Global Missions and Church Planting
As taught in the Reformed / Presbyterian tradition
The strategic effort to bring the Gospel to unreached people groups and establish biblical churches.
The question that stands at the heart of the Reformed tradition regarding Global Missions and Church Planting is one of both sovereignty and responsibility: How does the absolute, eternal decree of God in election harmonize with the urgent, historical command to proclaim the Gospel to every creature? For many outside the Reformed tradition, the doctrine of predestination is seen as a "frozen tundra" that halts the heat of missionary zeal. However, within the historical Reformed framework, the opposite is true. The Reformed tradition asserts that because God has a definite people—the elect—purchased by the blood of Christ, the success of missions is not a matter of human persuasion or cultural adaptation, but a divine certainty.
By the end of this lesson
- **Identify** the theological relationship between the doctrine of sovereign election and the motivation for global missionary endeavor.
- **Distinguish** between the "general witness" of all believers and the "special calling" of missionaries sent by the local church for the purpose of church planting.
- **Explain** the Reformed understanding of the "means of grace" (preaching and sacraments) as the primary tools for cross-cultural ministry.
- **Articulate** the role of the local church as the biblical sender and sustainer of missionary activity, as modeled in the book of Acts.
- **Trace** the historical development of the missionary mandate within the Westminster Standards and the writings of early Reformed theologians.
- **Defend** the necessity of verbal proclamation of the Gospel against contemporary models of "presence-only" or purely social-justice missions.
- **Apply** the "Regulative Principle of Worship" to the context of church planting, ensuring that new churches are founded on biblical rather than pragmatic grounds.
- **Compare** the Reformed "Covenantal" approach to missions with "Pragmatic" or "Arminian" approaches that rely on human technique and emotionalism.
Scripture
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