2019 G3 Conference — Plenary Q&A Session

all right so you've been introduced to several of these men and several of them you'll know in a variety of capacities but mr. Tim chao-li's dr. Conrad and Bayway mr. paul Washer dr. Joshua Boyce mr. or dr. strand Owen strand I'm sorry the name is very challenging for me thank you for that and then dr. Steve Lawson so we're familiar with for his name just say man but strand yes yeah can I just say this publicly I I thank you for the manly affirmation it's a Scottish last name with a Gaelic pronunciation I'm just glad I was never your substitute teacher you would have never known I was calling on you well let's go ahead and begin and we've been speaking of the nature of World Missions and that the charge for the church and we've tried to root that in the local church and on this panel it's there's a little bit of we have a missionary an international pastor from our perspective if we were in Lusaka Zambia we would be the International pastors so it's a matter of proximity but could any of you men or whoever would like to speak to the nature of local pastors speaking and local Bible teachers and local men and indigenous United States context or indigenous African context what by what means do you speak about missions where where's your authority from and and from what grounds do you have a platform not being a missie ologist proper I'll just start by stating that when we think about missions you might have a question we had a few questions like who are you gonna have speak at the missions conference in 2019 it should be all these missionaries in many ways that would be so helpful and so we're glad to have missionaries speak and to address us we can learn from from various different contexts and experiences but we must be clear that missionaries and missions missions is the work of the local church and so missionaries are discipled in the context of the local church so we can't disconnect pastoral ministry and missions and missionaries and so that would be the best way that I could answer the question very good so the authority structure remains the same if it's going to be centered in the local church the pastor has the authority to speak to the matter now if we could put the statistics up here we have another question that addresses kind of the snapshot in terms of where things stand in the world I think it's been alluded to before but we have presently the statistics tell us that the world is greatly unreached with the gospel according to Joshua project net we find the following statistics people groups 17,000 19 unreached people groups seven thousand sixty-six so there's approximately forty one point five percent unreached people groups the population of the earth of this given time was seven point six billion people the population in the unreached portions are three point four one four billion and that leaves the percentage of the population in the unreached world at forty one point four percent so how should we read these statistics she would be an encouraged or discouraged we should be very thankful that that much gospel advance has taken place it's primarily taken place in the last two hundred or so years in terms of the global spread of the gospel for various reasons gospel loving Christians have not always been able to do cross-cultural missions or have not always had that burden but the modern missions movement that sparks in this country and sweeps across all the world over the last 200 years has had a major effect and so we give thanks to God for that his spirit is real and is moving through the preaching of his word and yet there should be no complacency about those statistics because they speak to a task that is very much unfinished it's easy today in 2019 with such ease and comfort and imminence and technology for us to lose sight of the greater mission before us but missions is the tip of the spear it always has been and it needs to remain that way I wonder if in the younger generation we're losing some of that raw gospel promoting edge when it comes to missions and we cannot lose sight of that we have to keep as a movement of churches whatever denomination or tradition we belong to we have to keep holding out missionaries before the people they need to be in the in the Sunday service feature they need to be celebrated as honestly heroic figures because missionaries are heroic figures and they will be some of the martyrs many martyrs who greet us on the last day when we go to glory so we need to always keep that task and those stats before us and think ultimately if it's Christ that's going to build his church then we will find comfort it's if we're challenging or battling statistics then then we are in trouble this may be a matter of semantics or is there a difference what is the difference between unreached and unengaged or is there a difference unreached versus unengaged what is unengaged mean I'm only asking I am NOT crafting so I'm not familiar with that term does that mean they know the gospel they hear the gospel but they're not engaging with the God is that what that means I would imagine so we we view mission statistics every week in our look Church and we encourage our people accordingly and I frequently when I'm doing my research I see this percentage are unreached that and I always qualified that does not mean the other percentage are believers and so I don't know if it's the gospel witness is not advanced to that particular area or the gospel witness is available and people are just not availing themselves of it well there's first of all with regard to your statistics I really admire the Joshua Project and called them and talked to them at times but you have to understand that those statistics I don't know how and not the fault of the Joshua Project at all I really admire them but the theology on the mission field and among those who do statistics is so poor that oftentimes groups are considered reached people groups when they're not engaged people groups when they're not and so those statistics don't tell half the story of how bad it actually is now and an unreached people group in the classical definition is a group of people where there is no autonomous self multiplying biblical church a people that's not