All Send, Some Go
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
That. You know, it's a good set when chunks of drumsticks are flying around. I don't know if any of y'all caught that or not. I think there's a small piece of drumstick in the baptismal back there. I know what you're thinking. Who is this guy?
My name is Raz. If you've been around here for a while, I'm the hidden pastor who doesn't come up and speak here very often. Despite the fact that I spend the least amount of time speaking from this stage this morning, I am easily, easily, like worlds apart, the most qualified of our four pastors to speak. The topic is missions, particularly overseas mission, and I am an overseas missionary. I was sent as a missionary to the long lost nation across the Pacific, the United States of America, a decade ago. And for the last 10 painstaking blood, sweat, and tearsy years, I have labored for the kingdom.
History books have not yet been written that will include the name of Raz Bradley and his missionary conquest of the United States of America. If you haven't heard me speak before, yeah, it's always like this. When I first moved to the States, I moved straight here. I moved to Columbia. I went to CIU for grad school. And one of the first things that struck me as I was touring, I guess, the city, one of my friends took me for a tour downtown, was the overwhelming number of churches, church buildings specifically.
And I remember standing in downtown Columbia, and I was on the corner of, I don't know which streets they are, and I could see eight different churches from one corner. And some of them I'm giving myself credit for with like a steeple over there. But I could see the existence, the presence of eight churches from one corner. In downtown Columbia, there is two Lutheran churches that are separated by one block. They had enough people in that Lutheran church to start a second one a block away at some point. But the fact is, there is more churches than houses in downtown Columbia.
The very building that we're in was formerly known as First Baptist Church of Casey. If you go this way for about a mile, you'll hit a church called First Baptist Church of West Columbia. And in order to get there, you have to get on State Street. But while you're driving from First Baptist Church Casey to First Baptist Church West Columbia, you will pass on State Street, State Street Baptist Church. That's three churches, three Baptist churches on a one mile strip of State Street. Well, I'm giving us credit.
We're a block off. If you go out these back doors, you'll be on a street that goes this way called Holland Avenue. If you take Holland Avenue that direction for about a mile, or you'll take Holland Avenue for about half a mile, and you'll take 12th Street for about half a mile, you'll come to another Baptist Church. This Baptist Church is called Holland Avenue Baptist Church, which is curious, seeing as we're on Holland Avenue and they're on 12th Street. Go figure. The point is, on a world scale, the saturation of churches in this area is kind of crazy.
Which is why when I say I am a brave missionary to the United States, we all kind of know that that's a joke. And it's not that we don't think that America needs the gospel. I think we would all probably claim that. But it is amusing to think of America, this area, as needing missionaries. But why?
Why is that? If I'm a Christian and I want to tell others about Jesus and I leave my motherland and I travel 15 hours on a flight to go somewhere else to tell people about Jesus, why shouldn't that count? And whether or not we like to admit it, I think we all intrinsically have an answer. Whether or not it's the correct answer, I don't know. We have an answer. And the answer is, bro, there's already churches here, right?
Access to the gospel here already exists. If you meet someone around here who's never heard the name of Jesus, it's because they just arrived here from somewhere else. If you're from here, you've heard of Jesus and you know where to go looking for him if you want him. And so a great irony exists here. The American church sends the vast majority of its money and missionaries overseas to places that already have access to the gospel. And we don't realize that we're engaged in exactly the same logical fallacy that makes the idea of Raz Bradley being a missionary to the United States amusing.
I'm supposed to be wrapping up this series today, but the truth is we are just getting started. So at risk of being slightly repetitive, I'm going to be restating a lot of the stuff that we've already talked about throughout this series. Uh, this is the conclusion to the introduction. And I know that y'all don't speak the Queen's English, but in real English, when we conclude an introduction, the entire point of that is to set the stage for what's about to come for the rest of the story. And that's the point of today is to conclude the introduction, but set us up for what comes for the rest of the story.
Uh, let's pray as we, we kick off this morning and turn to God's word. Father, we thank you for the privilege of living in an area where there is easy access to the gospel. Please give us a desire to see the good news of Jesus reach into the darkest places in the world, that those who are far from you could come to know Jesus. Amen. Let's take a quick look at the guiding verse on missions.
