It is a great privilege to be
with you here this morning and. To be honest with you, brothers,
to. Tomorrow, I believe it is, I'm
going to be preaching in the main session, but I would forego
that privilege of preaching in the main session if I had to
make a choice between that meeting and this one. I love seeing everything that's
going on here, all these men praising God and men who are
dedicated to the word. But there's a world out there.
That does not know Jesus Christ. Not here, only in the United
States, but on every continent of this globe. There are people. That are not within the reach
of gospel proclamation. If God desired to save a man
in the United States, he could direct that man to even some
radio program where the gospel is being preached. But there
are billions of people who are outside the reach of the proclamation
of the gospel. And I want you to know something.
It's your responsibility. I have a deep and abiding respect
for pastors. The more I grow, the older I
get. I have a greater and greater
respect for pastors. Pastors do the invisible work. Pastors do the work that is not
applauded in a conference. Pastors are getting up early
and going to bed late, taking care of their sheep. They have great burdens. Great
trials and many times little reward. I understand that. I
understand it. And I understand that you may
be here today. Struggling with a small flock. Burdened about things that are
going on, even right now, as you sit here in the conference,
things that may be going on in your church, I understand that.
But brothers, in spite of all that, it does not give us an
excuse to step back from the Great Commission. It does not. This is our task as men of God. To work and work and labor until
the master calls us home and to look not only to our sheep,
Not only to the people in our own congregation, and not only
to our lost neighborhoods, but we are called upon to look out
to the world. And to actually involve ourselves.
Part of our sacrifice in the ministry should have to do with
those in lands where the gospel is not preached. I want us to
turn for just a moment to Matthew chapter 28. Verse 16, But the eleven disciples
proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. When they saw Him, they worshipped
Him, but some were doubtful. I absolutely so appreciate this
passage. We are looking at eleven men
who we can honestly say conquered the Roman Empire. Eleven men
who changed the world. Eleven men that for right now
have a legacy of 2,000 years. Over 2,000 years the world has
been impacted by them. And yet we see them here, drawing
near to the Christ with excitement, with exhilaration, in obedience. And yet at the same time we see
that they are men just like us. They're struggling with doubt.
They're fighting back fears. They're thinking, what's going
to happen to us? What's going to happen to our families? What
is this going to cost? What does it mean? They were
just like us. And yet these men, most of them
dying as martyrs, most of them, the world would say they were
abject failures. And yet we know today that God
used them to overcome the Roman Empire and bring the gospel to
the whole known world. They were men like us. But they
did such great things. Why? Because they have a God
like ours. We see all around us the fall
of the West. Really, honestly, it's not an
exaggeration. When you see the sins of Romans
1 in a culture, in a society, it does not mean that God is
going to judge that nation or that society. It means that he
already has. He's already declared judgment
and turned them over to the lusts of their own depraved hearts.
And as men, we can sit back and we can we can recede, we can
yield, we can take a remnant kind of theology and say, we're
the only ones left, let's hold the fort. You're not called to
hold the fort. You're called to advance. The
world we live in right now here in the United States of America,
it's still not difficult. If you think this is difficult,
you do not understand church history. We still have it easier
than any generation of Christians that ever lived on the planet.
And for us to talk about darkness and fear and hide in our homes
and hope in some political resolution, we're not being Christian. We
are called to advance. And the darker the world gets,
the greater our light. And if we move into a time where
we have the persecution of the first century, that well, then
congratulations, we now have the opportunity to live like
first century Christians. There is no defeat. There is
only victory if we are faithful to the task at hand to do what
God has commanded us to do and to do it God's way. Not ours. Look what we have here in verse
18. And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, all authority
has been given to me in heaven and on earth. What does this
mean? It means all authority has been given to him in heaven
and on earth. And what does that mean? You
and I have no excuse. We have no excuse for our doubts.
We have no excuse for our fears. We have no excuse to hide behind
something in order to protect ourselves. We have no excuse
not to risk. My wife is always saying, she
says, these Calvinistic friends of yours, they only believe God
is sovereign with regard to salvation and nothing else, because it's
obvious, because they won't risk. They won't trust him. A missionary
comes to a church of 500 people, pours out his heart about what
God's doing on some strange island far away, and they all risk with
mighty faith and hand him $50. Man, we live in a time where
we in the power of God and the grace of God can rise up and
do great things. This is not a time for men of
small hearts and tight spirits and narrow shoulders. This is
a time for men to trust God. And to take it on. In ourselves,
we can do nothing, nothing. But in this statement that all
authority has been given unto him in heaven and on earth, in
this we can rise up and say, bring on the lions, bring them
on. All authority has been given
unto me in heaven and on earth. Go. Go. Go. Craig Blomberg in his commentary
on Matthew, wonderful commentary, he says this, the word go down
through church history has been given in some cases too much
emphasis, and in other cases too little. What does he mean
by that? In the case of the word being
given too much emphasis, we have people in churches and pastors
who say, the world is so needy, we just need to send people.
