What is a Missionary?

Fields of Workers

God’s Mission: Good News What is the mission? Teaching everything?
Good News to Share: Good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.
Messengers: Who is going? Who are the messengers? Sent ones.
Teamwork: How can they be sent?
The Sending Church: Local Church Missions
Career Missionaries: Church Planters, Mentors, & Support Team
Skilled Associates: Skilled workers lending practical assistance on the mission field.(6 months to 2 years)
Short-term Teams: Organized groups who work 2-6 weeks primarily on physical projects.
Volunteers: Helping days or months when able.

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This page is about Biblical missions from the perspective of mainstream historical Christianity. The thoughts on this page are intended to line up with concepts revealed in The Holy Bible as understood at face value with the normal, ordinary, common, historical meaning of words in the context of the whole of the books, chapters, paragraphs, sentences and cultural context of the audience to whom the words were originally written. While I have not quoted a lot of Scripture on this page, the links to other pages often lead to Biblical quotations.

Today are a lot of ideas about what a missionary is and isn’t. These may be based on assumptions, local cultural norms, and/or the various objectives of churches and organizations that have been labeled “missions.”

It is not my intention to address those, rather it is to show a particular perspective on missions and missionaries as viewed by an Ethnos360 missionary. (See Ethnos360 web pages for official positions. Where there are errors, they are mine.) My objective is to expand the team of individuals and churches who are establishing thriving churches among language groups of people who have not yet had an opportunity to hear of God’s saving grace. One way to help is to bring information closer to those who are looking to have a part in meeting the needs. Only those who know can go. This is about bringing the knowing and the going closer together.

God's Mission: Good News

A missionary is a person who is working to accomplish a mission. God’s mission. The Great Commission in particular. (Matthew 28:18-20) (and much of the rest of the Bible.)

So, what is God’s mission?

Ultimately, I believe that God’s mission is to draw every person into personal fellowship with Himself. He created each one of us to know Him, to love Him, to live with Him in His creation, to fellowship with Him, and reflect back to Him the glory of His character and His works while relating well to His creation and His people.

God does not want pre-programmed robots, but people who willing choose to believe Him and obey Him, embracing what is good.

The freedom to choose has resulted in all of us choosing less than perfect goodness.

We have all chosen things that are not good; in direct opposition to God’s goodness. Consequently, none of us are good enough to live in God’s presence. So God, in the person of Jesus Christ, provided a remedy to deal with our lack of goodness, our unrighteousness, our sin, and restore us to a right relationship of fellowship with Him. We receive the gift of eternal life by believing what God has said and done through Jesus Christ.

The Good News is that through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has provided a way for all people to be restored to the righteousness, the goodness, that His perfect goodness demands.

See more at – Bible Basis of Missions

Good News: Care to Share

Good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.

God has chosen to spread the Good News through those people who have received the Good News responding with such joy that they care to share the message with the people who have not yet heard it.

Sharing the Good News with people near where you live is easy enough. But what if they have already heard the Good News while there are people further away who have not yet heard the message?

How can someone leave their source of income, their job, to tell people in another place about Jesus?

More than that, the Great Commission that Jesus gave us requires that we go to all ethnic groups, preaching the Good News, baptizing, and teaching people “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”?

Teaching everything, as Jesus told us to do, is going to take an investment of time, energy, and resources. It’s going to require a commitment to life-on-life long term relationships until the task is completed. It’s going to take attention to what people, individuals, have and have not been taught so as to equip them.

How can one missionary person or family do that alone?

It’s going to take a team. The Body.

Messengers: Who is going?

Generally, a career missionary is a “sent one” or someone who is sent by believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to accomplish an objective in direct response to His mission for His church.

In our culture at the moment, there is a lot of confusion about who is and who is not a missionary.

My objective is simply to bring to light traditional, career missionaries who sacrificed their personal ambitions to proclaim Christ at great personal cost to make Christ known where He was unknown and to establish congregations of Christ-followers who are able to teach others all that Christ commanded.

For a time, missionaries were people who shipped their belongings overseas in coffins so that their co-workers would have the means to transport their bodies when it was time to return home.

This understanding of the cost and importance of the mission has been lost with the ease of travel and the loss of the Biblical purpose.

Today, a career cross-cultural missionary is someone who has been marked by his or her local church to represent the Body of Christ for the purpose of proclaiming the message of reconciliation to people who have not yet heard the Good News about the identity, purpose, work, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. A career cross-cultural church-planting missionary is someone who is working toward the objective of establishing a thriving church of people who are able to proclaim Christ to the world around them long after the missionaries are gone. These people often include not only the Bible teachers and translators who are active in discipleship, but the team of people who work alongside of them to take the logistical work of living off of their co-workers so that the thriving church can be established.

