What Is Church-Centered Missions?

Ahmed was a Gulf Arab who heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, repented, and believed. Muslim converts from the Arabian Gulf are extremely rare, so Western missionaries excitedly pursued Ahmed for friendship, encouragement, and discipling. But what they didn’t do was direct him to a local church. Although they privately spent time with Ahmed, he had:

• no pastoral oversight (Heb. 13:17)
• no weekly worship (Heb. 10:25)
• no church fellowship (Acts 2:42)
• no spiritual formation through sermons, corporate prayers, and gospel ordinances (1 Tim. 4:13; 1 Tim. 2:1; 1 Cor. 11:33)
• no opportunities to serve others in the church (Rom. 12:7)
• no congregational accountability (Matt. 18:17).

Ahmed was taught to believe that, as a member of an under-reached people group, he was an exception to the rule—a churchless Christian. So, he faced the difficulties and discouragements of the Christian life without God’s people.

Fast-forward twenty years—the missionaries are gone. They returned to the US, and Ahmed is left alone to fend for himself spiritually.

Why was Ahmed not folded into the life of a local church from the beginning, whether Arabic or English, established or “underground”? The missionaries might say it was because of security risks, or to preserve a pure indigenous expression of Gulf Arab Christianity in case others joined him, or because the two or three missionaries were his church (though they weren’t). The problem was that these missionaries had a privatized understanding of the faith.

Modern missions often downplays the church. Missiology is downstream from ecclesiology. What we believe about the church will influence how we carry out the Great Commission. And that makes all the difference to people like Ahmed. Converts don’t need private coaching. They need a church.

Don’t misunderstand me—there remain many missionaries who faithfully bear witness and biblically shepherd God’s people in difficult contexts. But the trend over the last several decades in missions favors pragmatism and minimalism at the expense of the church.

Downplaying the Church

Why is modern missions trending away from healthy churches? Because (too often):

1. Sending churches fail to equip future missionaries with a biblical ecclesiology before they go overseas.

2. Sending churches outsource their training responsibilities to missions agencies and parachurch organizations.

(That’s not to criticize all missions agencies and parachurch organizations. Technical specialization is needed, especially in frontier missions. For example, Radius International provides specialized pre-field missions training that’s crucial in areas of linguistics, culture, and more. But recently, churches have all too happily handed off all their responsibilities to others.) As a result of these trends . . .

3. Missionaries ignore churches which already exist on the field, to the detriment of their ministries and people like Ahmed.

David Wells diagnosed the problem: “The invisible church becomes everything, and the visible church, in its local configuration, loses its significance and its place in the Christian life.”^{11 .} David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 214). Without the local church, missionaries leave the field too soon, and their disciples too often wither on the vine as a result.

In the 9Marks church-centered missions series, we’re arguing that missions and the church go together. Regardless of one’s religious background (Jewish or pagan), the New Testament warns against “neglecting to meet together” (Heb. 10:25). When the author of Hebrews addresses suffering Jewish believers, he doesn’t tell them to secretly stay inside Judaism, but rather, “Let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured” (Heb. 13:13). Part of going “to Christ outside the camp,” involves going to his assembled people.

If missions is not church-centered, then why did Paul’s missionary letters devote so much space to leadership qualifications and church structure and function? It is because churches are the launchpad for gospel operations worldwide, the “pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

Three Non-Negotiables for Church-Centered Missions

1. The Church Gathering

Neglecting to gather with God’s people is not only disobedient but also a missed opportunity. God’s blessing comes not only in private moments but in public assembly (see Acts 2:1, 4:31, 10:44). The early church was prepared to count the cost that came with assembling publicly. As David Wells said, “They obviously met at their peril, but meet they did. And it was in their company that outsiders saw the reality of God’s redemption at work.”^{22 .} Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant, 215. But in some missions circles today, gathering with a church is considered optional, or worse, it’s discouraged!

The “Insider Movement” (IM) regularly encourages Muslims who come to faith in Christ to remain in the religious structures of Islam, still attending mosque, reciting Muslim prayers and creeds, all the while secretly following Christ. Proponents of IM say that leaving one’s former religious identity is dangerous and unnecessary, so they discourage church involvement. No public profession is needed. Muslims can stay Muslim. Hindus can stay Hindu. What matters (they say) is not gathering with God’s people, but rather private devotion in the heart. One supporter of IM explained, “Christ calls people to change their hearts, not their religions.”^{33 .} Stan Guthrie, Missions in the Third Millenium: 21 Key Trends for the 21^st Century (rev. ed.) (quoted in Garner, “High Stakes,” 254.)

IM allows people to become “Christian” but avoid persecution. But Jesus warned his disciples, “They will put you out of the synagogues” (John 16:2). He assumed that his followers would be publicly aligned with him and that persecution would often be the result. Jesus warned, “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38).

It’s hard to imagine the prophet Elijah endorsing IM and “calling the prophets of Baal to worship Jehovah God and encouraging them to do so in their temples, at their altars, and according to their familiar pagan practices.”^{44 .} David Garner, “High Stakes: Insider Movement Hermeneutics and the Gospel,” Themelios 37, no. 2 (2012): 267. To the contrary, Elijah rebuked those who “go limping between two different opinions.” “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, follow him” (1 Kgs. 18:21).

None of this means that converts must immediately attend conspicuous “above-ground” gatherings. In some contexts, it may be necessary to meet more discreetly with an “underground” church. But the church is not just one spiritual option among many. It is a non-negotiable aspect of what it means to follow Jesus.