Doesn't matter if they qualify, doesn't matter if they're trained.
Let's just get them out, get them out, get them out. We've
got to get people out there. Some missionary half trained
is better than no missionary at all. That's not true. Half
trained missionaries have done more damage to the work of the
kingdom than you could ever imagine. So it's not just go. But then
on the other hand, there's another group of people that say, well,
you know, This is not the imperative in the text. The imperative is
make disciples. And so we'll make disciples and
they forget about go. They just think, well, I'm going
to bloom where I'm planted. And that's wrong, too. Pastor, I know you've got so
much to carry. But by the authority of God's
word, I'm going to put one more thing on you. You're to look
out into the fields, not just the fields of your neighborhood,
but you're to look out into the fields, the places where there
still needs someone to go. You're to look there. You're
to pray for that. You're to ask, Lord, what can
I do? And you're to inform your church. One of the most terrifying realities
of the ministry is that your church, sooner or later, if you
stay there long enough, is going to imitate you. You can preach
about evangelism all day long, but if you're not evangelistic,
your church won't be evangelistic. You can talk about missions all
day long, but if you as a man is not risking your life and
finances and everything else for missions, then your church
isn't either. I know a church. That when it
was under a certain pastor down in southern Georgia, an independent
Baptist fundamentalist church. They had about less than 100
people, less than 100 people, no doctors, no lawyers, blue
collar. And they, on the average, gave $200,000 a year to missions. And the pastor in that beautiful
Georgian, Georgia accent of his, he'd say, Brother Paul, I just
discovered this. You take care of missions, God
will take care of you. And that's what I've taught my
people and they believe it. When it says go, it divides the
Great Commission into two things. One, you're either to go, are
you to train and send those who do go. That's how Great Commission
lines up. Either way, it requires the same
devotion. If you have been called to be
a pastor here in the United States, praise God for you. I believe
it's the highest calling there is, is to be a pastor. Then you
are called still to the Great Commission. If you are not called
to go, you are called to train and you're called to send either
directly through your own church or through something the Lord
has raised up. And through which your church
might work, you are called to be involved. Now. He says here. Go, therefore,
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the father and the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to
observe all that I command you and lo, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age. Of course, we don't have time
to go through all of this. Here's what I want you to see.
From this, we understand that missions is a theological and
doctrinal endeavor. It is. It is didactic. Missions is not about sending
missionaries. Missions is about sending God's
truth through missionaries. There is more missionary activity
in the world today than there has ever been. And most of it
is a mess. One of the greatest things that
could happen on the mission field is to call most of the missionaries
home. Now, I know that sounds horrid
what I'm saying, it sounds arrogant, but it is true. It is true. There are such travesties
going on, horrible things that are happening around the world
in missions, missionaries going out from supposed conservative
missionary organizations that are teaching people that they
can be Muslim and Christian at the same time. That Yahweh and
Allah is the same God. Missionaries that are going out
and teaching all the things that has destroyed the church in America. I remember when I was in seminary
and I realized that I was not in a solid one. That I was being
taught all the German theology that closed all the churches
in Germany. In many ways, the same things
are going on now. All the things that we heard
about yesterday that's wrong with the church in America, it's
being spread abroad. And what can we do? What can
we do to fix the problem? It's to simply obey what God
has written in the scriptures. Now, I'm going to talk to you
about missions for just a second. And I'm going to explain to you
some things. Of how simple missions. Actually is. Let me read you this. In the
New Testament, missions is church planting. The primary goal of missions
is to plant a biblical church. It is that all you have to do
is study the life of the Apostle Paul and those co-laborers who
are with him, and you will see he had one priority. The ultimate goal was to plant
a biblical, autonomous, local church. Now, in the New Testament,
missions is church planting. Now, here's the question. How
do you plant a church? How do you plant a church? Well,
here's the answer. The same way you pastor one. I have had it up to here. with every new fad coming down
the pike about mission strategies, church planting, church growth,
and all of it is just an excuse not to do the simple and difficult
things that Jesus Christ commanded us. And what is that? How do you plant a church? You
plant a church the same way you pastor a church. And how do you
pastor a church? Second Timothy 4.5, you do the
work of an evangelist. You do the work of an evangelist. And then what do you do? You
pastor and disciple those men who are converted, those people
who are converted. You disciple them all. You preach
to them all. You pastor them all. So you do
the work of an evangelist. Those who are converted, you
pastor them, which includes, of course, teaching and discipling
them. And then what do you do? You
set your sights on faithful men and train them to be elders.
