like it's time to get up yet outside. But we're charging along. We are in the kind of the last stretch here of this class on missions. So we're winding our way down and coming down to to the homestretch with just a couple weeks left, probably this week and next week to cover basically what we have left to cover, what we'd like to accomplish with this class. So we've covered our fundamentals, we've spent most of our time in scripture going through what the Bible has to say about the salvation of God in particular and and then how he calls us into that. So we spent several weeks on the salvation of God, focusing on who owns it, who salvation belongs to. And scripture is clear in its testimony that God is the Lord over his salvation. And yet he commissions us to participate in that. So it is God who saves. Romans We spent quite a bit of time in Romans 8. It's God who works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purposes. And the next couple of verses explain what that good is. Romans 8.29, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. So God is clearly Lord over this whole process. He's the one who brings us through it. And then yet, even as he is Lord of salvation, he commissions his saints to participate in his work. And so that's what brings us to thinking about missions. He entrusts his saints, his people, as his means of bringing about his purposes so that Christians are called to worship him through obedience to him, through praise. He calls us to worship through proclaiming his glory among the nations. That's Psalm 67, one through five. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us. Verse two, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, oh God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth. Verse five, let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. So even the call of the Psalms is that we would worship the Lord, that his glory would be known, and that all the nations would come to glorify God. So when God saves us, he calls us into worship, to obey and to rejoice and to the joy of making him known. And then we moved into the New Testament, into the ministry of Jesus. We talked two weeks ago, and even some last week, about the Great Commission. When Jesus died and rose again, he called his disciples to meet him on a mountain in Galilee, and he commanded them to make disciples, going, baptizing, and teaching them to keep his commands. We spent quite a bit of time on that specific command, in fact. The three parts of those verses. In verse 18, that Jesus is the one who has all authority to give that command, that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. And then part two, that actual command, which the main part of that command is what? Verse 19. What is the main verb of verse 19? It's, remember talking about how that verse is constructed? What's the main verb? Make disciples, that's right, make disciples. You have three participles. We talked about participles, so we'll do a little grammar review real quick. We have three participles and you have an imperative verb. And the imperative is the command. And the participles help explain how you do that. And so in that sentence, Jesus' imperative is make disciples. And the three ways he describes how you do that is as you're going and baptizing, and teaching. So as you're going, make disciples. That's the command. And you do that as you're going by baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you. That's the Great Commission, is multiplication of disciples. And then really what we focused on last week was how the apostles carried that out. So when we watch the ministry of the apostles through the New Testament, obeying that command, what is the result? Churches, yeah, that's right. Churches is what we see in their wake. You could see where they've been because of these communities of Jesus followers, these churches sprinkled all around. the trails of where the apostles have gone. So when we look at the apostolic obedience to this command, we can see their obedience to the command is to make disciples and then strengthen those disciples as they minister to them and disciple them within the context of the local church. followers are trained, they're encouraged, they're supported, they even persevere to an extent, they're helped to walk out their faith, to walk in a manner worthy of Christ in the context of the local church. So that's all that we've walked through in an eight minute overview. In the last nine weeks, there's an eight-minute overview of where we've come to. So any comments, questions, light bulbs for you so far before we jump in this week to our content for today? Does it feel solid in your mind? Do you feel like you've got a good philosophy of missions? Great. It sounds like it. It sounds like we are missions experts at this point. Just ready, chomping at the bit to move on. So what we're going to look at today is what's at the top of the screen then. So this is the same study that we've done as a church in the past to arrive at our philosophy of missions. How do we choose a missionary? How do we support a missionary? What kinds of work are we going to be unified around as we support missions? So the way that we arrive at that is to study scripture. And you study scripture to see what does the Bible inform us of and that's how we've arrived at a philosophy of missions at HBF. So that's what we're gonna talk about for most of our time this morning is how does that play itself out at HBF? What is our policy? How do we support missions here? And the last part of the class is going to basically be a time for us to be introduced to each of our missionaries. So once we talk through our philosophy of missions here and the kinds of work that we support, then the appendix to the class is just to introduce us to all the missionaries and be reminded of who they are, a little bit of background, and the work that they do so that we can be