been engaged at all is someone where there's they would have no opportunity at all to hear the Gospel Gospels not been taken to their doorstep at all begin let listen missions is about the communication of biblical truth so when you take biblical truth out of missions and then you start drawing up statistics you have no idea really what everyone is saying and that's one of the great problems and missions today let me give you an example I was coming home from a trip I think I was in Eastern Europe or something and by God's unusual Providence I sat down beside a mission statistical something or other some kind of guy who knew everything about missions and had a really big computer and he started he started mentioning to me all the all these people groups has reached and so finally I stopped him and I said I have a question because I knew they weren't reached I said how do you define a reach people group because when I graduated from Southwestern Seminary in the 80s a reached people group was someone who had an autonomous self multiplying biblical church his definition of a reached people group was a group of people that lived within walking distance of where the Jesus film had been shown so see one of our great problems is that we can talk about numbers we can talk about all these different things but we're all using different terminology and until we define our terminology biblically a lot of this just isn't going to mean anything I follow up on that because the local church most of the church is gonna be represented here they're not gonna have the opportunity to necessarily have the insight to know one of people groups genuinely been reached how does that conversation take place in the local church in terms of them praying in an informed way then pursuing how they can honor the Lord and strengthening the local in potential indigenous church maybe let me just say one or two words they I'm coming from Africa and in Africa we first of all we do celebrate the fact that if you go back just 200 years it was a dark continent so it would have been among those numbers that would have been causing and the Christian world to despair but as we speak now it's it's more of a sleeping giant in the sense that the Christian faith is there but there's a lot to be done to wake up the people that are Christian in order for them to find their place in World Missions now coming to what you're saying one of the things that we definitely are doing is praying for unreached people groups now the difficulty with that is simply that these tend to be names that they're hearing most likely for the first time statistics so the thought that we can ever then leave Zambia or Tanzania or Malawi Kenya and go to some country for instance right in the middle east is a far-flung fault and it's that bridge that gap rather that needs to be bridged and that's where for those of us who are church pastors in Africa that's where the challenge continues because clearly until we bridge that gap this swelling army of God's soldiers will not cross over the next question since this is a conference on missions can you or any of you men explain what you believe one of the biggest challenges in terms of reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ Comfort we loved our comforts we're we live very comfortable lives we are accustomed to great comfort and we who are so comfortable we don't want to reduce our comfort in order to go somewhere or in order to send somewhere and so as long as we're we're really committed to being very comfortable people living very comfortable lives will have trouble reducing anything whether that's our own standard of living or anything else to go somewhere else or putting ourselves in danger or just having less of what we value in order to give more to support the work emissions and that can be true on a personal level a family level and even a church level we just want to be comfortable we want to have instead of give I think the greatest challenge on the mission field is the greatest challenge we have here at home we must with a radical violence we must abandoned so much pragmatism and fleshly methodologies and we must cling to a doctrine everyone - nowadays talks about reform reform reform I think most people don't have a clue what the reflect Reformation was about the Reformation was primarily about Sola scriptura scripture alone the scripture not only has to govern our doctrine scripture has to govern our practice we can't do Church the way we want to do Church we do church according to the way God has prescribed in Scripture we can't do missions according to the latest fad that comes from the most recent published Missy ologist we have to return to Scripture and see how they did it in the book of Acts and primarily they did it in a way that our flesh hates they preach the Word of God and they prayed and they preached the Word of God and they prayed and until we are willing to abandon all these silly other activities were I would prefer that Americans didn't go overseas I would rather give me one man with a Bible and broken knees over a thousand any other kind of expert that's what we need [Applause] so Lord willing we have a man with a Bible and broken knees and he's dispatched from the church under the blessing of the church and if missions is the work of the local church how do we keep the local church engaged and involved throughout the entire process how do we hold the rope and how do we participate in the the support and care through that faithful man he's not dispatched to disappear so how do we what do we do with that faithful man Lord willing he rises up expository preaching you set that church on fire with expository preaching and then you realize that man that you sent out he is your responsibility listen everything about missions depends on having a biblical Church and a biblical Church depends on having an elder qualified pastor a biblical pastor who's dedicated to prayer to pastoring and expository preaching and setting missions before the people of God constantly I know an old Independent Baptist fundamentalist missionary who was on the field in Peru and was he was the you know like a father to me he was such a lovely man and when I went back years later to his local