At the Kelang Methodist 29th Mission Conference held on Dec. 2, Rev. Dr. Thomas Wang preached a message titled, “World Missions, Everyone's Responsibility."
“Why do churches conduct missions?”, he asked.
Refering to Romans 12:1-2, he pointed out the duty of the church is missions.
“Whether for churches in the west or in the east, some churches take missions as extra work for God,” he said. “This belief is wrong; contrarily, if a church does not participate in missions, then it is not obeying the will of God.”
“In Matthew 28, Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations”; this is the command of the Lord. We must obey the Lord’s command of making all people in all nations my disciples; this is world missions."
Regarding world missions, he addressed the following points to the churches:
First, with regards to ones own ethnic group, the believers in the church should do a movement called “One Leading One”, which means that every single one of the believers in the church should lead at least one person to Christ and have them attend churches. If this is followed, then the churches shall grow exponentially.
Second, the congregation must continue to develop. As the number of congregation unceasingly increases, the churches must unceasingly setup churches, in order to contain more people.
Lastly, the commission of the church do not limit to ones own ethnic groups, but, more importantly, is referring to world missions.
Furthermore, he said, "Let’s look at Mark 16:15. Let me know if I am reading this correctly: “He said to them, go into all the world and preach the good news to all Chinese”? What didn’t the Lord say Chinese but all creations?”"
He explained that because of similarities in language, culture, and background, for many years, we have been doing missions to overseas and mainland Chinese, but God’s Great Commission is beyond tribes, cultures, and is to proclaim the gospel to all people in all nations. Robert Morrison, Hudson Taylor, and many others all did cross-cultural missions, learned to use chopsticks from China, wore Chinese clothes, grew long braids, just to reduce the challenges of missions in China.
“Today, the Chinese churches should follow their example to do cross-cultural missions; this is Chinese churches’ direction in the future.”
He continued to explain that in the beginning, many foreign missionaries came to China to train believers, establish churches, and develop all kinds of ministries in churches. Today, the Chinese Church has grown up and should carry the responsibilities of mission. A person at different ages has different responsibilities, different motivation, and a child only thinks for himself. While the spirituality of the Chinese Church continues to develop, our commission for mission becomes greater.
We need to go beyond culture, beyond ethnic tribes to do cross-cultural missions. Of course, the local ethnic tribes are our own responsibilities, but the Lord’s Great Commission aims at the world as the goal, all people in all nations as the goal, he stated.
He challenged the ministers and the attendants to do the movement of "One Leads One", planting more churches, cross-cultural missions.
“Will you do it or not?”
He emphasized that “doing” is the most important part in missions.
[Editor's note: Reporter Silas Tian from Malaysia contributed to this report]