I want you to look for just a minute, look over at second Timothy. Chapter two, verse two, the things
which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses,
entrust these things to faithful men who will be able to teach
others also. Now, this text has been used
for the last several decades. As the theological basis for
discipling people. That, you know, if you're converted,
you need to start discipling other people and the multiplication
of disciples. That's not what this text is
talking about. We ought to disciple, yes, every
new convert, we ought to disciple them. We ought to preach to them,
we ought to pastor them, but that's not what this text is
talking about. This text is talking about raising
up and training elders. That's what he's saying. He's
not saying invest your life in a 14 year old boy who's been
converted, even though we should do that. He's talking about raising
up men. Who can be elders in that local
church and then some of them being sent out to do what? To do the work of an evangelist.
To pastor and disciple those who have been converted. and among that group to pray
for and discover men whom God is raising up to be elders. To
do what? So they can help pastor the church
and for some of them to be sent out. To do what? To do the work
of an evangelist? That's missions. Why isn't this
at the forefront? Because it's not fancy. It's
not clever. It cannot be done in the flesh. It's hard. It requires the study
of scripture for hours a day in the proclamation of that scripture.
It requires bloody knees. It requires the death of the
flesh. And it means you probably won't
become famous. This is the work of missions.
Now, look at First Timothy, chapter three. In verse one through seven. We have what's known as the qualification
of elders, don't we? Or do we? I've heard people say, well,
yes, these are the qualifications of an elder, but I'm a missionary,
I don't have to have these qualifications. Really? I'm not going to be an
elder, I'm going to be a missionary. Oh, you're going to start the
church that's going to be the root for all the other churches and
that people group and you don't need to have these qualifications.
These are not the qualifications of an elder. Primarily. What is Paul actually saying
here? He's saying this is a description of a mature Christian. And the
elder, that man who has a desire and shows a desire to pastor
God's people. That's wonderful, but he can't
start until these qualifications are found in him in growing measure. So it's not just training men.
in theology, but training them in character. And it's not just
elders. The two elders of my church are
here today. We have a thing in our church
and our church and heart cry. Have a very important conviction
when someone says. I want to be a missionary. Our question is this to that
person's elders. Can this person be an elder in
your church? Would you make this person an
elder in your church to pastor your people? And if the answer
is no, they're not going to be a missionary. Now, do you think
that's strange? It's biblical. It's biblical. You see that. Now, let me throw a question
at you. This is going to be my last question just to get you
thinking. If I ask you, what is a pastor?
You can go to the scriptures, can't you? And you can show me
what a pastor is. And when someone doesn't meet
up to those biblical standards, you can say, well, this guy's
a mover and a shaker, maybe he's a spiritual life coach. Something,
but he's not a pastor because the Bible says a pastor does
this. You know what the problem is? Define what a missionary is for
me. Define what a missionary is.
There's our big problem, isn't it? Missionary is anything anybody
who wants to go to the field and please don't laugh because
I'm not making fun of this. But if someone wants to go with
a puppet ministry, they're a missionary or you send 15 of your youth
group. You spend eighty thousand dollars
to send them to a foreign land for two weeks where they go around
not really accomplishing hardly anything. And they come back
with all kinds of stories. That's not missions. What is
a missionary? I mean, really? Now think about this, the Great
Commission is the enterprise, it's the endeavor. It's what
the church is called to accomplish, and we can't even define what
a missionary is. It means anything. Isn't that amazing? Maybe that's
the reason why we're having so much trouble today. We don't
even know what a missionary is. Now, I don't want to scare you
or anything, but the word missionary comes from the Latin verb miteri. You know what it means? To send. The Greek word apostelo. To send. From which we get the word apostle. So what am I saying? Are there
apostles today? No. But in a way, yes. In a very, very different way.
Be careful. There were a group of apostles
sent out by the Lord. They saw the Lord. They saw him. They did. That's not happening
today. I'm just to inform you. It's like a man told one of my
dear friends who's in the pastorate that he was shaving And the Lord
appeared to him. And my friend said, well, did
you stop shaving? Because if you didn't, it wasn't
the Lord. But that's the word we use when
we say missionary, we're saying we're saying sent one. And I
believe. That there is some relationship,
but we have to be very, very careful. Those original apostles were
sent out by the direct authority of Jesus Christ. When we get
to Acts 13, they're sent out by the authority of the local
church. The local church has recognized
their calling and the local church has laid its hands upon those
missionaries. The original apostles They received direct revelation
from the Lord and they went out proclaiming that revelation that
they received. The missionary today doesn't
do that. If you find one that is, don't
support him. What does the missionary do today?
He takes that revelation of the apostles that has been recorded
and he proclaims it. So what do we what is a missionary?
