BIBLICAL FOUNDATION

1. The Living God is a Missionary God

Theme:
Purpose

• Why God’s covenant with Abraham discloses the destiny of every nation of the planet.
• Why you are sure that God is a global God, and not a tribal deity who favors one people over all the others
• How the entire story of the Bible provides a strong mandate for a mission to all nations.
• Why the enterprise of missions has substantial biblical basis that invites every believer to fulfill their part.
• How God’s first promise in the Garden of Eden reflects His mission purpose.
• How to express God’s single mission purpose as it unfolds in three directions: toward God, on behalf of all nations, and concerning satanic evil powers.
• How God fulfills His promise progressively through history.

2. The Story of God's Glory

Theme:
Passion

• Explain how the entire story of the Bible unfolds toward a purpose of God’s glory in global worship.
• Value worship as a relational act that reveals and delights God and fulfills His love for people.
• Explain the story of the Bible as God revealing glory to the nations in order to receive glory from the nations.
• Show how several of the main events of the Bible’s story cohere around the theme of God’s unfolding plan to bring about global glory by worship from the nations
• Recognize the mission purpose found in the “Lord’s prayer.”
• Explain the sentence: “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”
• Explain how both an expansive and an attractive force have always been used by God to advance His mission purpose.
• Describe how the mission objective of planting churches in unreached peoples brings about God’s greater glory.
• Explain how compassion for people’s needs can be integrated with passion for God’s glory.
• Grow with biblical passion for God’s glory and kingdom.

3. Your Kingdom Come

Theme:
Hope

• Define and use the concepts comprising the theme of the kingdom of God in the Bible.
• Explain the surprise of “the mystery of the kingdom” in terms of the Messiah coming not just once, but twice.
• Explain how Christ intended the missionary enterprise to extend His “D-Day” victory at the cross
• Explain the mission significance of a “two-tier” timeline of history, in which a present evil age persists even though it is invaded by a coming kingdom age.
• Explain what it means to advance the gospel of the Kingdom.
• Explain how Matthew 24:14 gives hope and focus for completing world evangelization.
• Understand how Jesus pursued His life-work guided by a vision of the kingdom of God as a fight against evil.
• Pray with bold hope and with strategic purpose for God to restrain evil powers in order for people to hear the gospel and to hope for lasting change.

4. Mandate for the Nations

Theme:
Mandate

• Explain the strategic value of Jesus working with a few leaders to launch a movement to reach the entire world.
• Explain the strategic value of Jesus’ focus on the Jewish people.
• Tell the story of how Jesus taught and modeled ministry to the Gentiles.
• Explain the Great Commission, describing Christ’s expectation of what is to be completed among all peoples.
• Describe the strategic value of focusing on people groups as it helps to complete the entire task of world evangelization.
• Explain how Jesus sends His followers on mission in the same way the Father sent Him on mission.
• Present the best biblical grounds for explaining the lostness of humankind in response to the ideas of universalism.
• Respond to the challenge of pluralism by presenting features of the uniqueness of Christ that mention His works, words, death, and resurrection

5. Unleashing the Gospel

Theme:
Witness

• Explain how God helped the early Church to be faithful to Christ’s mandate to be witnesses.
• Describe the crucial importance of the Acts 15 council for understanding how to present the gospel to the nations without presenting cultural obstacles to following Christ.
• Explain how the mission purpose of God is fulfilled by planting churches more than in any other activity.
• Describe both the apostolic and congregational structures of the church using the terms modality and sodality.
• Explain how prayer can be strategically offered for people throughout a city in such a way that God’s hand is revealed, allowing the gospel to move rapidly.
• Explain how Paul’s strategy of suffering defeated evil powers with the weakness of Christ rather than the power of Christ.
• Explain the strategic value of suffering and martyrdom in terms of the triumph of truth, the defeat of evil, and the glory of God.
• Describe some of the biblical grounds for hope for a tremendous ingathering at the end of the age, in the midst of a time of great hostility to Christ.

HISTORICAL PROGRESS

6. Expansion of the Christian Movement

Theme:
Momentum

• Tell the “broad-stroke” story of how God’s blessing has continued to extend to all peoples throughout 4,000 years of biblical history.
• Describe the progress of the gospel to different geographic areas and cultural basins in each of the five 400-year epochs since Christ.
• Explain how the gospel advanced even when God’s people were disobedient. You will understand different “mechanisms” of mission: people “coming” or messengers “going,” either voluntarily or involuntarily.
• Illustrate the idea that God’s blessings are to be passed on, or they might be taken away.
• Describe some key mission leaders and movements in history and their strategic approaches.
• Describe the two functional structures of the Church through the centuries using the terms “modality” and “sodality.”

7. Eras of Mission History

Theme:
Finishing

• Recall the approximate dates, emphasis, leaders and student movement associated with each of the three eras of Protestant missions history.
• Explain the four stages of mission activity (within an era).
• Explain the tensions of the transitions between the eras.
• Describe a “people movement.”
• Use the E-Scale to describe the cultural distance of missionaries from their intended hearers.
• Use the P-Scale to describe the comparative socio-cultural distance of existing churches from would-be followers of Christ.
• Describe the increase of the non-Western missionary force in recent years

8. Pioneers of the World Christian Movement

Theme:
Faithful

• Describe the commitment and zeal of “First-Era” missionaries.
• Describe how Carey, Taylor, and Townsend were each motivated by the vision of completing world evangelization.
• Explain the rationale that William Carey used to argue that the Great Commission was a binding mandate for believers in the present day.
• Explain how Carey’s motto—“Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” —helps explain the attitude and actions of the pioneers of the mission movement.
• Explain why Hudson Taylor founded a mission society.
• Explain why Cameron Townsend began translating the Bible.
• Describe the ways that women have been an important part of mission efforts throughout history.
• Explain how the Moravian community is exemplary to the Church today in areas of motivation and persistence.

