What do you do when expectations about ministry don’t line up with on-the-ground results?

We moved overseas more than two decades ago to take the gospel to people who had very little access to it. When we arrived, my wife and I, along with our colleagues, devoted ourselves to learning the local language. We earnestly desired that those we lived among would understand who Christ is according to the Bible. We spent thousands of hours studying grammar, learning new vocabulary, and seeking to understand the local culture, since all this knowledge would help us faithfully transmit foundational truths that are difficult to understand and communicate to those who have never heard them before.

By the end of our first year, our language ability surpassed that of our team leaders — but not because we were any more talented in language than they were. Rather, they were operating on certain assumptions about church-planting ministry that shaped their own language learning. They believed that very soon — hopefully within two or three years — many thousands of local people would embrace the gospel and start hundreds of churches. All of us expats could then leave to start another movement of disciples and churches among another unreached people.

What Are We Doing Wrong?

What was the source of this prediction about the pace and results of our work? We were told that rapidly advancing movements are the expected result in the “new paradigm” of twenty-first-century missions. It was suggested that, by following reverse-engineered methods, hundreds of churches could be planted with tens of thousands of new Christians in as little as six months.

When the pace and fruit of our work didn’t meet expectations, we began to wonder what we were doing wrong. We had been taught that if our approach didn’t lead to a church-planting movement, then we should change what we’re doing. But maybe, we thought, some ministry locations are more difficult, some peoples more resistant, some mission fields harder than others? An influential movement leader told us from the stage at a worldwide leader’s meeting that such is not the case. “There is no hard ground,” he said. That left one other possibility: we were the problem.

One leader suggested to me in a private conversation that we should consider moving aside to let a well-known movement practitioner take the lead. Many faithful gospel workers in our country became discouraged, even wondering whether they were wasting their lives by continuing to proclaim the gospel in this place.

Modern Revivalism

Students of church history may recognize similarities between these conversations and some from the past. During the Great Awakenings in North America and Britain, many Christians wanted to see a revival in their hometown. At first, as Iain Murray notes, revivals were widely viewed as extraordinary acts of God, whereby many more souls than normal became Christians (Revival and Revivalism, 374). Revivals were unpredictable and unpromised. But by 1830, some Christian ministers were experimenting with different methods to bring revival.

“Ultimately, lack of response and slow growth are not our enemies. Unfaithfulness is.”

Soon, “revivalists,” as they became known, believed they had figured out how to “originate and promote” revivals (375). Their ideas spread like wildfire among pastors and church members. “Follow our methods,” they promised, “and any church can see a revival.” The only thing preventing revival was the unwillingness of ministers to promote them. What was formerly unpredictable was now planned; what was unsure was promised. Ministers began to announce beforehand when revivals would take place.

Contrarily, “old guard” pastors were more convinced than ever that whatever true fruit of repentance they witnessed was the inscrutable work of God. While revivalists were tweaking their innovative methods, veteran pastors continued laboring in the ordinary means of ministry: weekly worship services, reading and preaching the Scriptures, prayer, Christian fellowship, singing hymns, and observing the ordinances. Though their methods remained stable, the fruit sometimes increased, sometimes decreased — suggesting to them that God was giving the growth however he saw fit (1 Corinthians 3:7).

Unfounded Promises

Today, many movement manuals begin with incredible “success stories.” One book tells how one man started two hundred churches within three months of beginning his ministry. Before ten years had passed, he reported 1.7 million new Christians and 158,000 new churches. To reports like these, we should all say, “Praise God — may it be so!” But the subtitle of this same book makes a disconcerting promise: “How it can happen in your community!”

Does the Bible promise that fast-growing church-planting movements will happen in your community if only you use the right methods? Be cautious of any training that assures you what God will do in the world — especially as it relates to the conversion of souls. We can only claim promises God has already made in the Bible. The great hymn writer Isaac Watts, who witnessed amazing revivals, cautioned ministers against depending upon them. Extraordinary works of God “are rare instances, and bestowed by the Spirit of God in so sovereign and arbitrary a manner, according to the secret counsels of his own wisdom, that no particular Christian hath any sure ground to expect them” (Revival and Revivalism, 385).

Only God can give new life in conversion and growth as Christ’s disciples. As the Bible teaches, we get to play an instrumental role in faithfully witnessing to the promise of redemption in Christ. We hope for and praise God whenever anyone places their faith in Christ. But we should be wary of predicting specific results or building our ministries on unfounded promises.

Unnecessary Discouragement

What about the pace of gospel expansion? The early church grew from thousands of followers in the first century to millions in just a few hundred years. Historian Rodney Stark estimates that the early church grew at a rate of about 40 percent per decade before trailing off (The Rise of Christianity, 6). Looking back now, most Christians and historians would consider this growth an extraordinary work of God, yet it is actually a much slower pace than that advocated by movement proponents today.

At 40 percent per decade, a house church of ten Christians would become eleven over three years’ time. Doing some quick math, the population of the Christian church in the last two decades where I live in central Asia has grown three times faster than the early church! Yet instead of celebrating this incredible work of God, some Christians are discouraged because they’ve heard that churches that don’t start a new church every six months are unhealthy.

Harvests follow faithful work. For example, the increase of Christians we see in Iran today was built on two hundred years of hard labor by Christians who patiently prayed, taught the Scriptures, and loved resistant people while they waited for them to come into the kingdom of God. We must not give up that groundbreaking work because we aren’t seeing the harvest others are experiencing. When God desires to have mercy on a sinful nation, he sends his people to labor, pray, and teach there persistently. Sometimes, we are those people who labor during generations of slow gospel expansion.

May we be faithful and encouraged, regardless of pace! The gates of hell cannot withstand the persistent proclamation of the gospel. If we will persevere in proclaiming Christ and praying for a people over years, decades, and even generations, then God’s Spirit is likely preparing them for something special pertaining to salvation. As we faithfully pursue biblical ministry, we can patiently celebrate what God is actually doing among us. Otherwise, we risk dissatisfaction during the day of small things.

Our Calling: Faithfulness

Ultimately, lack of response and slow growth are not our enemies. Unfaithfulness is. And when we are being faithful, the pace of growth is not our concern (John 21:22).

Lack of response should lead us to plead for God to work in our midst. But there is no biblical reason for faithful gospel workers to be discouraged by normal responses to the gospel. The same apostle who said, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) also emphasized that our work is to ensure generations of faithfulness (1 Timothy 2:2).

Christian friend, our faithfulness will be found as we devote ourselves to Christ — first for our own transformation and then for the teaching of Christ to others (1 Timothy 4:16). Before you commit to build a ministry that relies on quick results, ask whether Scripture commends that pursuit. Before adopting new methods in your ministry, ask whether you are committed to the ordinary methods outlined in Scripture, such as prayer, Bible study, faithful proclamation, and church membership. By these, God will build his kingdom.

So, how should we think of the pace and predictability of the spread of the gospel in missionary work today? We should strongly desire to see God work extraordinarily in the lives and hearts of those who hear the gospel from us. We should long for the same kinds of explosive increase among those we serve as we read of in the book of Acts. We should sincerely desire all people to hear the gospel and turn to Christ before it is too late (1 Timothy 2:4).

At the same time, we should give ourselves to the methods we observe in the Bible, trusting God with whatever growth he gives.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to witchcraft and wizardry week on APJ. We asked, “Is there good magic and edifying sorcery?” — a debate we hear all the time over Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and other fantasy literature. Pastor John dove into that big debate on Monday, with a twist of his own (as you’d imagine), in APJ 2121.

And another question about witchcraft and wizardry comes in today from Archie, a listener who is putting together three texts coming up in our Bible readings this month. “Pastor John, hello,” he writes. “In our Bible readings coming up in the Old Testament, we read that sorcerers and those who practice witchcraft are to be killed. That’s very clear to me according to Exodus 22:18 and Leviticus 20:27. But when Jewish Bible scholar the apostle Paul enters Ephesus, a city full of magic, he calls for no one to be executed — simply for all the books to be piled up in the city center and to be burned. That I see in Acts 19:19. Certainly Paul would have known full well the contrast from what he saw in Scripture from what he was calling for. Why is the Old Testament more violent here? And why is the same sin handled so differently in the New Testament?”

Well, this is huge. I mean, it has to do with the relationships between God’s way of working in Israel in the Old Testament and his way of working today.

God’s Dealings with His People

Let me back up and start with Abraham. With the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12, God brought into being a people for his own name. That people was defined both by physical lineage (as Jewish) and by covenant, in which God pledged himself to work for their good on their behalf as they trusted him and obeyed his laws. Now, from the beginning, this people was both a political and a religious reality. They were a nation-state, and they were in a privileged position toward God. The laws of the religion, Jewishness, were the laws of the state. They functioned among other political nation-states, this nation did (Israel). They had a standing army. They claimed a geographic territory as the rightful place of their earthly national existence.

So, for two thousand years, from Abraham to Christ, there was this primary focus of God’s saving work on that people. That’s the way he worked his redemptive plan in the world. He focused on Israel. Paul said in Romans 9:4–5,

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

One of the reasons that God established his presence among the nations through the people of Israel in this way — this particular national way — was to demonstrate the hopeless condition of humanity and to prepare them for the coming of a Savior. The history of Israel is not a history of successful relations with God. It is mainly a history of failure. The law was given to Israel to show that salvation by law-keeping was impossible because of how deeply sinful humans are.

