Most people, when looking for the will of God in their life, look for a magical moment to be called by the Lord to do anything for His work. This is the wrong approach when looking for God’s will, especially with mission work. Most of the time when people look for a magical or emotional experience after hearing a good message to send them to the mission field, they never end up having that experience, thus never going. This is a huge problem in our Christian society. Instead of expecting a mind blowing experience, one should ask God to let them be a missionary in prayer. This is the beginning of thinking outside of the box when it comes to missions.
Before anyone goes to the mission field, they should evaluate whether or not they are fulfilling the Great Commission at home first. Jesus said, “..first in Jerusalem…” Jerusalem was where they were at the time that Christ said this. If one does not evangelize in his home town or volunteer at his home church then there is a probability that they will not do so well when out on the mission field. Jesus said in the book of Acts, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Both in this passage means where you are and where you are not. Just because you are not on the mission field right now does not mean that you can’t be a missionary wherever you are right now.
When one does get called to the mission field after being busy in ministry at home, they should look at the biblical call to teach all nations. In the Greek, nations refers to different people groups. The word that is used is ethnos, where we get the English word, ethnic groups. If we want to have a biblical view of missions we need to think of nations, not as geographic locations, but as people. To think of missions in this way will get the unreached people groups reached.
Eighty-five percent of the missionaries from Independent Baptist churches that spread the gospel, are in the same fifteen countries of the world. This is because we have had a geographic view of missions, not a biblical view. There are still 6,000 people groups who have not received the Bible in their own native tongue. We need to send missionaries to the uttermost parts of the earth. The uttermost here means the unreached people groups.
In conclusion, the world is still unreached with the gospel and churches are sending missionaries to only a few different countries. We need to send missionaries to the uttermost parts of the earth as well as Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. We cannot just let this go on any further and in order to stop it we must have the biblical worldview of missions. To have a worldview that is biblical we must look at nations as people not locations.