9. The Task Remaining

Theme:
Strategic

• Differentiate between regular and frontier mission efforts using the E-Scale and the P-Scale.
• Define and use the terms people bloc, people group, unimax people group, socio-people, and unreached people group.
• Quote from memory the definition of a people group for evangelistic purposes.
• Explain the essential missionary task using and defining the term missiological breakthrough.
• Describe the rough percentages of the world’s population who live in unreached peoples and in reached peoples.
• Recall roughly how many unimax groups there are in the four major cultural blocs of unreached peoples.
• Describe the imbalance of missionary allocation in today’s world.
• Explain the biblical grounds for and strategic value of urban ministry.
• Explain how good mission strategy expresses both faith and faithfulness while allowing for the Lordship of the Holy Spirit in mission decisions.

CULTURAL DISTINCTIVES

10. How Shall They Hear?

Theme:
Hearing

• Describe what missionaries can do to communicate the gospel with sensitivity in cross-cultural settings.
• Explain how a dynamic integration of beliefs, feelings and values provides an underlying mental map which guides behavior.
• Explain the dynamic of ethnocentrism.
• Explain how a “dynamic equivalent” church can be both a Christ-honoring and culture-affirming church.
• Explain what it means to contextualize the gospel.
• Describe how a redemptive analogy works to help people hear the gospel.
• Explain the importance of distinguishing the “seed” of the gospel from the “plant” which may have sprouted from it in a particular culture.
• Explain what can go wrong when surface-level behavior is not accompanied by conviction about deep-level meaning.
• Define syncretism and describe what can be done to avoid it.
• Describe the kinds of encounters that are needed to communicate the gospel.

11. Building Bridges of Love

Theme:
Received

• Explain how the incarnation of Christ serves as a primary model for communicating the gospel with a grasp of both His renunciation and identification.
• Describe the importance of understandable and credible roles for missionaries in a new culture in order to become viable gospel communicators.
• Describe how a missionary can begin to establish a sense of belonging in a new culture.
• Contrast the way the gospel flows in different social structures found in urban, peasant, and tribal societies.
• Explain the necessity of “bi-cultural” bridges.

12. Christian Development

Theme:
Transformation

• Describe some of the most critical dimensions of global human need, and comprehend the nature of global poverty.
• List and evaluate four approaches to meeting global human need.
• Compare and contrast Christian Relief ministry with Transformational Development.
• Explain why and how Christian Community Development offers the greatest hope and promise for reaching people suffering from spiritual and physical hunger, and is the most effective long-term approach to integrating evangelism and church planting with community development efforts.
• Explain how the gospel offers the best hope of significant transformation for the poor and unreached peoples of the world when church planting movements are underway.
• Answer the charge that Christian missionaries destroy culture.
• Describe the difference between absolute poverty and relative poverty.
• Describe ways that cross-cultural workers have been encouraging reconciliation between people groups.

13. The Spontaneous Multiplication of Churches

Theme:
Multiply

• Explain why aiming to evangelize whole families is the best way to plant churches that will evangelize throughout a people group.
• Describe the four ways that churches grow.
• Explain why it is important to view the church as a new creation of God.
• Distinguish between examples of: New Testament commands, apostolic practices, and human customs. Describe the value of this distinction for church planting.
• Explain the value of emphasizing obedience to Christ in evangelism, church planting, and in training leaders.
• Describe the process of how a mother church reproduces churches by extension chains.
• Describe what makes a church truly indigenous.
• Explain the value of saturation church planting.
• Recognize the similarities of people movements and multiplying reproducing chains of churches.
• Explain what is meant by “spontaneous” multiplication of churches when missionaries work very hard behind the scenes.

STRATEGIC INVOLVEMENT

14. Pioneer Church Planting

Theme:
Breakthrough

• Describe why church planting among unreached peoples is difficult, feasible, and crucially important.
• Describe what “extraction evangelism” is and how to avoid it.
• Describe how a “conglomerate” church forms, and evaluate its potential for multiplying throughout a people group.
• Evaluate the practicability of focusing on one people group in culturally distinctive churches that aim not to be exclusive or divisive.
• Explain how culturally diverse churches can lead to reconciliation and unity.
• Describe why new converts often experience great scorn and disfavor from their people and yet should be encouraged to remain in relationship with their people.
• Describe why new converts can aspire to exemplify the finest ideals of their people.
• Use the “C-Scale” to identify and compare contextualization of new churches in a Muslim society.
• Describe some guidelines to guard against syncretism in pioneer church planting.

15. World Christian Partnership

Theme:
Teamwork

• Describe how believers can grow as World Christians.
• Explain what is meant by a “wartime lifestyle” and why it is important for Christians to adjust their lifestyles for Christ’s global cause.
• Compare the strategic value of the three roles of: senders, mobilizers, and missionaries.
• Explain how local churches strengthen the mission movement, and yet why they also need to be mobilized by the mission movement.
• Describe biblical models of the core activities of sending (i.e., serving, giving, and praying).
• Explain the value of a church or an aspiring missionary linking with a mission agency.
• Explain why God reveals His will without revealing details of the future to His servants.
• List some of the steps that disciples need to take to become effective missionaries.
• Describe how some churches have been effective in launching frontier mission efforts.
• Describe the value of strategic evangelism and church-planting partnerships.