The Training of Nationals

What do you think of when you think of missions?   

Maybe you think of some great pioneer missionary who opened a continent for Christ like Livingston in Africa or perhaps Carey in India.  My mind almost automatically goes to Adoniram Judson who opened the great country of Burma for Christ.  He gave them their first Bible and Bible dictionary which is still widely used and revered today all over the country. There are still millions of people in the 10/40 window who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.  However there are multitudes of existing national believers scattered all over the world who are believers in Jesus Christ who simply lack the training and equipping to spread the gospel and start churches.  Evangelism that costs us thousands of dollars a month to send personnel, costs nationals only pennies to do themselves.  

Perhaps when you think of missions you think of a short-term missions trip which brought you into direct contact with a mission field and people who you had the opportunity to help in some way.  Whatever the case might be, our memories of missions reflect a longing in the Christian's heart to be on the front line of what God is doing around this globe to fulfill His plan to bring the nations top Christ and glory to Himself from every corner of the earth.  It is one of the most exhilarating elements of what serving Jesus Christ can look like.

However, let me ask you a personal question.  If you were to define what the true essence of missionary activity is and what it requires, what would you say?  We might be able to say alot of things but what I'm asking is: What is the bottom line of the mission?  Can you say it in one short sentence?

I believe that if we boil down the Great Commission of Christ and other key mission passages in the New Testament into one short memorable sentence it would only need to have three words.  Are you ready?  Here it is:

Train the Nationals.

That is what God has called us to do!  The modern day churches in this age who support global missions on the average give about 70-90% of their missions resources to those who are doing just 10% of the actual mission work of reaching people and starting churches.  At the same time, they give about 10-30% to those who are doing 90% of the actual mission work of reaching people with the gospel and starting churches around the world.  Do you see the problem there?  In short, we have it backwards!

We ought to directing the majority of our resources strategically to those who are already on the fields, who already know and speak the language, and who already know the culture and love the people!  Those are the national Christian leaders!  

 GBTF is busy around our globe training the nationals to do the work of the ministry more strategically and effectively because they are uniquely positioned to do it better!  Nationals can do the ministry much more effectively than we can by simply sending Westerners, and they can do it far more economically.  Check out Globaltrain.org or GBTF.net and just see what God is doing.   And then share our ministry with others who might want to be part of training the nationals!