The mission of the church is a hot topic these days, and I am glad to see that pastors and church leaders are sharpening each other’s understanding of how to address this topic biblically and how to lead our churches to respond faithfully.

Last week, I posted five nagging questions I had after reading Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s book on the mission of the church. Within a few hours I had an inbox full of messages from people saying that they had read the book and had some of the same questions. By the end of the week, Kevin and Greg had offered some helpful clarifications that move the discussion forward. I’m grateful for their friendship and for the tone of this conversation.

Since last week, Ed Stetzer has written an extensive review of What Is the Mission of the Church? for The Gospel Coalition’s journal Themelios. Ed is an evangelical missiologist who has spent significant time studying this issue and encouraging churches to engage their communities biblically with the gospel. In his review, he expresses his appreciation for Kevin and Greg’s interaction with key passages in Scripture, their insistence on keeping the cross and resurrection at the center of the gospel, and the way they differentiate between the mission of God and the mission of the church. And yet, Ed believes that the way they unpack their definition is too narrow. He writes:

With their definition, they underplay the relationship of secondary ministries to those in the community that are not immediately didactic and explicitly gospel revealing. In arguing that God’s mission for the church does not include caring for the poor or intervening on behalf of those who are oppressed (good, God-honoring, and God-commanded), but making disciples through the proclamation, they overlook the role of work and example in discipleship. Rather, they equate “making disciples” with evangelism. Making disciples includes evangelism, but in “teaching everything Jesus commanded,” love and good deeds are also a part of the disciple-making process.

Ed’s concern is very similar to mine, which is why I would like to revisit my five questions in light of Kevin and Greg’s response from last week.

1. “Can we reduce ‘making disciples’ and ‘teaching Christ’s commands’ to the delivery of information?”

I agree with Greg and Kevin that the gospel is never merely “the delivery of mere information.” It is the explosive message of grace that powerfully secures our salvation. I also agree that verbal proclamation is vitally important. Here’s what Kevin and Greg say:

And yet, in the Great Commission texts the disciple making work is described as teaching, testifying, or bearing witness. And in Acts we see the mission of the church described not as Christians faithfully living out their vocations but as the word being verbally proclaimed. When Jesus sent his disciples into the world, it was to speak.

Agreed. But again, Kevin and Greg are defining words like “teaching,” “testifying,” and “bearing witness” as exclusively verbal events. I agree that these words are primarily about verbal proclamation, and yet there are elements of teaching, testifying, and bearing witness that are caught, not taught. I am not downplaying verbal proclamation but leaving room in our definitions of “teaching all that Christ has commanded us” for modeling and mentoring as well. Mark Horne provides some additional biblical support for the view I’m putting forth.

2. “If we agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the gospel, can we also agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the mission?”

To this, Kevin and Greg respond:

We passionately believe that the church should proclaim the gospel with words and promote the gospel with good works. But this is different from suggesting the mission of the church is to rebuild communities or build the kingdom. We hear Trevin asking, “Aren’t good works necessary to corroborate the message we are proclaiming?” Yes and Amen.

I am not denying that Greg and Kevin have a place in their book about obedience and the necessity of good works. My point is that our promotion of the gospel with good works is part of the mission. In other words, I want to include the corroboration of the gospel as part of how we conceive of mission, whereas Kevin and Greg insist on good works, but don’t want to call those good works “mission” because of their desire to keep the priority on evangelism.

3. “Isn’t there a sense in which worship is expressed through our life in the world, not just our corporate worship services?”

To this, Greg and Kevin respond:

We tried as hard as we could in the book to stress that good works and loving others matter, that they are essential, they are not optional, and they glorify God. The confusion may be that Trevin hears us saying worship is the mission of the church and then wonders why we don’t include all-of-life-worship in our definition. But we are careful to say mission is what we are sent into the world to accomplish. Therefore, we speak of worship as the goal of missions. Christian mission aims at making, sustaining, and establishing worshipers (247).

At the risk of talking past one another, I understand that Kevin and Greg have a robust view of our obedience in the world and our worship as consisting of all of life. And yet, I want to include that obedience within the wide-lens definition of “mission,” whereas Kevin and Greg want to make a sharp distinction between the two. Worship is not merely the goal of missions; it’s also the means. Our worship (whether gathered corporately or lived-out individually) is one way that the gospel is promoted and the mission moves forward.

4. “Even if we recognize that the verbs related to the kingdom are passive (receiving, bearing witness to, etc.), does this necessarily preclude us from speaking of ‘work for the kingdom’?”

I won’t rehash this point because Kevin and Greg agree with the way that I and others use the phrase “work for the kingdom.” We’re on the same page here, although I think we need to be careful to keep our theological discourse from devolving into the tendency to police people’s language. Parsing of words and phrases can be a helpful exercise, but it can also lead to a sort of insider-lingo wherein we recognize who’s “on our team” by the way they use or refrain from certain phrases. I don’t think Kevin and Greg are guilty of this, but some Reformed-types do go overboard in language-policing. (For example, I’ve heard people talk about how misguided the phrase “obey the gospel” or “live the gospel” is, even though Peter and Paul specifically use the first and preachers like Spurgeon were happy to use the second.)

5. “Is our representation of Christ not part of the mission?”

Following up their initial response, Greg and Kevin penned an additional blog post on how good works and the mission relate to one another. Interestingly enough, I agree completely with what they say here, quoting from Eckhard Schnabel:

We like the way Eckhard Schnabel puts it in his massive work Early Christian Mission. Schnabel argues that “expansive proclamation” is “the centrifugal dimension of mission” and “attractive presence” is the “centripetal dimension” (1:11). Our words ring out; our deeds draw people in. So the “elements of mission” include not only the ministry of the word but also “charity” and “ministry of grace.” But this is not the same as saying missions is charity or that a missionary is anyone who serves others in good deeds. According to Schnabel, “missionaries” are “envoys sent by the risen Jesus Christ to proclaim the good news” (1:11-12). Just as important, he clarifies what mission is striving for. “The result of mission is conversion: people accept and adopt the message proclaimed by the missionaries, they are integrated into the new community of faith, and they start to practice a new way of life with new behavioral patterns” (1:12).

I nearly did a double take when reading this paragraph because it struck me as saying exactly what Kevin and Greg do not say in their book: that the mission has two dimensions – “expansive proclamation” and “attractive presence” – both geared toward conversion of the lost. The book narrows “mission” to expansive proclamation only, with good works being a matter of obedience but somewhat disconnected from the mission of the church. I agree with Schnabel that the ultimate goal of mission is conversion, while the means toward that goal can also be included in how we speak of the church’s mission.

