Historically, Brentview Baptist Church has been keenly involved in missions all over the world. Both supporting missionaries locally and globally as well as sending our own members to serve oversees has been our passion. We have seen our short-term teams literally reach the world and become a highlight of our missions efforts. Our partnership with the North American Baptist Conference has allowed us to see the gospel reach people groups that we, ourselves, could not touch. Over all, Brentview has been passionate about missions.
As we have been discussing our understanding of what our role in missions is, we have usually come to the point of discussing missions in two main concentrations: 1)Evangelism and 2) Humanitarian efforts. While both of these are vital elements of missions, it seems that in order to strategize how we will both Know Jesus and TOUCH THE WORLD, we need to understand clearly what touching the world and Missions have to do with each other.
Historically, within our Evangelical circle of Baptists, we have found that missions is an implementation of Christ’s Great Commission found in Matthew 28. This would suggest that our main motivation for going to the world is to make Disciples. This is consistent with our commitment to our North American Baptist family.
Both disciple making and humanitarian efforts are necessary. We must conclude, that humanitarian efforts are an outpouring of disciple making and not a preliminary effort. Making disciples must be our motivation. Christ healed the sick but always provided a way for forgiveness as well. His main motivation was not healthy people, but worshipers of God. Otherwise, we only have Christians who worship God when they feel good.