church after he retired it was a church of maybe I don't know 75 80 people and no doctors no lawyers no professionals and they would give something like two hundred thousand dollars a year to missions but when you walked into his church there was not a wall you couldn't go three feet on a wall where you didn't see a missionary and every Sunday he talked about missionaries now he preached the Bible he cared about his flock it was a true pastor but everything depends on having biblical pastors back home that will order the church biblically then we'll have biblical missionaries and then we'll have biblical missions I won't talk anymore I'm sorry I'm I'm enjoying our conversation so someone's walking into that church there or a like Church say that's duplicated in ways that we're not familiar here and that there's a robust missions emphasis the the elders are diligently pouring and shepherding into the life of the church they're putting a global emphasis and a young young person catches that fire what do you do with them because obviously we want them to be mature but we don't want them so mature that they are not necessarily going to be able to handle some things on the field or at what point in time do you what direction do you give them on that I know there's elements of wisdom with every situation so generally speaking and precisely flickable well if he's going to be sent to the mission field to preach as Paul just said which is simply what the book of Acts demonstrates then he's actually going to have to be taught educated and trained in the Word of God or he will just be taking ignorance overseas whatever form that takes place I'm a professor in a seminary Owen as a professor in a seminary it doesn't have to be in a seminary but it is very well structured and it is very well laid out such that you have a comprehensive education in the Bible original languages systematic theology Bible exposition church history you must have a working knowledge of this obviously lloyd-jones and Spurgeon never went to seminary but they more than made up for it and with their own brilliance their personal library and their their brilliant minds and I'm not saying that you have to know a lot in order to go to the mission field but I will say this you better know your Bible inside out you need to be rooted and grounded in the Word of God and you're going to be hitting a brick wall once you're there you won't be in the buckle of the Bible Belt and you're gonna have to contend for the faith you're gonna have to be able to give a defense for the scripture and for the Christian faith and so I would say to a young man like that you need to sit under the strongest expository preaching that you can sit under and I say that to every young man you need to be under the fire of a pulpit that is preaching the Word of God with profundity with depth with theological precision before they are sent either to seminary or to some type of structured theological training whether it's in your local church with elders whether it is online through teachers in another location but but you need to know the Word of God if you're going to go into the mission field so to answer your question you know what what would I say to a young man I would say you need to find the strongest pulpit that you can find to be under and you need to go get a world-class education and training in theology and in the Word of God so that you actually know what you're talking about and not just being an echo chamber and repeating things that you've heard that you really own the message of Scripture and by that I do not mean that you become a librarian nerd and you just have become such an academic person I don't mean that at all I just simply mean that you own the theology and you own the gospel and you own the truth of the scripture and you are able to stand up and Herald and preach the Word of God in such a way that it's compelling it is accurate it is powerful and it is evangelistic so that's that's what I say to young men and and obviously you need to be connected with your local church and be under the shepherding of your elders so that they can give you good godly counsel and so that that is critically important it would be a rarity to be someone like a William Tyndale just went out on his own and did it no elders laid hands on him no denominations sent him out he just went to the continent of Europe on his own that's such a rarity and so you need to work with a local church and those who are in spiritual leadership to give you good guidance and direction yeah there's a sense that today because you can do training easily in all sorts of platforms you would get as little as possible and then launch out and I would push against that paradigm and say with the rise of secularism with the rise of militant Islam with the spread of the prosperity gospel and counterfeits that have been pumped out from America all over the world don't get as little training as you can get before you take on tip of the spear work get as much training as you can get take time marinate in the word as dr. Lawson said to go deep in systematic theology church history so on and so forth get equipped sometimes people talk about missions as if it's a practical discipline what could be more theological than missions you're giving up comfort as Tim said you're leaving your father and mother your kids are gonna grow up far from their grandparents why probably won't have great healthcare why so that you can declare to people that Jesus the Christ was crucified and resurrected for our salvation what is more theological than that there's no more theological undertaking or endeavour on planet Earth than that so in order to do that well as has been said get as much training as you can that's what I want to say to the young man there's all sorts of delivery systems for that seminaries are out there they're great you could blow up every seminary out there today we don't need seminaries guess what you would do tomorrow you'd start doing something that looked a lot like seminaries so use them use them as much as you can ground that that student though in a low Church and then send them out and let it rip so well obviously affirming all that I just want to add one dimension as well which