A missionary is a man who has been called by God and has the
desire to go out into the work of missions. He is a person that,
through the grace of God and the diligent study of Scripture,
has now met the requirements of a true minister of Christ
as set before us in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. He is a person
upon whom the church can lay its hands and say, yes, we send
this person out under the authority that we have as a local church.
and to be watched over and cared for us theologically, morally,
ethically, every way, shape, form or fashion. And then he
goes out. This is primarily what a missionary
is. He goes out and he does the work
of an evangelist. I'm so tired of all these people
who think that if they can make their service cool enough or
attractive enough, people will come. That's not what the Bible
says. You go out and do the work of
an evangelist. You preach the gospel in the
markets. You go door to door. You witness for Christ. And those
people who are converted, you pastor them, disciple them, and
you do what? You start looking for men to
train immediately. And not necessarily you're looking
to start a training ministry. You're looking for a person to
train. It may not have any title to it. It may not develop into
a seminary one day, but you are doing the work of a man training
men. And then as a missionary, you
either decide God has called me to pastor this people now
for the rest of my life or in raising up these men, you turn
the work over to them and you go plant another church. You
say, Brother Paul, but what about me? I want to be a missionary
and I don't do any of that. Then what do you do? I believe along with that missionary
can be sent out people who help that missionary. Paul had fellow
laborers. There can be evangelists to go
along with them, there can be other people to assist him. But
what you've got to realize is the main the main character of
missions is the theologian creature. Who goes out and proclaims the
word of And I would suggest to you that the majority of missionaries,
the great majority of missionaries on the field do not fit this
description. They are not doing this. Now. I'm going to stop. And I want to talk to you about
something. That I have the freedom to talk about. Because it's not
my ministry has nothing to do with me. I don't flatter. All
right. I've proven that with my life.
You can't buy me. I'm not here to impress anybody. No one, not even the leaders
of this church. So what I'm going to tell you,
I'm telling you because before God, it's my conviction. We support indigenous missionaries
around the world, and we praise God for those American missionaries
out there that are truly missionaries. But I want to tell you what I
think is, at least in my mind, the most biblical, most important
thing going on in missions today. And I'm not lying to you. It's what's happening through
TMAI. And I think, and I'm going to
tell you this straight up, OK? I think if you're a pastor. And
you've got the means to train men and send them out into a
foreign land, you do that. But if there's something left
over or if you don't have the means and you're not doing that
right now, I'm going to tell you as a person who's been in
missions for 30 years. That I would that all of you
would join what's happening here. Now my lips trembling. But I'm
just straight up. What is TMI doing? Do you like
what you see here? Did you enjoy the sermons yesterday?
Did they feed you? The things that you heard and
saw and their strategy of. Church planting and preaching,
did you enjoy this? Is that why you're here, isn't
it? Because you really appreciate this, right? That's why I'm here. TMI is seeking to do this and
not just seeking is accomplishing it to do what you see here all
over the world. They are. While everyone else
is running around. Just fluff, I mean. Crazy, insane
strategies and everything else. I have visited the areas where
TMI work and here's what they're doing. A man is trained here,
or a few men are trained here from a certain country. Let's
use Samar as an example. They're trained here. They're
trained in exegesis, hermeneutics, homiletics, systematic theology,
systematic ethics, so that they learn to think in a non-contradictory
manner. They're trained. in church history,
which is one of the great things missing in missions today. I
could do a whole lecture on that. And they're training them so
hard that the boys feel like, gosh, the tribulation has risen.
It's three years of study here. It's three years of tribulation.
This is it. But when they get through this.
This. In some ways, trial of fire,
they don't make it easy here. then they've got some of the
best tools that any person could have in their hands. And they
go to their country and they don't go start some kind of training
institute outside of the local church. What do they do? They either plant a local church
or they work with a local church that either wants to be reformed
biblically or is already there. And they start training men. And what do they train them in?
The same thing they got here. See, in a lot of ways, there's
racism, I think, in missions. Yeah, the American. What's he
need? Yeah, let's give him Greek, Hebrew, this, that, church history.
Well, let's go over there to Africa or South America. You
know, if we can just get them to read, it'll be good. Now,
I know that's no one's attitude, but if you look at the way education
goes on, theological education, let's dumb it down. That's disgusting. Not only not only is it disgusting
with regard to the person, it's disgusting with regard to the
God who made them, some of the greatest theologians right now
on this planet and maybe one of the greatest, if not the greatest
preacher lives in Zambia. But when TMI starts an institute,
it's like, OK, boys, get ready, we're bringing the tribulation
to your country. I can always tell a TMAI student,
he walks around like this. And so you go to Samara. Are there other places here?
