy. And I think that as we are considering our lives, or other people might be looking at our lives and saying, Why would you give a percentage of your income to the church? Because God alone is worthy. Why would you take your vacation time and use it to go on an international mission trip where you're gonna be exhausted and maybe sick and you know, because God alone is worthy. And also that Christ only Christ can save. only Christ is hope for salvation. And if that is our belief, then that is what solidifies. Our vision for life and our participation in the mission of God because we will care for. people coming to know Christ because we understand that in Christ alone is their hope and that nothing else is sufficient for our salvation. And so I hope people are challenged and motivated but also encouraged that Harvest is such a healthy body of believers who you guys have already identified for us as leaders ways that we can participate in God's mission in many, many ways. ways and that we would see more people joining in in prayer, in giving, and going, and that people could look at the lives of believers at Harvest Bible Church and say, those are go people. They are on God's mission, and they want God's worthiness to be on full display. Yeah. Yeah. I if if we are truly a church that is faithful to God's mission, then that should be the outcome. Yeah. And and it will be a litmus test for us just how faithful to the mission we are, if people notice. Like if if if people aren't saying harvest is all about the mission of God, then then maybe we're not as obviously about it as we think. but what I have loved, even over these last four weeks, is the the response of our church to praying for g for GCU to our ministry partners in Guatemala and India and Moldova to the prospect of other ministry partners in the future. to the need to be mindful of the mission in my own life with in my own sphere of influence. Like the response that I have heard from people in the church has been so overwhelmingly excited, positive, ready, hungry, like know, we're there. Yeah. We're we're there. Let's so now now let's plow the field. Yeah. Let's put in the work knowing that it will be worth it. That's so awesome. Thank you for joining us for the Harvest After Sunday podcast where we help you grow into the image of Christ by applying the truths of his word for his mission. We'll see you Sunday.