2,400,000,000 people now live on planet earth who have no access to the gospel of the grace of God in Christ. Only 5% of Christian workers are seeking to bring the gospel to them. Someone has said, “No person should hear the gospel twice until every person has heard it once”. As a young man training to be a pastor, I had to struggle with this reality. Why would I pastor one more American church while millions of people had no church at all. During Bible College, I pastored a church in an inner city neighborhood. Then I took a church near the seminary where I was studying. When my training was complete I applied and was accepted by a mission board to pastor an English speaking church in Ecuador, but was disappointed when the church chose someone else. How could I live with the need of the world while pastoring a church in America? God showed me the answer. He led me to build “Antioch Churches” in America. What is an “Antioch Church”? In Acts 11-13 we see a missionary-sending and supporting church. They sent their best people to places where the gospel had not been heard. They gave their money, their people and their prayers to reach the world with the gospel of the grace of God. Local evangelism was a model for foreign missions. They were an upward-focused church (authentic worship), and an outward-focused church (evangelism and missions) because they were a properly inward-focused church (learning and holiness). They shared the love, joy and peace of Jesus locally and to the ends of the earth. That is what God has done at Limerick Chapel, where I am now the Senior Pastor. Out of a congregation of less than 300, 40 of our members are on the mission field full time. Thirteen families, one single lady and many short-term missions trips have made us a lean, cheerful gospel machine. Our people are training pastors in Asia and Africa, leading other missionaries in Europe, recruiting “tent-making” missionaries, setting up transmitters worldwide for Christian radio, planting churches in post-Christian Europe, reaching Mormons in the USA and remote tribal people in South America. We are doing locally what they are doing worldwide. They are doing there what we taught them to do here. We visit them on the field and they live in missionary housing we provide for their furloughs. 35% of our offerings go to missions. God has provided for us and them in miraculous ways. My person conviction is that the only excuse a pastor has for serving in America is to raise up a church that is an “Antioch Church”. Paul Seger said, “God does not measure a church by how many they bring in, but by how many they send out.” It is all for God’s glory! What a joy it will be to stand around the throne of God and praise Him with those of every ethnic group on earth. He is worthy of praise! Missions begins with authentic worship and concludes with heavenly worship. Glory to God!!!
