1. The church must have an outward focus and strategy.
2. At least 30% of the church’s budget must go to missions.
3. The church must have an on-going training program for missionary candidates.
4. Missions education must be integrated into all the programs of the church.
5. The church must send its own people.
6. The church must be concerned about and pray for the lost.
7. The church must have a pastor that leads them in vision and outreach.
8. The church must be interested in helping other churches in missions.
9. The church must have a strong evangelism program focusing on its community.
BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR MISSIONS
STORY of Bethlehem Baptist Church
720 13th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Senior Pastor: Dr. John Piper
Missions Pastor: Tom Steller
In Minneapolis there is a church that I am going to say possibly considers itself not the luckiest but rather the happiest church on the face of the earth. Bethlehem Baptist is a church filled with Christians
who have a passion for missions. This passion is driven by a belief that missions must be the battle cry of every Christian and that God’s glory and the enthusiastic worship of his Son are the goals of missions.
“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church,” says Tom Steller, Bethlehem’s missions pastor.
That doesn’t sound like the best way to get to first base in a book on America’s top missions churches, but that’s what Tom Steller and John Piper tell the congregation at Bethlehem Baptist on a regular basis.
“The glory of God is the ultimate goal of the church,” they affirm.
The ethos at Bethlehem is missions. Most people in the pew understand what missions means
and where it fits into the life and breath of the church.
Piper says it best, “The final goal of all things is that God might be worshiped with white-hot affection by a redeemed company of countless numbers from every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Revelation 5:9 and 7:9).
Missions exists because worship doesn’t.
When the kingdom finally comes in glory, missions will cease.
Missions is penultimate; worship is ultimate. If we forget this and reverse the roles, the passion and the power for both diminish” (from Driving Convictions behind World Missions at Bethlehem by John Piper and John Steller).
People at Bethlehem Baptist eat, sleep, and breathe this truth.
It is at the heart and soul of the church.
It’s all about the supremacy of God in missions.
But it was not always so. Although Bethlehem Baptist had a great heritage of missionaries and missions focus when Piper came to be the pastor, missions was no longer a priority.
Tom Steller shared with me a glimpse of Bethlehem’s pilgrimage to their present place at “first base” in missions.
History
In 1890 Bethlehem Baptist Church, then called First Swedish Baptist Church, ordained and commissioned Ola and Minnie Hanson to work with the Kachin people in northern Burma.
The Hansons represent the kind of early missionary that was sent out by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Board, before the Baptist General Conference had its own mission board. The Hansons lived among the Kachin for thirty-seven years, preaching, planting churches, and translating the Scriptures.
In 1927 Ola presented the complete Bible in Kachin to the Kachin Baptist Convention. He returned to America and died shortly afterward. Since that time, there has been a people movement to Christ and about a people movement to Christ and about 90 percent of the six hundred thousand Kachin people profess Christ.
The esteem of the Kachin for Ola Hanson is profound and many consider him their spiritual father. In fact this esteem was so deep that in 1990 a Kachin believer, Hken Naw, made the pilgrimage all the way to Minneapolis to see their “mother church”—the church that sent Ola Hanson to tell them about Jesus.
When Tom Steller saw this unusually dressed stranger after church one Sunday morning, he
went over to introduce himself. Hken was studying at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and told Tom how he and his wife, Tsin, had longed to come and see the home of the Hansons.
In 1995 Tom had the thrill of going to Burma to represent Bethlehem Baptist at the Kachin Baptist Convention. Instead of the three thousand believers that were expected, thirty thousand came—many to see the pastor from Ola Hanson’s church.
STATS
Sunday attendance: 2,000
Missions budget as percent of total budget: 31 percent
Number of missionaries: 58 from home church (representing 235 people with children and spouses) 3 outside (representing 10 people with spouse and children)
Missions staff: 1
Most valuable missions agencies:
Baptist General Conference
Wycliffe
SIM
Frontiers
The Kachin live in northern Burma—southern Burma was where the famous Adoniram Judson went to preach in 1812. The Kachin, however, were considered “wild dogs” and when the early missionaries asked the king of Burma if they could teach the Kachin to read, he laughed and pointed to his dog and said they would have more success teaching his dog!
