By Floyd McClung

Who better to consult about what missionaries do than Dr. Luke, the author of the book of Acts. He was a missionary, and writes as one. He had been on the field, participated in the spread of the Gospel, and assisted the great apostle Paul in planting churches on two of his missionary journeys (Acts 16:10-18, 20:5-21, and 27:1 - 28:16).

Luke wrote the book of Acts for several reasons. Firstly, he wanted to give an accurate account of the birth, growth and expansion of the church, especially amongst Gentiles. And secondly, he wrote the book of Acts to serve as a training manual for pastors and missionaries who were interested in spreading the Gospel, especially accross cultural barriers (I draw this conclusion because of the orderly fashion in which the book is written, and because of the missions and leadership principles Luke deals with).

So there we have it: The book of Acts describes what missionaries do. A careful study of Acts shows it to be a record of the strategic thinking and actions of the early church leaders. Luke devotes 16 of the 28 chapters in Acts to one of those leaders, the great apostle Paul. It is to these chapters that we can look to find guidelines for what missionaries do.

Between 47 and 57 A.D., Paul  planted many powerful churches in four provinces of the Roman empire: Galatia, Asia, Macedonia and Achaia. In those ten years he planted scores of churches and visited countless towns and cities, preaching the Gospel wherever he went. I conclude from my study of Paul’s missionary journeys that the work of the apostle must be treated not as mere history, but  a model for today’s cross cultural missionary.

Luke treats the work of Paul as a whole, as a completed lifetime of work. The churches he planted were established and then multiplied rapidly. Roland Allen comments on this astonishing contribution of the great apostle, emphasizing the importance of learning from Paul’s methodology:

“The churches really were established. Whatever disasters fell upon them in later years, whatever failure there was…that failure was not due to any insufficiency or lack of care and completeness in the Apostle’s teaching or organization. When he left them he left them because his work was fully accomplished.

This is truly an astonishing fact. That churches should be founded so rapidly, so securely, seems to us today, accustomed to the difficulties, the uncertainties, the failures, the disastrous relapses of our own missionary work, almost incredible…We have long forgotten that such things could be. We have long accustomed ourselves to accept it as an axiom of missionary work that converts in a new country must be submitted to a very long probation and training, extending over generations before they can be expected to stand alone. Today, if a man ventures to suggest that there may be something in the methods by which St. Paul attained such wonderful results worthy of our careful attention, and perhaps of our imitation, he is in danger of being accused of revolutionary tendencies.”  Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, Roland Allen, page 4.

As I mentioned above, the book of Acts holds more than historical interest. It is included in the Bible to instruct us. It is meant to be more than “the romantic history of an exceptional man…” Ibid., p. 4. It is intended to throw light on the paths of those who follow in the footsteps of the great apostle. Those who are committed to the spread of the Gospel will learn much from the book of Acts if they see it as a God inspired model of how to do missions.

What do we learn from Paul about what missionaries do?

Above all things we learn that Paul was a strategic thinker, with well defined results in mind for his missionary work. Paul  assumed that wherever he went he would preach thegospel and the result would  be that people would be saved and churches established. To acheive these results he had the following stratedgies in mind:
The primary goal of all his efforts was the winning of converts and the planting of churches.  I doubt if Paul used these exact terms, but it is abundantly clear he expected people to believe in Jesus when he preached.  He gathered new converts in homes, appointed elders to lead them,  and instructed them to gather for teaching, worship, personal accountability and outreach to others. Because that was his expectation, that is what he accomplished.

He thought in terms of reaching provinces, not just cities.  Luke speaks of provinces more than he does cities in giving his account of Paul’s journeys. It is safe to assume that Luke picks up this perspective from his association with Paul (e.g., Acts 13:4, 13,14, 49, 14:6, 24). Paul planned his missionary journeys to coincide with the boundaries of Roman administration. He used to his advantage the Roman system of transportation, and thought in terms of the Roman administrative structure. On his first missionary journey, Paul sticks to the Roman province of South Galatia, which  borders his own native province of  (where Tarsus is located). On ensuing journeys he went further West.