informed, we can know them and pray for them, and join in the joy of the work that they do. So that's our goal today. We'll go through our missions philosophy here at HBF, and then we'll just start, we'll probably just get through the first one of our missionaries today. And then next week, we'll wrap up the class by introducing the rest of them. Okay, so missions at HBF. So to start out at HBF, we've defined the mission of the church in three directions. Does anybody know, anybody remember how we describe that? What is the church to be about? What are the three directions of the church, of the posture of our hearts? Yeah, Sophia. Okay, you were just doing some sign language, huh, but I called on you. Yeah, this looked like raising your hand, but that's right. Upward, inward, and outward. So we exist to exalt God, to edify believers, and to evangelize the world. Upward, inward, and outward. That's on your bulletin. That's even kind of in our logo. I can click back over here. That's meant to show those three purposes of the church, the upward arrows, and the inward arrows, and then the outward arrows going out the sides. It's to remind us of our purpose as a church. We glorify God, we edify the believers, and that, of course, is all centered around Christ. So you also have these arrows pointing at a cross in the middle. And then we also, those ones going out the sides are to remind us of our evangelistic our outward goal. Let's see if I can find where we were now. There. So, upward is to praise and glorify God. The inward is that calling that we've looked at, especially last week, to build one another up to maturity in Christ. The apostles didn't just evangelize, but they established churches so that the believers would be built up into Christlikeness. And then we're also called outward to bring that good news to others, to bring others in to Christ. And so as a church, how are we called to participate in that outward reach? How do we do outward as Christians? Okay, missions, yeah. Is this too easy of an answer? Missions, yeah. Missions absolutely is part of it. What is even closer than missions? That's absolutely right. I've got two answers in my mind. There may be more. We've got evangelism, right. We've got evangelism and then we've got missions. So we've got this outward responsibility. And the first part of that is absolutely evangelism. So the two are closely tied. Our definitions, in fact, the definition that I put on the screen week before last, I got helpful feedback that if this is a definition of missions, it needs to be just a little bit different or else it could be a definition of evangelism. And that's actually a helpful picture. They're so closely related that just a minor change in the definition could point to either one. But evangelism, it's closely tied to missions. How would you describe what evangelism is? Yeah, Bernie. Preaching the gospel. Okay, yeah. Preaching the gospel. Proclaiming the gospel. Telling the gospel. Speaking the gospel, right? Presenting the gospel. Giving the gospel to others. Making sure that others hear the good news of Jesus. And how do we do that? Okay, missions is one way to do it. Okay, you're gonna try to confuse everybody. Yes, evangelism happens through missions. How do we participate in evangelism? Words, yeah, absolutely through words. And as we go, yeah, that's okay. Yeah, through words. So there are organizations, or I don't know if movements is the right word, but there's a thinking that you can do evangelism without a message, without words, or I should say without a worded message, without a verbal message. So the idea that you can do evangelism through what? Charitable acts. Charitable acts. Yeah, kindness. building projects, you know. I went on a 10-day mission trip to Mexico when I was in high school, and we built a home, and we made quesadillas for orphans. And it was a sweet, sweet time, and I'll never, there's no tortilla like a fresh tortilla made on a stone in an orphanage in Mexico, I'll tell ya. But that's mostly what we did. We built a house and we made lots and lots of quesadillas. Is that missions? How so? Okay, maybe yeah, so that's good So I think I've got a bunch of verses up here that point to what you're talking about that talk about Adorning the gospel with our holy lives and with our love for others. So absolutely Going down there and making quesadillas for the orphans could be an opening for the gospel. It could be a great context for the gospel. It could be a great way to feed them and then tell them about food that they really need. Or to give them, like Jesus at the well, right? She's thirsty, of course, so I'm gonna use that as a context, as an inroad to tell her about the Messiah. Yeah, Tiffany. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I got off a little bit of a rabbit trail from answering that question. Yes, the difference when we use the term really the difference is where it is. We should all be evangelizing, we should live evangel-shaped lives. We should be living out the gospel where we are, no matter where we are. Missions is when you take that mindset and you say, wait a minute, there's people outside of my radius of effect. So how do we reach them? There's nobody doing this evangel-shaped living in that spot. So how do we as a church make that happen? We train somebody up and we send them to go do that. That's the idea of missions. So yes, that's right. It has to do with how do we get around that going aspect and making sure that the gospel goes out. Back to this question about what that looks like and what missions is, it can't exclude the gospel. So the gospel is a message. It's been recorded to us as a message. The gospel is a person, but that person is communicated through the message of the gospel. The apostles did not just go and love people. They wouldn't have been persecuted for that. They didn't just go and do kind works. They went and preached Christ and him