is it occurs to me I was speaking earlier about Jesus Christ how he sort of disappears from the historical record from the age of 12 to about the age of 30 or so and what is he doing in the meantime we're not told much but we're told that he's growing in wisdom stature and favor with God a man so he's growing in character and so the people we want to send to the mission field are people of godly character people who have studied the qualifications that the Bible lays out for an elder especially if they're going to go and be preachers if they're gonna go and start churches we want them to be elder qualified men who are godly who are above reproach and all the ways that are laid out in Scripture I think we've got a bad track record of sending people overseas who have porn issues who have marriage problems we have all sorts of issues and they just take those issues and then we wonder why their ministry crashes and burns in two or three years so men who are truly qualified are trained they know how to preach they know their Bibles and they're exhibiting godly character yeah I would also add to that too we need to send our best men I mean there's kind of the idea the stereotype that the guys who couldn't hack it in the States will export them overseas and just the reverse is true in the book of Acts I mean we're sending our best preachers we're sending our our best men in in the word so I think that needs to rise to the to a higher level and who we're sending and just hearing you say the first Timothy three qualifications triggers my mind in that we need to send men who are spiritually mature and grounded in godly but also gifted to preach the Word of God go ahead Paul I can read it I can read it I'm just I'm I'm just so excited alright anyone else I'm so excited by what I'm hearing if you're a pastor you are the epicenter of the Great Commission but let me let you know this too many of you do not spend enough time studying the Word of God and your fear of God is very very low you will lay hands on a man and send him to the mission field that you would not allow to be an elder in your own church that is terrifying according to what Paul told Timothy with regard to the caution required and laying on of hands you lay hands on a man and he goes to the mission field that fruit that he bears will be laid in your lap but also the doctrinal error and the ethical error that he communicates you will be held accountable for on the day of judgment may be the mission board a little but primarily you because you were the pastor and unto you was given the responsibility to discern whether or not this man was elder qualified or not no one who is not elder qualified should ever be sent to the mission field ever I go to these mission conferences and I stopped I came because well I agree with Josh but I stopped why because I hear all these people pleading for young people to go to the mission field I want them to go to the mission field but not now we don't need one more 20 year old backpacking across China with really cool gear drop-in tracks out of his pack and riding home in secret a secret code we need church planners who know what a biblical church is in compliant 1 or teach pastors how to plan a church so we've elevated the standard properly not just artificially and there may be several churches representative pastors missions team coordinators and whatnot dr. and byway could you speak just very briefly too since you oversee and give leadership to when that threshold is reached to dispatch a man to plant a church and a missional capacity what does it look like so that it's if it's new to somebody they're not waiting for some standard that they just keep we'll just wait you're gonna get there one day and they're not really clear when they are there when they are maybe they are overqualified but not necessarily somebody would dispatch just yet how do you discern when that man is ready to be supported in that capacity yes thankfully a church is like a family and in a home you will as a parent be relating sufficiently to the other members of the household for you to know something of their levels of knowledge and their sense of responsibility with respect also what they are able to do the church in many ways is like that I don't know how your churches are run here but back home I try to emphasize the fact that the church is a body it's not a bus where you only have one person doing everything and everyone else is just a passenger who have paid their tithes and offerings but really you have through your membership a lot of opportunities in which you are teaching them but you also have a lot of opportunities in which they are participating in teaching disciple and so on and that way the church is multiplying itself in the community way it is so what has to happen is in the midst of all that you are seeing those who are coming through with eldership quality they may not themselves yet be elders but you can't miss the fact that they are able to handle God's Word they are running their personal lives their families in a way that is showing that godliness is percolating to the top even when now individuals are looking for help in the church you find that by the time you are dealing with them they've already gone to some of these individuals so clearly you are having individuals in whom the confidence of the church is growing with respect to our own situation to use the me as an example we also have a number of preaching points where our own budding preachers will go out to to preach we we have them out in University and college campuses where again we are ministering so by the time the elders laying hands on someone it's it's not guesswork that's taking place it's a person has just been said who could as well be an elder in the local church where we are so again the principle is that a local church is like a family so there is enough interaction for you to be able to see for instance an obvious example is how they handle crisis in their lives because where they will be going there will be crisis so if they totally break down and you you are having to quickly ration and help then clearly they still have a lot of maturing to do at home don't send them out now being that we're centering everything in