Missions Every Day

Pastor Dave Monreal, Lead Pastor

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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.”

Matthew 28:18-20

I began attending an Alliance church when I was 19 years old. I had just recommitted my life to Christ, and I was looking for a new home church. I heard a friend talking about someone his mom introduced him to from Church and I mistakenly though he attended so I invited myself. The people were as surprised to see him as they were to see me. Little did I know 34 years ago that this would begin a lifelong partnership with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Even in college I did not truly recognize the extent of the great missionary heritage and legacy that I was becoming a part of. I knew it wasn’t the biggest denomination nor the most well know. I found myself having to explain what I meant when I said I was a part of the C&MA.

A friend of mine quipped once that “Missions is our middle name.” I replied to him, “No, missions is central to who we are!” I believe that more firmly now than when I first said it years ago. For many churches and denominations, missions are one of the things they do. For the C&MA missions is central to all we do. We believe that every boy and girl, every man and woman need to hear the message of Jesus Christ and have a church in his or her own language that one can attend and grow. More than just having a church in his own language, we believe that the local church should be self-sufficient and self-sustaining. Rather than the church relying on donations from afar, we want to see healthy, growing churches that have national pastors and leaders. We want to see the missionaries so effective that they work themselves out of a job and must find another mission field to minister in.

As a local church our desire is to be a part of the Great Commission and see the gospel proclaimed to all peoples in their own language. We believe that as a church we should pray, give, AND go! Sometimes these three areas are treated as individual options that a church can decide on which one to focus on. But as a church we must continuously be doing all three. We need to pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up workers and send them out to his mission field. We need to give of all that we are, time, treasure, and talent to the work of leading people to Christ and helping them be built up in the faith.

And as a church we need to be challenging our younger generations to consider the great privilege and responsibility it is to be a part of cross-cultural mission. Sometimes out of our own fear for their future and the sense of loss we will experience as parents we hesitate to encourage our children down this path. There is value in every God-honoring vocation. In Scripture, there is a particular calling for us as a church to equip and send out those whom God has called to full-time cross-cultural evangelism. We have just ended our weekend missions conference, but the call for us to give, send, and go is central to who we are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.