crucified and Christ alone. And that's why they were beaten and ultimately executed, was Christ alone. So that's evangelism. That's what Christians are to be about. And we'll talk in the sermon passage a little bit about counting that cost. So a Christian is not just someone who names Christ and says that you can have it your way and this is my way, but someone who identifies with Christ and that exclusive message of Christ and lives that out. And lives it out, even in their evangelism by adorning the gospel with holy, humble, loving lives. We mentioned Matthew 5.16 before as well. Matthew 5.16 says, in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who's in heaven. and John 13, 34, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You are also to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. So the authenticity of our commitment to Christ is lived out and witnessed to by our love for one another. Does that make sense? So that's one aspect of how we evangelize. We tell the gospel, we live out the gospel. The church evangelizes through preaching, through the preaching of the word. Sermons should be evangelistic. We want the proclamation of the word of God in our churches to show Christ, to show who Jesus is and the world's need for Christ. The church teaches evangelism so that members of the church can be equipped and encouraged and know how to articulate the gospel. And then again, our lives should be evangelistic and that can show itself in a number of ways. Yeah, Al. The dimension to this is that When you go to people that are different language as yours, and you go and try to teach the gospel, if they don't have the language, the gospel or the Bible in their language, you have to do groundwork. You have to translate. There's a lot of English-enforced missionaries that do translational work, right? But you have to start there, because otherwise there's no communication. Right. That's funny, Al. I would think that you had read my notes, because I use that very word, that very phrase. There's groundwork to do, depending on who you're bringing the gospel to, and that involves translation, absolutely. Yeah, so there's definitely steps that we need to get to. We'll talk about that in just a minute when we talk specifically about what kinds of mission we support. So how we live out the gospel has all kinds of facets to it. We should be evangelistic in our speech and we should be evangelistic with the people around us, with our neighbors, with our children, with the children of the families in the church and around us. We should be evangelistic with our neighbors, our coworkers. Evangelism should soak our mindset and so our lives. We should be evangelistically motivated, and not only in our speech, but then for the sake of the gospel in our hospitality, in our mercy, our grace that we show to others. Evangelism should be front of mind for the Christian. They don't replace the message of the gospel, but as has been mentioned, it can prepare the heart for the message of the gospel. So there's plenty more scripture that points to Christians living in an evangelism-shaped lifestyle. When Jesus, in Matthew 22, 39, that's Jesus giving the two greatest commands. Number one, love the Lord your God. Number two, love your neighbor. Love your neighbor, even as yourself. Luke 10, that verse in Luke 10, that's the parable of the good Samaritan. Who is my neighbor? The Samaritan didn't even really have much opportunity for speaking with the person that he helped. He found this guy nearly dead in the ditch, but he showed him love, he took care of him, he provided for his recovery. It says in Luke 10, 33, a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. We should be compassionate, even for the sake of the gospel, for the opportunity of the gospel. Galatians 6.10, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone. Titus 3.14, let our people learn to devote themselves to good works so as to help cases of urgent need and not be unfruitful. We should live fruitful lives of compassion, and that's within the body and without. keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, 1 Peter 2, 11 and 12 says, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So the church is absolutely called to evangelism, to bring the gospel to those around us through proclamation of the word, through godly living, through walking in a manner worthy of Christ, and we should also Oh, lost my spot. participate in the gospel going out beyond us. So Psalm 67, we should be part of proclaiming his praise and a desire to see that praise go out beyond our community, beyond our neighborhood, to the nations. And that's where you get to missions. So how do you participate in missions? Here's how you participate in evangelism here. How does this church participate in evangelism out beyond our fingertips? So we've already talked some about that. How do we participate in the call to make disciples of the nations? And that's the question of how do we participate in missions? How do we bring the call of the gospel to the nations? That's the question of how do we do missions? Again, it's not a command specifically to go. It's to make disciples and we participate in that. We support that by helping those who do go and who do go bring the gospel to the ends of the earth, to the nations. And so our purpose statement as a church, you have probably seen it. Probably most of you have seen that statement. It's on our website. We also have printed copies of it on these tables. Or we can get you one if the little holders are out of them. But we have a purpose statement that goes through some of our philosophy of ministry. And it has a little section on missions in there. And we'll go through some parts of that as we go. But even before we jump into that, I do want to make a clarification, I suppose, that's not often made. So as a church, we have this opportunity through missions to be unified and to put