4 Ministries--Send (Involve)
Luke 10:1-2 Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come. And He was saying to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest."Acts 11:19-26 So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews alone. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. The news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch. Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord; for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And considerable numbers were brought to the Lord. And he left for Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for an entire year they met with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch."
2 Timothy 2:2 The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
by Study-Leader @ 9:46 AM
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This week's study attempts to characterize the ministry of sending. There are at least three aspects of sending. As a "next step" to the ministry of building, primarily, it is preparing and equipping workers for the harvest. In the Luke 10 passage, when Jesus sent out the 70 disciples, notice they were men who received the focus of His earthly ministry. There was the tighter group of 12 disciples, then the inner circle of Peter, James & John. But Jesus had been building into the lives of all of these men, and now He was ready to send them out. And please also notice, "he sent them out ahead of Him...where He Himself was going to come." He was continuing to carefully observe and follow up on their work. His goal, after letting them see for themselves the great need of the people for Jesus' message of hope, was to impart to them a vision of sending, awakening ownership of the message of His Kingdom, and connecting them in prayer to God's Great Commssion, when He told them to "pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send forth laborers."
In doing this, he directs us to the second aspect of sending: praying for, and enabling the work of the harvest. This is something we can all do right now. Pray for God to send Christian laypeople, pastors and missionaries into the world to win people and build them up to be sent out to others. When you pray, be ready to listen if God ask you to be involved in this hands-on. In Isaiah 6, Isaiah gets a vision of God's glory and hears Him say, "whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" You get a sense of Isaiah's desperation, seemingly astonished that God has given him a personal vision but issued a general call, "here I am! Send me." When God issues an invitation like that, you cannot say, "here am I, send my sister!" A second way you can be involved in sending is to finance the work of God's Kingdom like Mary Magdalene, Joana and Susanna as well as our next character, Barnabas.
Because sometimes God does call someone else, and may lead you to be a sender in the third primary aspect: in being prepared to suffer the departure of dear friends who have been called away to the harvest. When my wife and I were called to join Campus Crusade for Christ, we were a little surprised to find that many of our dear friends from church weren't that happy about it. The reason: they didn't want to see us go. These dear friends pray for us, help finance our work and make it possible for us to serve...but we greatly miss their company. I can imagine this being the case in our Acts 11 passage. Barnabas wasn't someone the members of the Jerusalem church would have thought they could "spare." He wasn't a pew-warmer, he was among the best they had, called "son of encouragement," who funded their ministry by selling his property in Acts 4. (Early Christian sources, in fact, have identified Barnabas as one of the original 70 who were sent out by Jesus in our Luke 10 passage.) You see a vignette of Barnabas' encouraging heart when you see him finding God's hand of blessing on the work in Antioch and encouraging the workers who were already there--but leaving briefly to go get Paul. Barnabas was investing himself in Paul, having been the primary initial advocate of him in Acts 9 after his conversion, when the other disciples were all afraid of the High Priest's former chief persecutor. Motivated by the Holy Spirit, Barnabas knew God was going to use Paul and he took advantage of this opportunity to encourage him by exposing him to work God was really blessing.
Paul, of course, goes on from this initial missionary experience to evangelize and plant churches all over the Roman Empire, writing most of the New Testament in the process. At the end of his ministry, Paul writes his last instructions to Timothy, a man whom he had found in Lystra and involved in his work, to the extent that he called him his "son" in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy. "Entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." These three passages create a beautiful, full-orbed picture of the process of equipping and sending out workers into the harvest. Jesus Himself sends out the 70, possibly including Barnabas, Barnabas is sent out from the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem and involves Paul in his missionary work in Antioch. Paul involves Timothy in all aspects of his ministry, eventually installing him as the pastor of the church at Ephesus and encouraging him to continue the practice of encouraging, equipping and entrusting the continued work to others.
Like Paul, sometimes the "sendee" goes on to surpass the work of the sender: in 1858, a man named Edward Kimbell was a Sunday School teacher at Chicago's Plymouth Congregational Church. He felt led to visit the workplace of a young shoe salesman in his class where he led him to Christ. Moody became the greatest evangelist of the 19th century, preaching to crowds as large as 30,000 during and after the time of America's Civil War. At one such meeting in England, a Pastor named Frederick B. Meyer was encouraged to begin evangelistic meetings. At one of Meyer's meetings on an American college campus, a student named J. Wilbur Chapman came to Christ. Chapman began working as an evangelist in the YMCA, where he met a former pro baseball player named Billy Sunday, who had recently come to Christ at a mission meeting. Chapman encouraged him to get involved in evangelistic work and Sunday went on to become the first evangelist to use the new medium of radio to great effect and the most successful evangelist of the World War I era. Sunday once held a meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, influencing a group of local businessmen to begin meeting together to pray for revival. Ten years later, in 1934, another great evangelist named Mordecai Hamm visited Charlotte and held a revival, during which Billy Graham received Christ. Imagine being that humble but obedient Sunday School teacher and watching this progression from heaven, accompanied by that "great cloud of witnesses." A "sender" in this sense is a kind of a "coach." If you can picture the "winning" ministry as the role of "recruiter," the "building" ministry as the role of "teacher" or "trainer," and the sending ministry as the role of coach...and as you think about a coach, realize this role encompasses the other two! A coach recruits players, teaches them and trains them, continually identifying their gifts and talents as well as their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, building them up for their role as members of the team. Does this mirror the following passage from Ephesians?
for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:12-16)
When we talked about the ministry of "winning" we connected it with the spiritual gift of evangelism. "Building" is connected with the spiritual gift of teaching. Sending is connected with the spiritual gifts of pastoring and exhortation, or encouragement. Paul's charge to Timothy the pastor to "do the work of an evangelist" reminds us, however, to not leave work we've been called to do undone because we may not feel specifically gifted in that area. Serving as a sender means being involved in the whole spectrum as God allows you. Christianity, it has been said, must not become a spectator sport like NFL football, where 22 men in desperate need of rest are watched by 22,000 in desperate need of exercise!Mobilizing others is crucial to the art of spiritual multiplication. Someone did the math recently and expressed multiplication in these interesting terms: if Pentecost, where 3,000 were brought to Christ, was repeated every single day, but no other evangelism took place, it would take 5400 years to win 6 billion to Christ. But if God's people multiply as He intends, with each person becoming a witness himself or herself, 7 billion can be reached in a mere 21 years! Catch a vision for this level of involvement and be open to God showing you where you can win, build and send others for His Kingdom!
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