author: Bradley Bell and Ted Esler, editors
date: 2025
publisher: The Upstream Collective
Missiology for Missions Pastors is designed to be a guide for those who are called to lead the church into global missions.
Below, I give a fairly detailed summary of the book, but let me first tell you that I would recommend this book to anyone in a leadership role in a local church that touches on missions. While some of the chapters are more for "mission pastors" in larger churches, there are definitely principles that any pastor or missions committee can use or adapt.
In a recent social media post, I quoted Bob Roberts Jr, who said:
A pastor asks, "How's my church?"A missionary asks, "How's my city?"
All of us are on mission... to our neighbourhoods, our cities, our world. I have had the privilege of serving in Ethiopia and Uganda several times over the last decade; not as a North American with all the answers, but as a pastor with a heart to see my brothers and sisters spread the good news to their people and beyond.
Larry E. McCrary, the President of The Upstream Collective says that one of the tendencies in the Western church over the past few decades has been to outsource missions. But God never intended for the church to delegate the mission. Part of what this means is integrating global awareness into every part of the church’s culture. It means moving from being a missions-minded church to being a missions-engaged church.
If that's your heart, this is a good book for you to pick up.
J. D. Payne: The Mission of God
Miriam Adeney: The History of Missions
Jason Mandryk: The State of Missions
Mark Byrom: The Role of the Local Church
Dave Childers: The Mission Pastor's Role in the Church
Sharon Hoover: The Mission Pastor's Role Among the Nations
Julius Tennal II: Doing Short-Term Missions Well
Nathan Sloan: Sending Mid- and Long-Term Missionaries
Brian Fikkert: Practicing Word and Deed Ministry
Ray Mensah: Developing Healthy Partnerships
We cannot go back to a world before 9/11, not for geopolitics and not for data related to missionary sending. Perhaps the silver lining of this shift is that we can no longer rest confident in what has been called “managerial missiology” or in our own capacity to orchestrate obedience to the Great Commission. We must acknowledge that there is only one Lord of the Harvest.
Singapore Bible College’s Chuck Lowe who wrote, “Virtually everything evangelicalism now does is quantified numerically, systematised in small steps, codified in booklets, and standardised through training sessions... effectiveness in ministry depends on finding and using the right technique.”
Technology will obviously have an impact on how mission is done moving forward. Some of this is good and clear: translation work, providing resources, and communicating information via a variety of media. Jason rightly says:
But the gospel is not about the creation or consumption of content—it is about life-on-life relationships transformed by Jesus amidst the muck and brokenness of humanity.
He reinforces this with a quote from Reuben Ezemadu, who leads MANI, the Movement for African National Initiatives, a continent-wide mobilization network:
“While technological advancements have improved several aspects of the mission enterprise, such phenomena have further driven mission practitioners towards more reliance on tools, strategies, designs, and devices that celebrate human ingenuity at the expense of reliance on the Main Driver of Missions—the Holy Spirit.
The task is still great. Jason notes that according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity
more than half of all of the world’s 445,000 “missionaries” serving in a foreign country are serving in a Christian-majority nation. Missionaries to people groups considered “reached” outnumber those serving among “unreached peoples” thirty to one.
And then he adds, and I would echo this from what I have seen and heard
that the church has the resources to reach the whole world but that it will not happen because we refuse to coordinate our enthusiasm well enough. My hope, naïve as it may be, is that we can all take the radical step of setting aside our own agendas, unite in prayer, and listen to and obey the Lord of the Harvest, the only one who can and should coordinate a project of this magnitude.
This chapter ends with a call to prayer. As a PS, this chapter is worth the price of the book. Lillias Trotter, missionary to North Africa, reminds us that
“Each prayer-beat down here vibrates up to the very throne of God, and does its work through that throne on the principalities and powers around us... we can never tell which prayer will liberate the answer, but we can tell that each one will do its work.”
Mark Byrom then describes The Role of the Local Church. Part of this is strategizing on how to keep the church reminded of the Great Commission and aware of what is happening with our missionaries and partners around the world.
Missions awareness should lead to missions engagement.
Mark highlights the need to be "glocal". Global and local go hand in hand.
Healthy global missions engagement happens when healthy churches see how their global efforts shape the way local ministry is carried out. Use of the created term “glocal” is our way, as a sending church, to help people see that local and global missions efforts are both essential in our church family.
Mark reminds us that this century
will be marked by local churches across the planet engaging in global missions. Missions is no longer simply the West going to the rest of the world but is being furthered by churches of the Global South who are sending like never before. It is God’s global church through which the gospel will continue to go to the ends of the earth and to the remaining unreached peoples.
Dave Childers expands on this and highlights The Mission Pastor's Role in the Church. This chapter is for larger churches that can have a dedicated person in place. Their role is
to cultivate missions awareness throughout the congregation. Cultivating this awareness includes helping people understand more of the biblical basis of missions from Genesis to Revelation.
and to
mobilize and lead a mission teams.
Sharon Hoover highlights The Mission Pastor's Role Among the Nations. She writes about the need for partnership between the sending church and the mission organisation and the field. Partnership is a word that gets used a lot, and it is important, but it needs to be a partnership that includes both or all parties. This includes
- allowing the field to take the lead on issues that directly affect them,
- being open about finances needs,
- having the prayer requests be a two-way street, i.e. the field is not just the one making the prayer requests, but also praying for needs from the sending church,
- being open and accountable for return visits, including training and rest.
