5 things you need to be a more faithful missionary

You can’t look very long at the history of Protestant, evangelical missions without encountering the rich legacy of Southern Baptists’ work all over the world. What’s more, no understanding of the Baptist missionary enterprise is complete without a full grasp of what Southern Seminary has been pouring into our one sacred effort since its very founding. Founding faculty member of Southern Seminary, John Broadus, served as an advisor to the International Mission Board during its most formative years. While a student at Southern, Theron Rankin was called to missionary service in China and would go on to lead IMB through what was by many estimations the most fruitful decade in the organization’s history. Over half of IMB’s presidents through the years have been graduates of Southern, including its current leader, Paul Chitwood. Southern Seminary’s influence in Baptist missions runs deep. And because of IMB’s outsized impact on evangelical missions more broadly, the seminary has been a formidable voice in the shaping of world missions for more than a century and a half.

Five things have always been at the heart of Southern Seminary’s strategy for training up effective missionaries, and each of them remains crucial for being a faithful missionary today.

1. GOSPEL CLARITY

To state the obvious, faithful missionaries must have a strong grasp of the gospel. Proclaiming the good news of Jesus is central to the missionary task, so we need to know it down deep in our bones. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, Paul is unambiguous as to what the message of salvation entails: “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, [and] that he was raised on the third day.” Especially as many voices in majority-world Christianity today would conflate the gospel with material prosperity, it’s all the more crucial that we get this right. Southern Seminary has always made sure its outgoing missionaries have gospel clarity.

2. STRONG ECCLESIOLOGY

To be a faithful missionary, you also need strong ecclesiology. Missionaries today don’t just need a passion for church health. They must also be able to know it when they see it—and recognize when they don’t. Southern Baptist missionaries acknowledge twelve things that characterize every healthy church, things like discipleship, membership, discipline, and the preaching of the Word. IMB’s Foundations booklet holds that the missionary’s main goal is the planting of healthy churches, and insists, “We do not sacrifice or delay introducing any characteristics of a healthy church for the sake of rapid reproduction.” In lockstep with Southern Baptist missionaries throughout history, Southern Seminary is unwavering when it comes to ecclesiology.

3. HEALTHY URGENCY

While the faithful missionary will not sacrifice any criterion of church health for the sake of rapidity, he or she must certainly have a sense of urgency concerning the plight of the lost. In Romans 9:1-3, Paul shares transparently that he has “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” over the fact that so many of his fellow Israelites don’t yet know Christ. All over the world, tens of thousands of people die every day and enter an eternity apart from Christ. May this reality spur today’s missionaries to hope and pray that the gospel would spread rapidly and that healthy churches would multiply prodigiously all over the world.

4. MISSIOLOGICAL EXPERTISE

To be a faithful missionary, you also need to have some missiological expertise. At its most basic level, missiological expertise entails knowing what the missionary task is and what it’s not. Foundations names six components that make up the missionary task: entry, evangelism, discipleship, church formation, leadership development, and exit to partnership. Misidentifying your church’s humanitarian activities as “mission trips” isn’t something to get too worked up about. However, to be a faithful missionary in today’s world, you’ll need the expertise to spot what’s mission and what’s not. Ever since Southern Seminary established one of the world’s first academic departments for Christian missions around the dawn of the 20^th century, the institution has been a conduit of missiological expertise.

4. CONNECTION TO THE VINE

None of these things, however, will make you a faithful missionary if you’re not connected to the vine. In John 15:1-5, Jesus identifies Himself as the vine and says, “Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.” The missionary who does remain in Jesus, though, produces much fruit. Along with providing gospel clarity, insisting on strong ecclesiology, instilling urgency toward lostness, and serving as a trusted conveyor of missiological expertise, Southern Seminary is committed to nurturing missionaries who’ll stay connected to the vine.

CONCLUSION

A faithful missionary must possess these five things. And to really have these competencies ingrained into who they are, tomorrow’s missionaries don’t just need to hear about them on a theoretical level. They need to rub shoulders with men and women who have lived them out on the field. A good number of Southern’s faculty members are former missionaries, and through the tireless work of the Bevin Center for World Missions on campus, both faculty and students can be actively engaged in mission work around the world. Faithful missionaries need gospel clarity, strong ecclesiology, healthy urgency, missiological expertise, and connection to the vine. Southern Seminary provides these things.