Conclusion

Let me end by saying how much I appreciate Kevin and Greg’s critique of what passes for “mission” in many segments of evangelicalism. Simply being a nice person and doing good things in the world are not mission, since there are non-Christians who engage in the same types of work. Verbal proclamation is priority; it’s our ultimate goal and it is vital. When they critique the “social justice” crowd, I “amen” them the whole way.

My big concern is that in their stalwart defense of evangelism as the mission of the church, they have narrowed the idea of “disciple-making” more than Scripture does. Ed Stetzer sums up the basic point of contention here:

Gilbert and DeYoung have a different view than the prevailing approach in evangelical missiology.They believe the missio ecclesia is making disciples (X), with other actions and deeds (Y and Z) remaining distinct from X. Others (including most evangelical missiologists) see the missio ecclesia as YXZ, keeping X at the center but seeing Y and Z as essentially part of the mission. Gilbert and DeYoung, in my estimation, get the center of the mission (X), but have not properly worked out Y and Z’s relationship to the fulfillment of the church’s mission.

I’m thankful for pastors like Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert and count them both as friends. I appreciate them for their rigorous thinking imbued with pastoral sensitivity and a desire to be biblically faithful.

Recently, I read their new book, What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission, an ambitious work that seeks to place the church’s mission within the framework of the Bible’s story line and the New Testament gospel. DeYoung and Gilbert focus on the Great Commission texts in order to formulate this definition of the church’s mission:

The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father. (241)

I am largely in agreement with this definition, but I’m puzzled by the way the book unpacks it. I agree that the mission of the church is to make disciples, but I think I pack more into the definition of “disciple-making” than DeYoung and Gilbert do.

So instead of doing a full review, I thought it might be helpful to put forth five nagging questions about I have about their proposal, in hopes that these questions continue the conversation that DeYoung and Gilbert’s book has begun:

1. Can we reduce “making disciples” and “teaching Christ’s commands” to the delivery of information?

It seems to me that DeYoung and Gilbert tend to reduce “disciple-making” to teaching and then reduce “teaching” to the transferring of information. I agree that teaching is a central part of discipleship (which is one reason I am dedicating the next few years to the development of solid biblical curriculum). At the same time, we need to recognize that teaching also takes place in mentoring, in modeling, and in collaboration with others. So wouldn’t good deeds of love and justice fit within the overall definition of “teaching”? Isn’t part of disciple-making expressed in older Christians coming alongside new believers and together doing the good deeds Christ has called us to? If so, then doesn’t the making of disciples inherently include, at least in some measure, our work in the world? At the end of the day, I don’t think we can separate “making disciples” from “loving neighbor” in the way that it seems DeYoung and Gilbert do.

2. If we agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the gospel, can we also agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the mission?

I liked DeYoung and Gilbert’s chapter on the gospel, particularly the way they distinguish between two ways of conceiving the one gospel. In DeYoung and Gilbert’s conception, the gospel of the kingdom is integrally connected to the gospel of the cross. Or put another way, the cross is the fountainhead of the blessings of the kingdom. My question is: Why not use this approach in considering the mission? Can we not conceive of the church’s mission in wide lens and zoom lens as well? Evangelism is central (zoom lens), and yet evangelism is corroborated by any number of activities (wide lens) that demonstrate the reality of our gospel proclamation.

3. Isn’t there a sense in which worship is expressed through our life in the world, not just our corporate worship services?

At the corporate level, it’s clear that worship takes place within the church’s gathering. Yet the biblical story line begins with Adam and Eve worshiping God by obeying His commands in the garden. It was their cultivation of the garden that reflected their love and praise for their Maker. So when DeYoung and Gilbert claim that worship is integral to the mission of the church and yet want to separate worship from our deeds of justice, I worry that we are failing to remember that our good work in the world is part of our obedient worship to God.

4. Even if we recognize that the verbs related to the kingdom are passive (receiving, bearing witness to, etc.), does this necessarily preclude us from speaking of “work for the kingdom”?

When people use terminology like “work for the kingdom” or “build for the kingdom,” they usually mean that their good deeds are done at the bidding of King Jesus. They are doing these things on behalf of the kingdom. DeYoung and Gilbert are hesitant to allow any of our good deeds to be seen as contributing in some way to God’s work in establishing His kingdom. I understand their concern. Yet I think that propping up an unbendable category here might suppress kingdom work rather than inspire it. I think many people in our churches are unaware of how their “labor for the Lord is not in vain.” Connecting our good deeds to the kingdom that only God will establish can be a pastorally helpful and biblically faithful way of showing the relationship between kingdom work and the church’s mission. “Working for the kingdom” does not necessarily lead to burn-out and utopianism. For most of us, it infuses our current work with passion and excitement, knowing that God will take our work and use it for His purposes.

5. Is our representation of Christ not part of the mission?

DeYoung and Gilbert believe we must represent Christ, but it seems like they connect this representation so tightly to verbal proclamation of the gospel that little room is left for representing Christ through love and good deeds. I wonder if, in addition to the Great Commission passages, we also need to consider the New Testament metaphors for the church as we seek to discern our mission. Images like Christ’s bride, Christ’s body, and the holy temple and royal priesthood help us understand that being like Jesus is part of what it means to “teach all that He has commanded.” Christ-likeness is a part of the mission, and we cannot and should not separate proclamation of Christ from the representation of Christ we offer through our acts of service.

Update: Kevin and Greg have offered some clarifying answers to these five questions here. I encourage you to read their response. This is a conversation worth having.

Many American churches take time once or twice a year to recognize and honor veterans for their service to the country. Most of these churches also recognize law enforcement officers at the local level. We lift up the heroes among us, men and women who have put themselves in harm’s way for the good of their neighbor.

This kind of practice can be fruitful for a local congregation. It is good to point out clear examples of self-sacrifice. After all, the Scriptures tell us to give honor to whom honor is due.

But what puzzles me about some of these churches is the lack of public honor given to people who have served as missionaries. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a church service where the pastor asked all those who have served at some point as a missionary to stand and be recognized. Why recognize warriors for the country and not for the kingdom?

Why We Overlook Missionaries

There are several reasons why we might overlook our missionaries:

1. In one sense, every Christian is called to be on mission. The Great Commission is given to all believers, not just to an elite few. In recent years, evangelicals have come to realize that we should all be missionaries. All Christians should be consciously on mission, witnesses for Christ wherever God puts us. Some church leaders may fear that if we were to honor our foreign missionaries or full-time missionaries publicly, we might send the signal that missions is something that happens somewhere else and not here at home.