the local church and we're speaking of the the qualification of the high and scriptural qualification of those who would be dispatched as missionaries and dr. Byas addressed this earlier in his session when sending a missions candidate off to seminary for training or whatever other capacity they're being prepared how much oversight and how much involvement should the sin Church have over the process of the candidate and if if you could develop that you referenced it with the the pair of church doesn't usurp the church so how does the church come alongside when a man is part of a pair of church that is facilitating I've spoke about this in the sermon but I'll just say it like this I think sending folks off to the seminary is a wonderful thing whether it be for pastoral ministry or whether it be for missions which is pastoral ministry in a different context but I think that one of the tragedies is sending someone off to say a seminary to train and then just saying goodbye to them and then you have no interaction no involvement with that individual throughout their education process their development and then they get hitched up with a missions organization and then they're sent off to who knows where and there's never any return to that sending Church and when I read acts 13 and I see them put their hands on Paul and those others and they dispatched them they commissioned them one chapter later you see them coming back and they gather the church and as I stated in my sermon and sometimes you're just saying things so quickly when you're preaching so you hope that people get it they weren't just gathering for lattes and catching up on old times with friends they gathered the church for a report they were giving an account before the church that sent them out and so I think that we have so many advancements today so many wonderful opportunities with seminaries and wonderful parachurch ministries please hear me I'm not saying that every pair of church ministry is bad the the you know the exhibit hall filled with them for this conference very good organizations and their organizations on this platform that are represented and very good organizations but those organizations cannot take priority over the local church this conference has one theme consistently and that's to put an emphasis on the local church and so the tale can't wag the dog and we can't have this reversal of authority I really think that in the church today that there's an authority problem people don't want to be under Authority they don't want to have to give an answer to anyone but let's just be really honest when a church sends someone out for training and then eventually to the mission field they are communicating that God is sending that person out so it's a it's a sobering thing sobering thing and you men will we have seminary professors and university professors and missions agency and ministry that provides resources and writing how do you protect the integrity of the church went through so men are coming to seminary how do you direct them back to their churches and men are coming to university how do you direct them back to their churches and their coming to heart choir they're reading your material how do you continue to foster that mindset and what's the obligation of the parachurch for those who may be represented and they love the local church what kind of encouragement would you give them to make sure that they balance their roll out the emblem of Midwestern seminary is for the church Jason Allen came up with that because he loves the local church it's not just a tagline we believe that our most serious work as a seminary is to turn out pastors who preach the whole counsel of God so we have that mindset when we enter the classroom at least I think we do I try to we we do not simply want to to produce graduates who have pieces of paper with a certain seminaries name on them we are trying to form in our part working with local churches we're trying to form men of God men of Christ men of oak and so that's a that's a holistic effort that takes place we we do not believe that our our job is done then simply if we meet with a student once and send them on their way we are driving our students or churches but I would say a word to pastors here it is right that you would check in on your people absolutely it is also right that you would release gifted young men gifted young women as well for different callings to go and train for 3 to 4 to 5 years in a degree program the Bible does not say you have to do this to be in ministry please hear me but again these seminaries provide a great deal of instruction and blessing to students it's not just classes it's your peers it's learning from professors it's talking about the class after it so on and so forth so there's there's a deal today where you don't have to leave in order to go train and it's a very good thing for pastors to release those their training to go and be trained up further and to get these skills and and this expertise in the work of the ministry we can't lose sight of that it is good to be able to log on to a computer and watch a lecture and take a quiz I am thankful that exists I will continue to encourage people to do that as they need to but the standard of education just like the standard of preaching it's not to log on to a computer it is to go and sit under the instruction the Ministry of the Word of God that is always going to be the standard and it's only going to remain the standard if local churches and specifically pastors and groups of elders release men for ministry training I would like to say something that I I was sitting on a plane one time and I sat down beside probably one of the most liberal educators in the world and he was the president of some National Teachers Association and as we began to talk of course we were on opposite sides of the world academically theological e-everything but I asked him this question I said would you agree with me that one of the problems with the education system is this you were called to be a teacher you were not necessarily called to be a parent and he said absolutely I thought the man was going to begin to cry and I think that's a problem that we need to look at especially pastors I think