Paul did not think in terms of reaching every village within a province personally. He reached key cities and towns and from there he expected the gospel would be spread around. This is important because it indicates that Paul was not just interested in planting individual churches, but in starting multiplying church planting movements. He intended to plant churches that had missions and multiplication in their genetic code. He said to the Roman Christians ten years after the start of his first missionary journey that he had “…fully preached the gospel of Christ from Jerusalem and around from Illyricum…” (Romans 15:23). He said to the Thessalonians, “You have become a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia - your faith in God has become known everywhere…” (1 Thessalonians 1:7-8).

Paul planted churches that were not dependent upon outside resources for sustenance.  He trusted the Holy Spirit to sustain the work that was begun. He appointed leaders that were brand new converts. He stayed long enough to see a work up and going, and not longer.

I have wondered about all the interesting information Luke left out in his narratives about Paul’s exploits: their travel experiences, the types of food they ate, what exotic bugs they picked up along the way, team relationships, etc. But Luke doesn’t have time for these tantalizing details. He focuses instead on key steps in both the spread of the gospel westward and it’s penetration into the Gentile world. He is concerned with helping the reader learn how new churches were planted and established. And this, I believe, is what makes the book of Acts the important standard for missions that it is. Acts is a missions training manual. This is a book for those who want to reach people with the gospel. It is a divine blueprint for how to build God’s church.  In the words of the Apostle Paul, it is a divinely inspired narrative for those who want to  be “…wise master builders…”

From my discussion with missionaries and missions leaders around the world I have concluded there are five reasons why missionaries today don’t do what missionaries did in the book of Acts. All five reasons have to do with ignoring or amending Paul’s methodology. Following are those reasons:

1. “Paul was not involved in ministering to the poor.” A dichotomy is seen between preaching and caring, as if Paul was not concerned for the physical plight of the poor and needy. Or that by planting churches Paul had not thought of the best way to care for the poor. Some even suggest that Paul went to places that had very few poor or needy people, and that the poverty factor we face in our modern world was foreign to his experience.

This argument for not adhering to Paul’s emphasis on church planting is the most worthy of response since it is the most logical, and describes the majority of missions work being done in the world today. There are a great host of medical missionaries, community development workers and others serving the Lord and the poor all over the world.

But a close look at antiquity assures us that Paul’s world was not devoid of poverty and human suffering. Just the opposite was true. Disease was rampant. There was no cure for leprosy, polio, epilepsy and other common diseases. Famine was a curse then just as it is now. There were no inoculations for childhood maladies nor was their relief for treatable eye diseases.

Far from being a man immune to the pain and hardship of people in need, Paul was deeply moved by the suffering of people in need. He took offerings for those impacted by famine, and persisted in delivering one offering personally even after being warned repeatedly that he would be arrested and bound in prison if he took it to Jerusalem. In fact, Paul laid aside his ambition to press further West with the gospel to the Iberian peninsula in order to deliver the offering he had taken for the saints in Jerusalem.
So we must look deeper as to why God led Paul to plant churches as the primary New Testament model of doing missions. It is conceivable that Paul could have been led to plant churches by establishing relief and development projects. But God led him to preach instead. Some form of mercy ministry would certainly have been the easier path for Paul to take. He could have gone about taking offerings, establishing feeding programs, and through those efforts he could have planted churches, without the risk of persecution. It would have been a less confrontive approach to take in spreading the gospel. But God did not lead Paul that way. Being the strategic thinker he was, Paul focused on winning converts and establishing them in churches for a good reason. We can certainly trust God in his sovereignty that He knew what He was doing in inspiring Paul to take the approach he did, and then highlighting it so brightly in the pages of the New Testament.