our resources together in order that we would One, be unified and enjoy the unity of supporting something together. And also, because when we do things together, they're highly effective. And so when we support things together, we can support them in significant ways. Does that make sense? So when we support missionaries together, we can have a more significant impact. That being said, I'm not presenting who we support and why as a way of saying that you can't support anyone else. And so many of us probably have other organizations that we've supported for a long time, or other causes, or maybe a missionary that you know that you support and keep up with. And I'm not going through this to tell you you gotta cut those so that you're only supporting the missionaries of HBF. there could be great reasons, personally, that you support that ministry. But it is to encourage you, in a sense, to support the missionaries of HBF. And of course, that is financial, but it's more than financial. It's also to understand why we're supporting these ones and why we're supporting them together. And in knowing that, we can be joyful about supporting them, and we can get to know them, and we can support them in significant ways. Again, not only financially, but through prayer, so that we're not each just supporting someone, but here we have a whole congregation praying together for one missionary. Does that make sense? So the point of going through this is not to encourage anyone to cut all their ties with other missionaries, but to encourage you to support the missionaries of HBF as we support them together and to know maybe why we choose the missionaries we do, why we've gone through the process that we have. It's so that we can all say yes and amen to these missionaries that we support because we've just walked through scripture, we've walked through the testimony of the Bible about what is missions and what is it for. And so when we all do that together, we can say, yes, this is what the Bible is telling us is good. This is the mission of the church. Does that make sense? Any questions about that, Al? I might just say that as far as prayer for our missionaries, we do that. For example, our prayer of praise tonight, we'll be doing that. But then we also do it at other venues. I know our Bible study does at least one missionary every time we meet. That's great. And then we put out these sheets. That's great. Yeah, we should all be praying privately. I know there's some families that make sure they pray for a missionary each night. That's a great way to do it, even to train up your children to know the missionaries and to pray for them and have a concern for the salvation of those who are outside of their little world. Pray for the missionaries with your families. I would hope the home groups pray for the missionaries, if not weekly, at least occasionally. That's great encouragement. I'll bring that to our home group, yeah. Yeah, we should be praying for the missionaries in all kinds of contexts, but we do that together. Yeah, we do that together as a body when we're all supporting them together. Bernie? There's a lot of parent church organizations throughout. They have a certain mission, and as long as they stick with the mission of helping people come to know the Lord, there's all kinds of different ways to approach people. So as long as they're all working with the church, to help people to come to know the Lord, then it's all part of God's mission. And there are missionaries that are from different groups that are going around the world too. So yeah, it's important that all those be supported by different people in different ways. Yeah, so Bernie brings up the point that as long as they're participating in some way with bringing people to know the Lord, then they're, what was the phrase you used? Then they're participating in doing the Lord's work. So that's good. So that's a good example of what I'm saying here. I'm not suggesting that the only way to be involved in missions is to support those missionaries that HBF supports. The reason we support the missionaries that we do is because we want to enjoy the unity of the body. And so we're supporting very specifically what we believe the Bible is showing us is the work of missions, right? We're going to look at 3 John again, the work of missions. In fact, maybe I can just pull that up since I'm talking about it. Yeah, it's the next slide. Perfect. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God, for they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore, we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth." Now, if our church has a philosophy of missions that basically just takes third John and supports those men who are going out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles, doing the work that we just looked at through the New Testament that the apostles and their followers were doing, then we can all get behind that because we're Bible people and we can joyfully be unified in supporting that work. Great. There's other kinds of good work being done all over the world. We don't support them unified as a church because we want to preserve and promote that unity of the body. Everybody can get behind this work, but there's other kinds of work that are good, that you can choose to support, that aren't necessarily the work that we're going to be unified around as a body. Does that make sense? So you could give some examples, like the Gideons are an example of a parachurch ministry that's doing a good work. They're just mass-producing and mass-distributing Bibles all over the place. Now, does a Bible in every hotel room across the country guarantee converts? No, you can say no, right? That's easy. You can say no, I'm not criticizing the Gideons. That's a good thing, to get Bibles all over the place, because somebody's gonna read them, people are gonna read them, and it's good that there's Bibles everywhere, but