sometimes seminaries get blamed for things that's not their responsibility to start off with I rejoice in seminaries if my sons were called into the ministry I would send them to seminaries I would and I would want them to be academically prepared far beyond their father but here's something I want you to see when I send my son one of my sons to seminary or college he doesn't cease to be my son I am going to be calling him I'm going to be visiting him I am going to find out maybe what classes he's taking if he's in theology I'm gonna get to know some of his professors if he you know I'm gonna make sure if it's far away from my church I'm gonna make sure my son is in a church I don't expect seminary professors to do this and I think again one of the problems is we have lost the idea of second Timothy 2:2 second Timothy 2:2 is not about the multiplication of disciples it's about elders training up elder qualified men and one of the tools that elders can use are these seminaries you know I was I was talking to a group of guys the other day well while back and and one of them said something about well this Greek professor you know he wrote his whole dissertation on para on the preposition para and they were making fun of it and I said have any of you sat down and tried to figure out how important part is and if you don't get that right you're gonna blow the whole text I want to tell you I praise God for the guy who wrote the paper on pata and and my whole point is this look seminaries cannot in there men that probably disagree with me they are not incubators for ministers churches our elders are but what our seminaries seminaries are a place where a man can go not necessarily to get prepared but to get all the tools he needs to spend the rest of his life preparing I want that Greek guy I mean I want that I want that missionary I want him to know Greek I want him know hermeneutics I want him to know he Hebrew I want him to learn how to think in a non contradictory manner in systematic theology and ethics I want all that and if I if I'm a pastor and I'm caring for the flock and visiting hospitals and doing all these things and I'm probably not a Renaissance man I can't do all that but I can call on one of these seminaries in they can and I praise God that in this day and age we do have some of those seminaries but you never have the right to turn that kid over to a seminary because the seminary wasn't ordained by God to take your kid you're the pastor you're the pastor so we've spoken to the the charge of the local church we've spoken to education this next question is how do you in terms of your home foster a proper view of missions in terms of as a father and in terms of parents working together and raising up and training the children in your own home and just be as practical as possible there are lots of parents here that they're excited about missions but they want to communicate that to their children in a way that's balanced and effective well I think several things and more can be added and the other men can add to it one we always had missionaries come into our home so that our children could see the I mean these are real people and interact and talk with them and try to cultivate some interest in an appetite for missions I've taken my children to the mission field to get on airplanes and for them to come go with me so they can see it smell it taste it my children have not been called to missions but I wanted to give them the exposure in our home and overseas if God did call them that they would understand this as well as in our home to speak of missionaries as as the heroes in the body of Christ frontline warriors doing the heavy lifting difficult work tip of the spear as Owen would say I mean they're out there and they are to be held in high esteem in high regard for their sacrifice for the gospel so I mean those are just a couple of practical things and many others could be added I think missionary biographies are very very inspiring and devotional and motivating to set before young children really the ideal of missions it can't always communicate the sacrifice but it does it can communicate well I think the noble and lofty calling of being a missionary so those are just some and others can add to that list but those are just some practical things maybe just a quick one back home in Africa because of the the absence of of literature what I've been doing across the last 50 years of my pastor rate is in the month of June I always have what I call heroes of the faith day where I give by a graphical sketch of some preacher missionary sometimes even a mother like Susanna Wesley we've made our way through that some of the hymn writers and so on so that even where the literature is not as available as it might be for you people here there is an appreciation that we are trading where Giants have trod so perhaps even way you have the books that you drew it might be helpful even within the church context to have something like that in an ongoing way so that God's people especially the younger ones are beginning to realize the real world that has taken place in in achieving the the current situation of Christianity both of you spoke to biographies so dr. Lawson and dr. Ambe way could we just go down the line and is there a particular biography be at a book or that someone could research or is there a particular book on missions that it was uniquely impactful or that if you have a short list of references for someone to to engage in to prepare their people with what might that be a biography or a book on missions to help foster that be it in the home or in the church context I was raised around a lot of biographies and a lot of church history so for my youngest days I just remember hearing the stories but the ones that most impacted me I simply don't remember I can remember the people I can remember the characters that's part of the joy of it it was just part of my life from from a young child and my parents knees hearing these stories one of the missionary biographies that's most impacted me lately and I've forgotten the name of the author for which I apologize but it's a biography on John and Betty stam who were very well known not too long ago and I think have largely been overlooked