2. Another reason might be a flawed understanding of foreign missions. Decades ago, people who answered the call to missions typically left their homes and moved to a foreign country for the rest of their lives. Missionaries who returned home early (especially before retirement age) were sometimes viewed as being unable to handle the pressures of missionary service. Having all those with previous missions experience stand and be recognized might, for some people, lead to the question “If they are called to be missionaries, what are they doing back here? Why aren’t they still on the field?” The first question a furloughing missionary is usually asked “When are you going back?” This mentality is fading (mercifully!), but it still exists among some Christians.

3. A third reason is – to put it bluntly – we just don’t value missionaries as much as our military and law enforcement officers. I hope this isn’t the case, but I fear it might be. In some denominations, mission service is celebrated. In others, it is seen as a detriment. I’ve met church leaders who see foreign mission work as a crutch for people who weren’t gifted enough to handle ministry at home. They weren’t good enough to do ministry here, so they had to go to the mission field. In other words, mission work is actually taken less seriously than ministry in one’s native country. When the missionary returns home and seeks a ministry position, some churches are likely to skip over the person’s extensive missions experience and think, That’s nice and everything, but it doesn’t really count when it comes to climbing the ladder of ministry success. They don’t have enough experience at home. It’s no wonder that we overlook our missionaries when some of our churches actually think that mission work is a hindrance to home ministry rather than a help.

Because of these reasons, we don’t publicly honor our missionaries. We’re more likely to salute our veterans and thank our public safety officers than we are to show appreciation for the missionaries who have left houses, brothers or sisters, father or mother, children, or fields because of Christ’s name.

A Better Way

We should fix this. Here are several suggestions for how we can honor our missionaries.

1. Set aside at least one Sunday a year for missionary appreciation.

The music can be oriented around missions and the Great Commission. The service can feature an inspirational missions video or a testimony from a missionary in the congregation. The pastor’s message can focus on the Christian’s calling to be witnesses to Christ’s resurrection. Churches can plan major events where missionaries are celebrated and ministered to by the whole body. Small groups can “adopt” a missionary and spoil them all weekend long with meals, interaction, and gifts.

2. Publicly recognize the missionaries in the congregation.

“But we don’t have any former missionaries in our congregation!” you might think. Don’t bemoan your lack of missionaries. Rather, celebrate whatever missionaries you do have! Even if you have to invite them from other churches, do so. Start somewhere. What you celebrate shows what you value. Missionaries are often undervalued and under-appreciated. Rectify this by recognizing them publicly.

3. Recognize different types of missionary service.

Veterans are often recognized based on the branch of military service they were in: air force, navy, marines, army, etc. With missionaries, you can do the same thing and thus educate your congregation as to the types of mission work that are there. Consider saying this:

• All who have served in a full-time capacity as a missionary to a foreign country, please stand.
• All who have served on a short-term mission trip in the previous 12 months to a foreign country, please stand.
• All who have served in a full-time capacity as a missionary or church planter here in the United States, please stand.
• All who have served on a short-term mission trip in the previous 12 months here in the United States, please stand.
• All who have served in a disaster relief capacity, please stand.

Break down the different ways that mission work takes place. It’s true that all Christians are called to be missionaries, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give honor to those who set aside special times (whether weeks or years) to fulfilling this calling.

Conclusion

Missionaries should be recognized, welcomed, and appreciated by our churches. Most of our churches could do a better job at this. Ed Stetzer has said, “What you celebrate, you become.” If we only celebrate our victories at home, we will be a local church for the local community, with little to no impact worldwide. But if we celebrate missionary service in all its forms, we will become a missionary force that pushes back the gates of hell as the Lord uses us to draw more people to Himself.

I love to listen to the testimonies of my American friends who have recently been to Romania to do mission work. They inevitably comment on the prayer practices of Romanian churches.

• The prayer time blew me away!
• I couldn’t believe how much time they spent praying! 
• They are so fervent and passionate in their public prayers!

I always nod, smile, and – with great affection – recall the years I spent serving in Romanian churches that valued corporate prayer. For the Christians whose identities were forged through the fire of Communist oppression, prayer is an act of quiet desperation that manifests itself in bold supplication. I’ve never seen humility and confidence so perfectly married as when listening to (and joining) Romanians in prayer.

Here are five things about prayer I learned from Romanian believers:

1. Prayer is not wasted time.

Prayer takes up a big portion of a Romanian worship service. The typical service on Sunday morning begins at 9:00 a.m. The entire first hour is spent in prayer. Bigger churches open up the floor for spontaneous prayers about various requests. Smaller churches go pew by pew, so that every church member gets an opportunity to pray out loud. This tradition of soaking everything in prayer makes a strong statement: Prayer matters. It is not a waste of time. 

I often struggle with prayer because I am not fully aware of my utter dependence on God. I’m a “let’s get to it!” kind of activist. Prayer often seems passive. The Romanian testimony of prayer challenges me that it is never a waste of time to enter the throne room with our brothers and sisters and petition the King to act on our behalf. This is, in fact, the most effective type of activism for a child of God.

2. We should affirm one another as we pray.

Romanian Baptists pray out loud, one person at a time. But the prayers are never individualistic. The rest of the congregation listens carefully and affirms the requests of the person praying. When the public petitioner asks for something specific, other church members audibly affirm the request.

The Pray-er: “Lord, we thank You for giving us the privilege of coming into Your presence.” This petition is followed would be a chorus of spontaneous voices saying, “We thank You” or “Yes, Lord.”

When the pray-er starts making petitions, “Speak to us this morning, Lord!” the chorus gets louder and more united with their firm “Amen’s.”

Affirming others in prayer is hard for me to do in the United States. It seems like a charismatic or Pentecostal practice. No one else does it, so I’m the odd man out. Still, I miss leading people in prayer and hearing their “amens.” The public agreement in prayer reinforced the corporate blessing of my individual request. I often felt like I was being held up by my brothers and sisters in Christ, that I was lifted up to the throne room while I expressed the desires of everyone’s hearts. Then, when it came time for the next person to pray, it was like coming down and joining the chorus, reinforcing another brother or sister’s requests.

Audible affirmation during prayer is easiest for me when I’m praying with my wife. Affirmation reminds me that praying together isn’t just taking turns. It’s affirming each other’s requests, so that what the other is saying is also being delivered as the cry of our own heart.

