Send Missionaries to Neglected Peoples

Those who teach children should read study #77 for children.

Prayer. “Dear Lord, please help us to obey your Great Commission and send workers to people without the Good News of salvation in Christ.”

1. Prepare to start a movement for Christ among people of a neglected field, in which new flocks multiply.

Note: Congregations in Jerusalem, Joppa, Antioch, Rome, Ephesus, Colossae and other cities in the New Testament sent workers to other places to make disciples.

Find in Acts 1:8 four places that Jesus told His followers to go and be witnesses for Him. [Answer: Jerusalem (corresponding to your own community, culture and language), Judea (corresponding to nearby, neglected communities of the same culture), Samaria (corresponding to other cultural groups nearby), ends of the earth (distant people groups with very different cultures).]

Find in Acts 13:1-3 what the Antioch congregation did to send Paul and Barnabas.

Read Acts chapters 13 &14 and make notes of all the things that Paul and Barnabas did to start new congregations.

Find in Acts 14:26-28 what Paul and Barnabas did as soon as they returned to their sending congregation.

Find in Luke 24:46-48 what things we are to proclaim when we do evangelism. The workers whom you will send need certain skills that include the following four skills:

Four Skills that Missionaries Must Learn

Skill 1. Adapting to the other culture.

· Do not insist that new believers worship and do evangelism in the same way that your home congregation does.

· Respect cultural differences. Make no demands on new believers except to obey the commands of Christ and His apostles.

· Workers may have to learn another language.

· Only use methods that new believers can imitate and pass on to others.

· Only use equipment that is available to new workers in new congregations.

· Bond with local people. Love them. Make friends among them.

Skill 2. Evangelizing in a way that lets the Good News ‘flow’ from family to family and from friend to friend. Tell stories about Jesus’ death and resurrection in a way that new believers can also tell them to their friends. Do not use equipment or methods that would be difficult for the new believers to obtain or to use (except for occasional special events).

Skill 3. Make Disciples of new believers by teaching them to obey the commands of Jesus. His basic commands are to repent and believe, to baptize, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, l to love God and others in a practical way, to pray, to give and to make disciples.

Skill 4. Learn the activities that the New Testament requires new congregations to develop:

· Tell others about Jesus, and baptize repentant believers, Luke 24:46-48; Acts 2:38

· Teach new disciples to obey Jesus’ commands, Matt. 28:18-20

· Worship as a body, and celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Matt. 26:16-28

· Pray, intercede, and do spiritual warfare; let families pray together, Eph. 6:10-18

· Cultivate loving fellowship and serve the needy in a practical way, John 13:34

· Give, and practice Christian stewardship, Luke 6:38

· Teach believers how to serve each other and their community, Eph. 4:11

· Strengthen family life, help with problems, and correct offenders, 2 Tim. 3:16-17

· Organize to let believers serve one another with different spiritual gifts 1 Cor. 12

· Start congregations and cells nearby and among neglected peoples, Acts 1:8

· Train leaders in a way that they can imitate as they train newer leaders, 2 Tim. 2:2

2. Plan with co-workers to send workers to neglected people groups.

It may require several weeks to complete these important activities:

· Learn which people groups still need congregations that reproduce, to which your workers could go.

· Pray for a neglected people group that your congregation chooses to reach.

· Meet with believers who desire to go to neglected fields, and begin preparing them. Help them immediately to begin practicing needed skills. (They are listed above).

· Meet with believers who have shown interest in sending workers to neglected fields, and arrange for them to help you prepare and send the workers.

· Decide how the workers will be supported. Will they receive support from your congregation or other congregations? Or will they be self-supporting like Aquila and Priscilla, Paul and others in the New Testament? Make plans accordingly.

· Arrange to have weekly prayer for your congregation’s missionaries and for the people that they plan to reach.

· Arrange for reports to be given regularly to the congregation about the progress and problems of the congregation’s missionaries’ work.

· Help shepherds of other flocks also to mobilize their congregations to send workers to neglected peoples.

· Arrange to cooperate with other congregations in your region, to send workers.

3. Prepare with co-workers the next worship.

Explain how the Antioch believers sent Paul and Barnabas, and how they made disciples.

Explain your congregation’s plans to prepare and send workers.

Review the skills that the workers who are sent will need to have.

Let workers who have done missionary work in other places tell about it.

Let the children present what they have prepared.

Before the Lord’s Supper, read Jeremiah 31:31-34. Explain that the prophet foretold a New Agreement based on Jesus’ blood that we celebrate when we break bread.

Form groups of two or three persons, to pray and discuss plans to send workers.

Memorise together Mathew 28:19-20.

Neglected People Groups

There are near you and far from you, tribes, communities, cities, and neighbourhoods where there are not enough Christians and churches to take the good news about Jesus to their population. The few believers who are there are asking the Lord to send folks like you to help them to tell the good news and to start new, reproductive congregations.

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