Adopting a Strategic Focus can be a game-changer in terms of earning greater participation and ownership of your church in missions. It clarifies, simplifies, and amplifies involvement. It is also more satisfying than casting out thinly and widely without deep missionary relationships.  See the biblical model of Paul. Realize the benefits. Then act to do it!

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One of the amazing benchmarks of a church fully grasping its role in world missions is to raise up, send, and shepherd its own people as missionaries. It can be frightening at first. "How do we do that!!!" Yet, it shouldn't be much different than raising up church leaders, but with cross-cultural and international elements to it. This little episode can help inform your vision for "how to do that."

If you want to achieve a goal, you need to define the goal. The New Testament gives us a clear goal for Great Commission missions. The goal of missions is the local church. It is planting and strengthening local churches in every tongue, tribe, people, and nation on the planet. Too often missionaries, mission agencies, and even churches confuse and cloud methods and strategies with the desired end. They confuse the means with the end. Almost any kind of outreach ministry can and should be connected to the local church. A practical, intentional, conscious goal is essential. Ask your missionaries how they are connected to seeing local churches planted and strengthened.

This episode is dangerously fun. Here we answer the most frequent objections raised by church and missions agency leaders to restoring or repatriating missions to the local church.  Want to learn the answers to these objections?  Listen to this podcast. Could you share it with others? We believe the Bible is so strong on this that the pain of implementation must be overcome by our commitment to God's Word, faith in His plan, and hope for a better, preferred future.  Then there is the Grandfather Clause ...

We transition in this preview of a more complete treatment in the book to come from the biblical basis to the implementation of the centrality of the local church in missions.  Step one, if you will, is simply agreeing with the Scriptures and having your local church take ownership of missions. There are lots of good reasons to do so! Starting down this pathway will be of great benefit to all the players on the team: the church, the church members, the missionaries, their missions agency, and the target ministry people on the field.

Propempo is a very special term, transliterated from the Greek New Testament, which demonstrates the central role of the local church in sending out missionaries for the sake of the Gospel. This episode traces the use of the word "propempo" to demonstrate how it is used to describe this crucial responsibility of the local church.  Track along with us as we show how it can fuel our understanding of the centrality of the local church in missions.

In this episode, we explore the scope and nature of God the Father's view of the centrality of the local church in missions. We discover that God is the originator and designer of the local church. The Bible is full of evidence of His involvement and purpose behind the local church together with its unique mission on earth. God's mission is the local church's mission. God's glory is found in and through local churches.

We dare not underestimate the incredible role of the Apostle Paul in establishing the centrality of the local church in missions. Paul clearly understood his special calling to preach the gospel and to establish local churches. In fact, he was under submission to his own sending church as he went out. His view and understanding of the centrality of the local church in missions is a model for our thinking and implementation of missions today. We pray this series will rock some boats, rattle some cages, and change some people's minds about how missions should operate in our world biblically.

"You can't see the forest for the trees" can be true of us. Sometimes we don't see the big picture because we don't lift our eyes to see the most obvious things. Every book of the New Testament was written by church leaders and church planters to local church leaders and local churches for the good of local churches everywhere. The local church is the beginning and end of missions. But it's not just the focus of missions; it is also the center of God's plan!

When the Apostles and disciples of Jesus heard the Great Commission, what did they do? How did they obey it? We'll see in this episode that they went all over the map preaching the Gospel and disciplining believers resulting in the planting of local churches. Acts is our guide for this 30,000-foot overview of early church history.  Church tradition about the Apostles' work also confirms this summary: early believers planted churches in obedience to the Great Commission.