“I will seek to lead my church to accept its full responsibility for community and world service. The church has a mandate from God to evangelize the world. Give to home and foreign missions and as many service arms of the organization as you can. The members of your congregation need your direction in these vital areas.” -UPCI Manual.
It is imperative for every minister of the gospel to periodically evaluate his or her position and direction, using the God-given mandates for the church as reference points. Jesus established one of these mandates in his closing words to His disciples: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations…” Matthew 28:19. While the church serves many purposes in meeting the needs of its members, the mandate for missions must be elevated to become its primary reason for existence. All other roles are subordinate to this one. In fact, it may be said that this mission encompasses all other aspects of the church and its work in the world.
While it is neither practical nor scriptural for each person to go to all nations, the church as a body must nevertheless embrace world missions as its purpose. No member is exempt from the call. That means that the church is to ordain and send out missionaries, provide financial support for them, and offer as much assistance as we can through prayer, encouragement and blessing. These functions will not happen without organized leadership. Pastors must assume this responsibility as an essential part of leading the local church.
To effectively lead a church to be engaged in missions, both at home and abroad, the pastor must continually present the need of missions to the congregation, regularly provide opportunities to pray and give to missions, and preach about sharing the gospel as a staple of his or her preaching fare. Any pastor who does not know how to do this must enlist the help of others who have successful missions programs. This also includes a major emphasis on reaching out to other local communities that do not yet have a witness of this gospel.
We live in a world that is becoming more complex and conflicted with each passing year, causing the ministry to focus on the spiritual needs of the congregations. This must be done, but not to the abandonment of our primary mission. Indeed, one vital way to maintain the spirituality of church members is to continually point them to the greater purpose of their lives—spreading the gospel of salvation to the whole world.
Missions must be considered as a matter of ethics because the slogan of the United Pentecostal Church, International is “The Whole Gospel to the Whole World by the Whole Church.” This statement is based directly on scripture. The only way for us to be true to our mission statement is to purposefully structure the activities of the church to fulfill this goal. It must be said that we make our mission “the great commission!”