Missionaries and Money

Is it really necessary for you to plug your church on every post?

You haven't been married long, haven,t been in ministry for no more than a few minutes but if everybody would just do what you say and how you do it then we would have it all taken care of huh?

I mean wow I'm glad you came along. I don't know how the church was making it without you?

I went on your site and read some of your essays.
Your whacked out man!
Gay people can't come to Christ?
Male gynocologists are perverts?

Did you just fall out the koo koo nest?

It is wrong to correct the KJV with the greek text?
There really are people like you out there.

I've always found that alot of fellows that preach
"soapbox" issues instead of the Bible in context often times are secretly struggling with the very issues they are so hot and bothered with.

Maybe you should have been a gay gynocologists or maybe you want to be? Anyway you have gone way off the reservation.

 

I don't have much time to worry about someone else. I barely have enough time to what God has called me to do.

Even many less disciple others.

http://www.bibleteacher.org/Dm118_8.htm

 

To be fair I think Shannon is saying many of the things others may be thinking. I'm not in agreement with the tone per se, but someone really needs to put a stop to this nonsense. I hope Brother Sanderson stays around and learns as much as I have in my time here.

 

I agree Pastor that not enough people are living lives in way thatr allows them to properly share the love of Christ.

However, when numbers like this are used it ttoally takes the Holy Spirit and man's sin nature out of the picture. It reduces "soul winning" to the level of a pyramid scheme. It looks great, but really has no validity.

 

Brother Anderson, in 1977, before I began deputation to be a missionary to Japan, I had an interesting conversation with my grandfather, Dr. John R. Rice. (You may have heard of him? )

Grandad said to me, "Johnny, why do you want to be a missionary to Japan? You could win more souls in America!" To this day I don't know what I answered him, because I admired him so much and his question hit me so deeply. The only correct answer is the one I hope I gave him. "God called me."

Even Jesus had places where it was difficult to reach. Remember Matthew 13:58, “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Our task according to the Great Commission is not to go to the easy places where we can win the most people, it is to go into the entire world, both where it is difficult and where it is easy, and preach the Gospel to “every creature.”

May I ask, have you ever surrendered to be a missionary anywhere in the world, if God would consider you worthy to be one?

 

Brother Anderson,

The population of the earth was much smaller in the time of the disiciples. Who failed way back then so that the whole world was not saved before 100 AD?

 

amen, C4K. good observation. We cannot save the entire world. That is obvious. We do need to share God's Word and Christ's Love as the Spirit leads. That is all. Walk worthy of the vocation wherein ye are called.

 

Mission's giving is important and right. However, in some situations people feel that by giving to missions they are doing their part. They feel thy are doing their part by winning souls by proxy.

Mission's has to be balanced, organised, consisitent and most importantly led of God.

The real issue has been stated. Individuals need to win others to the Lord. Not all the money in the world given to the best financed missionaries in the world could do the whole job.

Money, like anything else, is simply a tool.

One of the 15 year old guys in the church where I pastor won a friend from school to the Lord via MSN! I have seen the transcript and he gave a solid Gospel presentation and the response seemed genuine. She will most likely be at our youth club this Friday.

Why did I share that? Just to emphasise, individuals do the work and the money given to missions is just another tool.

 

Has the world not been 'reached' by the gospel ? So, the apostles failed the Lord miserably in the so-called Great Commission, is that right ? And if the purpose of the gospel is to 'win souls', then not only the apostles, but the Lord Himself, failed miserably in His bid to win back the souls that were pawned to Satan by sin, right ?
And if the Lord Jesus Christ failed, and His apostles whom He greatly 'commissioned', failed, then, the great God, who speaks things into existence, that great Three-in-One, united in eternal purposes, miserably failed in His bid to win back the souls in bondage to Satan, sin, and death, right ?

And the winner ?

Money=Funds=Givers who do not want to give.