Paul sums it up in Romans 3:19–20: “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law [as Jewish people], so that every mouth [that’s the nations] may be stopped, and the whole world [not just Israel] may be held accountable to God.” That’s why he created Israel the way he did and gave her the law the way he did. And then he continues, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

So, one of the purposes of God in dealing with Israel the way he did for two thousand years was to show that not only could Israel not be saved through law-keeping, but how much less could anybody else in the world be saved, who didn’t have the privileges of Israel. All of this was preparatory for the coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ. Since during those two thousand years, Israel, God’s people, were a geographic, political, national state with religious laws functioning as her national laws, therefore the punishments for disobedience to those laws were carried out by Israel in her capacity as a national political state. God’s aim for those centuries was to make vivid on earth the nature of his holiness and the seriousness of sin.

An Example of Such Dealings

Thus, for example, the carrying out of capital punishment was part of the lesson book for the nations. The law of God was being fleshed out in Israel. This is how serious sin is. And so, sorcery was a capital crime (Exodus 22:18). Cursing your mother and father was a capital crime (Leviticus 20:9). Bestiality, having sex with an animal, was a capital crime (Exodus 22:19). Adultery was a capital crime for both the man and the woman (Leviticus 20:10). Homosexual intercourse was a capital crime (Leviticus 20:13), and so on.

This was to show on earth, among the nations (and for us in our Bibles), the ultimate standards of God’s holiness — and therefore we should not read this history, the history of God’s dealings with Israel, and say, “Well, that shouldn’t have happened. That shouldn’t have happened in those days.” We should not say that. We shouldn’t call God’s way in that time into question. God chose that it happened that way, and he did it in order for us to tremble at the prospect of committing sin and to send us flying to Christ.

“It’s only a matter of time until all sin that is not repented of and forsaken will be brought into judgment.”

In those punishments, God was showing his intense opposition to attitudes and behaviors that exalt human self-determination and belittle God’s laws. Such punishments were indeed severe, but they were no more severe than the punishments that await such flagrant sinning in our own time, for God will come to judge the quick and the dead. It’s only a matter of time until all sin that is not repented of and forsaken will be brought into judgment, a judgment every bit as severe as capital punishment in the Old Testament — indeed, far more severe.

How Jesus Changed the World

But with the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ, profound changes came into the world and transformed the nature of the people of God and the way this people witnessed to God in the world. “The kingdom of God [is] taken away from [Israel] and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:43). The new people of God, the church of Jesus, are no longer those who are ethnic by origin or by circumcision, but only by faith in the Messiah Jesus. That’s who’s made a part of the pilgrim people of God, the Christian church.

We are not a nation or a political entity. We have no geographic location, and therefore there is no direct correlation between the laws of the state and the law of Christ in his church. We are transferred out of darkness into the kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13). “[Christ’s] kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Otherwise, we would use the sword to enforce his rule, but we don’t.

We are sojourners and exiles scattered among the nations, and we are defined not by national or political or geographic borders or political structures. The old covenant, Hebrews says, has passed away. The priesthood is replaced with Christ. The sacrifices are replaced with Christ. We’ve died to the law. All foods are declared clean, so you don’t have those ceremonial laws in the church anymore. The temple is no longer the center of our religious life, and our life in this world has been put on a new footing.

Life in Christ as God’s People

This new life in the church in Christ is characterized by the fact that Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). The church is on a mission to rescue sinners from condemnation by offering them forgiveness through Christ. That includes forgiveness for sins that once would have been immediately executed as capital crimes. Paul lists some of those sins in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 that would have been executed, and then he says, “Such were some of you. But . . . ” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Here you stand with your head still on. In other words, instead of being executed, repentant sinners are justified, cleansed, sanctified, forgiven, folded into the new people of God.

The sins are just as serious now. They were serious in the Old Testament. They’re just as serious today. And the punishment that awaits those whose sins are not repented of and forsaken will be far more severe in hell than anything the Old Testament ever did through capital punishment. The same standards of holiness prevail today as in those days, but we live in a day of mercy, a day of reprieve, a day of salvation and reconciliation with God. And so, the church continues to bear witness to the absolute holiness of God and yet makes the world aware: “Now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). “Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Once I had a friend who dated this woman.

She was nice, as I recall her, smart and extremely studious. She had ambitions to be top of her class. Yet her drive to excel wound her up a bit tight, in my opinion. She had this wide, bright smile — when she allowed her face to relax. She lived braced for the next exam, which, for her, seemed a year-round sport. Comparing her work with mine, it’s almost as if we attended different universities — or as if she were secretly training for the CIA.

My friend dated this woman, and he assured me they enjoyed “fun” times together. But all I remember is their study dates, quick trips to the cafeteria between library marathons, and endless flashcards. They were a power couple, too busy for a normal life, destined to leave their mark on this world. Until they broke up. I don’t have all the details, but soon after the relationship ended, I heard him do what I hadn’t truly heard before: he laughed.

Sure, I had heard him chuckle before, but never laugh. That’s the difference between grinning and smiling, speaking and praying, singing and worshiping. And his laugh was music not easily forgotten. Colorful as Joseph’s coat, alive as a rainforest, the sound of his joy brightened his listeners. His laugh, unkenneled, became a trademark. The contagious sound erupted from far deeper than the chest.

My friend was happier. And to all appearances, that newfound bliss was due to ending the relationship with this woman. The whole situation serves as an illustration of why Satan is so relentlessly after your joy in God. Let’s connect those dots.

Killed Joys Point to Killjoys

The mathematics of my friend’s gladness seem obvious: friend minus girlfriend equals happiness.

Fairly or unfairly, her presence and his deepest laughter couldn’t coexist. As one disappeared, the other appeared — like Clark Kent and Superman. Such a sudden change in demeanor reflected unfavorably upon the relationship and, right or wrong, upon her influence on his life. With her gone, he loosened up enough to laugh his real laugh; the clouds parted.

Back to Satan. He knows all too well about this connection between our joy (or not) in relation to some person, and how onlookers perceive that person. If the other kills our joy, others will see them as a killjoy. And so, Satan seeks to make us look miserable in relation to God.

Our audible joy (or not) says something about our God. No matter how we assure them otherwise, unbelievers assume our Christian lives are little more than morning study dates in Scripture, making flashcards of rules to memorize, and sneaking brief guilty pleasures during the week between Sunday services. They need to see our delight in God, hear the newfound happiness in our voices. Do they? They often see us more serious than we used to be, but do they also see us happier? Do they suspect we were more satisfied in our previous lives, dead in sins and living for the world?

You see, spiritual warfare rages over who appears to make people most satisfied: God or Satan.
Thus, sounds of human gladness in God taunt Satan’s ears. Saints have understood their joy as a polemic: “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” (Psalm 4:7). This kind of combatant joy affronts Satan, especially when the boast comes from the man deprived of all worldly explanations for his happiness. Such a man provokes the darkness. He causes onlookers to wonder, gets them talking: What does he have that we don’t?

Satan’s Sermon

So count on it. If Satan cannot break you from God, he will attempt to make you look as miserable as possible while serving God. He means to preach about God through you, his manuscript. Your sighs and groans and complaints under the lordship of Christ begin his sermon:

Friends, relatives, neighbors, look at this man formerly free of religion now wasting away under its yoke. He was happy once, bright once, knew how to have a good time and carry a normal conversation to entertaining ends. But now the miserable creature has found God, receiving the wage of anxious toil. Further, he would attempt to evangelize you all into his same burdens and groans. He offers all that which he unhappily bears. Mark him well. Beware this uphill, narrow, and laughterless life of the Christian.

The point is not that we audibly laugh in every circumstance. There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). The point is that we should be known for bursts of laughter and dancing, not endless weeping and weightiness. Our regular expressions of joy serve as an act of spiritual warfare against one who labors tirelessly to make us curse God to his face and grumble behind his back.

Here is the inconsistency that the enemy loves. God is my Father, you say — yet you’re always fretful. He is the Joy of my joy — yet you’re consistently gloomy. He is my all in all — yet even your children weary from your dissatisfaction. Christ is my Prince of Peace — yet you’re short-tempered. Jesus is my Good Shepherd who gives all by grace — yet you’re seldom grateful. Everyone can see it but us.

In other words, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him — and God is greatly dishonored in us when we are consistently curmudgeonly and dissatisfied in him.

Laugh, Christian

Our duty, then, is to make it abundantly clear: Our best joys and laughter were had not before coming to Christ but after. We aim to make it plain that before the Spirit made us new, we did not know what real happiness was. But now that we have him, we have more than we could ask for, more than we deserve. We live in the desert, testifying that we have water the world knows not of.

Consider how this relates to the use of our mouths. One reason God hates the grumbling of his children is this relation between our satisfaction and his glory. “Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:14–15).

Consider what disrespect this respectable sin of grumbling offers to God. It says we have no Father in heaven, no Friend on earth, no Shepherd able to provide for us. The sound of our anxieties indulged ignores the birds of the air and the splendor of the flowers, claiming that whoever cares for these has not been caring for us. Complaining tells the sad tale of the orphan. But our God has not left us orphans.

So laugh, Christian. Make a habit of smiling. Relax those face muscles and rejoice, for he has destined you not for wrath but for eternal life. Put to death those grumbles and petty complaints that consume those without our hope. Yes, weep with those who weep, and sing of God’s goodness to you, of his love for you, which towers over every creeping dissatisfaction of this life. Show a world desperate for answers, desperate for life, desperate for a cure that you have happily found all in him.

As I thought about tonight and our theme for tonight, I thought about this crazy thing we do in our family. Sometime after dinner and cleanup, after bathtime and PJs, we huddle up with our kids around the Bible, we read a story together, we pray for our family, our church, our neighbors, for the needs around us, and then we do this thing. It’s kind of like talking, but it’s not talking. It’s more beautiful than talking, and usually happier. You use your vocal cords, but you change the rhythm of your voice and the pitch (highness and lowness) to make a different kind of sound. We have a book with lots of lines and funny symbols that guides us.