Not only did God have the poor in mind when He led Paul to plant churches. In fact, we can assume that God saw this as the best way to provide for the poor on a long term basis. Leading Paul to establishing churches as a cross cultural missionary was not God’s way of saying it was the only way to do missions, but it certainly highlights it as the end goal of all missionary activity. It also means church planting was central to God’s purpose in the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles. No doubt God saw this as a way of establishing an ongoing support system for the poor. The church is the dwelling place of the Spirit on earth. By raising up a people for Himself,  God was establishing a beachhead for His kingdom on earth and a safe place for the care and healing of the lost.
Paul did have a burning ambition, indeed a holy ambition, to plant churches (Romans 15: 14-21). At the heart of all Biblical missions there must be the same ambition, less the pressing need of human suffering deter us from the greatest of all priorities, and that is raising up a people for the praise of His name among all the nations. God’s glory comes before people’s need. By calling people to forgiveness through repentance of sins, Paul was acting on his belief that the glory of God among the Gentiles is of greater importance than the need of people on earth. We are no where told in the Scriptures we must choose between the two, but one must take  priority over the other.

To be motivated primarily by the pressing need of people is to ignore the far greater need of God for the praise of His name. The primary work of the Spirit in the world is to fulfill the covenant made by God with Abraham and the other patriarchs to raise up a people for the sake of His name. Missions is not about man first, but God. Missions exists because worship does not. Paul makes this motivation abundantly clear when describing to the Roman believers his motivation for spreading the gospel. He says to them that it is the praise of God’s name among the Gentiles that inspired him to preach the gospel:

“For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for His mercy, as it is written:

Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles;

I will sing hymns to your name” (Romans 15:8-9).

Later in the same chapter he says he is a minister of Christ  “…with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God…” (15:16). Paul preaches first for the sake of God, and not the need of the people.

It is this motivation that is missing in so much of what is done in the name of God today. Well meaning people seem to be far more concerned with the needs of the poor than they are with the broken heart of God. Church planting is not so much about winning people to Jesus as it is about cooperating with the Spirit in raising up a people for the sake of His name. The Lamb of God has purchased men for God with His blood so they might become a kingdom of priests, to serve our God.  (Revelation 5:9-10).

Worship among the lost is the goal of missions because the ultimate aim of all we do must be to bring the nations into the presence of the Lamb. Worship is the just reward of His suffering. The goal of missions is the gladness of the people in the greatness of God. “The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice, let the many coastlands be glad!” (Psalm 97:1). “Let the peoples praise thee, O God, let all the peoples praise thee! Let the nations be glad…” (Psalm 67:3-4).
The core of missions motivation has to be the broken heart of God. Much of what is done is the name of missions today is motivated more by the need of people than the worthiness of the Lamb. This is why there is so much competition and jealousy and battling over limited resources in the church. It is because the focus is more on the needs of people than on God.  Missions must be first of all and above all about the one being in the universe who is without spot or blemish, the one who alone who is worthy of our  devotion, worship and honor.

Missions is not ultimate, God is. Ministering to the needs of the poor is not the ultimate goal of the church, worship is. Man is not the center of the universe, God is. Man will pass away, but God is forever. Worship is the goal of missions because God is ultimate. To quote John Piper, “When this age is s over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more…but worship abides forever.”

Worship must be the goal of missions because the ultimate aim of all we do must be to bring the nations into the white hot presence of God’s glory. We are not talking about how to do missions, but the goal of missions. And understanding this goal properly will mean that planting churches will always be ultimate in our efforts of reaching people with the gospel. Why? Not so we can count the number of churches planted, but so the people of covenant can gather and praise their maker.

2. Another reason why missionaries today don’t follow Paul’s method of church planting is because Paul’s methods and principles have been changed and added to to the point they are no longer recognizable. In fact, Paul often gets blamed for a lot of the slip-shod, ineffective activity that is done in missions because some Christian workers say they are doing God’s work “like they did in the early church.”

People have wandered all over the world doing all kinds of evangelism and outreach, all the while claiming authority from Paul for their absurdities, saying they are following the apostle’s example. Churches and youth ministries have sent teams out all over the planet, with no sense of strategy or objective taken from the Word. Some  have even had the boldness to claim they were following the leading of the Spirit when they had no theology of missions or sense of God’s purposes. “Paul was led by the Spirit when he obeyed the Macedonian call,” they say, “and so are we.”