It's called the Great Commission. This is when Jesus sends out his apostles at the end of the book of Matthew. This is going to be up on the screen, uh, Matthew 28, and I'm going to start in verse 18. It says, and Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. The word, the, the section we're really focusing on today is, is that middle section in verse 19 and specifically the words that Jesus spoke that are translated to all nations.
Uh, in previous weeks, Chet has talked about how the, the original word in Greek is S. N. And so most of y'all, I'm assuming don't speak Greek. That says Panta, T. S. N.
That means all of the nations, or at least S. N. A. is translated in that section as nations. And what we talked about is that a better translation than nations, because when we hear the word nation, we think of countries with borders and governments and that kind of thing. A better translation would be people group or ethnicities. And that what Jesus is actually commanding is for us to take the good news to every people group.
Now it wasn't always this way. The evangelical church has erred on the translation for some time. Uh, we even called, if we go to the next slide, we even called our sermon series, all nations. And we did that knowing full well that in that section of scripture, we don't prefer the translation nations. We prefer a different translation, but guys, if you didn't know yet, I'm a little bit of a wizard with computers and things like this are easily fixed. And so you can just get a little bit of Photoshop in there and change it.
I was on my work computer. I didn't have Photoshop. That was paint, but you get the point. All nations is, is not the preferred translation. All ethnic, all people groups is how we should think about it. In my brief semesters as a missiological historian in seminary, I wrote papers on what is now commonly known of as the Lausanne movement.
Lausanne is the name of a city in Switzerland where a number of, uh, mission, uh, conferences were held in the 1970s. Uh, the first one was in July of 1974, 2,300 evangelical leaders from across the world, about 150 countries were represented. They all came to Lausanne in Switzerland to discuss the status of God's mission. Uh, essentially it was a state of the union for global evangelism. This is a big oversimplification, but one of the main questions that was being asked at the conference addresses the very nature of this all nations idea, this, what do we do with the all nations phrase? Because in general, in throughout evangelical, uh, history up to that point, the rallying cry of evangelical Christianity was that we should have a Christian church in every nation that is in every country and that God's mission would somehow become accomplished if we could just get a church in every country.
In fact, uh, there's an Anglican archbishop. His name is William temple. This is 30 years before Lausanne in 1942. He wrote that the great new fact of our time is the existence of the Christian church in nearly every nation on earth. So, uh, if God's mission was almost accomplished in 1942, how come in 1974, they were having these massive conferences in Switzerland to discuss whether or not the mission was done yet. And why are we still talking about it today?
Uh, at Lausanne in 1974, there was this bloke, his name was Ralph winter. Ralph winter, uh, was a relatively unknown person at the time, but he, he made his, he made his name at Lausanne. Uh, and he died. What he diagnosed was that in the church was what he called people blindness. And so I'm going to read a chunk of what he said at Lausanne in 1974. He said, I think this is up on the screen.
He said, I'm afraid that all our exaltation about the fact that every country of the world has been penetrated has allowed us to suppose that every culture has by now also been penetrated. This misunderstanding is a malady so widespread that it deserves a special name. Let us call it people blindness. That is blindness to the existence of separate peoples within countries. The nations to which Jesus often referred were mainly ethnic groups. The phrase make disciple of all ethnic does not let us off the hook.
Once we have a church in every country, God wants a strong church within every people. Uh, he went on in that same speech at Lausanne to estimate that, uh, over 95% of all missionaries deployed outside of the West, uh, were sent to be among other Christians or to countries that had established churches. He confronted at Lausanne, the global church for sending only a tiny fraction of all missionaries to what he described as the largest proportions of non-believing people groups, primarily the people groups among hidden Hindus, Muslims, and the Chinese. That was all in 1974. So fast forward to today, 2022, it's 48 years.
Let's call it 50. Uh, you've seen this map. This map has come up in previous weeks, uh, in green are areas, not countries because it's kind of split up all over the place, but areas in which access to the gospel is easy. In yellow is areas that have limited access to the gospel. And in red are areas with almost no gospel presence. In week one of this series, Chet, uh, quoted from David Platt, who spoke at this year's Together for the Gospel Conference.
Uh, it's a huge conference that happened in Kentucky. All of our pastors and Isaac went to the conference. Uh, there was 10,000 people there and, and he diagnosed three problems. And I don't want to talk about the second problem. Uh, but instead of quoting him again, I actually want to, uh, do something pretty cringeworthy, which is play a clip from another sermon inside of my own sermon. It's not really kosher.