There's a lot of other places around Europe. New Zealand, different
places. I'm sitting there preaching in
Russia. And I look, and on the front
row, the students have their Greek New Testaments out, following
me. I can't find hardly any place
in the third world or anywhere outside the United States where
I can go where they're being trained in real biblical counseling. See, first of all, it was Christian
counseling, then people said biblical counseling, but now
everybody claims to have biblical counseling, so you have to go
real biblical counseling. I don't know what the next adjective
is going to have to be. Maybe really, really biblical
counseling. No, really, no fooling biblical
counseling. But I can sit there. I could
send, if one of my sons was called into the ministry, I could actually
send them to Samarra. And they would get a better education. And when I mean education, a
spiritual training. than they would in most places
in the United States. And what I'm saying, pastors,
listen to me, for example, and I'm going to stop here so that
we can do some questions, but let me give you an example. Sometimes
people will come and they say, you know, why does heart cry
only have something like, I don't know, 240 missionary families?
And did we support indigenous missionaries? Why do we only
have that many missionaries on the field? Why don't we have
more? It's not because of a lack of funds or a lack of faith.
Jesus never said the harvest is great and the money is few.
He said the harvest is great and the labor is a few. And so
people will say, well, come work in this country and we go. Is
there a biblical church with biblical elders training men
that can be sent out and that can be held accountable theologically
and ethically? No, then we can't. And that's
why a few years ago we began to work in a small relationship,
but a wonderful relationship with TMAI. If they call me from
Samara today and they say, we've got a missionary ready to go
out, we don't have to go to Samara. We don't have to investigate.
And then we don't have to sit there and go, OK, we've got to
get somebody over there, you know, every month to make sure
this guy really is doing what he's doing. We don't. Why? Because
he's been trained at Samarra. He's being held accountable by
those men, the local church and everything else being watched
over. So it's a wonderful thing. And in other places in the world,
it's the same same way in places in Europe, all over. And that's
what I'm saying. Men, we need more North American
missionaries than ever. But at the same time, this thing
of working with indigenous peoples is absolutely fantastic. But
the problem has always been, yeah, we know, but how can we
be sure they're trained? How can we be sure that they're
really doing the job, that they're working, they're doing everything
they say in their letters? That's always been the problem,
hasn't it? That's also the problem with North American missionaries
too. But when they're sent out from a local church in that country,
a local church that has biblical elders, a biblical training program
that is united with this church here. Then it's like, wow, now
we can do something. And that's what I want to encourage
you, and again. I can do this because it's not
my ministry, it's what I believe in. The TMAI could grow a lot more. They have the men, they have
the integrity. It could grow a lot more. Whether it's starting
up institutes, whether it's helping to train men, whether it's funds
to bring young men here who want to be here but don't have the
funds to study, or whether it's helping the teachers, the indigenous
teachers that have been trained here to go back and teach all
over the world. That's something that you men
can do. Your churches can do. So billions of dollars are spent
in missions today, brothers, and it's wasted. It's wasted. Where are you going to find a
group who says, OK, this is what we do. We do the work of an evangelist. We pastor the people who are
converted, we train those men. We send them out, we hold them
accountable. Where? And all of you can be
a part of that. You know, finally, that there's
some place where you could actually direct your people to invest
their funds without having to worry about on the day of judgment,
what's this going to mean for me? Did I waste God's resources
and the resources of God's people? The thing about it is this work
that you will be a part of isn't glamorous. isn't fancy, it's
just hard and right. And as someone who's been in
missions for three decades, I know I only look like I'm 25, but
honestly, three decades. I can tell you that I sleep at
night with regard to all the men that we help support through
TMAI. I sleep at night. Now, brother,
come on up and we'll, any questions? Thank you, Paul. Amen, amen. Well, you've set
the bar biblically for us what missions is. Thank you for that.
And the need for that is essential today. We have a problem in missions.
There's no question about it. And you've referred to that.
I want to begin, first of all, just to take you back to your
own missionary experience on the field. Tell us more what
you saw with regard to the needs that pastors face. And also,
what did you see on the field with regard to American missionaries
that were making it more difficult or actually compromising the
work of the church? First of all, and TMAI would
agree with me totally, there are North American and European
missionaries on the field, missionaries from the West that are worth
their weight in gold. We all recognize that there are some
really godly missionaries out there, and we want to affirm
that we want to affirm also that that more North American missionaries
go forth. Yes, so much yet at the same
time, brothers, what you have to realize when you go to a lot
of seminaries, what do you see? At least in my experience, you
see kind of a division. The guys who are going to be
professors one day study Greek and Hebrew and church history
and systematic and all this. You have some guys who are in
the pastorate who do those things, but most of the pastorate guys
go towards ministry classes. How to do ministry. And then
the missionary guys, they go toward how to do missions, mission
theories, church planting, church growth, global strategy, and
all these things. And so what you have is the men
going to the pastorate here, a lot of times in the United
States, are trained in strategies. And that's totally wrong. We're
not marketers. We're prophets. We're preachers. But it's the same way on the
mission field, you have to the mission field, and I mean, every
it seems like every other person's coming with the new fad in missions,
the new strategy and mission. So I was in Indonesia a few years
ago and walked up to a man who I was told that he was converted.