Is the God who gives you breath big enough to provide for you? Will you trust Him to provide to do what He has asked of you?

Missions FAQ

Teamwork: How can they be sent?

The Apostle Paul and Silas were already hard at work in their church when, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit told the church leaders to set them apart Barnabas and Saul “for the work whereunto I have called them.” (Acts 13:2)

The work they were already doing relates to the commission Jesus gave throughout the Bible, including Matthew 28:18-20;

“18And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

If a career missionary were to obey the Great Commission, teaching everything, that person would be essentially establishing churches. A Biblically qualified church would have the written word of God available to so that the believers could learn from the scriptures and apply the truths therein to their values, leadership, judgments, morality, and purpose. A Biblically qualified church leader would need to be appointed to lead that church. Who would appoint the indigenous leadership? A career missionary endeavors to share the Gospel and establish a thriving church of believers who have been taught the “all things” that Jesus commanded so that they are able to teach those things to others in obedience to the Commission. (2 Timothy 2:2, Ephesians 4:12ff) Until the time such leadership is recognized, the missionary would be the church leader, and thus would be required to meet the Biblical standards for church leadership.

With the objective in mind of establishing a thriving church in places where people have no access to the Gospel, it must be noted that the task is huge. God designed missionary work, especially in cross-cultural church planting, to be a Body function that requires a team. The more people and the more quickly a team engages, the more rapidly the Biblical objective can be accomplished.

What Jesus told His disciples to do (“teaching them to observe all things”) cannot be accomplished on a short visit overseas, so someone will have to stay on location long enough to complete the task. The teaching tasks can be eased by other people who stay long term to handle the tasks of living in difficult places such as finding food, paying bills, making funds accessible, maintaining buildings and vehicles, overseeing transportation, and managing personnel. Furthermore, the hard work of living in difficult places can sometimes be eased by short-term work teams who can accomplish major projects in a matter of weeks.

The Apostle Paul accomplished a lot in his lifetime, but it seems that he never worked alone. He had team mates working and traveling with him as well as people who brought supplies, delivered messages, and carried on work that he has started. To varying degrees he had the support of the churches who sent him and the churches he planted.

It is the same thing today. Not everyone is a Bible teacher or a church planter, but many people have very significant roles as team members in the mission; including send, supporting, and physically engaging in logistical work so that the work of establishing thriving churches can be accomplished.

More about Teamwork

The Sending Church: Local Church Missions

Mission starts in the local church. Reaching the world with the Good News about Jesus and equipping people to establish, lead, and guide local churches in another country, starts in a church locally. People come to faith in Christ through the outreach of the local community of believers. In that community is where people learn the value –

of God’s written word,
of the life of the Church,
of the identity of God,
of their own identity in Christ,
of other believers,
of the community of believers,
of discipleship, and
of Great Commission action.

The local community of believers is both the beginning and end goal of missions. Individual believers working together in community under local leadership, guided by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, working together to glorify God and make His name known to all people everywhere, is the start and finish of God’s word in this Church age. God is calling out people to become the Bride of Christ through those who have believed the message helping other people to hear, believe, and obey Him. See – The Purpose of the Local Church (Parts 1 & 2)

Set Apart – Commissioning missionaries – Ideally, a person would be evangelized by the local church, rooted in Christ, discipled, equipped for ministry, taught everything, and minister in the church before being recognized and set apart to represent and multiply the Church in a foreign setting. At the present time many churches in the western society are not “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” People are generally not coming out of local churches prepared to establish a thriving church in another country; especially by means of an unwritten language, in the context of a mysterious culture, without a Bible translation, through a type of discipleship that equips new believers to govern the church and reach into new communities. Sometimes people are sent from their local church who are not qualified to lead in their own churches, much less establish a thriving church somewhere else.

Not everyone who has a part in missions is equipped to establish thriving churches. However, everyone can use their gifts, talents, experience, and resources to contribute as part of the body to accomplish the objectives of Christ as the head. (1 Corinthians 12)

Acknowleding the needs and gifts in the western church, Ethnos360, as a sending agency respresenting many local churches, has developed training and roles that equip people and utilize the gifts of people who are eager to serve.

A missionary cannot teach what a missionary does not know. To help fill in the gaps, Ethnos360 has established schools such as Ethnos360 Bible Institute where local churches can send people to study every book in Bible in two years with an emphasis on missions and being practically equipped to serve.

More about Teamwork || More about Sending || Vision Casting || Send

Career missionaries: Church Planters, Mentors, & Support Team

One Goal, Many Hats – Career missionaries are people who have, by faith in God’s word, set aside other occupations to devote themselves full time to ministry. Most are supported through their friends, family, and supporting churches.