My eight-year-old has the hang of it (with some tuning issues). My four-year-old really gives it her all, but she isn’t winning any competitions. My two-year-old loves to do this thing — it comes as naturally as eating or drinking or liking dump trucks. You probably know what I’m talking about. In fact, many of you are here tonight because you love to do this beautiful, inexplicable thing. It’s called singing.

It’s utterly ordinary to you now, but when you stop to think about it, it’s one of the strangest things human beings do — isn’t it? I mean, how would you describe singing to an alien who’s just landed on earth and never heard someone sing before? It’s hard, isn’t it? You hear it all throughout history and all over the world, but it’s not at all essential for life. You don’t need it to survive. You must eat and drink and breathe and walk, but you don’t have to sing. Someone could live a whole life, seventy or eighty years, and never sing. I’m sure those people are out there. They’re really, really sad, but they’re out there.

God Sings

So, why do we sing? Why would the infinitely creative, infinitely powerful God alter our brains and vocal cords to give us the capacity to make melodies and harmonies? I think it’s because some things in life are just too good to be said.

For example, I can say, “I love Jesus.” I can say, “I really love Jesus,” and I do. I can say, “Jesus is my greatest Treasure,” and he is. I can say, “Jesus is the greatest, most trustworthy, most satisfying, most glorious Treasure in the world.” Can I get an amen? Or I could sing, “Hallelujah! All I have is Christ!” I don’t even have to sing it well — and it still says more than words can.

God gave us singing because there’s a joy greater than words. And there’s a joy greater than words because that’s the kind of God we have. All the singing in the world is an echo of the song at the heart of the universe. He’s the Song of songs, the God who made lungs and mouths, whole notes and half notes, major keys and minor keys, symphonies and, yes, country music. Did you know our God is a singing God? Zephaniah 3:17:

The Lord your God is in your midst,     a mighty one who will save;he will rejoice over you with gladness;     he will quiet you by his love;he will exult over you with loud singing.

It’s not just singing, but loud, happy singing. You were made in the image of that God. So, I shouldn’t be surprised when my two-year-old sings nonsense in his crib in the middle of the night. He was made, knitted together in his mother’s womb, to remind me of God. Of course he sings. Of course we sing.

God gave us singing because he loves to sing, but he also gave us singing because we were made to worship — to glorify him by enjoying him forever. It’s not enough to know, study, or describe this God. To really know him is to enjoy him, to treasure him, to worship him. And that’s why I wanted us to begin this evening of seeing, savoring, and singing in a favorite psalm, Psalm 4. We’re going to look first at the melody, then at the minor key, and lastly the chorus.

The Melody

Psalm 4:7 has become one of my favorite verses in all the Bible. I read through the Bible several times over years before I ever noticed it, but once I saw it, these words lodged themselves in my soul, and I’ve come back to them again and again:

You have put more joy in my heart     than they have when their grain and wine abound.

More than the world has at its very best!

Notice, David doesn’t say, “You have given me great joy.” He could have said that, but he didn’t. He also didn’t say, “You have given me as much joy as those in the world have in their finest meals and fullest pleasures.” No, he says, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” If it’s a word that has grabbed me, it’s that word more.

As David weighs the joy he’s found in God against all the greatest joys on earth — the most expensive experiences, in the most exotic places, with the most famous people — he finds all those other offers wanting. He prefers what he’s tasted through faith over anything else he might see or do or buy, because he knows that God holds out more joy. I wonder if you believe that.

Do you believe that if you went all in with Jesus — if you had to give up everything else you have and love to have him — you’d be happier than you’d ever be without him? I know some of you do — that’s why you’re here. You can’t think of Christianity any other way. You don’t know Jesus only as Lord and Savior, but also as your greatest Treasure. You’re part of the “Fellowship of More Joy.”

“It’s not enough to know, study, or describe this God. To really know him is to enjoy him.”

Others of you, though, have never heard someone talk about Jesus like this. Savor Jesus? How do you savor a person, much less someone you can’t see? What does that even mean? I’m glad you asked, and I’m glad you’re here. I want you to hear that there really is something in life worth singing about — there’s someone worth singing about. There’s a joy too great for words. “You have put more joy in my heart.” For tonight, we’ll call this greater joy the melody. But I chose the psalm for a second reason.

The Minor Key

I’ve loved verse 7 for years, but it’s taken on even more meaning the more time I’ve spent in the psalm. Now, experts wrestle over the specific circumstances, so we don’t know for sure what David was experiencing. We do know that he’s in trouble and that he’s been sinned against, because of how he begins the psalm:

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!     You have given me relief when I was in distress.     Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!How long, exalted men, will my honor be insulted?     How long will you love what is worthless and pursue a lie? (Psalm 4:1–2)

You could call this the minor key. We heard the melody: “You, O God, have given me more joy.” Now here’s the minor key: suffering. In David’s case, it was serious and prolonged pain. The king’s honor has been insulted, and people close to him have been lying about him. Who was it in this case, and how exactly did they wrong him? Again, we don’t know for sure. David had so many enemies and so many trials that it’s truly hard to know.

Many, however, read Psalms 3 and 4 together as morning and evening psalms and therefore believe they’re about the same event. And the superscription on Psalm 3 tells us that he wrote that psalm “when he fled from Absalom his son.” In 2 Samuel 15, when David was king, Absalom (his own son) led a conspiracy and tried to take his father’s throne by force.

Again, Psalm 4 may not be about Absalom (though I think it is), but it’s about some betrayal, and it’s helpful for me, anyway, to think about a particular betrayal. His third son really conspired against him, lied to him and about him, recruited an army of traitors, and then tried to kill him.
Again, my kids are eight, four, and two. I literally can’t imagine one of them hurting me like this. But they might.

All of this — the betrayal, the lying, the threats, the grief and sorrow and anger — really changes how you hear the joy in verse 7, doesn’t it?

You have put more joy in my heart     than they have when their grain and wine abound.

Really? You can say that in these circumstances? Could you say that if someone hurt you like this? Maybe someone has already hurt you. When he says, “when their grain and wine abound,” I can’t help but think he’s thinking about Absalom, who was sleeping in his father’s house, feasting on his father’s grain, and getting drunk on his father’s wine.

And yet David can say, “As happy as Absalom might be right now, I’m happier.” Even now. Even here. Even while he absolutely wrecks this father’s heart. This is a man who sees, savors, and sings, even in suffering.

His joy in God carries him through the valley — and it shines even brighter in the valley. How great and satisfying is this God that he can give joy — more joy — in pain like this! We hear how the dark minor key draws out and amplifies the melody.

Some of you are struggling to sing in this season. You have something heavy weighing on your mind right now, and you can barely focus in worship, much less sing. It might not be the betrayal of a child, but it stings like that — and like his, the sting might last for months or years or longer.
I think if David were here tonight, he might say, “If you know the God who is with me in my valley, you can still sing. Even now.” In fact, you have to sing. It’s the only way you’ll make it through.

And this psalm teaches us that it’s not just about getting ourselves through. Remember, David is singing to the people suffering with him — he’s singing them through their pain. And he wrote his song down so that God’s people could sing these lines again and again and again. That’s what the psalms are. And his song still sings today, doesn’t it? He’s singing us, all these thousands of years later, through our sufferings of various kinds.

“There is a joy in this world that is deeper and more intense than your pain, whatever your pain is.”

So, if you’re here tonight and going through something hard, who needs to hear you sing through this? Whose faith might be strengthened by hearing you, in all your pain, cry out, “You have put more joy in my heart, even now”? How could anyone feel joy in a situation like this? By finding a joy deeper and more intense than the pain. If you don’t hear anything else, know that there is a joy in this world that is deeper and more intense than your pain, whatever your pain is. That’s the kind of joy God holds out to you in Jesus, in the gospel, in his word.

The apostle Paul wrote a phrase for this kind of happiness: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). In a world like ours, with lives like ours and heartaches like ours, that’s the right kind of happy. Sorrowful — genuinely, even persistently, brokenhearted — and yet always, always rejoicing.

No matter how hard life gets, we always have more than enough reasons in Christ to rejoice. And that brings us to the chorus.

The Chorus

We’ve heard the melody: this greater joy God gives. We’ve felt the minor key: his terrible suffering. And we’ve seen how his joy shines through that suffering. But what is the joy he experiences? Does David tell us any more about the “more joy” that God gives? Let’s look at verse 6:

There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?”

I think David’s talking about the faithful people around him, people who are suffering with him (perhaps hiding with him from Absalom), and they’re asking, “Who can show us anything good?” Is God going to let us have anything good? We’re doing the right thing here, and yet we’re the ones suffering. We’re the ones being driven out of the kingdom and running for our lives. And the ones doing evil are getting all the good. They’re safe. They’re well-fed. They’re on their third bottle of good wine. What’s up with that, God? Why am I doing the right thing if I just keep getting beat up by life? And why wouldn’t I do the wrong thing when those people seem to be doing so great?

You’ve probably been tempted this way at some point. You’ve wondered why your Christian life is so hard at times, and why people diving headlong into sin seem to have it easier or better.

How does David shepherd the pain and confusion of these hurting friends? He lifts their eyes to remind them where to find that more joy. Here’s the end of verse 6 into verse 7:

“Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!”You have put more joy in my heart     than they have when their grain and wine abound.