The fact is that God's plan, purposes, and tasks were all successful. Christ redeemed all whom the Father gave Him. He covered them all with His blood. And they were all given to Christ by the Father from the beginning, from before the foundation of the world, when there was yet no star, or sun, or galaxies.
God called them all by name.
From the intelligent and rich, to the poor and ignorant. From the mature to the baby, the one who lived or will live to a ripe old age, to the one who will die in the mother's womb.
From those who were born in the first Adam's time, to those who will be born before the coming of the Second Adam as Judge of all the earth.
The names of all God's elect children are in the Lamb's Book of Life, and they are not written there on the basis of when, how, and by whom they heard the gospel, they were written there before the foundation of time.
The apostles could fail, not every preacher may reach God's people with the good news of their redemption, not everyone of God's people may receive Gospel instruction in kingdom living, but, each and every one of them have been redeemed by Christ.

And not only money, but in a moneyed church, where the coffers are running over, and the members are faithfully doing their 'duty', whether in love or not, to give their tenth plus,
you will find that the zealous, 'soul-winning' pastor will probably pick the consciences of his members by preaching on sloth, or spiritual lethargy, and such, as you do in your next lines.

This guy from New York came to our church in the Philippines back in 1995 and used three small pebbles to give the same illustrations. While he was talking I couldn't help but think back to those times when I had attended marketing and cold canvassing seminars to peddle cheap products to prospects.
And the guy had the temerity to call those that he was trying to "reach for Christ" as prospects.
I was turned off to the idea of 'soul winning' from then on.
My Savior is not a commodity to be peddled and accepted or rejected by mere men and women, call them prospects, if you will, buyers or rejectors who appraise my Lord's worth as if His being Savior was dependent on their appraisal and their own self-worth, and whose peddling is dependent on the strategies employed by men of corrupt minds.
He is Lord, and He is Savior, and He did what was needed.
I cannot do doublespeak by preaching Him powerful on Sunday mornings, and then peddling Him like some stupid product to be appraised in Sunday afternoon.

And God and Christ would be victorious, forever beholden to the zeal, assistance, and obedience of limited, fallible, failure-ridden,"soul-winning" men and women.

And many true children of God will find when they get to Heaven, and walk with the Savior like the two from Emmaus did, that, really, all their anxieties and all their 'feelings of worth' had been an affront to the person, power and might of the God who calls nothing out of something, who created the entire universe, and who created and formed a people for Himself.

 

pinoybaptist, must you bring such vitriol against soul-winning to this fellowship forum? Can you not keep it in the debate threads? And must you inject Calvinism into every discussion?

And you once again call it the "so-called Great Commission," when in the debate thread on soul-winning you have not answered my clear points as to why the Great Commission is for all disciples and to the church. Please go there and debate me, but don't attack the Great Commission in a fellowship thread. It is unseemly.

 

Bwana John:

The very fact that I do not believe the elect of God must first hear the gospel in order for the Holy Spirit to be able to work His will in them marks me as non-Calvinist, though I do hold to the Doctrine of Grace.
I will get back to you on the so-called Great Commission which you claim to be for all believers, but it will be in my time, so stew.
Are you going to ambush me now in every forum I go to ?
I do not want to think of you as an enemy, but if that is what you think of me, so be it.

 

Bwana John:

The very fact that I do not believe the elect of God must first hear the gospel in order for the Holy Spirit to be able to work His will in them marks me as non-Calvinist, though I do hold to the Doctrine of Grace.
I will get back to you on the so-called Great Commission which you claim to be for all believers, but it will be in my time, so stew.
Are you going to ambush me now in every forum I go to ?
I do not want to think of you as an enemy, but if that is what you think of me, so be it. </font>[/QUOTE]I don't think of you as an enemy. And I am certainly not trying to ambush you. Why would I do that? As far as I remember, this is only the second thread I've interacted with you on.

Being a missionary, I check and contribute to the Missions/Witnessing/Evangelism forum quite often, so anytime you post here you are likely to hear from me. If I think you have made a good comment, I'll compliment you. If I think otherwise, I will say that also.

At this point I simply think of some of your views as strange. And I will debate them if I think they are harmful. But debate is inappropriate on a fellowship thread, so I hope you'll keep your views about the Great Commission out of here, since they are a big incitement to debate.

 

sanderson1769, when people have nothing intelligent to say about a current topic they will often resort to attacking character or setting up strawmen with your other beliefs.

And keep plugging your site if you want. I don't agree with you in several things, but that's life, people disagree.

Part of our problem, it seems, is that 99% of our time is spend praying for the harvest and a very small portion of the time is spent praying for the Labourers.

Prayer for one another empowers, protects and I believe is a help to evangelism.