In this episode, pastors Derek Brown and Cliff McManis talk with fellow CBC pastor Bob Douglas about how missions must be a top priority for local churches. They also discuss how pastors must set the example for their people in valuing and participating in global discipleship.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we have a special guest in the studio who we look forward to talking to in just a moment. But before I get to our guest and our topic for today, I want to remind you to check out withallwisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of written and audio resources that are all aimed at helping you grow in real Christian maturity, rooted in God’s Word and focused on applying the truth—not just knowing the truth. Now on to today’s guest. His name is Bob Douglas, and he’s actually a fellow pastor with us here at Creekside. He’s our executive pastor, and he really is the one who keeps everything working around here and looking excellent and functioning well. We just completed a multi-phase construction project at our church that has greatly improved our office space, our worship center, our classrooms, and our gathering area outside the worship center. And pastor Bob oversaw the entire project, even doing a fair amount of work himself. Bob is a husband of 32 years to Robin, and he is dad to three grown children. But among the many responsibilities that you have at CBC, Bob, you also oversee missions. So we want to ask you a few questions about your work and overseeing missions and your active participation in missions, and then get you to talk about our philosophy of missions here at CBC. So first off, what missions efforts is our church currently involved in?
Bob: We have a number of different efforts going on, a couple of them internationally. Christ to India and Ibex are two of the biggest ones. Hope House, which is a boys’ orphanage in Guadalajara, Mexico, or outside of Guadalajara, Mexico. We have some short terms stuff going on this summer. We have a group headed to Utah as well the Christ to India and Ibex. Those are ones that are focused on pastoral training, which is one of our biggest efforts, helping them in multiplying effects, training pastors so that they can multiply, obviously within their area in India. We’re in the southeast region of India there with about, and roughly 120 pastors that are a part of that. So 120 small churches. And Ibex is the Institute of Biblical Expositors in Honduras. Boy, they have a huge reach, throughout Central America and South America, teaching and training pastors as well. So those are our biggest ones and I shouldn’t forget about local missions effort with Cornerstone Seminary, for sure. I mean, you already mentioned you and Cliff are board members there. You on the board and on staff there. But I was struggling for the name—Real options. Of course, the fight for life and our church backs that as well.
Cliff: Let me clarify on Ibex, because that might not be a familiar term. It’s an acronym used in other agencies and missions organizations. Actually, the Master’s University has an Ibex and has had that since the 1980s. And that’s their institute to Israel, and they call it Ibex, which is based on an indigenous animal that actually lives in Israel. That is no relation to the Ibex you’re talking about. And that’s our ministry to training pastors in Honduras.
Bob: Yes. Thank you for the clarification.
Derek: Any missions organizations that we use here at CBC?
Bob: You mean do we use an outside missions organization? No.
Cliff: Or let me ask the question this way, which has been posed to me several times as a pastor and elder here at our church. They’ll say, hey, pastor Cliff, what missions organization do you guys use? So pastor Bob is elder over missions at our church. What would you say? What missions organization do we use?
Bob: We don’t use any. We’re not connected with any at this point.
Cliff: Well, I would say we do use one as the church. The Church of Jesus Christ is the greatest missions institution ever established—actually, the only one that Jesus personally established. So that’s always my answer. What missions organization do we use or institution? The church of Jesus Christ.
Derek: And that actually relates to talking about philosophy. And that’s where we want to camp out with you, Bob, is talking about philosophy. So what is our main philosophy regarding missions here at CBC?
Bob: Our main philosophy comes right out of Matthew 28, right? The Great Commission. Go, therefore, and make disciples, reaching to all nations, baptizing them, training them, and teaching them. So our focus is bringing the gospel to people.
Derek: Yeah, and I think that’s vital to the point that Cliff just made is that is something that is directed out of the local church. When Jesus established institutions, he didn’t establish institutions. He only established an institution, namely the church. And so making disciples is what the church does. And obviously there are parachurch organizations that can assist the church in that. But we’re talking about the Great Commission flowing out of the local church, and fulfilling that through global missions however we can. And we’ll talk more about how we’ve become involved with different organizations or different churches throughout the world and missions opportunities throughout the world. But that’s one thing I wanted you to make clear is that we are fulfilling the Great Commission at basic. This is what we’re talking about when we talk about missions.
Bob: Yes. Fulfilling the Great Commission, focused on the gospel. We do not do service-oriented stuff. We’re not going down there and building a fence or building a house or doing this thing not connected with people. And bringing the gospel and just doing a service project and leaving that. That is not what we do, though. That might be an element of a greater piece, but it is nowhere near the focus.
