If you believe that God is truly sovereign, then you know that He is not, as Paul explains in Acts 17, "served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything." Yet when it comes to missions, many Christians cite the great need as our motivation.

The truth is that God does not need us, and He will accomplish His purposes among all the peoples of the world.

A better way to talk about our role in God's global mission is to refer to God's exclusive use of human means in the transmission of His gospel. Romans 10 refers to the feet of the messenger as being beautiful. It's out of obedience and compassion that we participate, and even at our best we're certainly not ideal messengers. We go, not because God needs us, but because He sent us. We were made for (and saved to) mission.

As we read about the development of the early church in the New Testament, it's clear that we're getting a mixture of prescription and description. As believers, we make decisions about which passages are meant to apply to us today, and which are more a reflection of the times and cultures in which they were written.

Few churches, for example, encourage their people toward the communal lifestyle of the first believers that we read about in Acts 2. We've decided that this is not a vital part of following Jesus today. Same goes for worshiping in synagogues, the consumption of alcohol, many of the signs and wonders we read about in those same passages. These, we conclude, were contextually determined expressions of the church appropriate for that time and place, but not required of us today.

Other sections of these same passages, though, we interpret differently. Many churches put things like the role of women in the church, the practice of sermonic preaching, and submission to church leadership as authority into the ecclesiological, (rather than missiological,) category. We read these to be prescriptive instructions for how we should behave as a church today.

This sort of selective application is actually necessary. In fact, I agree with many of the conclusions I've included here. The distinction between church and mission is necessary (as Stephen Neil said, "When everything is mission, nothing is.") But I would venture to guess that most church leaders have not given adequate consideration to how we decide what passage and practice goes into which category. How you apply your interpretation of scripture reveals a lot about your missiology.

I don't care what's stated in your "core values" document; what you spend the most money on is likely the most important thing to you.

When a church claiming to be "on mission" or "missions minded" cannot spend the vast majority of their offerings on buildings and programs for their church members. (That makes you "building-minded" or "program-minded.")

Mission is, necessarily, a great expense. Moving a person of one culture to live in another culture (legally) costs a lot of money. If you say that you believe that mission is more important than, say, your church's 4th of July picnic, you should spend much more money on the sending and maintenance of missionary presence than you do on hot dogs and soft drinks.

A church that puts 90% of its money into mission is radically affected by that investment. If you want to lead your church to really value mission, why not decide together to be willing to suffer a bit of discomfort (keep those perfectly-functional old mauve chairs rather than springing for new ones in Starbucksy earthtones) for your participation in God's global activity.

You could even advertise it- "Our thermostat, decor, and cheap coffee reflect our commitment to missions."

Any missional Christian worth his salt has a library (Kindle?) full of Piper and Keller, a Spurgeon anthology, and a couple copies of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. But far too few include such seminal missiological works as Roland Allen's (regrettably-titled) Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?, or Lesslie Newbigin's ahead-or-its-time The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. These are the books that make men into missionaries.

A perusal of the Christian blogosphere reveals how few churches are informed by having read Christopher Wright's The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission by David Bosch. It's much more difficult to get caught up in insignificant things when you have a global perspective. Read the right books in order to expose yourself to global thinking.

According to Barna Research, only 11% of churchgoers have ever been on a mission trip. Only one third of Americans even have a passport. The truth is, no matter how much you talk about God's global mission, you simply must have a meaningful experience outside your own culture in order to understand the Great Commission and its implications for your faith.

A Christian leader should travel. Not in the "summer mission trip to Tijuana" sort of way; I'm talking about a "three weeks in the African bush" kind of experience. When you're clearly out of your comfort zone and completely reliant on people who are quite different from you, "the nations" become people rather than projects.

We have a lot to learn from people of other cultures. Perhaps the most valuable part of cross-cultural interaction is the chance to see yourself through the eyes of someone who is not like you. In Luke 10, Jesus instructs us to love our neighbor. For believers living in the West, there is no excuse for not taking the time to go meet him ourselves.