When Tom Steller went to Burma, people came up to him, took his hand, and said, “Thank-you so much for sending Ola Hanson. We were wild men. Look at us now. God is faithful.”
Tom says, “And now, the Kachin church is reaching out to evangelize unreached people groups around them in Southeast Asia. No glory to Ola Hanson. No glory to Bethlehem Baptist Church. No glory to the Kachin Baptist Convention. All glory to God alone.”
In more recent history another event dramatically impacted missions at Bethlehem Baptist (BBC) in November 1983. The guest speaker for the annual missions conference was unable to come to Bethlehem. As a last minute resort, Pastor John Piper was asked to fill in. That event was possibly the single most significant factor in changing the face of missions at BBC.
As John Piper prepared the missions messages, he was overwhelmed with “the supremacy of God in missions.”He realized that missions is central to the work of the church and got excited about what God wanted to do. During the missions conference, his church caught the excitement.
Preparing the missions message had presented a big challenge to John Piper, but God used it in the life of the church and in Dr. Piper’s heart.
Tom Steller says that things in missions at Bethlehem Baptist have never been the same since. John Piper is a guy, who, like many other pastors, admits he manged to make it through seminary without taking even one course on missions.
This confirms my conviction that if the pastor gets mobilized for missions, then the people will be as well.
One Sunday morning in March of 1984, Dr. Piper announced that anyone in the church who seriously and strongly believed that God was calling him or her into missions and would like to earnestly pray about it was welcome at the manse the following Friday evening. John Piper and his wife, Noel, calling it “Missions at the Manse,” expected that thirty people might come. That Friday evening they counted
about ninety people squeezed into their home. God was doing something.
This began a process of discussing what missions was really supposed to look like at Bethlehem Baptist. They asked, How does a church do a good job supporting missions?
Soon after that, another defining moment took place. During BBC’s pursuit of an effective missions strategy, it was suggested that the U. S. Center for World Mission (USCWM), in Pasadena, California, might be a resource.
Some people had heard about the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course that was offered at the center. Perspectives is a course covering the biblical, historical, cultural, and strategic perspectives of world evangelism. This training program has had a profound effect on churches wherever it is taught. I can honestly say that in almost every church I visit, if the Perspectives course has been taught, or the missions staff has attended one, then they are moving and growing
in missions.
About twenty-five eager Bethlehemites decided to take the course. They crammed into several cars and headed off to the U. S. Center for World Mission. Two weeks later they returned, informed and transformed. As they said, “We had our socks blown off!”
The outcome of the experience at USCWM was a bunch of mobilized members who wanted to make a difference in missions at Bethlehem. One urgent desire they had was to host a Perspectives course at Bethlehem. The next year that happened, with 120 people taking the course. They have offered it every other year since and Tom Steller believes it is one of the fundamental reasons the church sustains its
vitality for missions.
Another crucial resource in the early years of Bethlehem’s missions renewal was ACMC (Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment). It remains a vital source for Bethlehem’s missions awareness, and regularly people from Bethlehem go to the national ACMC conference where they are updated on the latest strategies and initiatives in global missions, hearing creative ideas and finding out what other
churches are doing.
Heart
As Bethlehem came under the influence of USCWM, ACMC, and other organizations, the leadership began to pray and work through what missions was supposed to be at BBC. Fourteen convictions came out of the discussions and study and are now the driving convictions behind world missions at Bethlehem. They are a powerful summary of the biblical mandate for world missions, the best biblical foundation for a missions vision that I have seen anywhere. As Piper and Steller say,The leadership knows them and loves them and they shape all Bethlehem does. To be a part of the community of Bethlehem means to know these fourteen convictions. I will list them as they are described in the 1996 church publication written by John Piper and Tom Steller, Driving Convictions behind World Missions at Bethlehem. I ask that you read them through carefully, read them a number of times, and then read them and talk about them with the missions committee at your church.
Conviction 1.
God’s goal in creation and redemption is a missionary goal because our God is a missionary God. Jesus Christ himself in his self-emptying and in his identification with sinful humanity to the point of his substitutionary death on the cross is the perfect manifestation of the missionary heart of God.
Conviction 2.
God is passionately committed to his fame. God’s ultimate goal is that his name be known and praised by all the peoples of the earth. We believe that the central command of world missions is Isaiah 12:4: Make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted.