we're not in the work of putting those Bibles everywhere, right? We wanna be more specifically tied to the work of showing that word to people, person to person, to make disciples. So we go back to Matthew, Matthew 28 in that. Nothing wrong with getting out Bibles, may it abound. We're just choosing those missions that we're going to be unified around as a body because they're so inherent to the command of Christ. Does that make sense? Does the example help? I mean we could go through a hundred examples of good work being done. But we won't. We won't go through 100 examples. Maria? like personal relationships, building personal relationships. So it's not just presenting the gospel and moving on to the next village or the next whatever. It's like living with the people and building a relationship with them and getting to know their language and how they speak and all of that. So it's not just like moving right along. It's so time-consuming. And because it's relational. I'm not sure. Having discernment I think what I see here is that the elders and the leaders of the church have gotten together and vetted a certain group of people and said, these are the people that we support because they are biblical. Because it's easy to get caught off into the good works. Yeah. Not doing evangelism, they're just doing for example, like they gave to Gideons. But to support people that are really going out there and have the boots on the ground, and they're doing evangelism, and they're preaching people, and they're discipling people. I think that's important. Right. That as a church, it would be easy to get emotional and say, I want to support these people because it's children, or I want to support this because it's one of my pet peeves, or hobby books, or whatever. But to have a group of elders or leaders that are saying, These people are biblical. These people are doing what they should be doing. These are the ones we want. These are the people we support. We want you to get behind us and support them. Right. And yeah, I like you brought up that point, Larry, about emotions because there's so many needs and we're so comfortable here. We're so blessed in our comforts, but all around the world, it's not so. And there's so many needs. And what are we called to? We're actually called to address their greatest need. which is salvation. So there's all these needs that need to be met that we would love to go out and meet, that we would love to support as HBF. We just love to eradicate hunger. But how are we going to put our resources in the most valuable place? We're going to address the most dire need. which is Christ. The most dire need is that they would come to know Christ. So we also want to be careful with our resources that, yes, I mean, if we can give comfort, let's give comfort, but what we're going to do with our resources is to make sure that we're giving the gospel. the kind of comfort, comfort, oh my people. Isaiah chapter 40 verse one kind of comfort rather than the worldly comfort that's not gonna save them eternally. Again, is there anything wrong with a cool cup of water? No, the Bible tells us this specifically. No, it's good to have compassion. It's good to help people. It's good to love them. But you love them and you show that compassion in order to adorn the gospel. And if you leave out the gospel, you just leave them walking down a broad path with a cup of cool water in their hands. It's kindness, but we need to love them more than that by giving them the gospel. Good. I'm a little off track here, but we're getting right to it. Just give me a second to find out where in my notes we are. So, we want to be about this work, unified around this purpose. Are there other good works? Yes. What are we going to support as a church? These good servants of God, good, I mean, these ones that the Apostle John is talking about, they've been sent from one church, so they've been sort of qualified by the Apostle John. He's sending them and they're coming through the church to go and bring the gospel and they're doing it accepting nothing from the Gentiles so that the testimony of the gospel wouldn't be hindered by them asking for money and support. And so what do we do in order to preserve the purity of that message? We support them. That's what we're going to get behind is sending those ones along in a manner worthy of God so that we can be fellow workers for thee. truth for the gospel going forward. When we do that, when we send them ahead, next question, what should they be seeking to establish? What are they doing? Making disciples. Yeah, great. So first is converts. First thing is converts. It's a little bit of a trick question, because I think I already said that we want to see churches established, and the apostles are leaving churches behind them. But before you have churches, you need Converts. He needs some disciples. So when Paul goes to Philippi in Acts 16, he doesn't go to the synagogue because there is no synagogue. So not only are there no Christians, but there's very, very few Jews. So when he gets there, he goes down by the water on the Sabbath because that's where the few Jews who are there go down to pray. And he meets them and he tells those few Jews about the gospel. And Lydia, it says, the Lord opened her heart to listen. And she believes what Paul is saying. And so now you've got some believers. The whole household believes. He baptizes the household. And then he goes to prison. And that's where the Philippian jailer is converted, is in the prison when he sees the miracle of the jail cells all being busted open. And so then, by the time he leaves Philippi, there's the brothers. You've got the believers in Philippi meeting probably in Lydia's home. and they all implore Paul to leave so that he doesn't get hurt. So now you've got a church, and Paul doesn't spend very much time in Philippi before he leaves, but he leaves with a congregation in Philippi. So