The people around him were looking for safety and justice and some comfort; he was looking for something better than all of that — far better. He wouldn’t settle for getting his things back. A throne with all that power wasn’t big enough for him anymore. No, he wanted the Good that’s better than all those other goods. The reason his joy is strong enough to endure betrayal is because God is his joy. This is the chorus. “Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!” The joy’s in his face — it’s in him.

He makes the same point in verse 3: “Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.” I think that for means “for relationship.” In the gospel, God is not just trying to prove his grace and mercy when he forgives us — he doesn’t save us from a distance — no, he wants to know us. And he wants us to know and enjoy him.

This is the same joy as Psalm 16:11:

You make known to me the path of life;     in your presence there is fullness of joy;     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

And now, in Christ, we say with the apostle Paul,

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8)

David’s chorus in the valley was his greater joy in God himself. That joy kept him from bitterness. That joy kept him from being paralyzed with despair. That joy freed him to love those around him and encourage them not to return sin for sin. That joy allowed him to lie down and get some rest: Verse 8 says, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Because God is his joy, he can have joy, real joy, more joy, even when his life falls apart. He can sing in his deepest, darkest valleys.

This man is a miracle. He’s an emotionally miraculous man. Who responds to suffering like this? He’s the kind of man I want to be. No one sees, savors, and sings through this kind of suffering — unless God does this kind of miracle in them. And that brings me back to singing.

Prophet, Priest, and Song

I started by saying that singing isn’t necessary to human life — like eating, drinking, and breathing — but the longer I think about it, and the longer I spend in verses like these, and the longer I sing, the more I wonder if it’s not the most human thing we do.

Remember that Jesus — the greatest human who ever lived, the Son of God in the flesh — sings. In a couple precious places, we actually hear him sing. He suffered more than David, far more, and yet with more joy, far more. Hebrews 2:10–12 says,

It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation [Jesus] perfect through suffering [the cross]. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying [this is Jesus speaking, quoting Psalm 22], “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

And he actually sang. Remember that night of the Lord’s Supper, after the bread had been broken and eaten, after the wine had been poured and consumed, after he had given his last words to his disciples, how did they end the night together? Matthew 26:30 says, “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” Can you imagine? On the night he was betrayed, hours before he bore the sins of the world, in his deepest, darkest moment, he sang.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. David bore the awful betrayal of a son, but the Father sent his beloved Son to bear the betrayal of the whole world — to bear your betrayal against him, your sin. And Hebrews 12:2 tells us that it was joy that sustained him — more joy than the world has ever known, even when their grain and wine abound. He knew that joy, before the foundation of the world — between the Father, Son, and Spirit — and he’s now become that joy for us, our Treasure in the field, our Pearl of great price.

You won’t get to heaven unless you really want to. That’s what the Bible tells us.

Jesus wanted to go to heaven. Hebrews tells us that the joy of heaven propelled his life of faith (Hebrews 12:2). It’s what motivated him to run and run all the way to the end. The same joy motivated the other heroes too, from Abel to Zechariah (Hebrews 11:4, 37). All ran through dangers and toils and snares — too many to count — and they didn’t stop. Why? Because they longed for heaven. They longed for the heavenly country that they could see just beyond the finish line (Hebrews 11:13–16).

You can’t run the race of faith all the way to the end without a clear vision of heaven. Your legs will give out. The strength of your resolve won’t be enough. The course is too steep. The headwind too strong. Ask the heroes. Ask Jesus. They’ll all say the same thing. Only the joys of heaven can sustain the race of faith.

In their post-race interview, they’d want you to know that the race is possible. What else are we to make of the fact that they made it? But they’d also want you to know how. If we asked them that, I suspect they’d smile, perhaps pause to wipe some sweat off their face, and then begin talking about heaven.

Here’s what they might say.

Reunion

Never forget that heaven will be filled with people who know and love the Lord Jesus just like we do. Everybody there will know the Lord “from the least . . . to the greatest” (Hebrews 8:11). All the people we’ve loved and lost, and who knew and loved the Lord Jesus, will be there in that place. Every single one of them: friends who died too soon, taken by disease or worse; children taken as children; parents; grandparents; wives and husbands.

Heaven will be filled with Jesus-people, with the “church of the firstborn” (New Testament believers) and “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Old Testament believers; Hebrews 12:23). Every believer of all time will be there. Some we can’t wait to meet, like Charles Spurgeon or Martyn Lloyd-Jones or John Stott. And others we can’t wait to see again — some whose names are still too painful to say aloud. They’ll be there. All of them.

What a day of rejoicing that will be.

Perfection

Heaven is also a place where God has promised to perfectly “put [his] laws into [our] minds, and write them on [our] hearts” (Hebrews 8:10). If you’ve been a Christian for more than, say, five minutes, then you’ve longed for this reality, even as you’ve experienced it in part. It’s a promise that reminds us that heaven will be free of sin. We will be free from sin. God’s good and life-giving ways will be part of the DNA of our resurrected bodies. You’ll no longer be able to sin. And that lack of freedom won’t bother you! It’ll be one of the best things about you and that place.

It’s a reality every Christian longs for. We long to be free of our inveterate self-seeking. Our debilitating jealousy. Our too-small and ill-directed desires. Our inability to act for God’s glory with anything but mixed motives. That darkness within you that occupies so much of your mind and heart, that pattern you long to see changed, foresworn, put off, that sin that besets you now — it will be permanently removed in the sin-free world to come.

It’s a promise whose future reality extends back into the present. When Jesus died, he activated God’s promise of perfection. The Bible calls it God’s new covenant. And it gives believers in this chapter of the story not only the prospect of future perfection, but present experiences of that future world. When we believed in Jesus, sin’s power over us was broken in a brand-new way. Our slavery to sin and the devil and the fear of death ended (Hebrews 2:14–15). And all this anticipates the full flowering of God’s promise in the future, where sin’s power and presence will be eradicated.

A place without sin. A life without sin. It’s what we were made for. And it’s what God promises us at the end of our race.

Creation

Hebrews calls that coming place a “world to come” (Hebrews 2:5). I’m afraid we don’t think about this enough. Too often, heaven is a cipher for something less real, less tactile, less concrete than this world. As a result, it fails to capture our imaginations and hearts. But the end of God’s story is nothing less than a new creation. A place with food and animals of every kind. A place full of wonder and beauty. A place with things to do, to make, to create. A place filled with music, gardens, and games. A place just like this one, only unburdened by sin.

“You can’t run the race of faith all the way to the end without a clear vision of heaven.”

What do you long for in this world? What places make your heart ache? What smells and textures and sounds make your heart sing? Pine needles on a sunny forest path. Freshly baked bread. Birdsong, rushing water, cello suites. Windswept plains. Starry, starry nights. Each is a pointer given by God and meant to draw us inexorably to the world to come.

Every single good desire created by this world — every last one — will be fulfilled in the next.

There is a world at the end of our race, with joys far too large for our little words. Metaphor and simile try their best. But these too fall short, which is why the best window into that world is this one. So, we must not forget that when God created this world, he called it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). But when he talks about the world to come, he calls it even “better” (Hebrews 11:16).

Love

Now for the best part: God is there.

It’s the best reality of heaven, and it’s the hardest one to wrap our minds around. Hebrews doesn’t just tell us that God is preparing a world for us; Hebrews tells us that God is planning to live there with us. That’s why the place is called “the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:22). It’s the fulfillment of God’s age-old promise to be our God and for us to be his people (Hebrews 8:10). In that promise, we finite creatures find our best and highest good.

We’re rightly glad that heaven is a place and that it’s full of other people we know and love. But still, there is something in us, a longing, that only God himself can fill. There’s a kind of joy that comes from relating to God that is unlike anything else. It’s a joy that is often easier to experience than to explain.

But let me try.

Our deepest joys on this earth come from personal relationships. We experience them when we spend time with people we know and love and who know and love us. People who know us and still love us. That’s what each of us wants more than anything else.

This is precisely what God gives us in himself. He knows us better than anyone else. And he loves us still. In fact, he loves us more than anyone else. More than we could ever imagine. God loves you so very much. And he’s proven it beyond all shadow of doubt by sacrificing his most precious Son for our good (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; 8:31–32).

One day, Hebrews tells us, in that coming world, full of God’s family and free from sin, we’ll live with God himself. We’ll live with the one whose love for us is better than life itself (Psalm 63:3). This hope is either true or it isn’t. And, if true, then it is more than sufficient to fuel our race of faith all the way to the glorious end.

Forever

Finally, Hebrews — the heroes — want you to know one more thing. Heaven is forever.

Hebrews calls that world to come unshakable, “lasting,” and “eternal” (9:15; 12:27; 13:14). All that good comes not with a period but an ellipsis. There’s no expiration date. No final chapter. No end. Every good of this world ends to make us long for the next. Every good meal, conversation, laugh, and sunset. They all end so that we long for a world where the good never ends. Or, better, where the good ends only because what follows is better still.

All our adventures in this life, wherever our race may take us in this wide world, are, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, simply “the cover and the title page” to the “Great Story . . . which goes on . . . forever” and “in which every chapter is better than the one before” (The Last Battle, 767).

Forever joys. Forever increasing joys. It’s the kind of story only God could tell. It’s the kind of happy ending only an infinitely creative storyteller could imagine. So run, Christian, run. Run all the way to the end. Heaven will be worth it all.

Church planting is one-half asking people for favors and one-half asking for money. I exaggerate, but not by much. Church planters are needy.

By God’s grace, Trinity Baptist Church of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, recently covenanted as a church. We’re up and running but still in startup mode. Ultimately, of course, we look to God to meet our needs. That’s one reason we have a weekly prayer meeting. And in his generosity, God has provided dozens of founding members who are eager to give and serve and sacrifice for the good of this new body.