And I said, so you've become a Christian. He goes. Muslim
Christian. I said, well, which one? I walked up to the missionary
who was supposedly part of that and I said, so tell me, how many
people have been converted? And he said, well, before you
talk to me about missions, you're going to have to drop your Western
language. I said, son, it's biblical language and it's not going to
get dropped. How many people have you seen converted? He said,
no one. I said, I thought so. All right, so we have all these
strategies. Then all these dear young people who go to a missions
conference, and I love them, they get all fired up, and they're
told, you go to the mission field, and I'm going, no. I was at a
really big mission conference a few years ago, and man, they
were preaching on missions, and I was there at a table, and young
people were coming to me, I'm going to the field, and I said,
please don't, don't go to the field. Everybody was mad at me. I said, look, I'm going to give
you five minutes, explain to me the doctrine of propitiation."
And they're going... I said, it's like a young man
called me one time and he said, Mr. Washer, I want to go to Peru
so bad. I said, really, why? I just want to give my life to
the Peruvians. I just want to give my life away.
And I said, how are you in your theology? Well, that's really
not my gift. I just want to give my life away. I said, how are
you in intercessory prayer? Well, you know, I struggle in
that area, but I just want to give my life away. I said, young
man, nobody needs your life here in Peru. They need someone who
can open up their mouth and tell them truth about God. And that's
what we're fighting against. And that's why I love what's
being done in TMI. I just love it. Why? Because
it's almost like. Just we're just doing what the
Bible said, training men to preach, to train men, to preach, to train
men, to preach. Look what it says. Go into all
the world and preach the gospel. Not an interpretive dance, preaching. You're putting your finger on
something that we need to understand. American pragmatism is what defines
missions today. And that's a man-centered approach
to advancing the kingdom. That's a theological issue. I
know you've seen that in a number of places. And if you could comment
on that idea of the theological core that informs our approach.
When Jesus said, go out and teach them, that tells us that missions
is didactic. That it's theological. Now here's
what most missionary organizations do. And this is just true. They reduce their doctrinal statement
down to the lowest common denominator with anyone who calls themselves
Christian, so that they can bring in as many laborers as possible.
And they're sincere. They're not bad people. They're
sincere to bring in as many laborers as possible and as many supporters
as possible. But here's my question. How can
you send out a missionary team of four men, when all four men
have, well, three of them have differing views of ecclesiology,
and one of them doesn't even know what the word means. So
how do you do that? Or one of them has this view
of soteriology, and the other one has another view. You know,
what we have done is we have, throughout the world, we have
people now worshiping an undefined Christ. And brothers, there's
nothing more dangerous than doing that. It's theological. It is
theological. Do you see that? I'm going to
tell them about God. Another thing that's happened
is we have reduced the gospel. And here's what's happened. It's
taken generations, but this is what's happened. If you go back
and read Spurgeon, Flavel, Bunyan, all the men, the reformers, everything,
you see a gospel so majestic and powerful, an explanation
of Calvary to such a degree that you want to fall down and worship.
We've reduced that down to four spiritual laws, five things God
wants you to know and repeat this prayer. All right. So as
we've reduced the gospel, the power of the gospel has been
lost. So these men, seeing that the gospel, their gospel has
no power, they must go to all the other gimmicks. So we need
men who know the gospel because only men who know the gospel
can believe in its power. You see, because of our view
of the gospel, when we stand out in a pulpit. We are Ezekiel. In a valley of dead bones. We
know that nothing's going to happen here apart from a supernatural
work of the Holy Spirit. And we know that God has promised
most to do that through a pure doctrine being preached. And
so we preach the gospel and we believe that men will be raised
from the dead. That's missions. That's what we need. That's what
we must have on the mission field. But they must know the gospel. What we're alluding to here is
really the core challenge, and I'm going to say it this way,
the core problem in missions today is the North American church,
what we're exporting. And that's what we're hearing
Paul affirm here. I was sharing with the men on
Tuesday at our pre-conference event, you need to understand
mission organizations to get more people on the field do exactly
what Paul said. They may have a doctrinal statement
that you could read and say that you agree with, But you don't
understand. They're not necessarily asking
their missionaries to agree with their doctrinal statement. Some
say, yes, you must agree, but some say just affirm the doctrinal
statement. And you're sending people out
to the field, good people, only to join a team, as Paul illustrated,
where there's no agreement. It's a plan of church. The chaos
that that leads to, I was reading one statistic a few years ago
that studied evangelical missions today, and it said that 70% of
missionaries never returned to the field for a second term.
And when you calculate the investment, it was well over half a billion
dollars the North American church was investing in that one statistic. We are accountable. The American
church is accountable for what we're doing in missions. Here's
my question for you. If that's true, then what's the
role and responsibility of pastors here in the U.S. to understand
their duty to lead their churches to advance biblical missions. If you're a pastor, you know,
R.C. Sproul has a book that we're
all theologians. Well, especially if we're pastors, you must be
a pastor theologian. You must you must believe these
things, that truth, that doctrine, that definition is important
and you must teach your people and then Depending on the providence
of God, how God is working in your life and in your ministry
and in your church, you must involve your people in missions.
