Ghosting Missions

Why Preaching So Often Misses the Missions Mark

A few weeks ago, I was in a conversation about preaching in churches regarding missions. I was struck by one comment. “If a church has a “missions Sunday” (and most do not) that will be the one Sunday of the year that the pastor will invite somebody outside of their church to preach. Most preachers ghost missions.”

That is true.

When it comes to preaching, most pastors do not preach on missions. I am going to suggest that there are three reasons why we hear little missions preaching today, apart from simple neglect or ignorance.

1. Expository Preaching

I love expository preaching. We moved recently and have been looking for a church. I am observing, in myself, that when a preacher is not going verse by verse through a book, I write that church off. Evidently, this is my favorite model of preaching. It is also what I was taught when I was in seminary. Three points pulled out of a small section of scripture, and an application at the end. They call this “homiletics” to make it sound more impressive than “preaching.” It was one of the easiest classes I took in seminary because all you have to do is follow the formula to get an A.

We find almost no examples of expository preaching in the New Testament. In my course, the professor went to great lengths to shoehorn a few passages into expository preaching, but it was unconvincing to me. I know this probably will get a few people to unsubscribe, but I don’t believe we can beat the drum that the New Testament model of preaching is expository, unless we broadly define it and the Bible text in question. I realize there are canonical reasons for this (i.e., we didn’t have the New Testament yet, and so on).

Why does expository preaching mitigate against missions preaching? Because, for the most part, the missions narrative in the Bible is a grand narrative. It is best understood beginning in Genesis and working its way through Revelation. It is about the forest, not the trees. Expository preaching lends itself to looking at the bark, the leaves, and the roots. Sometimes one must rise above the tree canopy to see the whole and regular expository preaching does not do this. Thus, the missions message is lost.

2. Topical Preaching

The favorite style of the megachurch and multisite crowd is typically topical. The way it tends to work is the preacher designs their messages around a “series,” gives it a snappy title and video bumper, and dissects a single topic over the six weeks. These sermons are filled with anecdotes, versus plucked from here and there, and are heavy on relevancy. There might be little stage props and demonstrations to bolster the message. The most winsome speakers are able to craft these series into full blown books.

Topical preaching is necessary. Like systematic theology, there are appropriate times for a preacher to focus on a single subject. Ask yourself, “When was the last time I heard a topical sermon series on missions?” I am sure it happens, but rarely. The overwhelming number of topical sermon series are about personal issues that people face. They are not typically weighted heavily toward theology. Because most preachers are pastors, they see the New Testament primarily as a pastoral handbook, even though much of the text was written by missionaries to missionaries. Topical preaching tends to simply ignore missions.

Topical sermons often run the risk of being Chrisian self-help sessions. This leads us to the third reason why preaching is seldom focused on missions.

3. Application

When I took that homiletics class, we were instructed to focus on application. I recall the professor saying, “When you take off in an airplane, it is a good idea to know where you are going to land it.” What did he mean? The sermon design starts with application, which is always placed at the end of the message. This is the part where the keyboard player slinks on stage and beings playing a few low intensity chords. Both expository and topical sermons emphasize application.

For expository preaching, I trust we see this is a real problem. Many passages of scripture are not intended to be applicational. Sometimes the Bible is just telling a story, passing along important information, or calling us to reflect on God’s glory. Yet, somehow, most expository sermons are able to come up with some sort of application.

Topical sermons, on the other hand, are very strongly tied to application. Many of these applicational suggestions are in the realm of important things, like obedience or personal holiness, and so forth. But often they are therapeutic, focused on helping us live better lives.

Because missions application is either abstract (for example, “let’s pray for the lost people in Overthereistan,”) or highly concrete (as in, “Let’s get on an airplane to do missionary work,”) it is rare to hear a sermon preached that includes missions application. This is probably due in part to the facile view of missiology that most seminary graduates are exposed to during the training (assuming they get any missiology at all). It is also due to the nature of most application, which is personal and limited in scope.

What does missions preaching look like?

I am so glad you asked that…

When Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, opened the minds of the disciples to understand the scriptures, it was a broad sweep of the whole Bible story.

Luke 24:27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

and a little later in Luke 24:

44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

You can also see Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 and Stephen’s preaching in Acts 6 to see that they gave a long form narrative of God’s plan for redemption. This concept of God moving through history to reconcile the fallen world to himself is what I would call missions preaching.

Seeing the big picture is what saves us from expository preaching’s tendency to focus on the trees instead of the forest. It overcomes the therapeutic nature of topical preaching by stating the historical outlay of God’s grace to us as people. Application is different when this type of preaching is utilized. Typically, I find it to be much more about purpose. It helps people understand their place in the grand narrative.

I recall a snowy winter night in 1988 in a cold basement room in a Lutheran church in downtown Minneapolis. My wife and I had signed up for the Perspectives course, and this was the first night. A Baptist pastor took to the podium and preached, “The Story of His Glory,” tracing the unfolding of God’s grace to the nations, starting with Genesis 3 all the way to Revelation. That pastor’s name was John Piper. This was when Annette and I realized that we might play a larger role in this grand narrative than we had been thinking.

One could deliver an expository or topical sermon on missions, of course. It just rarely happens. I am sure there are exceptions to what I have written here. Yet, very few pastors make this sort of preaching a part of their annual preaching cycle. Unfortunately, the big picture is often left out, resulting a very low missions IQ in most congregations.

Preaching often ghosts missions.