3. Prayer is for everybody.

The Romanian church taught me that everyone can pray and that everyone should pray. That means that prayer in church is not the exclusive domain of the man in the pulpit or the church leadership. Men in the pews pray. So do women. Out loud. Children pray softly in their rows. Teenagers pray for their lost friends.

The Romanian practice of prayer embodies the priesthood of all believers. We are all granted equal access to the throne of God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. This emphasis on prayer from all kinds of people in the church made the service seem like a family. We were there, affirming our mothers and sisters and fathers and brothers in the Lord as they prayed.

4. Prayer can be spontaneous and theological.

Once you make prayer the purview of everyone, you open the door to all sorts of messy requests, right? It’s true. New believers often prayed for odd things, or they mimicked phrases they’d heard that weren’t theologically precise.

Still, the majority of Romanian prayer services convinced me that prayers can be heartfelt, spontaneous, and theological. Head and heart go together. Many Romanian believers unconsciously followed the Lord’s Prayer pattern, beginning with praise to God for His salvation before moving into general requests and ending with specific desires for deliverance. Romanian believers peppered their prayers with snippets from psalms and other biblical petitions.

The cool thing was… no one felt “super-spiritual” by praying this way. It was the way we talked to God. One reason American evangelicals are increasingly fond of written prayers is that our experience has shown spontaneous prayers to sometimes be superficial. It doesn’t have to be this way. When you are immersing yourself in gospel truth, richly theological prayers pour forth from the heart spontaneously.

5. Prayer teaches.

Many churches want to be “gospel-centered” today. We want the gospel to be presented in our songs before the sermon even begins. I’m encouraged by these developments. At the same time, I’m convinced that one of the places we need to push for gospel centrality is in our corporate prayer life.

Prayer teaches. Often times, as I listened to the prayers of my Romanian brothers and sisters, I realized that the gospel was clearly articulated in these praises and petitions. Before the pastor even had the chance to get up in the pulpit, the gospel had been proclaimed through the prayers of the people in the congregation.

Conclusion

I’m grateful for my Romanian brothers and sisters, and for the prayer practices that they taught me. What about you? What are some prayer practices you have learned from brothers and sisters in other parts of the world?

Not too long ago, I watched a television documentary about the increasing number of practicing Muslims in small-town America. At one point in the film, a mainline Protestant pastor visited the local imam in his home. At the outset of their conversation, the pastor made his intentions clear:

“My purpose in meeting you is not any sort of conversion. I respect you and your beliefs. You’re not going to change, and I’m not going to change.”

There is so much to unpack in those three sentences that I hardly know where to begin. Interestingly, the imam restated the last of those three sentences, offering his total agreement to framing the discussion this way.

“I respect you and your beliefs.”

Let’s begin with the second sentence first: “I respect you and your beliefs.”

The pastor is right to respect the imam, if for nothing else than the fact that the imam is a fellow human being created in the image of God. It’s the image of God in humanity that separates us from the animal world and gives us intrinsic value and a unique vocation.

When speaking about “respecting beliefs,” we should tread little more carefully. Most of the time, when pastors and church leaders speak of “respecting someone else’s beliefs,” they mean “respecting the sincerity with which a person holds to a belief.” In that sense, it’s fine to speak of “respecting another’s beliefs.” But in the more literal sense, “respecting someone else’s beliefs” can be foolish.

If my seven-year-old son were to watch Peter Pan and then decide to jump off the house and fly through the neighborhood, it would be ridiculous of me to say, “I respect your belief.” I might respect the tenacity of his childlike faith, but I’d be the first to say, “That’s silly.” I can respect my son as a human made in the image of God; in fact, I can love him as a father should love a son, and yet still point out the fallacy of his belief.

In the same way, Christians need to distinguish between (rightly) showing respect to people and (wrongly) advocating respect for any and every idea that someone else believes. I can respect a Muslim friend without at all respecting the Muslim view of the afterlife, or the Muslim explanation of the cross of Christ, or the Muslim idea of works-righteousness. Such beliefs are not worthy of respect because they are wrong, even if the people who hold these beliefs are valuable, precious individuals made in the image of God.

“My purpose in meeting is not any sort of conversion”

More troublesome than conflating respect for people with respect for one’s beliefs is the first statement made by the pastor: “My purpose in meeting is not any sort of conversion.”

As a Christian committed to the teachings of Jesus, I cannot understand how this statement is anything but an abdication of the responsibility Jesus gave His disciples after His resurrection: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Notice the absence of any qualifiers. Jesus didn’t say: “Go and make disciples among the nominally religious in your area.” Or “Go and make disciples of those who don’t believe in any God at all.” Or “Stay within your church walls and make disciples there.” No… Jesus’ command is crystal clear. He is the King who possesses all authority in heaven and on earth. When we place the Great Commission together with the stark claims of Christ’s exclusivity, we see just how wrongheaded it is to say that we have no purpose to convert an unbeliever.

Of course, this pastor will be lauded by many in society today. He seems so open-minded and tolerant. “My purpose is not to convert you,” he says, eliciting a Whew! from the filmmakers as the tension in the room immediately subsides.

But when the pastor’s statement is placed within the entire context of the Scriptures and what Jesus Himself says about salvation, it’s tantamount to saying, “I don’t want you to be with me in the new heavens and new earth.” It’s a tacit condemnation to eternal perdition. There are all sorts of implications to saying such a thing:

• My purpose is not to introduce you to Jesus. (You’re getting along just fine without Him after all.)
• My purpose is not to show you how to escape eternal judgment. (I’m not taking Jesus seriously when He talks about hellfire and all that stuff.)
• My purpose is not to worship side by side with you, singing the praises of the Lamb whose blood was shed for you. (You stay in your mosque, and we’ll stay in our church, thank you very much.)

Then there’s the most troublesome statement of all. The imam and the pastor both state very quickly, “You’re not going to change, and I’m not going to change.”

Now, there’s no surprise that the imam would say such a thing. But for a minister of the gospel – the most explosive, transformational news ever unleashed in our world – to say “You’re not going to change” is an explicit denial of the gospel’s power to change the human heart. There’s no faith here that God can work miracles. No faith that God can so work in a heart that its affections and beliefs shift dramatically.

What if the pastor applied this logic to the alcoholic who comes to him for counseling. “Well Joe, you’re not going to change.” Or to the man who is on the brink of destroying his marriage with pornography, “Sorry, Sam. You’re not going to change.”