You must explain to them what missions, what it is, and then
you must involve them. And how do you involve them?
If you have young men that are being raised up or even older
men that are being called into the field, you help train them
and you get them also to places that can assist you with the
training. But another thing that you can do immediately, that
you can do immediately. Brothers, I'm sorry, I'm just
going to say it, you can participate in this ministry. You can participate
in this ministry. Your church, if the men who are
pastors in this room right now. Led their church. To get involved
with TMAI. Financially. within a year, it
could change things dramatically. If I could have these seminaries,
these institutes all over the world, and again, it's not my
ministry. It would be absolutely wonderful. And then we come along.
And in different places, according to our means, when these men
are coming out and graduating and they're recommended by the
local church, then HeartCry steps in, starts supporting them. But
here's the thing. You don't need to give money
to heart cry, and here's why. We can't do anything unless these
guys are doing something. Training these men. There's a
lack of laborers. There's a lack of laborers. They're
training men. They're training men. They're
training men with everything that you love about this conference.
And so I just want to plead with you to consider this. And also,
if you're a pastor, theologian who loves the Word, you need
to start taking mission trips. You do. You send your young people,
it costs $80,000 to send 20 of them to a foreign field, and
they run around for a week and a half. You don't need to do
that. Your church needs to send you. And you need to sit with 12 people
in Nepal or Russia, pastors who are sponges and starving to death. And just sit there with them
and teach them. Or conferences or help. There's
so much. You just get in touch with these
men and say, what can we do? What can we do to help you do
your work? And look, Here are some of my sermons. Here's my
church. Look at it. I'm a pastor. I love the word.
Is it true that I could go over and just pour myself into 25
men for two weeks? Is that true? Could I do something
like that? You're the one pastor and your church can get behind
sending you and then you come back and you say, yes, what I
saw with my own eyes, not even half the story has been told.
We need to do this. I've seen pastors go with us,
with TMAI, come back and they're just glowing. They're wore out,
but they're sitting there going, in America, I labored 20 hours
on a sermon and sometimes people just yawn. Those men were on
the edge of their seats just to learn the smallest thing.
So this is a great opportunity, great opportunity. Well, let
me let me say this. I got to say this. This is a
story that happened. This will tell you the state
of missions. I got on a plane, I think it was in Bucharest or
something, and I'm half dead and I'm sitting there, you know,
coming back from a conference and I'm sitting beside this guy
and I look and he's got these statistics and stuff. So I'm
like, so what do you do? He goes, I'm a mission strategist.
Really? I said, So what's going on in
the world? He started listing all the success. Man, God's moving. I said, that's
wonderful. I said, tell me about it. He said, yeah, he started
labeling people groups that I knew. People groups, some of them I
personally knew. And he's going, this group's
been reached, this group's been reached, this group's been reached.
And finally, I said, hey, pull back the reins on this a little
bit. Let me ask you a few questions. What is your definition of a
reached people group? He said, if someone has lived
within walking distance of where the Jesus film was shown. Enough
said, right? Again, that pragmatism. And we've
talked about this, Paul. It shows up in church planting.
The rapid church planting movement. What is that about? It's about
a bunch of silly little boys who shouldn't have got a PhD
is what it's about. Brother, listen to me, listen
to me. Missions is hard. Amy Carmichael
said it was an opportunity to die. Brothers, this conference
is wonderful, but this isn't. This isn't our daily life, my
daily life is going home on Monday. and working with monotonous plow
horse, step by step work. My pastors who are here, they're
going to go home. They're going to face problems.
It's hard. And you can't say, oh, you know,
here we are, 21st century, and still this many people haven't
been reached. We got to do something. Yeah, let's follow the Bible.
No, we don't have any time for that. But that's been the problem
for the last two centuries. We don't have time for it. At
first, the church was attacked by liberalism. And that hurt
missions. Now it's conservative pragmatism
that's killing the church worse than liberalism to a greater
degree than liberalism. Another example, this is a translation
work we can get every known language, have a translation in every known
language in our lifetime. Let's go. We've been talking
about this, but let me tell you where to go. Here's the problem. Listen to me. I saw a thing the
other day they were bragging about. I think maybe Michael
Chambers showed it to me. I don't know. But this was last
year. I've worked a lot in South America,
in the Andes and things like that. And it was how we are now.