that's what we want to send these people along to do, is to preach the gospel, to disciple new believers, and to establish and strengthen churches. That's the result of these ministries that we see in the New Testament. These churches are established by apostles. We don't have apostles today, so we imitate the apostolic precedent and we imitate what the apostles taught their disciples to do. in sending pastors. We send pastors who train pastors. We encourage these men, and they support, and they train more leaders, more disciples, so that that work multiplies. So, any questions there? Al? I just gotta say, We have to realize or understand that this is the work of God. It's not our work. So we need to recognize what God is doing out there. He prompts us to support a missionary. That's what we ought to do. These people need to be called by God to do the work. So a new definition just has to be there, because a lot of things can't be done on just our own power. We need to recognize it's God that's designing everything. When you look at Paul's word, for example, the Lord told him where to go. Exactly, that's why we spent the first portion of the class just solidifying how much this belongs to God and how much of it is His work. It is all God. which he invites us into to participate in, but the comfort and the structure that we get from this is that because this belongs to God and he's in charge of it, and he's the one who produces all of the results even through us, then all we have to do is obey. All we have to do is be faithful because we're not trying to stretch the limits. We're not trying to step outside of our lane. We're not trying to cut the corner in order to get a few more converts. No way. Because the way that we're going to accomplish God's purpose is most effectively is to do it God's way. So we listen to God's word. We do God's work as he's called us to do it. Absolutely. And God is the one who produces that fruit. So it's this enormous freedom really it's the freedom of discipline that the the violin strings cannot make music while they're just laying limp on the table, but it's when they're tightened and Strapped down and held in exactly the right place when they're perfectly disciplined that they make the most beautiful sound and in the same way Disciples of the Lord are free to fulfill their purpose when they do so with discipline according to the Word of God So yeah, great point. We just obey. So I'm going to move forward with our missionaries. So if this is what we're aiming for, here's some criteria that we've set out for our missionaries at HBF. That purpose statement that we have for the church has this section on missionaries and it says, Quote, the elders should define criteria for selecting missionaries to support in order to be good stewards of the church's resources, and they should clearly explain this vision so the congregation is informed, unified, and enthusiastic of its support of its missionaries. And so that's why this is written down in our purpose statement is to clarify these things. And in some ways, that's what the purpose of this class is to bring these things to front of mind. So we're informed, unified, and even enthusiastic of our support of our missionaries. So we want to be unified in a vision of missions together. And again, the best way to do that is to be biblical. So in our unity around scripture, here's what we're aiming for with our missionaries. Here's a criteria for our missionaries. And I'll just go through several of these, and then I think we'll have time to talk through our first missionary. I don't mean first, I mean just get through one of them. So, our criteria for missionaries. First, our missionaries must be theologically like-minded. The missionaries with which the church will partner must be theologically like-minded, agreeing broadly with the church's doctrinal statement and philosophy of ministry. Why is that important? Too big of an answer? It's very important, right? Because everything that we've been talking about hinges on that. So it's not only that we have a good mindset about missionaries, and from that we just appoint people and assume that they have the same mindset, there's quite a breadth of philosophies about how missions should be done. So we want to partner with people who think this way, so that we're partnering with people who are foremost about getting out to where there are no disciples, making disciples, and training those disciples to multiply themselves. and to establish and strengthen local churches. If they're not theologically like-minded, that's not possibly not going to be their aim. So in our statement of faith, we've got a couple of different terms for how like-minded you need to be. I keep forgetting the adjective. To be a member at the church, you need to be in, I think it's general agreement with a statement of faith. Is that right? Yeah, general agreement. And then for elders, they need to be in wholehearted agreement with the statement of faith. It's an adjective that we're trying to narrow down in our minds about what that means. But the missionaries need to be broadly in agreement with the statement of faith. We're not looking for carbon copies of our statement of faith, but they need to agree theologically with us on key issues and certainly in a philosophy of missions. Number two, missionaries must be closely connected with the work of making disciples. So that just goes with everything we've built up to this point. We believe this is the work of the Great Commission, is to go make disciples by baptizing them and teaching them to obey all of Jesus' commands. So our missionaries are closely tied to this. An exception, not really an exception, but what Al was just talking about a few minutes ago in terms of laying groundwork is that in some cases, we have a couple missionaries who are involved in Bible translation. So if you have a group of people who have zero converts or