The Truly Inclusive Gospel Message

The gospel is for everyone. It is a radically inclusive message. Though the world balks at the exclusive claims of Christ, we rush forward with the inclusive news that He is Savior of all the world. If I fail to proclaim this message, I am not really following Jesus. Instead, I’m just cloaking 21st century ideas in traditional Christian garb.

What would have been the better way for this pastor to handle his conversation with the imam? It would have been better to say something like this:

I respect you as a person made in the image of God. I respect your right to hold to any faith that you choose. I would never coerce you or force my religious beliefs upon you, as such a practice would detract from the truth that you, like me, are made in the image of God. And yet, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I am commanded to share the gospel. When the time comes for me to seek to persuade you to follow Jesus, it is not out of a heart of oppression or desire for control, but out of love and concern. Since I truly believe the gospel offers hope for all humanity, I cannot keep it to myself. The gospel is too precious and you are too valuable for me to keep silent. 

Today, I’m happy to be joined by David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, AL, for a conversation about his latest book, Radical Together: Unleashing the People of God for the Purpose of God. I appreciated Radical Together for its emphasis on the church as the agent through which God extends His glory to the nations. As I read David’s book, I marked up the margins with questions that remained unresolved in my mind.

Today, David graciously responds to some of my lingering questions about his bold proposal. I pray our conversation will edify and embolden you as you seek to fulfill the Great Commission.

Trevin Wax: David, in Radical Together, you write:

“If you and I want our lives to count for God’s purpose in the world, we need to begin with a commitment to God’s people in the church.”

Why is it so vital that the church be at the forefront of our efforts to fulfill the Great Commission?

David Platt:  The local church is God’s chosen, called, and ordained agent for the accomplishment of the Great Commission. From the beginning of the book of Acts, we see God’s people, by God’s design, coming together in local churches that are devoted to God’s Word, to fellowship with one another, to worship, and to prayer (Acts 2:42). Through these local churches, the Lord began adding to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:47). Out of 114 times that we ekklesia in the New Testament, at least 90 of them refer to specific local gatherings of believers.

Clearly, the New Testament precedent and pattern is the advancement of the gospel through followers of Christ who are joined together in local bodies. As a result, if we want to be a part of spreading the gospel to all peoples in global mission, biblically we need to begin with a commitment to God’s people in the local church.

Trevin Wax: In your chapter on “The Misunderstood Gospel,” you make some clarifications regarding the motivation for our obedience. You write:

Unleashing radical people into the world requires the gospel as our foundation and our motivation.

David Platt: That’s right. I don’t want any follower of Christ to be overwhelmed by guilt, constantly wondering:

• “When I am going to be radical enough?”
• “What do I need to do, how do I need to give, or where do I need to go in order to do enough for God?”

These are extremely unhealthy questions, for the reality with which the gospel confronts us is that we’ll never be able to do enough. No matter what we do, even if we sell all of our possessions, give to the poor, and move to the most dangerous country in the world, we cannot do enough to be accepted before God or approved by God.

The beauty of the gospel is that Christ alone is able to do enough. He alone is able to keep the law and commands of God, and He has done it. Indeed, He has been faithful enough, generous enough, compassionate enough, etc. As a result, the starting point of the radical life is death to self, death to every attempt to do enough before God, and trust in Christ, the One who has lived the radical life on our behalf.

Trevin Wax: How does this beauty of the gospel translate into the beauty of Christian obedience?

David Platt: The beauty now is that when we trust in Christ to be our righteousness, we are now free to obey from a totally different position. In Christ, we have been declared “not guilty” before God. As a result, we no longer live from a position of guilt, but from a position of righteousness. And not only have we been declared righteous in Christ (as if this were not enough!), but He has given us His Spirit, and He lives in us to enable us at every single moment to live according to the commands which He has given us. As Christians, we now find ourselves free from guilt and driven by grace.

Trevin Wax: Why is it important that grace, not guilt be what motivates us?

David Platt:  In addition to everything I’ve mentioned above, guilt is ultimately an unbearable burden and an unsustainable motivator. We may change our ways for a short time based on guilt, but real, true, radical life change will not happen until we trust in the gospel.

So my encouragement in Radical Together to anyone who struggles with a low-grade sense of guilt, wondering if they are ever doing enough, would be to realize that they can never do enough…and then to rejoice in the reality that Christ has done enough for them. Then, whenever they are confronted with sin or shortcomings, I would encourage them to trust in Christ, to rest in His righteousness, and to ask Him to produce the fruit of a radical gospel in their lives. This alone will sustain radical, life-changing, world-impacting obedience for the glory of God in all nations.

Trevin Wax: You express concern about the “missional” movement, if by missional we mean merely focusing on our immediate context and not on reaching the unreached with the gospel. I think “missional” is a reaction against the older idea that “missions” is something that we pay other people (“missionaries”) to do over there. The missional movement is seeking to remind us that we are all missionaries in our local context. It seems that you see a distinction between missional churches and Great Commission churches. Is that so? Why or why not?

David Platt:  “Missional” is quite a loaded, and often misunderstood, word in many conversations today. I certainly appreciate any effort to remind us that God intends us all to make disciples wherever we live, particularly in our local context. This is the command of God for each of us to follow, and so by God’s grace we need to wake up every day intentionally considering how we can most effectively make disciples where we work, where we play, and where we live.

At the same time, the Great Commission is not just a command from Jesus to make disciples; it’s a command from Jesus to make disciples of all nations (literally, panta ta ethne, of all the people groups). This means that Jesus has commanded us to go beyond just the place where we live and the people we live among. He has commanded us to go to people groups all around the world who have little to no access to the gospel. This is at the heart of the Great Commission.

So being “missional,” in the sense of the whole of the Great Commission, is never just about making disciples among people right around us. Being “missional” according to the Great Commission involves making disciples among people far away from us (geographically and/or ethnically).

As a result, in Radical Together, I want to encourage those who would claim the banner of “missional” to be truly “missional.” Let’s continue to focus on making disciples among the people around us (let’s not detract from that focus!), and let’s focus on making disciples among peoples all around the world who presently have no access to the gospel. This is obedience to the Great Commission and the heart of what it means to be “missional.”

Trevin Wax: Is it possible to so focus on the unreached people groups that we discount the good work being done by people in other parts of the world? I had this question about myself as I was reading the book. Were my five years in Romania not really Great-Commission work, since that country is partially evangelized?