But founding members are not the only ones who have played a vital role. In this article, I want to glorify God, and encourage and counsel church planters, by reflecting on ways we’ve benefited from partnerships with, and the generosity of, other local churches. I also hope to encourage pastors of established churches to consider ways they might support new gospel work in their area.

Here are seven ways we’ve benefited from the help of other churches in our town and region, along with some biblical principles that account for why these other churches have been so helpful to us.

1. Partner with Counsel

Kingdom-minded pastors don’t just care how their own churches are doing. They care about the progress of the gospel and the state of God’s churches throughout their region. Consider, for instance, how Paul and Barnabas set out on their second missionary journey not to evangelize an unreached area but to check on the state and soundness of the churches: “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are” (Acts 15:36). I benefited from pastors who modeled this kind of kingdom-minded concern for their whole region from the very beginning of my planting efforts.

When I first started thinking about planting a church in Chapel Hill, I called a handful of pastors I knew in the area. I asked them whether they thought Chapel Hill could use another faithful church and whether they thought I’d be a good person to lead it. Their responses were encouraging and affirming. If they hadn’t been, I would’ve taken that seriously. They also gave me their read on the area’s culture, spiritual needs, and other churches. If you’re a pastor who’s been ministering in a region for a decade or more, a little counsel from you can go a long way in helping a potential planter get his bearings.

2. Partner with Encouragement

There’s no need for church plants in the same area to develop a sibling rivalry. Instead, even young churches can be a model for and help to other churches. Consider how Paul commended the Thessalonians, who were barely out of their “planting” phase when he wrote to them: “You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia” (1 Thessalonians 1:6–7). Church planters working to establish new works near each other can generously share with each other what the Lord has done in and through them, along with what they’ve learned even in a short journey so far.

When planting in Chapel Hill was an idea still in the “maybe” phase, I got a call from Shane Shaddix, then one of the pastors of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh. He was also in the beginning stages of planting a church there, just a few steps ahead of us. Shane wanted to encourage me and help our efforts. Shortly after, on one of my first trips to the area, he and his fellow planter, Manny Prieto, bought me lunch and asked how they could help and encourage our work. They have consistently supported me and my fellow pastor, Michael Abraham, by texting us, praying for us privately and publicly, warmly welcoming founding members of ours for a season of attendance at their church, and in many other ways. Their church, Risen Christ Church, is a new faithful gospel witness in Chapel Hill. If you’re in the area, I would gladly encourage you to check them out.

Another local-church planter who’s been a huge help to us is Chase Jenkins. First Baptist Church of Durham recently sent out Chase and another FBC pastor, Wes Treadway, with about 72 (!) of their members to plant Parkside Baptist Church in South Durham. Chase has encouraged us relentlessly. He has been so affectionately invested in our work that I sometimes wonder if he cares more about our church’s success than his own!

3. Partner with Local Knowledge

Paul commended the Philippians for partnering with him from the very beginning of his gospel ministry: “You Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only” (Philippians 4:15). Many churches in our area have been eager and generous to partner with us in seemingly small but practically crucial ways — for instance, by sharing local knowledge, connections, and church-planting hacks.

Eric Gravelle, campus pastor of the Summit Church’s Chapel Hill campus, generously shared contacts in the school system and advice about meeting in a school. Travis Bodine, the pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church west of downtown Chapel Hill, pooled local knowledge from his church members to generate all kinds of leads for us to chase down. And Manny and Shane of Risen Christ shared a detailed spreadsheet of possible meeting spaces. After Michael and I made dozens of inquiries, with a perfect fail rate of 100 percent, the venue that agreed to host us was from the list Risen Christ had given us. I was recently able to return the favor by sharing about a location we checked out that might prove to be a good fit for their next home. And both sets of these planting-pastor peers, from Risen Christ and Parkside, have given us advice about incorporation, nonprofit status, banking processes, and many more of the interminable logistics of planting a church.

“There’s no better way to encourage a church planter than by praying for him and his church, publicly, by name.”

On the last Sunday morning before we covenanted, I had the joy of worshiping with the saints at Parkside. Like we would soon, they baptized someone in a horse trough. (They at least got to bring the trough inside their building — our baptisms take place in a large outdoor patio next to our meeting space.) Long story short, Parkside offered us not only helpful equipment for pulling off a horse-trough baptism, but one of their deacons even assisted us with our first one the following Sunday. That’s more help than I even would have thought to ask for.

4. Partner with Local Connections

One of the ways Paul used his pastoral (or I should say, apostolic) capital to help churches take root and grow was by connecting them with, and commending to them, other leaders. For instance, Paul commends Timothy to the Philippians and urges them to trust him because of his proven character (Philippians 2:19–24).

Similarly, another way that local pastors have helped us is by connecting us to other local pastors in their relational networks. On another of my early trips down, Lawrence Yoo and Danny Castiglione of Waypoint Church generously bought me lunch and gave me their take on spiritual dynamics throughout the Triangle region. Lawrence then connected me with David Kwon, pastor of Journey Community Church, because he thought they might have space for us to rent. When Michael and I met with David, he emptied out his mental Rolodex of places we might consider for a meeting space and pastors we might consider connecting with. We wound up renting space from Journey for our Wednesday-night Bible studies.

5. Partner with Space

We know from Scripture that the church is a people, not a building (1 Corinthians 1:1–2). Some churches in the New Testament likely met in homes (Romans 16:5). Paul carried out evangelistic ministry in a rented hall (Acts 19:9). So we know that churches can gather wherever they have permission and room. But many of us (like me!) are so used to doing ministry in a well-appointed church building that planting can be a shock to the system.

I’m used to doing ministry in a 150-year-old city-center church with a large and well-maintained workhorse of a building. Having no building to take for granted is like learning to throw a baseball with my weak arm. Once a church plant hits a certain size, it will gather more people than can comfortably fit in someone’s home. Which means that for every meeting you’re either renting or asking for space.

On this front, the Lord has been generous to us through many different churches. Parkside is not the only local church to offer space for occasional meetings. Chapel Hill Bible Church graciously allowed us to host an early interest meeting in their chapel. And First Baptist Durham let us meet first in their fellowship hall and then in their sanctuary every Sunday night for the whole summer before we covenanted, for free. In addition to some key members’ homes and garages, our church essentially incubated in First Baptist. Your church might not have a large building or budget margin to give to a new church plant, but do you have enough spare space to incubate one for a season?

6. Partner with Prayer

Because the gospel advances through God’s gracious, sovereign work of saving sinners, the gospel advances through prayer. And because the gospel advances through prayer, church planting advances through prayer. So, not only should planters pray, but other churches can have an Epaphras-like ministry of wrestling in prayer on behalf of new plants: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God” (Colossians 4:12).

Over a couple months’ worth of Sunday mornings leading up to our covenanting, my family and I visited just about every church we had founding members coming from, and a couple of others that wanted to partner with us. During at least three of those visits, the pastor or elder leading the pastoral prayer prayed for our work.

There’s no better way to demonstrate a spirit of catholicity than by leading your church to publicly pray for other churches. There’s no better way to say and show that we’re all on Jesus’s team. And there’s no better way to encourage a church planter than by praying for him and his church, publicly, by name.

7. Partner with Members

For the Great Commission to be fulfilled, some gatherings of Christians must support and encourage some of their members to scatter. It’s painful. It’s costly. It’s hard to part. But it comes with the territory of trying to establish new kingdom outposts. Sometimes God uses persecution to do it: “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). But a more proactive way to scatter for the sake of the Great Commission is for pastors to encourage members to consider uprooting their membership and perhaps even their livelihoods for the sake of advancing new gospel works — and for churches to joyfully bear that cost.

Our main sending church, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, where I served as a pastor for seven years, was exemplary in this. Amid a difficult season of transition in which another long-term associate pastor was leaving to pastor elsewhere, along with several other elders doing the same, Mark Dever graciously gave public airtime to discussing our planting efforts in the church’s evening services and encouraged members to consider moving to join the work.

In similar fashion, First Baptist Church of Durham has demonstrated exemplary partnership with us in their willingness to joyfully give members away. Even amid planting their own sizeable, full-grown church, they have encouraged and supported their members who have considered joining our work. And in their service the Sunday before we covenanted, they commissioned those who were leaving FBC to join Trinity by bringing them onto the platform and praying for them. And Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Mebane did the same with the members they sent, a tremendously encouraging sign of their support and commitment to the work at cost to their own body.

Partners in the Greatest Cause

The apostle Paul knew what it was to be needy. Through Christ he learned the secret not only of abounding but of lacking (Philippians 4:11–13). And when Paul wrote those words to the Philippians, he lacked much more than a church building or office or staff. Yet Paul thanked God for the Philippians’ contribution to his needs, and he called their relationship a partnership (Philippians 1:5; 4:15). Partnership includes financial support, but as I can gratefully testify from experience, it goes well beyond money.

Church planter, your neediness is an opportunity for other Christians, pastors, and especially churches to forge new gospel partnerships. Pastor, a new church plant coming to town is not a competitor or an opponent, but a partner in the gospel. How can you lead your church to partner with them?

We’re just two weeks from Christmas. Presents are still being purchased, wrapped, and shipped. Christmas cards still need to be signed and mailed. Loose ends on travel details are getting sorted. Family event-planning is getting finalized. Perhaps you’re multitasking right now and gift-wrapping while you listen. We all feel the holiday pressures, of course, Pastor John, as we gear up for one of the busiest holidays in the world — and one of the most expensive. The average American adult will drop about $1,000 just on gifts during this season, leading to a question of great relevance this month, like in this email from a podcast listener named James.

