Worship Centred Motivation for Mission
February 4th, 2010
Wayne Cowpland (Dundee Central)
Over the past few years Miriam and I have travelled to many interesting places around the globe where we’ve engaged with many missionaries old and young alike. Besides overseas travel, we’ve been privileged to visit regularly the vast majority of Christian Unions in Scottish Universities and lead short term trips. As we’ve engaged with those who’ve gone out, one of the key incentives has been to see those who don’t yet know God come to worship Him.
Thinking through how we communicate to a new generation is vitally important. For many of my generation and older, the motivation for ‘missions’ has been and still is, ‘their blood is on your hands if you don’t go’. It’s a message I’ve preached myself. However, if the truth be known very few respond.
Why is it that whenever there’s a mission focused service in some of our churches, the attendance is poor? The annual Scottish University CU Missions tour is no different. Is it possible they already know the statistics of those who’ve never heard the Gospel? Is it possible they know the command of Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations; they know the mandate of Jesus to go into all the world and preach the Good News to all Creation; they know the words of Jesus, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you”. So why don’t these things connect? Why are we not seeing more and more taking up the call to “go”? Why are we seeing an ever decreasing Christian population from our churches moving out into missions?
What’s going to make a difference?
If we want to connect with this generation then it’s important that we do it in the right way. There is a place for challenging people to move out on the basis that if they don’t, then many will go to a lost eternity and there’s a place for expressing Jesus’ commands to go, but that’s not enough. Our message needs to be much more! Worship centred motivation for mission needs to be the incentive. A burning passion for the glory of Jesus!
Mission is often seen as just another activity of the church but we need to give it a higher profile. We need to have the mind of Christ. If we can communicate that to our congregations and all that that entails we will see a difference. When we have the mind of Christ, we see that God’s heartbeat is for mission. We will see from Genesis 12 (where God says to Abraham, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you”) right through to Revelation 5:9; 7:9 (people from every nation, tribe, people and language worshipping before the throne) that God will accomplish all that he set out to do.
This is God’s passion, and if we have the mind of Christ we will want the things that he wants and desire to be involved. It will then be Him motivating us to go. When we worship the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, our focus is on Him and that will naturally lead to going out. Christ in us is contagious!
If we’re going to see a new generation fired up for mission then Worship centred motivation for mission needs to be taught. If we can paint a picture (as described in Revelation 5:9 & 7:9) of all peoples worshipping before the throne then this will be a great incentive rather than people being made to feel guilty because they’re not following commands.
