January 2025 | Volume 20 | Issue 1
Take Your Missions Team Higher
10 ways to increase your impact this year
Dream for a minute about what your missions team could accomplish if you were functioning at the max of your God-given capacity. Are you secretly disappointed with the lack of momentum but are not sure why? Or maybe there are one or two areas where you know you could do better but don’t know how to get unstuck, or if it’s even possible.
This month’s Postings suggests 10 concrete options to engage more of your team’s potential. Why not ask each member to pray over this list and come to your next meeting with one or two priorities for the team to adopt this year. Ask God for discernment and unity, and then define how to move upward via concrete action steps.
Ten Ways to Move Your Team to the Next Level
1. Seek a new sense of urgency. Do some soul searching individually and as a group to assess if your passion for the spread of God’s glory has been replaced by a focus limited to program and budget. Does your personal missions call need to be revitalized? Many missions leaders feel their church is apathetic while if honest, it may be that their own passion for sharing the gospel and their willingness to serve people sacrificially has diminished. Does your team need to ask God to ignite your hearts with fresh urgency? This is far more about beseeching God for Holy Spirit conviction than just reading a book, but Radical by David Platt might be a helpful resource.
Has your passion for the spread of God’s glory been replaced by a focus limited to program and budget?
2. Become intentional disciplers. Church leaders are increasingly convinced that developing disciples, not just converts, is the key to a healthy church and to transformational outreach. But how do we go about this life-on-life ministry of helping our people become obedient Christ followers? Discipleship is not a program, but sometimes a program can jump-start the process. Our past Postings, “Integrating Discipleship and Missions,” describes how three churches are pursuing discipleship including how North Way Christian Community is seeing people discipled through the Rooted Consider inviting your church leaders and/or your missions team to become your church’s initial Rooted group.
3. Get proactive about listening to your congregation. Often outreach leaders assume they understand their people’s attitudes about missions and therefore fail to initiate in-depth conversations that can reveal surprising perspectives and identify people’s interests. Also, missions teams often are convinced that people know they are available to talk when that has never been communicated. The majority of your congregation may have no idea that your missions team wants to help them discover God’s plan for them and what kind of role in global/local outreach would be a fit right now. Give your team members “listening assignments” and provide specific questions for those in different life phases as well as church leaders, newcomers/new members, etc. Reserve some time in future meetings to share what your team is learning as they engage in one-on-one and small group dialogs.
4. Redefine your “missions pipeline,” and reshape your messages to your congregation. Too often churches think of missions mobilization only in terms of recruiting long-term missionaries or sending short-term teams. Scripture emphasizes the responsibility of every believer to live on mission and engage in multiple ways in Jerusalem-to-the-ends-of-the-earth outreach. This Postings on “Missions Essentials” can help your team begin to craft messages so that you can assist each person to discover and begin to fill their God-designed roles.
5. Move from decision-makers to active leaders. Churches with long-standing missions committees sometimes struggle because their members see their role as limited to attending a monthly meeting to make decisions. Your missions team needs to be made up of those who are willing to roll up their sleeves for the hard work of being an active leader. If people on your team are not able to commit the necessary time to do so, it may be best for them to step back and serve in a support capacity.
Your missions team needs to be made up of those who are willing to roll up their sleeves.
6. Divide and multiply your team. As missions leadership roles shift from mere decision making to hands-on leadership, many churches create multiple teams or task forces that each focus on utilizing individuals’ gifting and interests in a more narrow scope of responsibility. Strategy, missionary care, events, and short-term coordination/training are often teams to begin with, but your church may organize in a different way that makes sense for you. Define specific roles and let new members “test their fit” on the team for 3-4 months.
7. Set time parameters for decision discussions. Many missions teams bog down in difficult decisions that often revolve around individual missionaries. Meeting after meeting, the same the same factors are rehashed, creating frustration and stealing time needed for other strategic considerations. Solutions? Create a personnel team to do needed research and then prayerfully determine a way forward or come back to the missions team with a proposal. When you develop meeting agendas, set limits on time spent on such discussions by your leadership team. Once the issue has been well researched and options laid out clearly, agree on a deadline for decision making such as “We will discuss this issue for no more than X amount of time at next month’s meeting and make a final decision at the following meeting.”
8. Focus on goals and streamline policies. In the late 20th century, some churches created very extensive missions policies that, while useful, were often so extensive that they were cumbersome and seldom updated. Today, effective teams adopt actionable values and specific goals and then develop a streamlined set of policies.
9. Prioritize visiting your missionaries to learn and care. Send members of your missions team to visit workers on the field, especially those sent from your church. This is not just the role of a pastor or missions pastor. Visits by members of your team are far more important and encouraging to your missionaries than you know. Visiting also provides an understanding of your workers and their ministry contexts that cannot be grasped without on-the-ground exposure. If needed, pay your team member’s way just as you would underwrite the cost for a pastor.
10. Be open to other changes God lays on your hearts. Is there another crucial way your team could “recalibrate” in order to lead your church to greater global impact in the coming year? Make sure it focuses on a tangible change your team can make. For example, you may not be able to increase the amount of platform time designated for missions, but you could determine to creatively use the time you are given for greater impact or experiment with developing fresh, new spaces or opportunities where you can build outreach vision.
Establishing one or two clear, realistic goals is energizing!
Perhaps as you pray and review this list, you identify a number of changes you would like to implement. Choose just one or two to begin; tackling too many usually means none are really addressed. Establishing one or two clear, realistic goals is energizing!
Catalyst can provide resources and help you identify concrete next steps in any of these areas. We would also consider it a privilege to pray with and for you in this process. Contact us soon to dialog about how we could help and encourage.