Our Missions World, Spring, 2000

Week of Prayer for North American Missions

When Thanh accepted Jesus he asked "Why didn’t anyone tell me about Jesus before now?"

North America is a mission field. The United States is the fourth largest unsaved mission field on earth. Only China, India and Indonesia have more lost people. Canada has only 122 Southern Baptist churches to reach a population of 2.9 million. There is a lot to pray about for the first Week of Prayer in a new century.

This great need means that every believer needs to be "On Mission." This article shows what the Mission is and how to be "On Mission."

An On Mission Christian is on God’s Mission. God’s mission is to return people to a relationship with Him through His son Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Missions is the work of God’s people to be faithful to God’s mission for humankind.

The WMU vision statement is "Woman’s Missionary Union challenges Christian believers to understand and be radically involved in the mission of God."

It is important to see that evangelism is at the heart of biblical missions. Every believer can be an evangelistic missionary by being obedient to God’s mission.

In Genesis 3 God came looking for Adam and Eve. In Christianity God makes the effort to find His children and bring them back to Him. When humans choose to disobey God we are separated from Him. The only way to be reunited with God is through His Son Jesus Christ. A person who agrees to follow Jesus must repent from disobeying God. Then they must ask the Holy Spirit to come inside of them.

Look at how Christianity is different from other religions. Religion is man looking for God. Christianity is God looking for man. The Holy Spirit makes the new believer Holy. Religion just tries to make people good.

God created evangelistic missions to bring people back into relationship with Him. On Mission Christians support missions because it is the plan of God.

In the Bible, God commands people to tell others about Him. In 2 Kings 17:27-28 God has the King of Assyria send a Priest "to go there and teach the people what the God of the land requires." God sends Jonah to Ninevah "to proclaim to it the message I give you." (NIV)

Every believer was given the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20. On Mission Christians support missions because it is the command of God.

Jesus "came to look for and to save people who are lost (Luke 19:10) CEV." This is the beginning place for Christians talking about people being saved or lost. A person is saved from the consequences of their sin. A person is lost who is disobeying God and going the wrong direction.

On Mission Christians support missions because Jesus gave us the example.

Darwin Sokoko is the NAMB National Missionary for Filipinos. He lives in Chicago and helps start Filipino churches. He knows about changed lives. God changed his life through the witness of a Christian roommate in Manilla. "He shared Christ with me and helped me to begin to study the Bible. In barely a month I was convicted of sin and accepted Christ. My life immediately changed."

As an On Mission Christian, God has let Darwin see many others lives changed. Through his ministry people have accepted Jesus and others have been called into the ministry.

Darwin recently discovered a Filipino pastor in California who was called into the ministry from hearing Darwin preach. "It was a small Air Force church but there were some young people there. I sometimes struggled to go to such a small group. But God had plans for that ministry."

"Many of the converts we have are from the ministry that we did. So our good works were concrete steps that they walked on to become Christians. We have to be faithful to share Jesus with the people we help. Their greatest need is Jesus."

He asks for two prayer requests:

The Bible is clear that every believer needs to be on God’s mission. We support God mission by being involved in missions. The next articles will show other ways for On Mission Christians to be involved in evangelistic missions.

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