By Billy Hoffman
Stewardship Development Specialist, TBC
Billy Hoffman
Is God leading you and your church to share Christ where He is not known? I ask it this way because spreading the gospel is both an individual as well as a Christian community activity. This is the third in a series of articles to assist you to discover a biblically-based process for doing that. We continue reviewing Acts 13 to discover the pattern of the call and empowerment of the first missions team from the church at Antioch. From this we see there are three things in play which led to moving the gospel into new territory — spiritual resources, human resources, and tangible resources. Until God changes the nature of the universe those three basic elements are always involved in gospel advance. The order of employing the three is also important. It’s somewhat like constructing a building — it’s important to pour the concrete after all of the underground plumbing and electrical has been installed. If you reverse the order, you’ll have problems.
The first article in the Oct. 29 issue of the Baptist and Reflector explored the “spiritual” resources required for the task. The second article in the Nov. 9 issue of the B&R described the next resource required for us to invest to advance the gospel. It is you and me — the “body of Christ.” Human activity is required to advance the gospel. This is only because God has willed it to be so.
The final resource category to invest includes money and tangible things needed for a specific strategy to succeed. “Tangible” things can be computers, computer chips for cell phones, videos, and gospel literature, etc. In other words, it includes any and all goods and services in the marketplace needed to implement a disciple making strategy.
You might ask, “How does the passage in Acts 13 support this claim of investing money and other tangible things to advance the gospel?” The answer is found in Acts 13:4, “So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus.” The last time I checked, no one ever secured legal passage on a ship unless they paid the fare. Money was needed in order to take the gospel to places still unreached — in this case, Cyprus.
It’s the same today. Missionaries “sent out by the Holy Spirit” still need financial resources to secure transportation to an area where Christ is unknown, housing where they can live, and gospel “tools” essential for communicating the truth of God’s Word to those who have never heard. This reality leads to what some consider the obvious question, “What’s the most effective and efficient way to financially take the gospel to unreached people groups?”
Effectiveness and efficiency isn’t really the initial criteria to judge financial (tangible) investment. The strategy drives the investment. For example, if only $200 a month is needed to go from village to village in Africa to share the gospel using a “Chronological Bible Storying Cloth” and leave it with the new believers to share with others, that’s great. However, it’s also great, if $5,000 a month is needed to rent an apartment in downtown Tokyo, Japan, in order to build relationships with neighbors in order to invite them to a home Bible study. The monthly amount, $200 or $5,000, is driven by the strategy and the cultural context. Effectiveness and efficiency will be judged periodically to determine whether the Holy Spirit directs toward a new strategy. Some strategies require a tremendous amount of time and effort in sowing before the joy of reaping takes place. We should be just as excited to participate in sowing as reaping.
It takes all three resources to advance the gospel — spiritual, human, and tangible. Every effort must be made to make sure none of the three are lacking. It may surprise you, but there was a time when the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention had more financial resources than was needed to support the missionaries and strategies at the time. Multiple communications were sent to overseas personnel encouraging them to request funds to support new initiatives and evangelistic efforts. What was lacking at the time was human resources — Southern Baptists were not surrendering to the call to the mission field. Now it’s the opposite of that. There are qualified missionaries ready to go but funds are lacking to send them.
Perhaps, at times, sufficient prayer, fasting, or receiving a word from the Holy Spirit is lacking. Is one or more lacking in your life or your church? It starts with the kind of commitment that believes it’s intolerable for anyone in the world to spend another day without access to hearing of the saving grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Will you and your church make that commitment?