David Platt:  For what it’s worth, I think your work in Romania (assuming you were making disciples there with a view toward seeing all nations reached with the gospel) was absolutely Great Commission work. For that matter, I trust that my work in Birmingham, AL (talk about reached!), is also Great Commission work as I shepherd a church to make disciples here with a view toward penetrating every people group on the planet with the gospel.

We are constantly tempted to choose between either going to reached peoples or going to unreached peoples. But this need not be an “either/or” scenario. What if God has designed our work among reached peoples to be aimed toward the spread of the gospel among unreached peoples?

The example I use in Radical Together involves how we as a church are focusing on ministry to various people in Birmingham (Brook Hills Bob) with a view toward the spread of the gospel among all peoples in the world (Brook Hills Baruti). We don’t want Birmingham or the nations for Christ; we want Birmingham and the nations for Christ.

So is it possible to so focus on unreached peopled groups that we discount the good work being done by people in other parts of the world? I suppose. But not if we understand disciple-making as a “both/and” scenario instead of an “either/or scenario.” Jesus made disciples among a very small group of Jewish men in the first century in a way that has led to you and I becoming disciples in America in the twenty-first century. Let’s follow His lead and make disciples among reached places in a way that will lead to disciples being made in unreached places all around the world.

Trevin Wax: What is the value of short-term missions in fulfilling the Great Commission?

David Platt: There are so many abuses when it comes to short-term mission trips, and oftentimes these abuses obscure the tremendous value of short-term missions. The goal of short-term mission is always long-term impact…on a variety of different levels.

First, we want to be a part of long-term impact in other contexts in the world. Obviously, we are not going to be able to go into another setting and make disciples in a week or two. So our goal should always be to connect relationally with long-term disciple-making processes in other contexts. Whether it is missionaries who have moved into another country/context, or nationals living in another context/country, we want to connect with brothers and sisters who are carrying out long-term disciple-making in that country/context. They know what the best uses might be for a short-term mission team, and there is great confidence in going to a place and serving alongside brothers and sisters like this, knowing that you are a part of supporting a long-term disciple-making process in that country/context for the glory of Christ.

But the long-term impact is not just about what happens in that country/context during that week or two on a short-term mission trip. We also want to promote a long-term impact in the people who are going on that short-term mission trip. This is a part of the disciple-making process in our own churches. In the church I pastor, short-term mission trips are a huge component of our long-term disciple-making processes. We want people that we are teaching and training in Christ to go into other contexts in the world, to see the glory of God in ways they may have never seen before, and to expand their understanding of the global purpose for which God has created them.

So for anyone that is looking to go on a short-term mission trip, the goal is not just to focus on impacting another part of the world; the goal is to focus on impacting the people you take with you to another part of the world, so that when you come back to your own context, you and the people who traveled with you are that much more committed to obeying the Great Commission in the context of where you live every day. In addition, many people will come back from a short-term mission trip and decide to go into more mid-term or long-term missions. Almost all of the people who have gone out from our church to serve in another country/context for 6 months, a year or two, or a lifetime, started by going on a short-term mission trip.

In all of these ways, short-term mission trips can be hugely valuable for supporting disciple-making processes in other parts of the world as well as right where we live. Through short-term, mid-term, and long-term missions, we join together with our brothers and sisters around the world as we work with all our hearts to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Trevin Wax: How does God-centered preaching lead to passion for evangelism?

David Platt: The gospel begins and ends with God. He is the holy, just, and gracious Creator of the universe who has sent His Son, God in the flesh, to bear His wrath against sin on the cross and to show His power over sin in the resurrection so that everyone who believes in Christ will be reconciled to God forever. And this is the gospel that we proclaim in evangelism.

So how do we best lead and shepherd God’s people to evangelize? By giving them a grand understanding of God. In preaching, we unfold the character of God: His holiness, His justice, His grace, and all of His other breath-taking attributes. As we magnify His Word, people behold His glory. And they believe, deep within their minds and their hearts, that God is great and greatly to be praised. In the process, this becomes the ultimate motivation for evangelism. The more the people I pastor see God’s worth, the more they want to make His worth known in the world.

So week after week after week, as I stand before them with God’s Word, I want to show them God’s worth. As they hear His Word and they see His worth, they will lay down their lives to make the good news of God’s grace and glory known to the people around them and people groups around the world. God-centered, gospel-saturated preaching is great fuel for Christ-honoring, world-embracing evangelism.

The best way to ground young people in the Word and to empower them for future ministry is to involve them in a mission-based youth group. By mission-based, I am not implying that the teenagers would be going on monthly mission trips or doing weekly door-to-door evangelism. I use the term “mission-based” to describe a missional attitude among the teenagers and their leaders.

The Attraction-based Model
Many youth groups today are “attraction-based.” The youth minister focuses on organizing events in order to attract the youth to the services. The goal of this model is noble. Big events and fun activities can serve as a successful evangelistic tool and can greatly help young people get involved in church. The Bible allows for diversity in how we strategize in getting the gospel to people.

The problem that some attraction-based models face is that too often the events themselves become the ends and not the means. Success is defined by the size of the crowd, not by the fruit seen in the lives of those in attendance. Furthermore, when the attraction becomes the end goal and not the means to an end, those who attend are usually left with just a “spoonful of sugar” and no medicine at all. The sweetness may attract a crowd, but the youth group is no longer offering anything of substantial spiritual value.

Another potential problem that attraction-based models often confront is the professionalism of the attractions themselves. When the church tries to attain the same level of professionalism as the world when it comes to entertainment (movies, music, events), we usually fail and wind up looking cheesy. If it is our music or movie-making or dramatic abilities that are going to bring people to church, we are in trouble! The world will almost always beat us at these things.

(That said, I do not advocate a retreat from the world in the areas of art, music, or movies. God, give us great movie-makers, great musicians and bands and terrific events! He knows we – and the world – can benefit from them.)

My point is this: the church must offer something above and beyond the glitz and glamour if we are going to effectively reach the youth culture for Christ. We have the gospel – something the world does not have!

The Mission-Based Youth Group

A mission-based youth group is entirely different in its outlook. The typical attraction-based model invites young people to church and then implicitly encourages them to ask, “What can this youth group do for us?” A mission-based youth group attends church asking “What can our youth group do for our friends, our schools, our church, and our community?” It is inherently outward-focused. Special events are the method by which we bring outsiders into the church in order to share the Gospel with them, see them saved, and then send them out as teenage missionaries.

Teenagers On Mission
In our world, everyone asks “What’s in it for me?” and most youth groups ask the same thing, because we have led them to think this way. I want the mindset of youth groups to not be “How can you serve us?” but “How can we serve you?”

