Your Church Is Not Your Team

If you want to be biblical in your approach to missions, you must be church-centered. But you also must have biblical expectations for what church-centered means.

Over time, I’ve noticed some friends who say they’re church-centered in their missions approach aren’t operating according to the biblical expectations of a church. They’ve taken their expectations of how a missionary team should function and imposed those on the church. These folks have adopted the slogan without internalizing how the Lord uses the local church to advance the gospel. Instead, they expect the church to be able to provide the strategic focus and concerted effort of a missionary team.

I’ve had missionaries who wanted me, their local church pastor on the field, to set their agenda for how they spend their time during the workweek. I’ve seen missionaries measure other members’ church commitment by how much time those members spend in ministries the missionaries have initiated.

Don’t get me wrong — I want every member equipped and ministering. I want missionaries who understand that the local church is not only the end but also the means of missions. I want missionaries who value the local church in their own lives as a part of how they are faithful to the Lord’s calling. But I want those things on the Bible’s terms.

Unmet expectations are the mother of frustrations. And frustrations over unarticulated expectations are how a movement dies when it should pass on to the next generation. If we don’t speak to this with clarity, tomorrow we will find our rising missionaries turning back to the same foolish, pragmatic practices we are trying to warn against today.

The church’s witness is its unity, not its activity.

Many zealous evangelists are impatient with questions of church polity. They see those discussions as distractions from the main thing. And they’re right that a church giving attention to its internal ordering will not have as much attention for reaching the lost around it. But an internally disordered church will have no attention for the lost and, simultaneously, undermine the gospel in its division. For faithful Christians, there is no option for ignoring our life together.

But be encouraged! The internal life of the church is not a hindrance to evangelism. Ephesians 3 contains that wonderful picture of the evangelistic power of the church. It’s a compelling community because the church puts on display the manifold wisdom of God (Eph 3:10). The same Jesus who gave the Great Commission instituted the local church to carry it out. His means will not undermine his end. The difficult work of living out our unity as those bought by the blood of Christ is so difficult, it requires the Holy Spirit, and it astounds heavenly beings. When we devote ourselves to this work, we present a powerful corporate witness to the truth of the gospel.

But take notice. It is not the activity of the church that displays the manifold wisdom of God to the heavenly beings. It is the mystery that through faith in Jesus Christ, Jew and Gentile are united into the one body. It is the unity birthed by the gospel that displays the power of the gospel (Eph 3:1-10).

The unity of the church is our most effective gospel witness. That’s not to say that we can focus on unity and neglect evangelism. It is to say that the blessedness of brethren living in peace with one another is what most powerfully confirms the truth of the gospel we preach.

Church members can be faithful and not productive.

Practically, this leads to a fundamental difference between church members and a missions team. A team is organized around their chosen activity. It’s not only permissible, it’s prudent for a team to remove a member who can’t keep up. An individual grappling with health issues, sin struggles, or family responsibilities that are hindering his ability to contribute may be asked to step down from a missions team. I’m not saying he must. I’m saying that might be a good and wise step.

But can you imagine anything more abhorrent than a church asking someone to resign his membership because he’s too sick, is struggling too much with discouragement, or has too dysfunctional a family to keep volunteering in a particular ministry? What kind of gospel would that preach? The church is the assembly of the redeemed, especially including the weak, the wounded, the discouraged, and the downcast.

A team, even a ministry team, is focused on accomplishing tangible goals. A good team will hold you accountable with questions such as, “How often are you having spiritual conversations?” or, “Have you reached your language acquisition goals?” Not only will a good team ask those questions, but you can be legitimately disqualified from the team if you can’t achieve those goals.

 A good church will never discipline someone for those kinds of shortcomings. That’s not what we’re here for.

Church leadership is shepherding, not coaching.

The Bible uses the term pastor or shepherd to describe the work of church elders. The job isn’t to get the sheep to work. The job is to care for the sheep. That involves teaching them to obey all Christ has commanded, including evangelism. But the goal is their spiritual well-being, not participation in all the elders’ plans.

I’m not condemning a pastor who might occasionally refer to the congregation as a team. I understand what he’s trying to communicate. But just like a father who calls his family a team, he’d better understand the difference when one of the team members breaks his leg. The members of a congregation must know they aren’t accepted by their leaders based on how well they’re able to effectively implement the coaching.

Church-centered missionaries, whether serving as pastors or coming alongside existing leadership, have great ambitions for how a church might be used for the Lord. But reality interrupts. You can’t launch that evangelistic training because a discipline case takes up the leadership’s time for a year. You can’t get many members to come to your outreach effort because three families are sick, another member’s dad dies, and a fifth member is in a faith crisis. You must remember what a church is so that you don’t treat your fellow Christians as obstacles in such moments. The church belongs to Jesus and is being built up into maturity by Jesus. It doesn’t work for you; you serve it.

A missionary who encourages the church rather than berating it shows he knows what matters most. Sometimes the sheep move more slowly than you hoped. When you must slow down to help them start to move in the right direction, that’s not a hindrance to the work. That’s the job.

Conclusion

As I write this, my family and I are packing up our home. After 10 years on the field, health and other circumstances have made it clear that we need to depart. We’re leaving, yet the work is by no means finished. More than any other time in my life, I have felt tempted to indulge in if-onlys. If only I had been more proactive in meeting new people. If only this brother had actively pursued eldership sooner. If only my family hadn’t suffered in this way. If only this partner in ministry hadn’t left. If only, if only, if only.

Such fantasies fall into the same basic human presumption that I know better than God.Missionaries full of ambition for the kingdom should remember this warning from Puritan Stephen Charnock: “Do not presume to lead God, but be led by him. It is our safety to follow him; it is our sin and danger to presume to be his directors.”¹

When the Lord fills our hearts with a longing to see his churches full, when we feel compassion for the lost in their suffering, and when our hearts break over the stubborn, we all want to do something. And that’s when we most need to believe that God’s ordained means are better than our schemes. Church-centered cannot simply be a slogan. We must be committed to living as though Jesus’ plans are better than ours. Otherwise, we will become a new version of pragmatists, cloaking our own agendas in pious language.

1. Stephen Charnock, A Treatise on Divine Providence (Monergism Books, 2020), 199, PDF.