“Pastor John, hello, and thank you for the podcast. Often, I hear that we are to love God for who he is, not for what he does for us — to love the Giver more than the gifts. How can we know that we are doing this, especially during this Christmas season? When I examine my own heart, so much of what I know about God seems to be in relation to what he has done for me, like the sending of his Son in the incarnation. How do I interact with him on the basis of him, and not simply on the basis of the gifts he has given me?”

First, I think it is absolutely crucial in pursuing that interaction with God in that way to get really clear in our mind and in our heart that there is a huge and important difference between enjoying a person who gives gifts and enjoying the gifts instead of the person or more than the person. And I think we need to clarify this and get it fixed in our minds, both from experience and from Scripture. Let me give you an example of what I mean from experience.

Key 1: Loving the Giver of the Gift

What if you give an engagement ring? You’ve been in love for two years, maybe, and now you’re going to move this thing decisively forward. You give a ring. (I’m assuming you’re a man, but gals, you apply it in an appropriate way.) You give your fiancée a beautiful diamond ring, and she spends the rest of the night and then the following weeks bragging about this gift, taking it and showing it to everybody. She never calls you. She never looks at you. She never takes you by the hand and looks you in the eye. She’s just thrilled with this diamond, and your intent in giving her that was totally missed.

“The goal of all God does for us is to make it possible for us to be with him and him to be with us.”

How would you feel about that? You wanted her to look at it. Oh, yes, you wanted her to love it. You wanted her to be thankful for it. You wanted her to enjoy it. And then you wanted her to put it on her hand, take your hands across the table, look you in the eye, and say, “I would love to spend the rest of my life with you. You are ten thousand times more precious to me than this beautiful ring.” We understand from our own experience what it means when gifts are loved more than the giver. We get that. There’s no excuse for not getting that. We get it in our experience.

Then we get it from the Bible when it comes to God, because it’s all over the place:

1 Peter 3:18: “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” That’s why he died: to “bring us to God.”
Or Romans 5:11 — after saying that “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2) and “we rejoice in [tribulation]” (Romans 5:3), then Paul adds this in Romans 5:11: “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Or Psalm 16:11: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
Or Psalm 73:25–26: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Or consider the story of the ten lepers healed by Jesus in Luke 17:11–37. Remember? All ten — no leprosy, awesome, healed, run away. One of them, a Samaritan, comes back praising God and falling down at Jesus’s feet. What’s the point? The point is that they missed it. They just missed it. This is about Jesus. This is about God. Leprosy deliverance was a means to that end.

So, we know from experience, we know from the Scriptures, that there’s a difference between enjoying a giver through his gifts and enjoying gifts instead of the giver. We know that. We get that. We know that the goal of all God does for us is designed to make it possible for us to be with him and him to be with us. He does everything for us to be with us as our all-satisfying treasure and Father and friend and Savior. Getting that clear is the key, I think, to experiencing God in and through all his gifts.

Key 2: Remembering the Gift of Jesus

Here’s one more key to help us experience God this way during the Christmas season. We should realize that every gift, every good thing that comes into our lives of any kind as a token of God’s everlasting kindness — all of it, all of it was bought by the sacrifice of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. Here’s the logic of Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” So, “all things” are coming to us as believers because he didn’t spare his Son. Here’s the effect this has: All giving and getting, especially at Christmastime, becomes a reminder of the death of Jesus.

Now, what effect does that have? What effect does God intend for his Son’s death to have on us when we think this way? On the one hand, Christ is the Father’s indescribable gift (Romans 8:32; 2 Corinthians 9:15). And Christ is his own gift. Over and over, the New Testament says Christ gave himself, Christ gave himself, Christ gave himself (Mark 10:45; Galatians 1:4; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 5:2, 25; 1 Timothy 2:6; Titus 2:14).

Think of it! If God gives his Son, and the Son gives himself for you and to you, it doesn’t even make sense to say we love the gift more than the Giver. The gift is the Giver. The Giver is the gift. So, since every gift shared at Christmastime is possible only because of the death of Christ for us, and thus directs our attention to the death of Christ, therefore every gift takes us through the cross to the gift who is the Giver.

“All giving and getting, especially at Christmastime, becomes a reminder of the death of Jesus.”

Here’s the other way of seeing it. In Romans 5:8, Paul says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So, behind every gift that we get or give at Christmastime is the death of Christ. And that means that every gift is the overflow of the gift of God’s love, because that’s what he shows when Christ dies. When you think of God’s love, it is inseparable from himself. When John Piper talks about enjoying God, I don’t mean, “Oh, but you can’t enjoy his love.” In a sense, his love is not a gift. It is what he is. When real love binds two persons together, they don’t say, “Hey, where’s the gift?” They say, “You are the gift. You are the gift. You are my love. Your love is yourself given to me.”

So, it seems to me that Romans 8:32 is the key to Christmas God-centeredness in giving and getting gifts. Every good in our life as Christians is owing to the death of Jesus, according to the logic of Romans 8:32, and that death is the gift of God himself for our everlasting joy and the gift of God’s love, which is also the giving of himself to us.

O come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem,Unto your own and rescue them!From depths of hell your people save,And give them victory o’er the grave.

Rejoice! Rejoice! ImmanuelShall come to thee, O Israel.

“O come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem” is initially an unassuming, even underwhelming line. We might expect to hail the promised deliverer as “Cedar of Lebanon” or “Oak of Righteousness” or “Tree of Life,” not as “Branch” or “Sprout.” Such a nickname seems more fitting for a junior-varsity point guard than for the Savior of the world. Yet the old hymn draws our attention to a rich biblical theme of hope on the other side of calamity, renewal from the rubble, deliverance through devastation.

The “branch” or “root” of Jesse invokes a great Old Testament prophecy and its surprising fulfillment. Jesse the Bethlehemite is the grandson of Boaz and Ruth and the father of David, the giant slayer and great king of Israel. In 2 Samuel 7, Yahweh promises to set his love on this son of Jesse and to establish his descendant’s kingship forever. The Davidic dynasty continues for centuries, and most of these rulers are hardly men after God’s heart like David. When King Jehoiachin is banished to Babylon (2 Kings 24), David’s line is reduced to a lifeless stump.

The yawning chasm between the expectation of an enduring kingdom and the ruin of exile leads the faithful to pray, “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?” (Psalm 89:49).

Evergreen Hope

Yet hope remains because of the prophetic promise. Seven centuries before Christ, Isaiah pens these hope-filled words:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. . . . In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples — of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. (Isaiah 11:1–3, 10)

The prophet speaks of a shoot from the stump, new life emerging from destruction and death. This Spirit-endowed sovereign would “reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom” and inspire hope not just for Israel but for the nations as well. Only “the zeal of the Lord of hosts” could accomplish such a stunning reversal (Isaiah 9:7).

“Immanuel will come again, O Israel, O nations, to fell every foe and lead us safely home.”

Jesus Christ is the prophesied sprout from Jesse’s stock. The opening verse of the New Testament designates him as “the son of David” (Matthew 1:1), and his birth in Bethlehem and endowment with the divine Spirit fit the prophetic profile for the messianic king. Yet Jesus is born in a lowly manger, raised in backwoods Nazareth, and travels about with nowhere to lay his head — hardly a “glorious” royal resting place. Moreover, he is hailed as “King of the Jews” not by joyful subjects but by jeering adversaries as he is lifted up on a cross. Ironically, the Branch from Jesse’s stem is impaled on a life-taking tree.

The crucifixion looks like the death blow to these prophetic hopes for a forever king. Then, in the greatest reversal of all, the broken Branch bounds out of the tomb on the third day.

The Root’s Surprising Fruit

Revelation 5:5 triumphantly declares, “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” This recalls Isaiah’s prophecy of David’s greater son who would rule with righteousness and faithfulness and strike down his foes. Yet when John turns to behold this lionlike King, he instead sees a Lamb. This apocalyptic vision reveals that the messianic king “conquers” in a most surprising fashion: not by crushing rebels but by dying in their stead and then standing victorious over the grave.

Only the zeal of the Lord of promise could bring forth from Jesse’s stump a righteous Ruler who would rescue the world. In the fullness of time, Jesus Christ — both Lion and Lamb — comes to a world condemned to rescue his people for a world renewed. Our King conquers through sacrificial death and resurrection life. This broken Branch from Jesse’s stem produces the sweetest fruit: life, healing, and hope.

O Christian, rejoice in this God of glory and grace whose arm is not too short to save, who overcomes all obstacles to keep his covenant commitments. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel has come to you, O Israel, O nations. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel will come again, O Israel, O nations, to fell every foe and lead us safely home.

There is no wrong time for world evangelization. And there is no wrong time for theological clarification. If you wait for the optimal time to become a missionary or to send a missionary, you won’t be one or send one. If you wait for the optimal time to get theological clarity about what the Bible really teaches, you won’t get it. There is no optimal time because sin, Satan, sickness, and sabotage have made certain that there is no optimal time to know or spread the truth. If knowing and spreading happen in your life, it will be because you looked sin, Satan, sickness, and sabotage in the face and said, “I’m going through you. In the name of Jesus, in the power of his Spirit, in the joy of the gospel, and for the glory of God, I’m going through you. And you will not stop me.”

I would like to motivate you — I pray that God will use me to motivate many of you — to give your life to world evangelization and theological clarification in the most inhospitable, unsuitable, uncongenial, forbidding times. If you wait for the ideal moment — personally, relationally, economically, globally — you won’t know what you ought to know, and you won’t go where you ought to go. There is only one kind of time for knowing and going, and it is always, at some level, inhospitable, unsuitable, uncongenial, forbidding.