When I use the word “mission-based,” I am not only speaking of the youth group as being “missions minded.” Of course, we want the youth to be eager to go on mission trips and share the gospel. But that is not enough. Teenagers need to begin seeing themselves as God’s missionaries in whatever place He has put them. Christian young people witness to the reality of God’s kingdom in their families, jobs, schools, and communities. Being the church Monday through Saturday is just as important as doing church on Sunday.

Counter-cultural and Culture-Redeeming
The mission-based youth group is simultaneously counter-cultural and culture-redeeming. No segment of society is off-limits when it comes to God’s redemption. We should welcome in the youth with wild hair, tattoos and nose-rings. We should have open arms for the intellectuals, the achievers, the thinkers and the athletes. We should comfort the abused and hurting. We should work to see minorities included and integrated within the youth group. The church is the one place where people that are different in many ways can come together united by the gospel.

The darkness of the outside world is not something to hide from, boycott, or scold from afar, but is instead the very place the youth are called to extend God’s light. A youth group should be a channel for God’s blessing to flow out to the surrounding community.

Against the World for the World
If I learned anything from my time tutoring middle-school children in failing Kentucky public schools, it is this: there are kids and families in our neighborhoods who are dealing with unspeakable pain and grief. I yearned to send those teens to a youth group that finds its purpose in representing the love and compassion of Jesus Christ for our broken world.

People who are always focused on their own troubles and problems continually find more troubles and problems to focus on. But those people who look outward and try to meet the needs and relieve the troubles of others find themselves empowered, joyful, and spiritually fulfilled in a way that they never could when they assumed all church ministry existed only for them and their needs. The mission-based model moves youth to a place of greater spiritual vibrancy as they see and meet the needs of the others.

The Relationship between the Missional Youth Group and Church

In the mission-based model, the youth group is not a church within a church or an island unto itself. The youth ministry exists as a special ministry to teenagers, for the church. Therefore, the youth group is directly accountable to the rest of the church.

There are two extremes in the relationship between the youth group and the church. The first takes place when the youth group is continually being served by those in the wider church but is never given an opportunity to serve anyone else. When this happens, the teenagers form the mindset of expectation, of receiving without giving. Then, the youth group thinks it deserves the support of the church, even though the group has done nothing to show the church why it deserves its support.

I saw the other extreme in a church that I ministered in during my time in Romania. The youth group did just about everything. The youth ran Awana for the kids; they had a special song service for the adults in every worship service; they taught the younger children to play the mandolins; they even held English lessons for the church. In this situation, the church expected the youth to do all the tough work, but rarely gave back to the youth group by sending them out in mission or in retreats. It was like pulling teeth to get the church to fund anything for the youth group.

The mission-based model seeks to strike a biblical balance between these two extremes. The youth group serves the church and the church serves the youth group. Ministers would seek to include the youth in service to other areas of the church.

The youth should be integrated into the church, making sure their service is employed during major activities (Christmas, VBS, Awana, other ministries). They should also be serving in worship. Perhaps there could be a youth choir or youth ensemble, a drama team, or a puppet ministry to be used occasionally at the children’s worship service. The mission-based model seeks to involve the youth in a variety of church-wide functions, and not just youth activities and events. When the youth group is isolated, the church misses out on being blessed by the youth, and the youth miss out on the blessing of being a blessing.

The Missional Youth Group’s Relation to the Community
As the youth grow accustomed to serving the wider church, they will become increasingly comfortable serving the wider community. When the surrounding community thinks of a church’s youth group, it should think of great teenagers who are constantly showing up to help in important endeavors. This is not only a good testimony for the community; it is also life-changing for the young people.

Youth can reach out to help the community, whether it is handing out water to marathon runners during the summer, or giving away snacks and water at Band Camp every year, or volunteering at a homeless shelter around Christmas, helping with the Angel Tree ministry, visiting nursing homes every month to sing, talk to and encourage the elderly, visiting shut-ins from the church, helping the elderly by seeing needs and then meeting them, perhaps by doing yardwork for those who can’t, helping paint a house or fix a roof. When parents or grandparents are in the hospital, why not send a group of teenagers to visit them?

Youth pastors need to lead the youth to look past their own personal needs and attention to the needy in the community and church. This way, they begin to live the Kingdom way now in their young age and will be accustomed to this way of living by the time they are adults.

From Theory to Practice

What are some examples of mission-based youth groups that you have seen in your experience? Is your youth group mission-based? If so, what does this look like? How has it helped your church?

- adapted from a series of posts on youth ministry in April-May, 2007

The video below is a panel discussion from The Gospel Coalition with Matt Chandler, Kevin DeYoung, Jonathan Leeman, and Trevin Wax. The conversation centers on the Great Commission and the mission of the local church.

Gospel, Mission, and the Church from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Topics discussed:

• The Gospel: Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration vs. God/Man/Christ/Response
• The centrality of the cross in our gospel presentations
• Confusing the gospel and its implications or the fall and its implications
• 9Marks and Acts 29: Two camps in dialogue
• Mission of the church and the meaning of “missional”
• How our cultural contexts form the way we react to “missional”
• Taking care in not overwhelming people with mission
• The role of the church in mercy ministries
• How local churches are staying cross-centered while engaged in mercy ministry
• Should a pastor have a defensive or offensive posture when it comes to the gospel and mission?

Here are a few thought-provoking quotes:

Matt Chandler: “The atoning work of Christ is the gravitational pull on the mission and the gospel. If you tell the meta-narrative without the atoning work of Christ, you are no longer telling the meta-narrative.”

Jonathan Leeman: “Our entire lives are the backdrop for speaking gospel words.”

Trevin Wax: “We are suspicious of anything that sounds like it could be used as theological cover to not get engaged in mission.”

Kevin DeYoung:”Our mission is to make disciples of Christ as servants of people; our mission is not to serve people as disciples of Christ.”

Matt Chandler: “Our fundamental posture is offensive in nature. I want my fundamental posture, standing firm on the Word of God, to be: We have a saving, delivering God who is going to save others in this city.“

Today’s post is contributed by Jerry Rankin, president emeritus of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He blogs at The Rankin File.

The gospel and missions. This subject would appear to be a no-brainer and elicit a yawning “Duh, what’s the point?” Everyone knows missions is about proclaiming the gospel. Or do they? It is amazing the discussions I have had over the years with leaders of mission agencies, denominational executives and church pastors about what is missions.

