Chapter 1

The Missionary God

 “Whoever receives you receives Me, and whoever Receives Me receives the One who sent Me.”  (Matthew 10:40 TPT)

 God is a missionary. This is the central theme and plot of the Bible. God Himself is the main character of the story, and He has a mission: to redeem the greatest tragedy in history—the fall of His lost sons and daughters into spiritual bondage to his enemy—by sacrificing everything to reconcile and restore us back to Himself. Through this grand rescue, He does not merely intend to free us from slavery to sin and death, but to fashion us into a Bride for His Son, who will rule and reign with Him on earth for eternity. There is no greater romance or epic adventure than God’s story!

To fulfill this mission, God sends. The rescue plan culminates with the Father sending His Son Jesus to go to the cross, purchase the forgiveness of our sin through His death, and restore us to new life through His resurrection.

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. (Colossians 1:19-20 NKJV)

At the cross, Jesus reclaimed the throne of the world from the devil, pushing back the kingdom of darkness and unleashing the presence of His kingdom to spread slowly yet steadily across the earth, like an ever-growing mustard seed and ever-expanding leaven. Even before He even went to the cross, Jesus was demonstrating His victory over the enemy by “doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38), and announcing the arrival of His kingdom: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15 NKJV). To fulfill this part of His mission, He sent twelve and then seventy on short-term regional mission trips to announce the kingdom, heal the sick, cast out demons, cleanse lepers, and raise the dead (Matthew 10:7-8). “As the Father has sent Me,” Jesus told them, “even so I am sending you” (John 20:21 NKJV).

Christ finished the other part of His mission—triumphing over sin, sickness, and death—at the cross, but His mission to announce the arrival of His kingdom was far from over. The Father had opened the door for all people across the globe to be reconciled to Him and experience new life in His kingdom, but those people couldn’t walk through that door without knowing it was there!

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!” (Romans 10:14-15 NKJV, my emphasis)

Jesus told His disciples, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14 NKJV). This is the current stage of God’s mission––preaching the gospel of the kingdom to the end of the earth. Once again, He is fulfilling this mission by sending. Who is He sending? Us! This is why Jesus sent His Spirit to make us His witnesses: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Act 1:8 NKJV).

It is not only apostolic leaders with the gift of preaching who are responsible to carry the gospel message to the ends of the earth. The role of apostolic leaders is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph. 4:12, my emphasis). These “sent ones” (biblical Greek: apostolos means “sent one”) are not only to go, but also to prepare others to be sent. Every believer who has been reconciled to the Father and entered into new life in His Spirit is an ambassador for Christ and minister of reconciliation:

Now all things [are] of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore [you] on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:18-20 NKJV)

Writer and theologian Joseph Mattera says, “The main purpose of Jesus dying on the cross was not so that you can go to heaven. The main purpose of His death was so that His Kingdom can be established in you so that, as a result, you can exercise Kingdom authority on the earth and reconcile the world back to Him.”[1] This is God’s mission, and this is our mission.

The Church and God’s Mission

The church, specifically the local church, is at the center of God’s plan for fulfilling His mission to carry the gospel of the kingdom to the ends of the earth and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). This is why apostolic missionaries, from the apostle Paul to today, have not simply focused on making converts, but on planting churches to fulfill a twofold purpose: 1) gathering and training disciples in practicing the way of Jesus together, and 2) sending them out to be salt and light in the world and make more disciples. Apostolic leaders understand that the Great Commission was given to every individual Christian, but it is primarily facilitated through local churches via the training and equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

Every leader in the body of Christ must understand that God did not come up with a mission for His church as much as He formed a church for His mission. Today, many local churches have lost clarity and focus in their mission to equip every believer to partner with the missio Dei—God’s mission in the earth. As a result, many of our churches are leading people to be more like “fans” of Jesus than true “followers.”[2] The body of Christ doesn’t need more spectators; we need participators who will answer the call: “Here I am. Send me” (Isaiah 6:8 NIV). We need true disciples who will go out and make disciples.

Thankfully, there is a missional renaissance taking place that is changing the way the people of God think about God and the world. The Holy Spirit is restoring the original apostolic paradigm for understanding the mission of the local church and the responsibility for every believer to be equipped for ministry. We are beginning to recover the truth that every follower of Christ is called to be a missionary, because that is what it means to become like the One we follow. As missionary Henry Marytn declared, “The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to Him the more intensely missionary we must become.”