a written language, It may be that the best way to establish discipleship is to get them the scripture in their language. And certainly to train a pastor and leave them with a church that's doctrinally sound, they need scripture. So we do participate in the work, we support the work of Translation as well. But again, that's not separate from disciple making. That's within the context of one-on-one disciple making. And our missionaries who do translation work are doing it with people that they're discipling. What a great way to do that. Like, hey, can you read this for me? Sure, yeah. They're reading scripture. Of course, it takes several years to get to that point. It's an amazing work. When we talk about them, we'll talk a little bit about that process. Missionaries must work toward the establishment or strengthening of the local church. Somebody give me a, just broad strokes, why is that important? Bernie. Yeah, great engineering term. It's the mechanism. It's the mechanism for disciple-making. It's the factory, right, that produces the disciples. Yeah, the church is God's purpose. Christ will build his church and And it is the training grounds, it is the mechanism of God for strengthening disciples within the body of Christ. Good. So, we want to see churches established. Another reason for that is I mean, it's biblical, but we see the danger of not doing that. So you have these missionaries, historically, who have gone to some tribe, they've gone to some remote people, and they spend their whole life there, trying to minister to these people, learning the language, trying to teach them the word, and what can happen is that missionary becomes like the sort of foreign holy priest to those people, a gift from that god, and what happens is that missionary dies or goes home and the people go back to what they had. So the aim is not to just go and represent a foreign god to these people, but by by making converts and establishing disciples and training them to train one another by raising up pastors and shepherds over the people, then that missionary eventually leaves and what you have is a healthy church that multiplies itself and duplicates itself and starts sending out more indigenous pastors who go into the into the jungles and into the even more remote places. So that's the aim. We wanna be involved in that multiplying work that goes generations beyond the missionary themselves. In general, it should be the goal of any church planting or church strengthening endeavor, ultimately, to raise up local leadership and establish the church to be self-supporting, self-governing, and self-reproducing. So we wanna be a part of that work. There ought to be some plan, you talk about mechanism, you got me thinking about machines, there ought to be some plan down the line for how the missionary is going to leave. so that the church is not dependent on them. So a good mission has an exit plan. It doesn't mean that the missionary only gets to be a missionary for one mission. They might go do it again somewhere else. But a good plan would be we're going to establish this, build it up, of course, depending on the Lord. But as the Lord blesses it, that missionary can step out and it's now being led by faithful local pastors, native language pastors. And then finally, if, and often they are, if these missionaries are serving in church leadership, they need to meet biblical qualifications for that role. That's part of the criteria that's certainly not, last but not least, that many of our missionaries do serve as elders at their local churches, and they certainly need to meet character qualifications of the scriptures, 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Okay, so the kind of work we emphasize as a church is this. We desire to see churches strengthened, established. We desire to see leaders trained and raised up. We support the work of translation. for those groups that don't have scripture in their own languages. That is a tedious and slow work, especially groups that they don't have scripture, they don't have an alphabet even. How do you get scripture in the hands of a language that's never been written down? That's a long mission. We're supporting that work in Cameroon. So, Finally, I guess one aspect of what we want to be a part of in supporting missions is care for missionaries. If we're looking at distinguishing marks of what we do in supporting missionaries, we want to care for our missionaries above and beyond what's expected or normal. It can be a tendency to want to support lots of things, and so to support lots of things in small ways. We don't want to send $20 checks to 500 organizations. We want to support in significant ways. And that's, of course, not only money, but it's money too. We want to support in significant ways so these missionaries are built up to do their work. feel cared for and know that they're cared for. We want to provide significant prayer support. So we don't support a hundred different missionaries, we support six. And the reason we do that is so that well, not the reason that, but one of the reasons we do that is so we can support them financially in significant ways, but so that we can know them significantly and pray for them personally, keep up with them, be involved in their work. We want to, like Maria was saying, we want this to be a personal relationship. They're in the trenches, And we realize from what Paul says about the Philippians' involvement in his ministry, we realize that we're in it with them. We're there with them ministering. We wanna be significantly involved in the work that they do, in encouraging them. We're writing them Christmas cards. That's a very small thing, but that's just maybe a very small picture of how we wanna be involved in their lives. If you have no idea if or how many kids they have, Let that be just a little flag for you. I need to get to know my missionaries better. As you're writing that Christmas