Before it would take years to get a translation, but now we're
going to crank out this translation of the New Testament like six
months because we're using indigenous translators. Wonderful. There's a group. Of of literally
Andean women, about seven of them with no theological training
or anything in a circle trying to make a translation. The translations
we have in the world today, most of them need to be redone. Some
of them are out and out heretical. You can not preach expository
messages out of many of the translations. Because what they've done, again,
it's racism. They look at the third world
person and say, we need to explain this text to them. It's not even
a dynamic translation. It's not even a paraphrase. I
don't know what to call it. Instead of saying literally what
this means, something else that they can pull from the garden,
or the culture, or the society, or some whimsical phrase in a
certain language, and there's no way you can exposit the text.
Here's what we need to understand. Most translators are not theologians
today. Yet all the great translations,
Wycliffe, Tyndale, all those men, they were theologians. And
they translated the Scriptures literally in the context of the
local church. Now, what do I mean by that?
They knew that in that translation, they just needed to give a literal,
clear translation because they believed that there was a local
church that would have local pastors that would be trained
in theology and hermeneutics and be able to explain the Word
of God to the people. That God works through preaching.
That doesn't happen today. I know one translation that was
done by a man who, when the translators came in, he was converted from
being a witch doctor. He helped him with the translation,
and after the translation of the New Testament was done, he
went back to being a witch doctor. And there's no concept of mercy
or grace in the whole text. And so, we need to understand
these things. Translations need to be done
all over the world, so that men can actually exposit the Scriptures. And brothers, that's what we
got a meeting here in just just a minute. To talk about translating,
translating. The scriptures and how to do
it. And that's what's going on here, and it's not just TMI,
it's it's a couple of different people in groups trying to work
together, indigenous groups saying, look, we've got to take this
on, but we can't take it on pragmatically. We've got to put our head down
and just work and trust the Scriptures in everything that we do. Not
look at the time clock. Just trust the Scriptures. Well,
I can affirm that. In my own experience working
with our men on the field, being in the room as men are being
taught how to accurately interpret the Scriptures, men who pastored
for years, just sitting there and weeping, realizing that they've
been preaching heresy and falsehood. only to have a great joy of being
gifted with the training to actually accurately interpret the word
of God. But I've seen these men repent and ask God's forgiveness. That's why the translation work
is important. Our guys in the classroom sit
with national pastors and they bring their translations and
they help them actually look at the original languages and
determine what is a good and accurate interpretation of the
text. And so we're excited to join this endeavor to look at
what we can do by way of editing, revising Bibles that have been
translated. But you need to know what's happening
at large. There's a movement of pragmatism that again, in
this regard, See, America has defined success as bigger and
better, quicker and faster. And that has just penetrated
the mentality of missions, and we've been exporting that. So
important. And Paul, thank you for your
partnership in ministry. You've heard him promote the
ministry of TMAI from the heart. I'm grateful to you for that.
But really, man, my heart's burden is that you understand your stewardship
as pastors. You have got to stop delegating
the responsibility for missions down the chain in your church
to people who are uninformed and do not understand the state
of missions today. Do not. Just quickly send people
to the field. Make sure they're the right people.
Make sure they're equipped, they're trained, that your church is
walking with them, helping them making discerning choices. If
you choose to partner with TMI, we praise God, we need you. There's
no question about that. The work is exploding around
the world. The demands are great. I've shared
with the men, we have 43 countries, pastors who've asked us to come
and help them train where we're not working already. We need
your help. And if you're interested, we
have a display in the back. We have a program we call our Ambassador
Program, where our guys and our staff will connect your church
with a training center, and we begin to cultivate that relationship.
So we'd appreciate it if you pray and seriously take our invitation
to join us in this endeavor. Again, Brother Paul, thank you
for your ministry today. Just one other thing that I so
appreciate again is this. The dignity. Of the indigenous
missionary within the context of the training programs at TMI. That they're seeking to give. To that sometimes third world
missionary. The same. The same instruction
that a Stephen Lawson has benefited from, that John MacArthur has
benefited from. They're not trying to step it
down. There's an old saying, the samurai sword maker, there's
one left in the world today of a true one. And he says this,
I trained my disciple for 10 years. He must be a hair better
than I am so that my craft improves. If he's one hair less than me,
He's one hair less than me, then my craft will decrease. And then
with his disciple, it will decrease. And with his disciple, it will
decrease. Our greatest theologians are yet to be found, and they're
in the third world. J.I. Packard was asked one time,
who's the greatest preacher alive? And he said, you don't know him.
And the whole point is he's out there somewhere preaching to
six people. And that's what I so appreciate about TMAI. When I
see those guys in Russia, Talking to me about biblical counseling.
Reading their New Testaments in Greek, talking about expository
preaching. Man, you just don't see that
anywhere, brothers. You just don't see it anywhere, but you
see it with this ministry. So I beg you, at least take their
information, get on your knees and pray about it. Don't allow
your mission program to be caught up in sentimentality. romanticism,
or the pleading heart of someone. Do it biblically. Do it biblically. Lead your people into something
biblical. Thank you.