So, the lesson that I want to draw out of the life of William Tyndale is that he carried out his theological clarification and his Bible translation in what most of us would consider impossible circumstances — the kind of circumstances that would surely justify putting theological study and Bible translation on hold while you just keep your nose above water. You just stay alive on the run.

Tyndale the Theologian

Tyndale’s incredibly productive twelve years (from the age of 30 to 42) working on theological clarification and Bible translation were spent in exile on the European continent. I’m including theological clarification because most people don’t know that Tyndale was a theologian — a theological Reformer — alongside his Bible translation. I have a three-volume set of Tyndale’s theological works, totaling over 1,200 pages. David Daniell wrote,

It is possible . . . to write about Tyndale as polemicist, as propagandist, as political reformer, as moralist, as theologian, as historian, as enemy of the institutions of the church: yet he first presents himself as a working translator of the Scriptures. It cannot be right to see him as being anything else more important than that. He translated two-thirds of the Bible so well that his translations endured until today, a labor so great that that list of secondary definitions must surely dwindle by comparison. (William Tyndale, 121)

Secondary, yes, but oh my — how significant those writings were in his own day. If Tyndale had never translated a page of the Bible, he would have been hunted down and killed by the Roman Catholic Church because of his writings in support of Luther’s teaching. Anthony Kenny wrote,

When he renounced the doctrine of transubstantiation, friars, noblemen, and bishops all turned against him, and the University which had sheltered him offered him a home no longer. (The Bible in English, 72–73)

Henry VIII was angry with Tyndale mainly for believing and promoting the theological clarification of Martin Luther’s Reformation teachings. In particular, he was angry because of Tyndale’s book Answer to Sir Thomas More, who had who helped Henry VIII write his repudiation of Luther called Defense of the Seven Sacraments. Thomas More was thoroughly Roman Catholic and radically anti-Reformation, anti-Luther, and anti-Tyndale. So, Tyndale had come under excoriating criticism by Thomas More. In fact, Daniell said Thomas Moore had a “near-rabid hatred” for Tyndale and published three long responses to him totaling nearly three-quarters of a million words. This was not mainly about Bible translation. This was about truth clarification. And remember, these are political leaders who at the snap of their fingers could kill Tyndale with impunity — if they could find him.

“There is no wrong time for world evangelization.”

This was all theological clarification — almost all of it written while he was in exile on the Continent, moving from place to place to avoid arrest. He had left England probably in April 1524 when he was 30 and never returned home till he was martyred at age 42 in 1536, just north of Brussels, after twelve years in exile and in hiding. The charge that sealed his execution was not Bible translation, though that might have sufficed, but heresy, not agreeing with the holy Roman Emperor — in a nutshell, following the teachings of Martin Luther.

Ministry on the Run

I don’t mean to downplay the achievement or the danger that Bible translation played in Tyndale’s life. It is almost incomprehensible to us how viciously opposed the Roman Catholic Church was to the translation of the Scriptures into English. In response to John Wycliffe’s work to put the Bible in English from the Latin, the Roman Catholic parliament passed the law de Haeretico Comburendo — “on the burning of heretics” — to make heresy punishable by burning people alive at the stake. The Bible translators were in view.

Then in 1408, the Constitutions of Oxford stated,

We therefore decree and ordain, that no man, hereafter, by his own authority translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue . . . and that no man can read any such book . . . in part or in whole. (God’s Bestseller, xxii)

John Bale (1495–1563) “as a boy of 11 watched the burning of a young man in Norwich for possessing the Lord’s prayer in English. . . . John Foxe records . . . seven Lollards burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English” (The Obedience of a Christian Man, 202).

Tyndale hoped to escape this condemnation by getting official authorization for his translation in 1524. But he found just the opposite and had to escape from London to the Continent for the rest of his life. He gives us some glimpse of those twelve years as a fugitive in Germany and the Netherlands (in one of the very few personal descriptions we have) in 1531. He refers to

. . . my pains . . . my poverty . . . my exile out of mine natural country, and bitter absence from my friends . . . my hunger, my thirst, my cold, the great danger wherewith I am everywhere encompassed, and finally . . . innumerable other hard and sharp fightings which I endure. (William Tyndale, 213)

All these sufferings came to a climax on May 21, 1535, in the midst of Tyndale’s great Old Testament translation labors, when he was betrayed in Antwerp by his supposed friend Henry Philips. He was taken to Vilvorde Castle six miles north of Brussels, where he stayed for eighteen months until his death.

No Hiatus from Holy Work

You might think that, imprisoned and waiting for your possible death, you would take a break from theological clarification and Bible translation and hope for a more optimal time, or think you’ve done enough. That didn’t happen. I think this letter is one of the most moving things I have ever read and captures what I mean by doing theological clarification and Bible translation in the most inhospitable circumstances. He wrote this to an unnamed officer of the castle. Here is a condensed version of Mozley’s translation of the Latin:

I beg your lordship, and that of the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here through the winter, you will request the commissary to have the kindness to send me, from the goods of mine which he has, a warmer cap; for I suffer greatly from cold in the head, and am afflicted by a perpetual catarrh, which is much increased in this cell; a warmer coat also, for this which I have is very thin; a piece of cloth too to patch my leggings. My overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also worn out. He has a woolen shirt, if he will be good enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth to put on above; he has also warmer night-caps. And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark. But most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study. In return may you obtain what you most desire, so only that it be for the salvation of your soul. But if any other decision has been taken concerning me, to be carried out before winter, I will be patient, abiding the will of God, to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ: whose spirit (I pray) may ever direct your heart. Amen. W. Tindalus. (William Tyndale, 379)

So, the lesson I am taking away from Tyndale’s life is that his accomplishments in theological clarification and Bible translation are astonishing not only because of their faithfulness and excellence, but because they were achieved without waiting for the optimal moment. There wasn’t an optimal moment in his life.

Hindrances to World Evangelization

Let’s turn from Tyndale to the Bible and our own circumstances as we hear the call of world missions. Let Tyndale’s experience put fiber in your faith and stir you up not to wait for the optimal season of your life to be as engaged as God calls you to be in the task of theological clarification and Bible translation — or whatever dimension of world missions God calls you to.

Let me call your attention to some global crises that might make you think this is not an optimal time for doing world evangelization or Bible translation or even focused effort at theological clarification.

In the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the killed and wounded are approaching one million people. Israel is now fighting wars on two fronts, with Hamas and Hezbollah, with Iran about to intervene. China, for the first time in decades, several weeks ago launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. Boko Haram in Burkina Faso recently killed 26 Christians as they worshiped — and a hundred others. Over half of Sudan’s 46 million people suffer from acute hunger because of civil war. Civil wars rage in Ethiopia, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Haiti, and at least ten other nations. One hundred million people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes, including forty million refugees, 40 percent of which are under eighteen. On the home front, in the United States since 2017 there have been half a million opioid-related deaths. And the moral degeneracy embraced by our highest leaders and aspiring leaders is appalling.

I focus on those big, global, nonoptimal circumstances for two reasons. One is to draw attention to the fact that if every one of those crises were to go away tonight, the real-life, close-to-home reasons for not throwing yourself into world missions would be just as great. You are one heartbeat away from death every moment, and you have no control over God’s decision about how long you live (James 4:15). The pain in your chest might be a heart attack in the making. The ache in your hip might be bone cancer. The phone ringing might be the death of your children or parents — or worse, their divorce. The note you’re about to open might be that your twenty-year-old daughter has decided she is not a Christian and finds better community with her LGBTQ friends. Or you look in the mirror and say, “You are not fit to even consider Christian service.” Most of the hindrances to devoting ourselves to the nudgings of God’s Spirit in world missions do not come from world events; they come from the nonoptimal circumstances of our personal lives.

Hostility in the End Times

But the other reason I focused my list on global crises is that they describe the world in which the Great Commission is going to be finished. God is not going to make an era toward the end of history when the nations will be hospitable to the reception of the gospel. Most of the unreached peoples in our day live in cultures that are hostile to the gospel. They are not waiting with open arms. But that is the world in which the mission will be finished. Jesus said,

You will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:9–14)

Let this nonoptimal description of the world in which the gospel will reach the nations — leading up to the second coming of Christ — land on you with its proper force. Count them:

1. God’s emissaries will be hated by all nations.

2. Many Christians will fall away. They will deconvert, and we will call them nones — those who declare no religion.

3. Christians will betray one another and hate one another — and the strategy of Satan here is to cause other believers to say, “The faith is failing. It must not be real. If the Christians are betraying each other at home, what do I have to say to the world?” You need to know how the Bible describes the end if you are going to escape that temptation.

4. Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray — books, articles, podcasts, TikTok reels, and movies, giving voice to many false prophets. They will be causing people to think, “We’re not winning. We’re not winning.” Win what? The Christianization of the world? That’s not in the Bible — till Jesus comes! He will do it. And if you want to know how, read 2 Thessalonians 1.

5. Lawlessness is multiplied. The troops from Kenya in Haiti right now are outnumbered four hundred to fifteen thousand gang members. It is not hard to imagine urban centers in America being little Haitis. If you live there, will you stay true to your calling to the nations? Or will you say, “This is not an optimal time”?

6. The love of many will grow cold. You travel from church to church hoping to find warmth and zeal for world missions, but what you find is that love for the nations — indeed, for the Lord — has grown cold.