You're not supposed to do that, but I'm going to do it today because I think Platt's demeanor and the visual that he draws attention to, uh, something that would be missed if I just kind of read what he said. And so, uh, we're going to play about a minute and a half of what Platt said at Together for the Gospel. Now, before we do that, uh, it's going to sound a little echoey. He was in a massive hall with 10,000 people in it. So that's not an effect that we're putting on there.
It's just the nature of the recording. So let's watch that. The church, our churches are practically ignoring the 3 billion people who need the gospel most. And this statement is not just anecdotal. I could show you the research, give you the Numbers. I'll let just one summarize the picture.
We as Christians in our country spend most of our money on ourselves, but we do give, we give collective billions of dollars to our churches, most of which we spend on making our churches more comfortable for ourselves. And then out of that money we give to churches and ministries, we give billions of dollars to missions, to gospel and church work and other places in the world, what we would call missions giving. But did you know, we've done the research that approximately 99% of our missions giving, so not talking about all of our resources or not even all of our giving in the church, like specifically that which we're giving to missions, approximately 99% of missions giving goes to people and places in the world that already have access to the gospel. to green and yellow places on this map. So the problem that he diagnoses is that the church is practically ignoring the people and places most unreached by the gospel.
50 Years later, after Ralph Winter diagnosed a problem of people blindness, Ralph Winter diagnosed that we're sending missionaries to places that already have the gospel. 50 years later, what's the update? I know it's a different statistic, but it's very closely related. Platt said that 99% of church giving, church giving specifically to missions, goes to countries and places that already have access to the gospel. So have we got better?
Or have we got worse? About the same. In no unclear terms, a problem has been diagnosed. And this is the problem that Platt said. The church is practically ignoring the people and places most unreached by the gospel. So what next?
Let's turn back to God's word and think through some practical steps for the global church, for Mill City Church, and for each of us as believers. I will go back to Matthew 28. This is the Great Commission again, just verse 19 this time. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. If you're relatively new at this church, we have four pastors. They all have different personalities, different types.
I am typically known in our church as the nicest of all the pastors. I'm the one who's always kind and polite, never sarcastic or abrasive. I don't know why y'all are laughing. But for the purpose of reinforcing the way that people view me, I'm going to be very dramatic in the way that I read exactly the same chunk again to almost condescendingly draw really obvious attention to the really obvious command here. All right, y'all ready for this?
Go and make disciples of all people groups, all ethnic. Go and make disciples of all people. This is something we are missing regularly. All people, all people groups, all ethnicities. Go and make disciples of all people. And in order for this to happen, somebody has to go.
That's the point there. The call here is urgent. The mission is critical. And yet, those willing to do it are few. Now, it can't be everybody, obviously. But it has to be somebody.
In fact, it's going to be somebody. It can't be everybody. But it has to be somebody. So here's how I want us to start thinking about this, how we should be shaping our conversation in a healthy way so as not to overburden or guilt trip ourselves, but at the same time to actively contribute to God's mission amongst the nations, amongst all people groups in tangible ways. And here's what I want us to remember. Remember, everyone sends and some go.
Everyone sends and some go. Now, to be clear, this is the most all-encompassing version of the word everyone. This is not one of those ones with exceptions where you say, I told a joke and everyone laughed. That could be true. That might not be true. This is everyone, unequivocally everyone.
All Christians are senders. They are supporters. They are cheerleaders. They are funders. They are ralliers. They are burden carriers.
They are sustainers. They are boosters. They are advocates. They are prayer warriors. There are missionaries on the front line working to get into the darkest places to bring the good news that Jesus rescues us from sin and gives us a path to salvation. If we put faith in him.
There are people in the darkest places in the world trying to get that message through. And if we're not there holding their hand, we ought to be supporters who are sending. I think we get this idea. It may come easier with an example. During World War II, the U.S. came together as a nation to fight the evil Axis powers. There was a bunch of soldiers who went.
They all went overseas to go off and fight the war. But there was a lot that happened on the home front as well. Folks rationed. Entire factories were transformed to stop producing things for household goods and cars. And instead, they produced munitions and tanks. Everyone sacrificed together because they knew the stakes.
And they believed in the cause. That is what the church does when they support those who go. We give financially. We pray daily. We correspond when we can. And we engage with those on the front lines.