Particularly in reaching remote people groups with the Gospel, a lot of physical work is necessary. The goal is to establish thriving churches. To do requires living among the people you serve. That means getting there – travel logistics, finding supply routes, finding a place to live or building a house, bringing in equipment that enables your ministry (Bible translation, printing, etc.) but if your time is spent building houses, moving supplies, fixing equipment, repairing engines, teaching children, treating medical needs, or just getting to and from your ministry location (six days one way for some missionaries), then progress on the objective will be very slow. In this age we have many tools and resources that we not available to missions even a very short while ago, but even with all of the fancy tools, most are useless with out people who know how use them.

Missionary Church Planters – In western society, many churches require pastors to have extensive educational qualifications to lead the local body. In foreign missions, we are asking people to not only lead a church, but to establish a thriving church with Biblical leadership in a foreign country, where no Christians or local churches exist, across the boundary of an unwritten language, in the context of hidden culture, without a Bible available, through intensive personal discipleship, in a remote location. Ethnos360 career missionaries are required to spend two years learning how to do this from experienced missionaries. The more these people are equipped, qualified, and supported by their local church going into this training, the better they will be able to serve the local churches they intend to establish. Key components are a close walk with God, teachability, and a willingness or humility to learn from others. People are greatly needed who are willing to lay down their own lives to glorify God and proclaim His glory among language groups of people where Christ is not known. These people will generally need to be Biblically qualified for ministry and as deacons and elders in the places where they serve in those roles.

Missionary Mentor Roles – A most valuable resource to a young missionary is a missionary who has already done what a new missionary has set out to do. There are two ways to learn things: through the school of hard knocks, or from someone who has already been there. Experienced missionaries often face health or family needs that prevent ministry in the overseas context where they have served. They can greatly speed up and multiply the work of younger missionaries by passing on their knowledge and experience to the glory of God. While these people are often not as well recognized by their sending churches after they have returned from their field of service, they are usually where sending churches will get the most bang for their buck.

Support Missionaries – Support missionaries are career missionaries who lend their skills to take the workload off of the teaching teams. Establishing a thriving church in a place where there has been no Gospel witness usually includes an enormous and sustained effort; or what is known as plain old hard work. Missionaries still have to hike over rugged terrain, carve a place out of the jungle, build their own houses, maintain their own vehicles, set up their own electrical systems, manage their own water supply, repair their own generator engines, move their own drums of fuel, clear their own airstrips, carry their own supplies, sometimes grow their own food, and educate their own children. This is in addition to learning an unwritten language, provided medical services to other families, translating the Bible, giving technical assistance, building relationships, developing Bible lessons, developing literacy, printing reading materials, and discipling people toward establishing a Christ-centered, locally-led thriving church. Any member of the Body of Christ who can take some of that load off of a church-planting missionary speeds their work and hastens the day when a new church plant no longer needs a missionary to live among them. Pilots, mechanics, printers, teachers, electricians, handymen, accountants, automotive technicians, administrators, information technologists, supply buyers, shipping specialists, government representatives, and leaders all have very significant roles in establishing thriving churches among remote people groups.

Well Done

Skilled Associates

Skilled Associates are people who go overseas to lend their abilities to the career missionary team for six months to two years. They may not invest the time to learn the trade language of the country where they serve. Their skills will directly relieve a career missionary (who does speak one or more local languages) so that a missionary can devote time directly to his or her unique ministry. Associates receive three weeks of orientation before fulfilling a technical, physical, or teaching role to relieve or support the career missionary team. They usually work very closely with career missionaries. Are you a school teacher, mechanic, builder, electrician, builder, hospitality worker, or engineer? Whatever skills you have, it is likely that God has prepared some special place where your unique skills are needed. Are you willing?

Find Your Fit

Short-Term Teams

Short trips of teams of people can accomplish a lot of physical work in support of overwhelmed career missionaries. Even more, going overseas to assist career missionaries will give the participants an introduction to life in remote places, the needs of people in those places, and opportunities to see where their own skills and experience might be used to advance the work of the ministry. See more about Wayumi, Interface, Encounter, and Internships here.

Wayumi (why-you-me)

Volunteers

Volunteers have had a huge impact on church planting but primarily here in the home country. A large part of Ethnos360’s buildings have been built or maintained by volunteers. Some come in RV’s and stay for long periods of time, lending their skills in construction, hospitality, and maintenance, freeing experienced career missionaries to devote more attention to the teams they oversee. Some teams of automotive mechanics have arrived to repair or maintain the vehicles of the missionaries who are working to train new missionaries. Other teams have built completely new housing for missionaries or students. Some help with printing Bibles or using their professional expertise to meet a specific need.

Volunteer in the USA