And when Jesus had spoken those six inhospitable circumstances for the completion of the Great Commission, the next words out of his mouth were, “And this gospel of the kingdom [this good news of the kingdom] will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

He did not say that the gospel of the kingdom might be proclaimed throughout the whole world. He did not say there might be a testimony to all the nations. He did not say that this proclamation and testimony might usher in the end and the coming of Jesus. Matthew 24:14 is not the Great Commission. That comes four chapters later. This is the great promise, the great certainty, the great absolute.

“If you wait for the optimal time to get theological clarity about what the Bible really teaches, you won’t get it.”

The Great Commission is a test of our obedience (most explicitly). This is a test of our faith. Do we believe him? Do we believe that in spite of being hated by all nations, in spite of many Christians deconverting and falling away, in spite of Christians betraying one another and false prophets persuading millions, in spite of lawlessness being multiplied in cities and nations, and in spite of the spreading of Christian coldness, there will be churches and Christians and missionary senders and goers who are white-hot for Jesus, and who are torching the glacier that is spreading over the world, and who will finish the mission?

Sustained by the Gospel Proclaimed

They will be sustained by the very good news that they carry. That’s why William Tyndale was both a truth clarifier and a Bible translator. It was the reality of biblical truth — the gospel of the kingdom — that sustained him. You might think that, living in exile, driven from place to place, in danger of betrayal, working in nonoptimal circumstances, he would develop an austere demeanor and a burdensome view of the gospel. Here’s how he defined the gospel:

Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad, and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy. (Selected Writings, 33)

That’s Tyndale writing in 1530 in exile at the age of 36. Tyndale was driven to put the Bible into the vernacular of every language because of the gospel. And yes, not just English, but every language. He wrote in the preface to his New Testament,

Christ wishes his mysteries to be published as widely as possible. . . . I wish that they might be read and known, not merely by the Scotch and the Irish, but even by the Turks and the Saracens. (William Tyndale, 67)

Without the Bible, there would be no pure, enduring gospel. And without the gospel, there is no escape from universal bondage of the will.

[No] creature can loose the bonds, save the blood of Christ only. . . . When the gospel is preached, [it] openeth our hearts and giveth us grace to believe, and putteth the spirit of Christ in us: and we know him as our Father most merciful, and consent to the law and love it. (Selected Writings, 37, 40)

William Tyndale was sustained in a life of theological clarification and Bible translation through unremitting, nonoptimal, inhospitable, forbidding circumstances, because he was thrilled by the power of the gospel to set people free from condemnation and make them glad in God. He lived on it and would say with the apostle, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” (2 Corinthians 7:4).

So, I close where I began. If you wait for the optimal time to become a missionary, you won’t be one. If you wait for the optimal time to get theological clarity about what the Bible really teaches, you won’t get it. There is no optimal time for either. Circumstances will almost always say, “Not now.” And faith will say, “I’m going through you. In the name of Jesus, in the power of his Spirit, in the joy of the gospel, and for the glory of God, I’m going through you. And you will not stop me.”

I can still remember the pang of distress that flushed through my body when I discovered that our country of service was no longer classified as “unreached” by the Joshua Project. Four percent of the ninety-million-person population was reportedly Christian. That percentage is twice the standard threshold for qualifying as unreached.

Since we had gone to the field with the idea that the unreached were of highest priority, we wondered, If we are not serving among the statistically unreached, can we justify being here? One of the important lessons we’ve learned is that missionaries serving among the reached can still have a profound impact on the unreached by leaning into the global church.

To be clear, identifying and pursuing people who do not have access to Scripture, discipleship, and healthy churches remains vital within the global church’s missions strategy. Wherever barriers to access exist — and wherever those barriers are most impermeable — missionaries should strategically seek to overcome them for the glory of God and the good of his people.

However, we also would do well to remember that getting the gospel to every tribe, tongue, nation, and people — however one understands those categories — is a vision and responsibility given to the global church. To see what I mean, consider the ministry of Robert Morrison (1782–1834), nineteenth-century missionary to the Chinese.

Reaching by Leaving

In 1807, Robert Morrison was appointed by the London Mission Society (LMS) to serve in China. He was the first Protestant missionary the LMS sent to East Asia. At the time, however, China was notoriously closed to outsiders — especially missionaries. The foreign trading companies that had established themselves in China were also averse to hiring missionaries. So, Morrison’s initial attempts to begin ministry in China were met with resistance and false starts.

In the eleventh year after he was appointed, however, Morrison took a fresh angle on ministry to the Chinese: he left China. Morrison relocated to neighboring Malacca (modern-day Malaysia), providing him the opportunity to engage Chinese people living there — people who could freely return to China and serve as native missionaries among the people he had struggled to reach. Despite the counterintuitive nature of leaving the country to reach its people, Morrison realized a strategic way to reach China was to prepare a missionary force of Chinese people who would assume their Great Commission responsibility, carrying the gospel farther into China than he could.

Following Morrison’s Example

Today, despite the best efforts of the Chinese government, the gospel has spread all over China, with Chinese believers leading the way. There are many other places, however, that present similar difficulties to foreign access as China did in Morrison’s day. The context my wife and I served in is surrounded by such places.

Though we found ourselves in a country no longer classified as unreached, some of our dear friends were local believers whom we saw God mobilize to go and serve among unreached people in nearby countries. We did not strategically design this plan — God providentially allowed us to watch it develop as the national believers sensed the weight of the Great Commission for the first time.

Better yet, a more intentional example of this strategy is present in a church I will call First Baptist Church in a major city of Southeast Asia. This country is populated by almost seventy unreached people groups whose native lands are notoriously difficult for foreigners to access. Despite operating in English, First Baptist Church has become a hub for gospel advance among foreigners, nationals, and the unreached by leaning into and mobilizing local believers into hard-to-reach places. Consider three elements of the church’s strategy.

1. Modeling a Healthy Church

First, this church has established itself in a city that is accessible to foreigners. At the same time, First Baptist distinguishes itself from other international churches by its healthy ecclesiology: it is led by a plurality of biblically qualified elders, it is congregationally governed, it promotes expositional preaching of the word, and it practices believer’s baptism. The members of this church observe the one-another commands of Scripture and engage actively in evangelism in their local communities.

“Missionaries serving among the reached can still have a profound impact on the unreached.”

This model contrasts with a more common model of an international church, where doctrinal statements and ministerial practices prioritize breadth rather than depth, often sacrificing biblical convictions in order to gain social community. Instead of aiming at an essentials-only vision of the church, First Baptist calls its members to covenant together under explicit convictions and doctrines that intend to protect the integrity of the body and its ability to display and convey the gospel. The healthy example of a convictional church benefits believers and unbelievers — whether foreign or local — in this city.

2. Developing Indigenous Leadership

Few of the nationals surrounding First Baptist speak English well enough to participate in church services. However, some are multilingual. The elders of First Baptist have taken special care to develop a ministry internship designed to disciple nationals toward the maturity, competency, and character qualifications required of ministry leaders and biblically qualified elders.

This effort has been led by a local believer — we will call him Paul — who has been a partner in ministry from the early stages of the church. Paul serves as a pastor at the church and feels the weight of the Great Commission to equip and go with his own people in missionary service.

While the internal partnership between foreign and local pastors is beautiful in and of itself, the next step in Paul’s ministry is to develop a core team of other nationals and to be sent by this English-speaking church to establish a local-language church nearby. Lord willing, in the next few years, this new church will be serving as a pillar and buttress of the truth for the local population in their own tongue.

Already, then, this English-speaking church is having an impact on the local context, partnering with and mobilizing local believers to Great Commission obedience. Although progress is slow and requires the initial partners to have proficiency in English, this pathway holds promise for seeing the gospel advance, disciples mature, and churches established in the broader context.

3. Reaching Unreached Language Groups

Along with the multiplication mentioned above, First Baptist also serves as the staging ground for two teams that intend to plant churches in other parts of the country among unreached language groups. Because these teams are composed primarily of missionaries (at least currently), they need to learn the culture and trade language of the country before attempting to enter the subculture and minority language groups they are targeting. Again, Paul has been a key partner in consulting and advising these missionaries.

Language learning and cultural adaptation take considerable time — usually two to three years to attain fluency and cultural savvy. It can be unhealthy for believers to spend those years without gathering with a church. By landing in this major city, both teams have had access to formal language-learning opportunities, have been immersed in the culture, and have also been members of a healthy church that aims to reach its neighbors. These teams are already in contact with national church-planting partners in their target location.

When the time comes for these teams to launch into their second context, First Baptist will be involved in sending them to their fields of service. While they are members at First Baptist, the missionary teams can also mobilize locals to join these pioneer church plants as they prepare to launch. More than that, they provide a vision and example for the nationals of how to strategically engage needs beyond their context. The missionary teams are already challenging nationals to respond to the Great Commission by making them aware that the majority of unreached groups in the area are far more inaccessible to foreigners. The best mobilization comes not from voices pushing you from behind but from voices calling you from ahead.

Don’t Panic — Mobilize

The historical example of Robert Morrison and the contemporary example of First Baptist are not a critique of or replacement strategy for direct missionary engagement in pioneer settings. The church in the West still needs to send missionaries directly to unreached people groups. However, the church’s missionary force does not come only from Western countries. All believers everywhere inherit the Great Commission and have a role in the “all nations” aspect of our disciple-making command.

The danger that “reached” places might get more attention from Western missionaries because they are easier to access and more comfortable is real. However, Westerners cannot neglect the opportunities to raise up and mobilize local believers in those places and equip them to go farther than Westerners can go on their own.

Morrison’s example reminds us that some places considered reached might become staging grounds for the equipping and mobilizing of a missionary force that will outlast our lifetimes and extend beyond our limitations. So, if you find yourself serving in a place that the Joshua Project deems “reached,” don’t panic — mobilize.