What do Worship and Missions Have in Common?

Easter Sunday 2020, almost everyone was presenting online services.

In an afternoon phone conversation with my brother Ronnie, a dual residence missionary to Kenya, East Africa, he mentioned something that fired my imagination and started me thinking about the goal of missions. He had watched portions of services that morning from his local church in Texas, our church in Mississippi, and an associated church in Nairobi, Kenya.

He spoke of how moving it was to see all of these different expressions of worship happening in three different locations.....

“I imagined this morning,” he said, “that God has the ‘biggest interactive HD screen’ in front of him in heaven and He is experiencing these incredible expressions of worship from all over the world all at one time!”

I was immediately reminded of a couple of verses relating to what he was saying and knew that he had touched on something that is very close to the heart of God.

Psalms 67: 1-3 -May God be merciful and bless us. May his face smile with favor on us. Interlude

2

May your ways be known throughout the earth, your saving power among people everywhere.

3

May the nations praise you, O God.

Yes, may all the nations praise you.(emphasis mine)

Many missionaries and missions leaders across the globe hold to this Scriptural principle that one of the main purposes of missions is worship. In other words, God created and loves every tongue, tribe, nation, and ethnicity on the planet, and wants to experience the expression of loving worship from their hearts.

In other words, there is not a group of people anywhere on earth that God would exclude from his “heavenly interactive HD screen.” Revelation 5:9 confirms this longing in the heart of God:

9 And they sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll

and break its seals and open it.

For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God

from every tribe and language and people and nation. (emphasis mine)

This is why the US church must be concerned about the “where” of missions outreach. Too many of those nations that have God’s heart have no way of knowing His love.

At present, 40% of the world’s population has no near- neighbor access to the Gospel.

....In other words, although these folks may have access to some forms of media or expressions of Christianity, no one is personally crossing into their culture to present the Gospel in a way that will penetrate their worldview and create a church- planting movement.

What can we do?

1. Pray that God will open doors into previously unreached areas as global recovery from this pandemic occurs through relief organizations who will bring the gospel along with medical/social help.

2. Evaluate our existing global missions ministries in light of the urgent need to reach the unreached and least reached. While I’m not asking anyone to stop supporting existing missions efforts with finances or personnel resources, I do believe that unreached peoples need a more prominent “seat at the table” as we shape our thinking about future

missions work.

3. Believe God for a divine inflow of resources (both people and finances) to reach the unreached of the world with a new thrust and vigor like we’ve never seen in the past.

Notice that verse 1 of Psalms 67 says, “May God be merciful and bless us. May his face smile with favor on us.” .....

When we embrace the heart of God for the remaining unreached nations so that they can worship around His throne, there will be no end to His favor and blessing!

Pastor Larry Stockstill reminded our church recently of this idea when he explained this verse to us:

Romans 8:32 -Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?

He reminded us that if God was gracious enough to send His only Son to die for our sins, why would he withhold anything from those who are committed to taking the message of the cross to the world that needs to hear it?