Julius Tennal II writes a chapter on Doing Short-Term Missions Well.
He highlights some of the myths of short-term missions.
I like his quote by Jeannie Marie:
“Short trips overseas serve as a bridge between our current reality and a vision for how God sees the world—and how we can invest long-term in that vision.”
- Caring for Missionaries
- Fueling Mission Locally
- Mobilizing the Church
I would add, it lets both believers and not-yet-believers that there are people who care.
Nathan Sloan adds a chapter on Sending Mid- and Long-Term Missionaries. He reminds us of the centrality of the local church as a sending church in global missions, quoting Bradley Bell from his book The Sending Church Defined,
. . . a local community of Christ-followers who have made a covenant together to be prayerful, deliberate, and proactive in developing, commissioning, and sending their own members both locally and globally, often in partnership with other churches or agencies, and continuing to encourage, support, and advocate for them while making disciples cross-culturally and upon their return.
Nathan goes on to say that
the most effective missionary work flows from deep, intentional discipleship within the local church.
Our church began casting a vision that every member is called to live sent in their life and that crossing cultures and languages for the gospel was open to and possible for everyone in the church. Not all would go, or even should go, but we wanted to disciple people to grow to be like Jesus and embrace the mission of God wherever they were as they lived out their sent identity.
Out of this, they developed this sending process
Brian Fikkert writes in Practicing Word and Deed Ministry
Jesus cares about people’s souls, and he also cares about hungry bellies, human trafficking, and horrific violence. How much? Enough to die on a cross to fix all of these problems. Hallelujah! The gospel—in all its fullness—is the best news ever!
Missions to be effective in the 21st century needs to be an integrated ministry: both word and deed ministry to people in poverty. But this needs to be done with a Kingdom mindset
Unfortunately, helping people in poverty experience the restoration of Christ’s kingdom isn’t easy. Good intentions are not enough. It is entirely possible to hurt poor people in the process of trying to help them....
Here’s the problem: most of us have unknowingly absorbed false stories of change from our surrounding culture, and then we automatically and unconsciously default to these stories when we design our poverty alleviation efforts.
I like his statement that God's goal is
to restore people to flourishing by enabling them to enjoy loving relationships with God, self, others, and the rest of creation.
By the Triune God dwelling with his people as they form habitats conducive to living in right relationship with God, self, others, and creation.
Ray Mensah begins his chapter Developing Healthy Partnerships by quoting the Missio Nexus tagline:
The Great Commission is too big for anyone to accomplish alone and too important not to try to do together.
Charles Van Engen observed that global partnerships will look differently in the future.
He stressed that
“in this new reality, there is an urgent need to discover and create new patterns of missionary partnerships among Christians worldwide.”
He cautioned,
“It is urgent that church leaders, mission executives, and mission practitioners talk together, analyze, critique, and articulate the possibilities and pitfalls of partnership in mission in the 21st century.”
Partnership in mission in the 21st century will include combinations of the following:
➢ Church with church
➢ Mission with mission (mission organizations partnering together)
➢ Multi-cultural teams that draw support from, and are accountable to, persons, churches, or mission agencies all over the globe, and
➢ Local congregations who send their own missionaries, cooperating with older and newer receiving churches or mission agencies.
One of the mission pastors surveyed on this said this about mutuality:
Mutuality is key to healthy partnerships, which in turn is key to reaching the unreached. So we should, together, humble ourselves and look up to Jesus and his Spirit to lead us as his church in serving his purposes. None is superior to the other, and none can do it alone. We need one another.
When mutuality is missing, a number of negatives arise.
➢ Individualism – Lack of mutuality leads to “territorial individualism.” Everyone cares about their little “empire” and jealously guards it.
➢ Parenting – The absence of mutuality can turn partnership into parenting.
➢ Paternalism – When the values are not coherent, and there is more self-interest than mutual or common goals, there is the danger of paternalism rather than a true partnership.
Those surveyed for this chapter noted that paternalism arises in a variety of forms, not just as inappropriate handouts.
➢ Resource Paternalism – giving people resources they do not truly need and/or could acquire on their own.
➢ Spiritual Paternalism – taking spiritual leadership away from the materially poor, assuming we have more to offer than they do.
➢ Knowledge Paternalism – assuming we have all the best ideas about how to do things
➢ Labor Paternalism – doing work for the materially poor that they could do for themselves
➢ Managerial Paternalism – taking ownership of change away from the poor, insisting that they follow our “better, more efficient” way of doing things.
Mutual respect is important. Churches and ministries in the Majority World want a relationship built on mutuality.
➢ They want to relate on the basis of mutual trust and equality instead of a servant-master type of arrangement where terms are dictated by those who are funding the work.
➢ They desire a partnership marked by mutual respect, mutual trust, and a shared learning and adjusting posture.
➢ They do not want mission pastors to take over and dictate the terms of the relationship and the delivery of local programmes. They want them to humbly seek to understand the context and work together with local leaders.
➢ They want those in the Global North to engage Global South partners in decision-making and be flexible with reporting requirements.
➢ They want Global North leaders to honour the local ministry by telling the stories as shared stories.
➢ They want reciprocal visits, allowing those from the Global South to shape, encourage, and challenge the churches in the Global North.
I received a copy to review from Bradley Bell, Executive Director of Equipping,
The Upstream Collective.
I was not required to write a positive review.
The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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