3. A third reason the Pauline method has lost its stature in the church is the disrespect some leaders have brought to the apostolic calling. So-called apostles have borrowed the term to reinforce their position of authority or dominance over their followers. Others have wanted recognition or prestige in the Body of Christ. “We are apostles,” they claim, expecting that taking the title means they deserve the same respect of those early apostles who opposed the Roman empire, withstood the fierce persecution of the Jewish leaders and spread the gospel all over the world - at the cost of their lives.

4. Another reason people resist the Pauline methodology, according to Roland Allen, is that they have “…adopted fragments of St. Paul’s method and have tried to incorporate them into alien systems…” The failure that has resulted from these hybrid methodologies have been used as an excuse to reject the apostle’s methods. To quote Allen again: “For example, people have baptized uninstructed converts and the converts have fallen away; but Paul did not baptize uninstructed converts apart from a system of mutual responsibility that insured their instruction.”

Paul did not gather congregations and then let them fend for themselves. He visited and revisited the churches he planted. He sent emissaries to them to shore up their faith and correct false teaching. Paul did not just gather people; he planted churches. He did not rest until he knew each one of his churches was established and functioning in a healthy manner with God chosen leaders.

5. Still another reason the Pauline methodology has been neglected is the misunderstanding about what Jesus meant when he instructed his disciples to “…make disciples of all nations.” There is a grave mistake in the thinking of some that cross cultural missionaries are commissioned by God to go to a nation, and without first planting new churches or working through already established churches, seek to change the moral standards and the socio-economic structures that exist. “Discipling nations” has thus come to connote changing that nation to be a more Godly nation with the resultant benefits to all the citizens.

This is a flawed strategy for several reasons. Firstly, it is poor exegesis of the Scriptures. When Jesus told his disciples to make disciples of all nations, he was speaking of the breadth of the great commission. He was speaking of his Father’s intention that the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant given in Genesis 12:1-3 be spread to the Gentiles. There is no internal evidence in Matthew 28 that what Jesus was speaking about was directly attempting to change the structures or economic systems of a nation, although that certainly may be the result of making disciples.

In fact, it is quite clear from Luke 24:44-47 (Luke’s record of the great commission) that Jesus was referring to God’s promise to Abraham that he would bless all the nations of the earth through him. In place of the phrase “…make disciples of all nations” that Matthew uses (28:19-20), Luke says the disciples were told by Jesus to preach “repentance and forgiveness of sins… to all nations…”
The “discipling the nations” strategy is flawed because it puts the burden of changing and challenging injustice, poverty, immorality  and cultural bondage’s on the missionary coming from another culture. Rather than trusting the power of the Gospel to transform society through local churches, it puts the burden of change on imported cultural models that are foreign to the culture. If the focus of cross-cultural missionaries is on civilizing rather than evangelizing, they will end up colonizing. The most powerful force for changing a nation is God’s Spirit working through local churches. But before that can happen churches need to be planted, then the church can be a prophetic force in the nation.

It is crucial that cross cultural missionaries focus their efforts on doing what Jesus instructed his disciples among all the peoples of the earth: go, make disciples, baptize and teach. That is the Pauline method for doing missions. And it is what missionaries should do today.

If churches are planted and taught the nature of the kingdom, that in itself is a revolutionary act. And it is exactly what the apostle Paul did. For example, he did not directly challenge the Roman practice of slavery, but he did win converts and plant churches that were instructed to treat slaves as brothers. This revolutionary approach planted the seeds of the kingdom of God that led to the overthrow of slavery within a short period of time.

It is not a matter of whether missionaries should be concerned about idolatry, immorality, democracy, racism, poverty or injustice. Paul was deeply concerned about the physical and economic plight of those he was reaching with the gospel. As was Jesus. But neither Jesus nor Paul sought to change nations by reforming the political structures per se. God gave Paul the wisdom as to where to focus his energies and how to prepare the church to take on those issues.

Cross cultural missionaries should follow Paul’s strategy: preach the gospel, baptize converts, gather new believers, plant churches, be an example of concern for the poor and oppressed and teach believers the gospel of the Kingdom. But don’t try to do the work God has given indigenous local churches to do. Trust the Holy Spirit in His church to be the empowered people of God for the praise of His name. That is what missionaries should do.