The Call to Send
Feature: By Matt Larkin
The idea of calling was once central to church culture
Growing up, I remember hearing a lot about “the call to ministry.” My pastor talked about it. It was part of church conversations. There would be a yearly call to commit yourself to ministry at camp every year. That said, I don’t know if the approach taken on this issue was consistently the best and most effective approach. What I do know is that this idea of calling was established in my life as something incredibly important. It is because of this, that when I was struggling with what to do with my life at age 20, the idea of calling became central to me once again as I began to pursue, with the help of another pastor and church, a call to pastoral ministry.
The call for churches to equip and send has existed from the beginning.
The call for churches to equip and send people out for the work of ministry is one that has existed from the very beginning. The church at Antioch demonstrates this in the “setting apart” of Barnabas and Saul for the work which God had called them (Acts 13:1-3) and it is a pattern that can be seen throughout the New Testament. However, it seems that in recent years, for many local churches, this call to send is something that has slipped to the periphery or has completely fallen off of the priority list altogether.
In recent years, our churches have lost the call to send.
There are likely many reasons for this. Struggling churches often feel they need their best leadership candidates to stay at home. Churches feel ill-equipped to train and send out leaders. Many churches may not even know where to start. Whatever the reason, the call to train up and send leaders out as pastors, church planters and missionaries is something that has become more the exception than the norm.
Historically, Advent Christians, convinced of Jesus' return, sent people out.
Looking at our history, as a movement, there was a time when the call to send was central to who we were. Due to a fervent belief in the imminent return of Jesus, we as Advent Christians sent people out for ministry with a contagious gospel fervor that affected thousands and thousands of lives.
Over time, the intensity of this end times fervor may have slipped. But, the call to send was not. For the better part of our history, we have been a sending denomination, directing people to the far corners of the globe with that same gospel and message of hope, found in the death, resurrection and imminent return of Jesus. This has been our heritage. This has been our identity.
Despite this, however, it seems that many of our churches are struggling to maintain that part of our identity. Many of our churches are struggling and probably feel unable, for a variety of reasons, to train up and send out leaders with that gospel message.
Advent Christians can restore their identity by remembering the importance of sending.
So where does that leave us? Where do we go from here? Is that sending heritage something that we, as a network of churches, can restore? Is it something we have the desire to restore? If so, how? I believe that to restore this central part of our former identity, we’ve first got to regain our understanding of its importance. I’ve alluded to the sending culture of the church at Antioch. But, the church’s sending culture pre-dates Antioch and even pre-dates Paul as a missionary.
The call for the church to send is something that is set forth by Jesus himself. Both in Matthew 28 and Acts 1, Jesus directs his disciples to go.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
In both of these passages, we witness some of Jesus’s last moments on earth with those whom he’d walked most closely with. And in both of these passages, we see a similar charge. Go! Go and proclaim my name and my gospel, that people throughout the world will know this amazing thing that God has done. How will they know if we don’t go? How will they know if they don’t hear?
And, of course, this charge has been carried out throughout the centuries, as local churches have trained up and sent out leaders that they might hear. They’ve sent them to the contextual equivalent of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. They’ve sent them to make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They’ve sent them to teach the commands of Jesus and the good news of his gospel.
Churches and those they've sent are part of a holy stewardship.
Both the individuals who have gone and those churches that have sent them are part of a holy stewardship. They are part of a continuum that dates back to those final commands of Jesus. It is a continuum that has, by God’s grace, carried the church forward for some 2,000 years. It is a continuum that has, by God’s grace, had an impact on and restored countless lives through countless generations.
To abandon sending is to be disobedient to the Lord.
Why is this call to send so important? It is certainly because of that impact. It is certainly because of that restoration. But, more importantly, it is because Jesus commanded it. The reality for our situation as a network of churches, and the reality for the Christian church at-large, is that to abandon this call to send is to be disobedient to the Lord. The oft forgotten verse of the Great Commission passage found in Matthew 28 is verse 18. In it, Jesus prefaces his charge to “go and make disciples” with this: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18-20, ESV).
With these words, Jesus does something he did not often do during his time on earth. He invokes his God-given authority. He reminds them of who he is to underscore the importance of what he is about to direct them to do. And in doing so, we see very clearly the importance of this call to go. This call to send.
Sending out leaders is not optional.
It is not an optional call. It is not a call to be taken passively. It is a call upon Christ’s church that should be tackled with the same fervor that you can find in our own Advent Christian heritage. Those early Advent Christians saw the urgency and seriousness of God’s call and attacked it with complete obedience and complete commitment. For us, as a network of churches, to regain our commitment to train up and send out leaders as pastors, church planters and missionaries . . . as ambassadors for the gospel, we must begin to once again recognize this call to send as a non-negotiable command of our Christ Jesus, our Savior and Lord. It is for his glory that we do these things.
Matt Larkin, “The Call to Send: Restoring our Identity as an Equipping and Sending Movement,” The Advent Christian Witness, Spring 2019
Learn more about the MTI program as a way to train up leaders in your church.