in recent years but it's published by Christian Focus and a very interesting very compelling story of a couple who gave their lives for the Lord not too long ago but very gripping and very very personally moving and impactful for me for me I'll be a little biased I'll talk about a person who biography I wrote not because I want the book to sell but primarily because of the very reason why I wrote that book it's a lady by the name of all lived OCH she was born in england got saved in new zealand her dad was a pastor she sensed God's call in Johannesburg South Africa and then became part of the team that founded the the Baptist work in in Zambia she was complementarian which is part of the reason why I I love the way she went about the work the the negative bit is that the book that essence come out on her is actually my PhD thesis so let me give you permission to skip the first three chapters completely when you do get it go straight to the fourth chapter and read that biography how she discipled the person who in due season became the first baptist leader in in our part of the world it's the very reason why I want to repeat I wrote rather researched and wrote is because of the impact of that person on my own life thank you olive doc is the name for me the number one book outside of the Bible is the autobiography of George Mueller to grab ahold of the horns of the altar and cry out to God and the power of prayer because that's absolutely essential then the other book would be not well known it's from banner of truth and it's Daniel Rowland's I found Evans wrote it about the Calvinistic Methodists of Wales and the way that he ordered the harvest in the way that he groups people together and he preached and exposited the scripture and then the other book that's had probably one the greatest impacts upon me and it directly involves missions Ian Marie's book Pentecost today with regard to a balanced view of the power and the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit those would be the three books that have most impacted me I would say that I would highly recommend to you the autobiography of John Payton by banner it's over in the bookstore a shout out to all the parents over in the far corner with all of your children if you read this this book you want to see you know how you know questions about how to impact your home and cultivate you know a heart of missions here's a family in Scotland walking over the hills of Scotland six miles to church on the Lord's Day with 11 children and he says in the autobiography that the expositions were so rich that God and the church was never boring it was worth the walk and it's just a thrill you're gonna meet this man and the pages of that book and you're gonna see him go to the New Hebrides and you're gonna see him turn those islands upside down with the gospel but before he ever gets there it gets really nasty and you're gonna see him bury his wife and his child beside the house that he built with his own hands and then he's sick and he's sick again with the same disease that took his wife and child he thinks that he's gonna die numerous times and then God does something very sweet and so I'm gonna stop talking so that you'll go by the book and you'll read it it's long but don't be intimidated with the link that is a thriller so read the book be encouraged and that's what I want to encourage you to read nine resources dr. Lawson's long line of godly men series has numerous biographies in it of missionaries or promoters of the gospel preachers so go over to the bookstore and buy all of them amen and Rita he's gonna he's gonna get me back later by the way parents the torch lighter series is on Amazon Prime has anybody seen this torch lighters on Amazon Prime amazing so well done my the book that is most impacted me is actually more recent it's by Duncan Hamilton it's on Eric little I always is it little or Ladell little little Eric little it's called for the glory I don't know that Hamilton's a Christian but Hamilton tells the story about the protagonist of Chariots of Fire the guy who wins the gold medal refuses to run on Sunday predating chick-fil-a's policy by roughly a hundred years and for the glory lays out what happens after Chariots of Fire after the gold medal the movie focuses on the glory earthly glory I talk about this my breakout later Hamilton focuses on a hundred pages on the humble brutal work of a missionary in a Japanese internment camp as Eric littles body breaks down he sends his wife and his three kids off to Canada he has a daughter that he never meets because of the glory of Christ and you cannot walk away from a story like that if you are a born-again believer in Jesus Christ whatever your vocation unchanged great you know for me it's kind of a toss-up david Brainard's diary which interestingly enough he dies in Edwards home and in some ways becomes Edwards greatest literary contribution by he didn't write it but by compiling and publishing Brainard's diary which ends up igniting the soul of Kari and launching the modern missions movement I tried to give an overview of that in the last church that I pastored and it was just breathtaking to see the sacrifice the extraordinary sacrifice of David Brainerd trying to reach the Native Americans in the Eastern seacoast so you know I would I would say that book and it just the the challenge to pay whatever price is necessary whatever sacrifice would be required to bring the gospel to people who have not heard the gospel so I would say that obviously William Carey's and inquiry is an extraordinary read any William Carey biography would be a great read for you and there's one in the long line series that Michael Hagen wrote that's that that is tremendous just the story of Kerry going to the mission field for 41 or 43 years I can't remember which never leaving never going on a sabbatical I mean even Livingston at least left once Africa to go back to to England but Kerry just buried himself in India seven years until he saw his first convert and his wife goes insane then she dies a son dies he remarries the second wife dies another son dies he's just relentless and I was going to say earlier obstacles to modern missions I would I would say it's just the general attitude