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Is Missions Still a Priority?

God’s Unchanging Purpose in a Pandemic

Introduction

There are few tasks more difficult in full-time ministry than having to tell a group of over one hundred students that the missions trips we have been preparing for are canceled. It’s a sinking feeling. Six months of work evaporating before your eyes.

This is what I needed to do a year ago. In the months that followed more trips were canceled and more plans were delayed. What would happen to the future of our short-term trips? Would we be able to go back to sending teens and college students around the world with the Gospel of Christ?

Even If We Can’t Do It, Still Pursue It

When something that is normal to you is postponed or taken away, it gives you the chance to revisit why it’s important in the first place. It’s a chance to review your principles and priorities. Of all the good things you are doing, do they all flow from what is truly essential?

Maybe you have been in a similar position in the last year in your church or ministry. Maybe you chose to stop doing some ministries. But, hopefully, you also chose to keep doing, or at minimum, keep pursuing that which God says is non-negotiable! Missions, according to the Word of God, is certainly non-negotiable. Maybe we can’t go as freely right now as we did before, but we can be praying, planning, and preparing.

I can understand the temptation to conclude that because much of the world has been shut down, planning for mission trips with your teens is no longer viable. Bottom line, many will say it’s just too risky right now. After all, many important opportunities for ministry continue to exist closer to home.

Brothers and sisters, it will always be true that there will be ministry needs all around us. Why? Because wherever we find people, we find needs. But let’s not forget that God is still at work in every nation, tribe, people, and tongue, drawing people to Himself and saving them as they hear the Gospel and respond in faith (Romans 10:9-10).

Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “I will build My church.” And if “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (same verse),” neither will a pandemic. In other words, God will not stop fulfilling His purpose to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). On that basis, He has not rescinded His call for us to be ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), both to our neighbors across the street as well as to those around the world.

How Do We Prepare?

We may be in a season of revisiting how we do missions right now as we wait for more opportunities to open up again. But let’s not waste this season!

When the time comes, we can be ready to go again. We cannot allow a pandemic and all of its collateral damage to give our teens the impression that counting the cost for the sake of the lost is a thing of the past.

If we are going to keep pursuing missions, we must make these three practices a staple of our ministries:

We must remember that God is still pursuing sinners with His love, and that He does that by sending people with the lifesaving message of the Gospel.
We must pray for open doors of opportunity.
And while we wait, we must learn as much as we can about what it will take to keep spreading the Gospel, not just across the street, but around the world.

In our next post, we will explore these three practices to see how they can prepare us to do missions again with excellence.

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1 thought on “Is Missions Still a Priority?”

  1. Missions is exciting, especially when one hears or sees how God used you in someone(s) life. How humbling it is He chose you when we are so human with faults and all. But our hearts must be knit with His in loving lost souls, and try to present the gospel so they too have a chance to save them from eternity of hell without Him. We must care enough!

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