For the Nations Convictions

The following text is a summary of the convictions that drive For the Nations at The Austin Stone.  While this list is not comprehensive, it is representative of core convictions that have historically driven our leaders and elders to the philosophies and strategies we employ.

The following convictions are truths we hold precious at The Austin Stone:

1. Missions is not the goal, worship is.
2. The mission of God to be praised among all nations will be accomplished. It cannot fail.
3. Christ’s command to make disciples was given to the Church.
4. Christ’s command was given to the Church, which means all churches.
5. Christ’s command was given to all members of the church.
6. Christ’s command was to make disciples, and those disciples form churches.
7. Christ’s command was to make disciples of all nations.
8. Local ministry is not at odds with foreign missions.
9. We are imperfect people, but God will accomplish His purposes through weakness.

Each conviction is expanded on in the following paragraphs, and these summarize convictions that have long been important to the elders and leaders of The Austin Stone.

Missions is not the goal, worship is.

In Genesis 1:28, we see the initial global mission of God in the creation of humanity: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”  God gave Adam and Eve a mission to accomplish - to fill the earth.  But why?  The answer lies in Genesis 1:27 - we are created in God’s image.  The purpose of God is to fill the earth with His image bearers who would bring glory and worship unto Him. To worship God is what we exist to do. It brings us, as humans, the greatest joy and deepest satisfaction. 

God’s plan throughout all of history has been for people to glorify His Name throughout all creation!  Therefore, as men and women who are made in His image, we should care about all creation worshipping His Name.

Through sin, we mar the image of God in us, but we can never fully remove it.  In Christ by the power of the Spirit, God gives us a new heart to worship Him in Spirit and truth.  Worship is the whole-self act of proclaiming God’s excellencies, demonstrating His love, and extending His worship throughout the nations.  God started this global plan through Abraham (Genesis 12:9), culminating His work in Christ, and now, by the power of the Spirit, commands that we join Him in His task to bring about worship (Philippians 2:10-11).

But we do not merely have an individual calling to care about the nations. We have a corporate identity as those re-born into the family of Christ who join with the nations in worshipping our redeeming God.  And we know that God has set apart others among the nations for salvation.  We go to them not out of obligation, but fueled by a desire for the worship of our great God!

The worship in our local churches, in our current cultures, simply is not enough.  God is too glorious, Jesus too precious, and the Spirit too lovely for our own church or own nation.  God designed all of creation to reflect His glory through praise and submission, and God has revealed His plan to rescue a people who will worship him from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

We go to the Nations because we worship, and we long for all people to know and worship God too.  We want the nations to be glad (Psalm 67:4)!

The mission of God to be praised among all nations will be accomplished. It cannot fail.

Scripture from beginning to end is concerned with the global scope of God's great salvation and glory.  The mission of God is to fill the earth with a knowledge of his glory (Habakkuk 2:14), and by His grace, we know where this story will go.  

The promise of the Scriptures in Revelation 7:9 is "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'”

The book of Revelation gives us a future picture and a promise.  We see that the mission will be accomplished! There will be a day when every nation, tribe, people, and language will be around the throne.  We know God’s will must be accomplished, and God gives us a sneak peak of what that will be like here!

Although God doesn’t need us to accomplish His mission, He graciously invites us into it with the full promise it will be completed.  We participate in God’s global plan of redemption for our joy and out of our obedience to the command of our King: “Go and make disciples among all nations.”  We obey knowing that God will fulfill all that He has promised.

Christ’s command was given to the Church.

The church is essential in this task of making disciples. According to Matthew 28:16, it was the eleven disciples who first heard Jesus’ command. These men stood as founders and leaders of the global Church (Ephesians 2:20), which was established by and multiplied through their testimony and the power of the Holy Spirit. In the book of Acts, these disciples formed local churches all throughout the known world. The gospel of the kingdom spread as more disciples believed and established more churches among various tribes, tongues, and nations. What this means is the Great Commission is inseparable from both the global and the local church. 

This Great Commission still stands for all disciples, and all churches, to continue the work that was laid on the foundation of the apostles thousands of years ago. This global, universal, cosmic Church still exists today, and it consists  of people who gather in local churches. To be a part of God’s Church is to obey Christ’s command to engage in making disciples of all nations, and the church is essential in this task.

Christ’s command was given to the Church, which means all churches.

The mission to go and make disciples of all nations was given to churches in every nation. As the gospel has spread throughout the world and as churches have multiplied and matured, they too have engaged in sending and supporting missionaries. The reality is that churches in the non-Western world are deeply engaged in international missions as well.  The missionary task is not merely a Western church endeavor.  It is a task for every church in every culture, no matter the resources, history, or global status.  Infant churches in New Delhi and historic churches in Alexandria, by God’s grace, are a part of this global church family and have a role in Christ’s commission to pray, worship, send, support disciples and churches among the nations.

The Great Commission doesn’t belong to any particular era or region of the Church. Rather, all churches at all times and in all places should endeavor together in making disciples of all nations. Our opportunity in light of these global trends is not only to send from our congregations, but to partner with international churches in sending, supporting, and serving missionaries among the nations.

Christ’s command was given to all members of the church.

If the Great Commission is for the church, every member of the church should be taught to obey everything that the Lord commanded.  This includes the command to make disciples of all nations.  The Great Commission is given to the church, but how does every member play a role?  If all are called to play a part, why do only some go?

The application of the great commission is not solely to go, but 1) to pray to the Lord of the harvest for more laborers (Luke 10:2), 2) to send them out as the church of Antioch did with Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:2-3), and 3) to support missionaries as “fellow workers in the truth” (3 John 8). 