of a long obedience in the same direction to keep on keeping on in difficult places rather than going and it's not working and then just bailing out I mean these men went and literally burn their bridges behind them and buried their soul in this work in fact when Livingston died they literally cut his heart out and buried his heart in right yeah they're in Zambia and and then the story of even getting is his his corpse out of the African continent so that the cannibals didn't eat his body and having to wrap it up and put it on a ship and send it back I mean this is just heroic commitment I think it puts just spiritual hair on your chest just to read these these books and and so I like those bhaag or feasts and even if you don't go to the mission field I think it inspires deeper commitment to the cause of Christ right where you're where you're planted so we need an IV hook up of these men just surging through our souls now just by way of the conclusion here one general exhortation if maybe one of you could take this so dr. strand you talked about there's a time to Train young women that are gifted dr. Ambe well you you gave a biography of a female faithful missionary and and Tim challege you've you've written to the the high calling of women and mothers in terms of the young lady so we've given a very high standard needs to be elder qualified it needs to be these expectations and send these men to seminary what does a young lady do that has a zeal zealous desire to to be a participant in the world of missions and if not to provide a critique of everything that's bad we know things are bad but your daughter comes to you dad what can I do she comes to you as a pastor what do I do what kind of just very quick encouragement could we give a young woman in that regard well if my daughter comes to me and tells me that I'm gonna be praying for her husband because she's gonna be under his authority and leadership first of all second of all I would say I preach about missions I preached the Word of God I cultivate that in my home but I'm not home a lot my wife is home a lot with the children so my wife is reading missionary biographies with my children and so we think that women don't have a calling and a high calling in this in this world as far as you know gospel ministry or anything like that well that's absolutely not true but women flourish best when they do what God has called them to do and when women pour into their children first and foremost and and cultivate that atmosphere in their homes their husbands become stronger the churches become stronger and it's just a beautiful thing and so if my daughter said she wants to go to the mission field today I would say let's put the brakes on that let's pray for a husband and then let's see what happens in the future I would just like I would just like to say I think well at least the men I know we do not believe a woman would be an elder in many of the dangerous places in the world I would not want to send I mean I think at times when I've been street preaching I wouldn't want a woman to be standing by my side but here's what you have to understand those qualifications of an elder P heard evangelist say I don't need to have the qualifications of an elder because I'm an evangelist but what Paul's doing there he's simply describing a mature Christian an elder should be a mature Christian a woman should be a mature Christian a woman needs just as much theology as a man a woman grows in Christ just like a man through knowledge of the Word of God through prayer through the grace of God and that's very important to understand also I read a statistic I don't know who it was from but they estimated that you know well the article was something about women believe that their limb because they can't preach them in but if you take all the women in the world and I think every child under 15 it makes up for 75% of the population women can do a lot of work the thing is that really bothers me I think we have Martha piece here there's a woman it's a perfect example God has used her all over the world because she knows the Scriptures I'm so tired of women getting together men get together have a conference on the Trinity or justification women get together and the only thing they teach them is if the world gives you lemons learn how to turn it into lemonade women don't need that they need theology and all over the world when I go into the when when I go into the bush when I'm when I'm in deep jungle in Peru I want you to know some are high up in the mountains of the Andes guess what the men are all gathered there most of the women aren't there because they're illiterate and you talk about one of the greatest unreached people groups in the world are women and we but we need women who know this book and they can be mightily used of God on the mission field and then lastly I'll say this you know people will look back at a mary celeste Seraph Calabar and other women missionaries and Amy Carmichael and you know we'll say well they shouldn't have done that or they shouldn't have done this well my my opinion is this Debra shouldn't have done that either but when the men are so weak God doesn't use them he will raise up women as a rebuke to the men so we need to rise up and be the men of God so they can be the women of God that they were called to be well thank you man you've invited us to a conversation and we're very very grateful for that and we just wanted to say thank you oh okay well thank you sir and and the spelling of the missionary because that I think Oh leave oh L iv'e thankfully her middle name is Kerry she was named after William Carey who was her uncle and then doc is Dee okay [Music] well thank you men very much and we're going to continue to look forward to hearing from you and participating in worship as some of you men they're yet to continue to preach and teach as we all sing together but we're grateful for your involvement and commitment to the work of the advancement of the church throughout the world so thank you man

Channel: G3 Ministries

Views: 75,133

Rating: 4.8574181 out of 5

Keywords: Christianity, Jesus, Missions, Church

Id: 5y3rzn5yfQY

Length: 62min 31sec (3751 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 17 2019