Christians are senders. Everyone sends and some go. Now, we don't know who among us will go yet. I pray that that number increases. I pray that as we have a burden for global evangelism, that the number of us who would go would increase. In the past few weeks, we've had David Taylor from Empower One and Ben Johnson from 1040 Hope, both encouraging our church family to pray and consider the possibility that you might be called to go.
And specifically, to the red places. It's my hope that each one of us can see enough of the beauty of Jesus, enough of that to take that missionary call seriously. Seriously enough that we would consider it. Seriously enough that we would pray about it. Am I called? Should I go?
And if you feel that there's a part of you tugging you, urging you forward to answer some part of that call, then your response is to take next steps, to learn more, to talk to Ben, and begin a conversation about what it looks like not just to go, but to be prepared to go and reach people in the red zone. Everyone sends, some go. Now, it would be negligent to spend a whole mission series and not circle back to look at what beauty is accomplished when the mission is complete. We looked here in week one. This is going to be Revelation 7. It'll be up on the screen.
This is the Apostle John writing about the vision that he has at the end of time. He says this, You want to know what that means? Guys, someday, and it may not be today, but someday, the gospel will infiltrate the ethne. The people groups in the red zones in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Somalia, in Sudan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Mali, Libya. Those are countries. We've talked about the fact that we're not talking about countries.
We're talking about people groups. The Tajik, the Pashtun, the Uzbek, the Hazara, the Emak. All of these people groups have less than 0.02% evangelical Christians as part of their population. All of these people groups speak different primary languages. All of these people groups reside inside of the nation of Afghanistan. And there's about 35 million of them in just those people groups that I named, along with another 70 individually identified unreached people groups that also reside inside of Afghanistan.
Now, to our Western ears, that is a pretty scary list full of hostile-sounding countries, potentially hostile-sounding people groups. It is no wonder that there is not a line of people who want to go serve there. We're not talking about mission trips to the Bahamas. We're talking about mission trips to the hardest places in the world. It's dangerous. It's hard work.
But someone is going to go. And when they do, when the gospel takes root, a glorious and beautiful picture will come to fruition, like the final pieces of a 10, no, 100,000-piece puzzle, finally coming together so that we can see it in its true glory. At the end of time, in the throne room of the king, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, every tribe, every people, every language, stand before God in awe and worship. You may be thinking similar thoughts that I think the first time, or that I thought the first time I heard a lot of this. In the grand scheme of things, I'm one little person in a country of 330 million on a planet with some 7.5 billion.
Multiply that by the generations that have existed in the couple thousand years since Jesus and multiply again by the generations before that. What good, how big a part am I actually going to play? Admittedly, and we have to admit it, it's a pretty bleak mindset. It's a pretty defeated mindset. If everyone had this mindset, no one would go. But if every church, every believer shifted that mindset, baby steps shifted that mindset towards obedience to God's call, to Jesus' commission, then we would see the kind of global changes that it would take to reach all of those people in the red areas.
If God's mission is that the church would go and make disciples of all people, what's my role? Well, we beat the drum of local missions for years at Mill City. That is the idea that we would talk about Jesus to our colleagues, our friends, our neighbors, our family. That's part of it. That's day-to-day life. That is easy-ish, but it's low-hanging fruit.
It's right in front of us. We should be engaging in that as commonplace. But there's also the part that includes reaching those people groups that no one else is going to. Everybody sends some go. Now, maybe you should go. Maybe that's something that you should be having conversations about.
But you should definitely send. In the past month, again, David Taylor and Ben Johnson, both of whom work for organizations reaching red countries, both of whom have offices in our building right there, they've been platformed to talk about different ways that we can send. You should also know that we, as a church, have increased our missions giving this year. And since the Rockies returned from the field, we've taken everything on that budget line item and allocated that directly to support 1040 Hope. We now give 1040 Hope $575 a month. That may seem like a lot.
That may seem like it's insignificant. I don't really know how you interpret 575 bucks a month to the red areas. But what it represents in our church is a down payment on where we're going long term. It is a down payment that we are committed to reaching unreached areas. And one of the difficulties in my life is picking and choosing the kinds of things that I want to support. I think, to a degree, everyone has to make those decisions.