I fought the battle in Southern Baptist circles for years on the need to give specialized emphasis to missions. The retort was that this was unnecessary since everything we do is missions. In reality, if missions is everything, then it is nothing. If it is everyone’s responsibility, then it is no one’s responsibility.

The issue has been complicated in recent years by the emerging of the term “missional.” What does it mean to be missional? I think the common connotation is that whatever is done outside the internal focus of church programs is missional. Outreach to unbelievers and evangelism would certainly be considered missional. Involvement in a church plant in another community, somewhere in unchurched North America or among an unreached people group in Africa would fit the designation.

But so would disaster relief, building a home for Habitat, ministering to the poor through a food pantry and clothes closet, helping to build a church in a pioneer area or passing out water at a public event on a hot day. These activities are not about our church’s worship, discipling members, Bible study classes and youth ministry. They are focused outside the church and are therefore “missional” whether or not the gospel is shared.

Certainly we ought to be doing these things, as Jesus taught us to care for widows and orphans, minister to the poor, heal the sick, and visit the prisoner. He even commended the Pharisees for being conscientious about tithing, but admonished them for neglecting the more important things.

We can do a lot of good things that we ought to do, motivated by love, compassion for the needs of others and accruing no personal benefit, but is it missions? “Missions is the activity of God’s people to fulfill God’s mission.” And God’s mission, from before the foundation of the world, has been to redeem a lost world. It is why Jesus came and died on the cross and rose again. It is why the Holy Spirit gathers believers into a local church.

And obviously, without a clear presentation of the gospel, God’s mission is not being done. In the early 20th century, missions was sidetracked by a paradigm shift to social ministry. Amazingly, the conversation goes on. Missions is relief ministry, it is advocating justice, feeding the hungry, stopping human trafficking, providing education, or digging water wells.

Christians should be doing all these things and more, but if it is missions it will include a clear presentation of the gospel that the lost, the hurting, and the needy might be saved from sin and reconciled to God. Why would we try to improve the temporal, earthly life of others and deny them the knowledge that meets their need for eternity?

I will never forget hearing a missionary public health worker in West Africa testify of a very successful ministry of bringing pure drinking water and sanitation to destitute Muslim villagers. At the conclusion of an impressive presentation he broke into tears and confessed that he had been a failure for he had yet to see anyone embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. I will never forget his closing remark: “Healthy in hell doesn’t count for much.”

Without the gospel, it is not missions!

Guest Blogger: Joel is a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary and is preparing for ordination in the Presbyterian Church of America. His ministry focus is the Arabic-speaking world, and he writes about life, the gospel, and the books he’s reading at http://joelws.com.

I’ll never forget the first time I met a Muslim. I was a teenager, in New York City on a large crowded street, and a man with a beard as large as my face came up to speak with me. I didn’t get a chance to talk with him very much, but I will never forget how different he looked from me and how greatly what he said about Jesus and the Bible varied from what I had always known and believed.

Fast forward several years to the first time I entered a mosque. I can also never forget the room full of men who looked very different than me, with writing on the walls that did not look anything like English, and filled with worship that looked nothing like what I had ever seen. But what I will always remember, far more than the beards or the Arabic script, are the conversations about deeply held convictions about God and the world, along with conversations about deeply held convictions about such things as sports, computers, and food.

Since that time, I have been developing friendships with Muslims in a variety of ways, and I have consistently been drawn to think about how the American church can get to know her Muslim neighbors. What follows are a few brief thoughts about how those of us who want to be known as followers of Jesus can effectively develop relationships with the Muslims who inhabit our cities.

Dialogues / Meetings for Better Understanding

The primary way that I have been involved in getting to know Muslim neighbors in the cities in which I have lived is by participating in Christian-Muslim dialogues, sometimes called “Meetings for Better Understanding” (see Muslims and Christians at the Table: Promoting Biblical Understanding Among North American Muslims for a book-length treatment of this subject).

Before I explain exactly how to start something like this, let me address two objections:

1. “It sounds like this is just a way to make us sound like we’re all the same, that Islam is just as valid of a path to God as is Christianity.”
   Certainly dialogues take place where this is what happens. But if we simply state from the very beginning that we have significant differences, and that we want to explore them together, the right tone can be set from the start.
2. “Muslims won’t want to get to know Christians.”
   While this may be true of some Muslims, it is often the case that Muslims in America are very concerned about stereotypes about them, and that in fact they yearn to get know people in America who will shower them with interest, love, and friendship.

Now how can we actually bring about meetings between Muslim and Christian communities? In reality, it’s much easier than one might think. There are basically two options:

1. Pick up the phone, call the local mosque or Islamic center (easily found online), and ask to speak with the imam (Islamic religious leader) or another leader in the community. Tell him you’re from a local church, and that you want to promote understanding and friendship between the two communities, and ask him if he would be willing to get together over coffee to talk about how that possibility might become a reality.
2. Go to the mosque during their Friday afternoon prayer service, observe their service respectfully, and then afterwards, introduce yourself to the imam and talk to him about the possibility of arranging a meeting for better understanding. Hopefully he will be interested, and you will be able to start regular (hopefully monthly) meetings between the two communities.

It’s really that simple. Perhaps that particular mosque will not be interested. But you will never know until you try. As I have been involved in and started such dialogues, I have tried to communicate three reasons for holding these meetings between our two communities:

1. To lose the stereotypes about each other—e.g., that all Muslims are terrorists and that all Christians are immoral and ignorant—that pervade media sources,
2. to truly come to understand each other from each other’s perspective, and
3. to develop positive relationships so that even when we disagree, we can still remain friends and coexist peacefully in our communities.

Those are noble goals. Now certainly, both communities would be exceedingly happy if some from one or the other would convert and join the other community. But the reality is, Christ calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and whether our Muslim neighbors ever come to acknowledge his Lordship or not—and certainly we can pray that they would—simply being willing to open our homes for discussion, food, and friendship will go along to showing them who Jesus is and what he has called us to do.

These meetings can range from formal—selecting a specific topic and having speakers from each side address that topic—to informal—getting together to have a meal and just converse over whatever happens to come up—to everything in between. You’ll find that there is much to talk about with our Muslim neighbors: who God is, who Jesus is, how to be right with God, how to raise children, the rising attitude of secularism, the shared story of Abraham, and so on.

The point is this: it is possible to get to know your Muslim neighbors, and there is much to talk about with them. If we will pray that God would fill us with his love and the courage to contact Muslims in our area, perhaps he will bless us with great conversations, wonderful food, and incredible friendships. That would at least be a start in loving our Muslim neighbors as ourselves.