Now we get to the Elevation Phase. Elevation is where the church and missions leaders begin to bring the whole church along into this new biblical awareness of what it takes to be a sending church. The leaders may be running down the track, excited about where they are going. The church members are probably still in the starting blocks, waiting for the gun to go off.  Teaching is a big part of it: for the church as a whole, as well as smaller subsets. Organizationally, you are aware that new structures and roles need to be created and launched. An Annual Mission Event can empower momentum toward everyone in the church growing in understanding and involvement. Recruiting mentors and other new roles for the Barnabas Team or Care and Prayer Team for missionaries will come here. Do something to intentionally put new missionary candidates on your church's radar for future development. Lastly, but not least, build prayer for missions, for missionaries, and for a strategic focus on missions.

Yes, it will take some effort and study to become a good sending church. There are deficits in learning this biblical role, and you'll need to exercise discernment. Even some excellent sources of information and inspiration may be influenced by their own biases and historical context. So listen to our recommendations to help you get started.

A huge part of educating your church to grow in becoming a Sending Church is taking the initiative to ask for help! Key life lessons apply here: 

Find the Church Missions Profile on SendForward.org or Propempo.com

With a body of information from the Evaluation stage, we enter the Education stage. We will revisit some fundamental biblical truths as a priority to gain unity and clarity among the leadership. The episode highlights the most basic elements and draws some contrasts with fuzzy truths known, promoted, or accepted in our present day. We'll discuss a few key principles for funding missions, including some initial thoughts on church missions funding.

The completion of our consideration of evaluating your church's potential as a good sending church includes thoughts that will ultimately help your church rise to that challenge. Start with prayer. End with prayer. Pray throughout the process. Ask lots of probing questions. Understand that you must win the participation and ownership of your church leaders. Seek to find the right resources and partners to become the good sending church the Lord desires to use in His plan for fulfilling the Great Commission.

This episode of Training for the Sending Church focuses on a very important and often neglected part of our evaluation. It zeroes in on discovering our present missions commitments and helps us understand the past and present status of those missions commitments and aim toward the future.

The questions here will guide you and your church missions leadership in creating the backdrop for development as a sending church.

Assessment or evaluation of the local church's sending church potential is essential. This episode discusses some dynamics facing the person or entity doing the evaluation. We cover key questions that will reveal doctrine, desires, and design affecting the evaluation. This can be very helpful in discovering strengths and weaknesses. The process accelerates direction and solutions toward seeing the local church prepared and equipped to become a good sending church.

Whether you have a missionary candidate urgently asking to be sent out ASAP or are just growing your church's missions vision, this series will help you. We'll walk through the evaluation, education, and elevation steps to equip you and your church in sending. This episode closes with some key resources to follow up.

It's not your job, but it's also not what the church does. Christians are free to participate in any number of interchurch activities. We are better together than alone. But there must be a clear movement of the ministry toward the centrality of the church for every believer. Why is the priority of the church so important and how can we maintain that?

A Christian's job can also be thought of as a parachurch ministry. It's important to make a distinction between what the church does and what a Christian does, and a distinction between what the gospel is and what the implications of the gospel are. Thus Christians live out their faith in the workplace and around the world while maintaining the primary importance of the work of the church and church planting missionaries.