card, right, and you say, dear Robin and Gigi Brown, and you think, oh, who else should be on this? Do they have kids? I don't know. Okay, I need to know my missionaries a little bit better. Does that make sense? We want to know them so we can care for them and pray for them. If I don't know if they have kids or not, then I'm not praying for their parenting alongside their ministry. We wanna know them that way and care for them in that way. So we currently support six missionaries. We aren't gonna jump into the first one this week. We'll walk through a portrait of each of our missionaries next week. But just to round out for this morning, our missionaries are Robin and Gigi Brown in South Africa, Evan Burns, Devraj and Tristi Urs, Shannon and Danielle Hurley, Dave and Stacey Hare, Davis Prickett, and the elders have just decided to begin supporting Jamie and Susan Bismeyer. So we will soon be supporting seven. missionaries. And it's actually a good spot to stop as well because next week we won't live stream the session. Yeah, Forrest. Yeah. We never have. I've heard some benchmarks that are just maybe you'd say like church wisdom. So one number that's often thrown around is that you should be giving 10%, not in connection with tithe, but just that's a good healthy amount to make sure you're at or over, I suppose. But it's not like that's a verse. I think Al checked our numbers from this last year and we were at 14% of our budget. The reason we haven't written down a number is, one, we just want to be evaluating our budget and what we can support. So if we were enormously blessed all of a sudden, well, we're meeting all of our needs, so why not increase missions, right? So I would love to adjust that number a little higher. I would love to be giving a little more to missions. But it also depends on who we're supporting and what their needs are. So if we don't have a missionary that we know well doing a work that we want to be a part of, then we're not going to We're not just going to throw that money out somewhere, if that makes sense. So it's personal. Who are we going to support? And then from there, what are their needs? For example, if a missionary visited and they said, we'd love for you to support us. We've got all but $50 of our pledges is filled up. So we're not going to, so okay, we'll give you $50 and then we'll commit to praying for you, support you in these other ways. So it all depends on need. Yeah, Lisa. And also just a good reminder that we're able to donate money in bucks in your market to specific, if we want to as well. Yeah, that's helpful, practical. Yeah, reminder that one of the ways you can give in a designated way is if you'd like to give specifically to missions. for missions specifically. We want to be a part of. making disciples among all the nations. And these are the ones that we support. So again, we'll walk through them. We'll give a portrait. I hope it's helpful to you. Some of them I know just from relationship with them over time. There's some of them I know some of you know some of these missionaries better than I do personally. And so maybe you can chime in next week as well and help with that. But The goal is that you would get to know them and get a sense for who they are and then, of course, have a real good clear picture of the work that they're doing to inform your prayers, inform your support for them, and to build the joy of the unity of the body as we pray, continue to pray and love our missionaries. So that'll be for next week. We'll go through each of those together. Any questions, last minute comments? Sure. was if somebody was, you know, very benevolent and wanted to give $100,000 commissions through the church, then the owner may consider that that be portioned out appropriately given our budget allotments. so that if a person wanted to go far beyond what the church said 15% was, then they may want to do that individually and ship it directly to the missionary. Am I making myself clear about that? Not to me, probably everybody else understands what you're saying. Are you suggesting that you can give directly to the missionaries instead of, okay, yeah. What I'm saying is that once somebody gives an inordinate amount of money to missions through the church, to the church, then is there an adjustment made then by the elders? Oh. Not into the budget. Yeah. Allocation. Yes. Yeah, good question. So we did that last year. We were given designated giving for missions and so that was really fun. That was exciting to get to sit down. It wasn't Yeah, it was just given four missions. And so then what we did with that was we looked at our missionaries because of the amount. So I'm not sure. We'd want to meet and prayerfully consider what to do with the hypothetical inordinate gift because that may mean that we would want to support something else too. But in the case of having extra, you know, cream on the top of our missions budget last year, we got to look at our missionaries particularly and see, okay, which of them would be blessed by more giving and which of them would be able to put this to work. Not that anybody wouldn't be blessed by more giving, but how do we, which of these can we give to to increase the work that's being done, right? And bless the missionaries, encourage them, and also build on the work. So one that we'll talk about is the sufficiency of scripture ministries is just growing leaps and bounds. And we put some more into that because they've got a big plan for the part of their ministry that we support is still under construction, if that makes sense. So we were able to give a little extra to help make that come to fruition. It's a seminary that they're putting together, but they don't have it built out to finish the program fully. So we're able to sort of step them along. So it's exciting to get to help in that way. So when there's excess, yeah, absolutely. We consider how best to put that to work. Yeah.