This corporate endeavor of making disciples as a church involves every member of Christ’s body playing their part with their gifts (Ephesians 4:11-16). Thus, our goal is not to persuade everyone to become a missionary. Instead, we want to help everyone in our congregations think and act with the global mindset of God’s worship among the nations so that they will individually use their gifts in the local church to serve toward that end.

Christ’s command was to make disciples, and those disciples form churches.

The goal of missions is not simply to evangelize all peoples, but to make disciples of all peoples who observe all that Christ commanded. The former can be accomplished rapidly through individuals. The latter takes time and requires healthy biblical community.

Any effort in missions ought to always be connected to the goal of reproducing local bodies of believers through both the declaration and demonstration of the gospel. Ministries that aim to serve and meet needs are good and healthy, but must transition over time towards proclamation and discipleship.  Hearts of stone are made flesh through the power of the Spirit of God by the Word of God being proclaimed. Preaching and evangelism are essential and necessary, but intangible without the outworking of the Word in service to the felt needs of the community.

No matter the function of ministry, the goal is to see communities of disciples who both proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ and display the fruit of the Spirit through their love for their neighbor.  Again, the goal is a worshipping people, and by God’s Word we know this means a church. Therefore, we labor together to build healthy churches who reproduce healthy churches over the course of time. Justice, mercy, evangelism, and discipleship are all functions of healthy churches who will in turn establish healthy churches as well.

Christ’s command was given to the Church, to make disciples of all nations.

The majority of mission efforts by western churches today focus on places and peoples where the church is already established. This is a great thing, because pastors need theological training, ministries need encouragement, and disciples ought to continue to be made and equipped where the local church is present.  We must labor to foster continued worship amongst peoples who have local churches!

However, there are currently almost 3 billion people in the world today (almost 40% of the global population) that live among peoples that have little to no access to the gospel, or the unreached.  No one knows the day or hour of Christ’s return (not even Christ Himself). But from Matthew 24:14, we know the gospel must go to every tribe, people, and nation before He returns.. Not only must the gospel go to the ends of the earth, but according to Revelation 5:9, Jesus will redeem people from every tribe, language, people group, and nation before He returns.

To complete this mission will take intentional effort.  Especially if we are taking the gospel to those who have no access to it - the unreached.  Currently, nearly $1 of every $100 given to foreign missions from the western church goes to the unreached.  Currently, only 3 out of every 100 missionaries sent go to work among the unreached. While we desire to go and make disciples of ALL nations, The Austin Stone has chosen to place a strategic priority on engaging the unreached - those who do not have access to this glorious gospel, and therefore, cannot worship our great God.

The Austin Stone has a unique burden to give the very best of our time, energy, efforts, and resources to seeing Jesus worshipped among people who are unreached.  We do this because we long for the return of Jesus, and feel compelled by the Holy Spirit to focus where challenges are the greatest and access to the gospel is the lowest.  It is our unique role in the kingdom as a local church!

Local ministry is not at odds with foreign missions.

There often can be tension between those who are passionate about local ministry and those who are passionate about foreign missions. The reality is that it is a false dichotomy for two primary reasons.

First, if the scope of the commission is the worship of God among every tribe, tongue and nation, then local ministry is the training ground for foreign missions. Simultaneously, foreign missions without those experienced in local ministry sends theorists, not practitioners. Character, doctrine, and skills are developed through daily obedience to Christ’s Word in the context of local ministry and local churches. Cross-cultural engagement is built from the foundation of basic Christian discipleship in a local context.

Second, the goal of foreign missions is to plant local churches.  The ultimate goal among the unreached is to see multiplying churches planted and thriving as disciples are made from the harvest and live in joyful obedience to the commands of Christ. Therefore, the end goal of foreign mission advocates is to multiply the impact of local ministries around the world!  Though there are many nuances, local and global ministry are mutually beneficial, but more than that, essential for one another.

We are imperfect people, but God will accomplish His global purposes through our weakness.

When Christ gave the great commission to the Church to make disciples of all nations, He prefaced it by stating that:

Matt 28:18 - “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” 

and He concluded it with the promise that: 

Matt 28:20 - “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Christ knows what we know as well, that we hold this treasure in jars of clay, we are weak and broken people.  We are insufficient for this global task.  Our limitations are too great.  Our sin is too great.  

While we will strive to be as innocent as doves and as shrewd as serpents, there will be pain and ‘mistakes’, there will be team dysfunction, there will be moral failures in the field, there will be geopolitical shifts, there will be active persecutions, there will be sickness, and there will be martyrs. In other words, we will come face-to-face with our sin and our brokenness. But all of that will give us the opportunity to pray, to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, to trust in the Word of God, and to take on Jesus’ yoke. 

Furthermore, there is nothing that rivals Christ’s omniscience or omnipotence. There is ultimately no “risk” that God is taking on us.  There will never be a perfect season to engage, a perfect strategy or model, or a perfect candidate to send or partner with.  But we have a perfect, powerful, global God who demonstrates His power in the midst of our weakness.  We go by His power and authority, not our own, fully aware of our weakness and the weaknesses of those around us, with Christ pleading at the right hand of the Father, and with the Spirit indwelling, filling, and empowering us to make disciples of all nations. We do this because we were once far off, but now we have been brought near. We were once enemies, but now we are worshippers. We were once lost, but now we are found. And we want all peoples to have the same opportunity we did - to meet Jesus for the first time and fall down and worship Him.