It's not just how much money should I be giving. It's also who should I be giving that money to. And I have to admit, sinfully in my own heart, that some pretty awful stuff happens when I start to consider something like missions in Afghanistan. I have trust issues. Is that organization going to waste the money? Is it going to get stolen?
Is it going to impact anything? Will there be a return on investment? Is it going to be a return on investment? Worse, there's downright racism. Afghanistan? Aren't they the guys who are trying to kill everyone in the West?
Why should I care what happens to them? Why should I care if they meet Jesus or not? Aren't they the enemy? There's lack of faith. That country is too far gone. I don't think God could perform a miracle and save them.
There's pride. You get very little recognition when you give to something that happens on the other side of the planet. It's much easier to give to something right here where you can take a photo of yourself, handing over a big check, and put it on Facebook and look really good. Sometimes they slap your name on a building. And of course, there's comfort. Why give my money away to something that seems hopeless when I can just spend it on me on Amazon?
In general, I am likely to have a lot of reasons that I don't give to something like this. But ultimately, what that does, what all of my reasons, what all of my excuses do, is highlight the different areas that I don't believe in God's plan to reach all people. That I am out of sync ultimately and not lined up with God and his desire to reach all people. And that needs to be fixed in myself. So what is the correct response to this?
God calls us to take the gospel to all people. And we've been ignoring those who need it most. Some should go. But all of us, Mill City Church, should and will send. The hardest hitting part of David Platt's message, the message that we played a clip from, the hardest hitting part for me in that sermon, the part that kind of hurt, that was a gut punch, you have to understand, he was addressing church leaders from across the country and across the world. There was 10,000 of us there.
The room was massive. And he said to all of us, at some point, collectively, we've got to decide to rectify this great imbalance and obey this great commission. We've got to mobilize billions of dollars and tens of thousands of missionaries to get the gospel to the red zone. This all-nation series, this all-ethne series, it's intended to serve as something of a pivot point for us as a church. These conversations about the red countries, we've referred to it sometimes as the 1040 window. We want all of this language, all of this idea of the unreached or the red areas, we want this to be commonplace for us as we talk consistently about missions and reaching every tribe, tongue, and nation.
Some of us will go. All of us at Mill City are going to send. Matt Freeman's going to make his way back up. I'm going to close out with three thoughts of things we get to do in response, not just to this today, but the whole series. Y'all should be able to predict all three of these. They're very straightforward and very simple.
The first one is pray. Pray for those who are already on the field. Pray for the organizations trying to reach the unreached. Pray for those who are going to be called. And pray for those who live in the red zones. The second one, also very obvious, is give.
Look at your budget. What does it show about what you care most? What changes can you make in order to reorient yourself towards God's mission? Some of y'all should start giving directly to organizations that send people to the red zones on top of what you're already giving to Mill City and other causes. The third one, also obvious, is go. I realize that this one is not going to be for everyone, but it will be for some.
Some of y'all need to stop ignoring the call to missions. You need to take steps to see what it would mean to begin training and eventually be launched specifically to the red areas on the map. Like I said at the beginning this morning, today is the conclusion of a series, but it is the beginning of a new way of thinking for us in Mill City about global missions and for our church. And in obedience to him, all of us will send. And I pray that some of us will go. Let's pray.
Father, we recognize this morning that the message of the gospel, the good news that Jesus came for us is for all people. And that there are billions of people who don't even know who Jesus is and don't even have a way to find out more about him. We pray for those in the red zone, that they would meet a Christian. We pray that organizations sending to the red will be able to penetrate into countries that are very hard to gain access to. We pray that we would give generously to organizations that are working on this. We pray that for those of us who will go, that you will be opening doors and guiding that path.
In Jesus' name, amen. This morning we're going to take communion. If you are not a believer, this is just kind of one of those rituals that Christians do. You're invited to stay seated. Matt's going to sing a song. There's going to be words on the screen.
If you're not a Christian, just stay there and consider some of the things you've heard this morning and whether or not you want to learn more about Jesus. If you are a Christian, come and receive Christ's body and his blood was shed for you. Do this in remembrance of him. There is gluten-free options for those of us with sensitive tummies in the back. But for everyone else, anytime during this song, feel free to just move and take communion.
Here's what the doctors said. Thank you. I'm so sorry to see you. Take communion. There is a place like this happening there. Like this for me.
Let's go to Ephra топ.