2. Preaching and Teaching, Regardless of Cultural Context

Faithful preaching will look different in a living room with eight people than in a church meeting hall with three hundred people. But its goal remains the same: to expose the meaning of the passage and then press it home to the hearer. Shepherds feed their sheep through preaching, the food leads to growth, and the growth leads to evangelism.

Over breakfast, a missionary explained his team’s new approach to reaching Muslims in a closed North African country. He rejoiced that they had been able to start more than a dozen Discovery Bible Studies among the locals. Interestingly, however, these groups had no Christian participants. He and the other missionaries intentionally stayed away. They were following a modern strategy that claims, “when working with lost people, we have to avoid falling into the role of explaining Scripture. If we do, we become the authority rather than allowing Scripture to be the authority.”^{55 .} David Watson and Paul Watson, Contagious Disciple-Making (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014), 149.

But according to Jesus’s own words, if we’re not teaching, we’re not obeying the Great Commission (Matt. 28:20). Sure, it’s good to emphasize the authority of the Word over the preacher’s personality or ability to tell stories. Even still, preaching/teaching in general is not a rival authority to the Word. Rather, preaching means proclaiming the Word’s authoritative message for the salvation of listeners.

I’ve heard critics object that expositional preaching is too Western. It won’t work in storytelling environments like the Middle East or Central Asia. But exposition began in the East! Five hundred years before Christ, priests and scribes read God’s Word to men, women, and children. They read “clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Neh. 8:8). This method carried over into the synagogue and eventually the early church. Jesus read Scripture in the Nazareth synagogue and then sat down to preach and explain (Luke 4:21). So did the apostle Paul in the Mediterranean synagogues. He “reasoned” with and persuaded people from the Scriptures (Acts 17:2). We must follow the biblical pattern today.

3. The Ordinances

When churches are biblically faithful, comprised of people who are truly born again, they become an accurate witness to the gospel and this happens, in part, through the ordinances.

Baptism

As New Testament churches gained ground, they always baptized converts. Peter preached, “Repent and be baptized” (Acts 2:38). A few verses later, we learn that three thousand were baptized and “added to their number.” When Paul wrote to the churches in Rome, he assumed all their members had been baptized (Rom. 6:1). Their submersion in water symbolized not only cleansing from sin but also union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection (6:3–4). It was the sign of entry, the front door into the church.

In a polytheistic Hindu context, taking an interest in Jesus Christ is not necessarily a problem. After all, there are millions of gods in Hinduism. But the flashpoint, the line in the sand, is baptism. An Indian pastor in a majority Hindu city observed, “Intuitively, they know that baptism means a shift in allegiance.” Often, persecution starts not at conversion but after baptism. This is when it is especially necessary for God’s people to support new converts amidst attack.

Some missionaries today question whether baptism is required. One reports, “Millions are worshipping Jesus in India, but they are not being baptized because they don’t want to join the Western fold.” In his view, baptism is “cultural suicide,” requiring believers to “leave their Hindu world.”^{66 .} Brad Gill, “03/22/15—AM service—Missions Conference Speaker,” First Baptist Church of St. John’s, March 22, 2015, quoted in Chad Vegas and Alex Kocman, Missions By the Book: How Theology and Missions Walk Together (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2021), 58. But we don’t have the authority to edit Jesus’s command (Matt. 28:19). Missionaries must instruct converts to be baptized and join gospel preaching churches.

Lord’s Supper

While baptism is the entry into the local church, the Lord’s Supper is the regular means by which the congregation becomes visible to itself and to the world. The Lord’s Supper defines the boundary of who’s “in” and who’s “out”—who belongs to Jesus and is committed to this body and who doesn’t and isn’t. Far from being bound to Western culture, the Lord’s Supper was instituted by Jesus. Like baptism, the Lord’s Supper is “inherently counter-cultural—requiring believers to publicly identify themselves with the culture of God’s kingdom and stand out from the world.”^{77 .} Vegas and Kocman, Missions By the Book, 69.

Even in frontier missions settings, the Lord’s Supper is a necessary celebration for every church. Church fellowship centers around preaching and the Lord’s Table (Acts 2:42, 20:7; Jude 12). Church discipline excludes an unrepentant sinner from the Lord’s Table, that is, from membership. A Syrian pastor once said, “That would never work in my culture.” Of course, discipline is unpopular in every culture. But since the Lord’s Supper is Jesus’s family meal, only those in the family may participate (1 Cor. 11:27). Missions conferences, youth camps, small groups, weddings—none of these are appropriate venues for the Lord’s Supper. This is because the Lord’s Supper, along with baptism and true preaching, constitutes a church.

Missionaries today often overlook this meal. Even if local believers are gathering for worship and edification, the Lord’s Supper is considered by some to be too “churchy,” tainted by Western influence. Others set the ordinance aside because there’s no recognized pastor to administer it. Missionaries remain in the background to promote indigenous leadership; meanwhile, Jesus’s command to “do this in remembrance of me” is ignored.

Both baptism and the Lord’s Supper are central to the Great Commission. They’re a “visible word” that portrays the gospel. This is why Paul writes that in the Lord’s Supper “we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26).

The Ordinary Local Assembly

What we believe about the church will determine how we carry out our missions mandate. No agency or parachurch entity can discharge this role. On every continent, in every context, the ordinary local assembly is what will ultimately promote and protect the truth of the gospel until the Lord Jesus returns.

Taken from Prioritizing the Church in Missions by John Folmar and Scott Logsdon, Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.