Mere Missions

T he H oly S pirit : E mpower • 77

Planting churches like this allows the poor to be empowered and to fully engage and join the Church in the Great Commission. To empower the poor, or anyone, in missions – “the sending forth of authorized persons to unchurched communities to proclaim the Gospel in order to win converts to Jesus Christ, make disciples from the converts, and gather together the disciples to form functioning, multiplying local churches, that bear the fruit of the Kingdom of God in that community” – is to give them authority, freedom and power. In missions, churches and their leadership, through the person and leading of the Holy Spirit, take on this responsibility. This has been the modus operandi throughout Church history. No doubt, the Church has had its ups and downs in empowering for missions. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the two main reasons are, the Church is not perfect and there is a spiritual enemy who infiltrates the Church to hinder the Church’s leadership and their best intentions (1 Thess. 2.18). The enemy has been especially successful in hindering one key class of people to engage in missions and that is the poor. He has subtly done this by stigmatizing the poor as deplorable and useless. They are only to be pitied at best. The general mindset of the Church is, “Can anything good come out of our poor communities, slums and prisons.” I give a resounding, YES, that God calls the poor and uses them to confound the wise and to expand and advance His Kingdom. For close to four decades, I have been actively engaged in missions “from and for” the poor through the Christian missions organization, World Impact. The following thoughts are taken from World Impact’s short article by Rev. Dr. Don Davis, Our Distinctive: Advancing the Kingdom of God among the Urban Poor. I have it in its entirety to stir the Church to see the poor as more than needing a hand-out.