Conviction 3.
Worship is the fuel and the goal of missions. A God-centered theology must be a missionary theology. If you say that you love the glory of God, the test of your authenticity is whether you love the spread of that glory among all the peoples of the world. To worship him is to share that passion for his supremacy among the nations.
Conviction 4.
God’s passion to be known and praised by all the peoples of the earth is not selfish, but loving. God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the ultimately loving act. The one and only reality in the universe that can fully and eternally satisfy the human heart is the glory of God—the beauty of all that God is for us in Jesus. Therefore, God would not be ing unless he upholds and displays and magnifies that glory for our everlasting
enjoyment.
Conviction 5.
God’s purpose to be praised among all the nations cannot fail. It is an absolutely certain promise. It is going to happen. Nothing can stop him: I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). The gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come (Matt. 24:14).
Conviction 6.
Only in God will our souls be at rest. The one transcultural reality that unites every person of every culture is that God has set eternity in our hearts (Eccles. 3:11).
Conviction 7.
Domestic ministries are the goal of frontier missions. What this means is that frontier missions is the exportation of the possibility and practice of domestic ministries in the name of Jesus to unreached people groups. The frontier people honor the domestic people by agreeing that their work is worth exporting. The domestic people honor the frontier people by insisting that what they export is worth doing here.
Conviction 8.
The missionary task is focused on peoples, not just individual people, and is therefore finishable. Many of us used to have the vague notion that
missions was simply winning as many individuals to Christ as possible in other places. But now we have come to see that the unique task of missions, as opposed to evangelism, is to plant the church among people groups where it does not exist. When the church has been planted in all the people groups of the earth, and the elect have been gathered in from all the tongues and tribes and nations, then the great commission will be complete. The task of missions is planting the church among all the peoples, not necessarily winning all the people.
Conviction 9.
The need of the hour is for thousands of new Paul-type missionaries—a fact which is sometimes obscured by the quantity of Timothy-type missionaries. Our prayer for Bethlehem is that we put a very high priority on raising up and sending frontier missionaries—Paul-type missionaries. Not that we diminish the sacrifice and preciousness of Timothy-type missionaries, but we realize what the utterly critical, uniquely missionary need is in the world, namely, there are thousands of people groups with no access to the saving knowledge of Jesus. Only Paul-type missionaries can reach them. That must be a huge priority for us. Without the gospel everything is in vain. A crucial role that the Timothy-type missionaries play is to raise up Paul-type missionaries among the peoples with whom they are working.
Conviction 10.
It is the joyful duty and the awesome privilege of every local church to send out missionaries in a manner worthy of God (3 John 6).There is a big difference between a church that has missionaries (on the back of the bulletin or as a line item in their budget) and a church that sends missionaries. These missionaries should be grown and identified by the church.
Conviction 11.
We are called to a wartime lifestyle for the sake of going and sending. To send in a manner worthy of God and to go for the sake of the Name, we must constantly fight the deception that we are living in peacetime where we think that the luxury of self-indulgence is the only power that can break the boredom. O may God open our eyes to what is at stake in the war raging between heaven and hell.
Conviction 12.
Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie and not a domestic intercom. In wartime, prayer takes on a different significance. Jesus said to his disciples,"You did not choose me but I chose you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain in order that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He may give to you (John 15:16). Notice the amazing logic of this verse. He gave them a mission in order that the
Father would have prayers to answer. This means that prayer is for mission. It is designed to advance the kingdom.
Conviction 13.
Our aim is not to persuade everyone to become a missionary, but to help everyone become a World Christian. Those who are not called to go out for the sake of the Name are called to stay for the sake of the Name.
Conviction 14.
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him; and our satisfaction in him is greatest when it expands to embrace others—even when this involves suffering.
The conviction at Bethlehem Baptist is, When it comes to world missions, there are only three kinds of Christians: zealous goers, zealous senders, and disobedient. It is their passion to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.
My Call
What is happening at Bethlehem is not just a lot of talk and theology.
It is total, biblically based involvement in missions.
I am convinced that if churches in America were to get a grip on this kind of thinking concerning
Bible-based missions, we would be overwhelmed and amazed at what God would do.
