In his preface to the revised (2004) edition of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Pastor Mark Dever has a very interesting potential ‘tenth mark’:
“If I had to add one more mark to what you’re about to read, it wouldn’t be missions or prayer or worship; but it would touch on all of those things. I think that I would add that we want our congregations to be outward-looking. We are to be upwardly focused – God-centered. But we are also, I think, supposed to reflect God’s own love as we look out on other people and on other congregations.
This can show itself in many ways. I long for our congregation to integrate better our vision for global missions and our efforts in local evangelism. If we have a commitment to help evangelize an unreached people group abroad, why haven’t we done a better job in trying to find members of this people group in our metropolitan area? Why aren’t our missions and evangelism better integrated?
We do pray in the pastoral prayer each Sunday morning for the prosperity of the Gospel in other lands and through other local congregations. We’re just now bringing someone on staff to help us plant another church. We as a church help to sponsor 9Marks Ministries, and through them work with many other churches for their benefit. We have “Weekenders” at which we welcome guest pastors and elders, seminarians and other church leaders. We have internships for those preparing for the pastorate. We have curriculum we write and talks we give. All of this is for the building up of other congregations.
As a pastor, I am certain that I need to realize that, under God, the local church is responsible for raising up the next generation of leaders. No Bible college, course, or seminary can do this. And such raising up of new leaders—for here and abroad—should be one of the goals of our church.” [pp. 17-18]
Michael Green is helpful on this theme of outward-looking churches:
“Antioch itself was a missionary situation. It was a young church which owed its origin to informal missionaries. It could well have argued that they had plenty to do in Antioch, and could not bother about anything beyond their borders. But… Antioch was a church which looked beyond itself… Hence their support of the Jerusalem Christians when famine struck. Hence their readiness to send Paul and Barnabas on the missionary journey to Cyprus and South Asia Minor… Just imagine the sacrifice involved in allowing two of their most gifted teachers and leaders to depart on some mad excursion, not knowing… whether they would ever see them again.
Is there not an important lesson here? We shall be fired to evangelism in our own locality in proportion as we are willing to neglect our own needs and look to needier places… which we can support. It is the church which waters others that is herself watered. But how few churches seem to believe this.” [from Evangelism Now and Then, quoted by Jeff Read in The First Principles: Building for Future Generations]
There's a wonderful example of Proverbs 11:25 in the 19th c Scottish church and Roland Allen earlier made a similar point to Michael Green about Antioch and the vital importance of an outward dynamic:
…the centres at which St. Paul established his Churches were [centrifugal] centres indeed, they were not centres which were self-centred, they were not centres which absorbed and restrained...
…Concentrated missions at strategic centres, if they are to win the province, must be centres of evangelistic life. In great cities are great prisons as well as great railway stations. …It may be a safe in which all the best intellect of the day is shut up, or it may be a mint from which the coin of new thought is put into circulation. A great many of our best men are locked up in strategic centres. If once they get in they find it hard to get out. At many of the strategic points where we have established our concentrated missions it is noticeable that the Church rather resembles a prison or a safe or a swamp than a mint or a spring or a railway station. We are sometimes so enamoured with the strategic beauty of a place that we spend our time in fortifying it whilst the opportunity for a great campaign passes by unheeded and neglected.
St. Paul… seized strategic points because he had a strategy. The foundation of Churches in them was part of a campaign. In his hands they became the sources of rivers, mints from which the new coin of the Gospel was spread in every direction. They were centres from which he could start new work with new power. But they were this not only because they were naturally fitted for this purpose, but because his method of work was so designed [Missionary methods : St. Paul’s or ours? A study of the Church in the four provinces, 1912, Chapter 2]
I'm reminded of a surprising command of Christ:
“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest.” (Luke 10:2)
The prayer Jesus is commanding is for more workers to bring in the harvest of people that the Lord has prepared for Himself. It’s a famous prayer for missions mobilisation. But notice who is being told to pray. It is those who Jesus is sending out (Luke 10:2). Missionaries. Disciples commissioned by Jesus himself to preach the kingdom and prepare the way for the king.
Not only are they told to go but as they go they are told to pray for others to go. Others meaning not just their friends but who are not ‘following along with us’ (Luke 9:49). Others who are part of other groups, other denominations, other church tribes and circles. Others who are not like us or with us. Others who we will be tempted to condemn and scorn. Others who are… dare we say it… Competition.
It is so easy, so human, to start thinking in terms of competition and market and share of the pie. To start thinking of my field, my strategy, my programme, my plant, my empire. So when another church or organisation comes along that seems to be doing the same thing as we are or targeting the same group of people or working in the same area the default is so easily not to be overjoyed and praise God for more harvesters in the harvest field but to feel threatened, annoyed, jealous, scornful.
Jesus wants to explode all of that, to widen my tiny vision to a kingdom vision, to see His Kingdom, His Church. To see the vastness of the task. To see his sovereignty over the harvest and the harvesters. To see ‘competitors’ as fellow labourers who are ‘for us’ (Luke 9:50).
What Jesus is calling for is for a church planter to pray for other church planters to be raised up, from other denominations, to plant churches even in the same area he is targeting.
Because the harvest is huge. And the harvest is not ours.
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