Derek: Yeah. I mean, I think of like the orphans down in Guadalajara and the orphanage there. And we’ve done things of bringing down gifts and helping supply them with their needs. But it is always along with the gospel. The gospel is the primary focus. And with that, you do. We do help with meeting some of their needs and blessing them that way. But it is always linked to the gospel and the preaching of the gospel and discipling these young boys.
Bob: Exactly. And similarly at Christ to India. So we have a number of orphanages there and widows homes, and we’re meeting the needs of orphans and widows, which are tremendous in that country. But more than just Americans coming in to establish an orphanage, this is actually done through a local pastor. A local pastor has to have the desire and his church have the desire to host that orphanage and that widow. And we come in help and train and help build the facility, and will help to house them, but it needs to be coming out of an outgrowth of their local church’s desire, not just us parachuting in.
Derek: Right? Yeah, that’s a really good point.
Cliff: Well, so Bob’s one of our elders and Pastor Bob’s been with our church on the leadership team with the elders for 15 years. And we’ve had a lot of discussions over the years among our elders about missions. What is it? How are we going to approach it? Our philosophy of missions, which is rooted in our theology of missions. And we all agreed. It’s pretty clear that our theology is based on Matthew 28, among other passages like Acts 1:8, where Jesus said, go. John 20:21, where Jesus said, as the Father sent me, I also send you. So it’s really simple. So our philosophy of missions flows out of our theology of missions. And that passage, Bob, that you quoted is key for us. It’s foundational. Matthew 28, also known as the Great Commission. So when people ask you what’s your philosophy or theology of missions? Isn’t it synonymous with the Great Commission?
Bob: Yes, absolutely. And I think I learned from you the verb in that Great Commission is the word make, make disciples, go out and do it. That’s the action. And you know that. So that’s the essence of what we’re trying to do.
Cliff: Right. And in light of that, what is your missions, theology and philosophy at your church? Well, it’s what Jesus said, and that is the Great Commission. And the heart of the Great Commission is make disciples. That’s the command. And then we see it illustrated for 28 chapters in the book of Acts, the command in Matthew 28, the modeling by Peter and Paul and the apostles in the whole book of Acts. And really, you could summarize it with two main principles—what true biblical missions is. It has to be rooted in the gospel, and the proclamation of the gospel. It also has to be rooted in the local church, flowing to the church or flowing from the church. And that’s pretty much been our rock bed foundation of how we do missions at our church. Right?
Bob: Yes. Amen.
Derek: Yeah. So I think that’s a good segue into—and we can kind of go back and forth between these questions. But a good segue into asking, as you have been interacting with other churches and other pastors from other churches, rubbing shoulders with them, talking to them about their missions, just kind of viewing things from a high level, maybe even reading books from different pastors who talk about these things. How would you say our philosophy or practice of missions here at CBC is different than a lot of other churches you’ve engaged with?
Bob: Interestingly enough—and it was a surprise to me when I first engaged with other pastors to find out that so many other pastors of churches do not engage directly. They don’t go. They don’t go and train. There was a time where we were reaching out to some other pastors that we knew. So they’re from the same theological plane. They’re from the same understanding of Scripture that we come from to come along with us in some of these mission efforts. And oddly enough, it was much more difficult than I thought it would be. And you come to find out that that’s just not part of what they do. They don’t go. They tell their people about things there. They connect with other mission societies and other missions groups and have people in that tell them, and then they’ll give some financial support, but they don’t engage, which I just find surprised.
Cliff: Yeah, I found that surprising too, that it’s like many other churches don’t do missions. They participate in missions, or they say they support it by just writing a check. But hands on doing it—I also found that to be a rare thing.
Derek: Any reason why you think that might be the case? Why that kind of attitude or culture has developed within some churches?
Bob: I think it’s both push and pull. There are many mission organizations out there, and of course, some of them do great work, and they have formalized everything they need to be in the field. And so what they need is fuel, right? They need the money to go to go do it. And I appreciate that. I mean, I understand that, and that’s not to disparage that formula. It’s just you’re missing something by not being there. And you’re also missing the opportunity to engage your people. One of the very first things that we did in reaching out and starting mission stuff was Hope House in Guadalajara, Mexico. And this is a boys’ orphanage. And the story of the start of that orphanage and everything is just amazing. Seeing the change that has brought to those boys’ lives, hearing the stories of where they come from. But it was a great short-term missions opportunity. People from our church can go down there a couple of times a year. We go in the summer at Christmas, engage and see and touch and feel and see it. And by pastors not leading that way, I think it falls short for people to really understand and allows the world to become very, very close. Right? All they see is where their community is and everything is, you know, on TV or a screen somewhere versus really having a tangible touch.
Derek: It sounds like one of the key differences you would point out is that, at CBC, we have pastors who are actively involved not only in supporting these missions efforts and by encouraging our people to, but actually being actively involved in them. You two have gone over to, like you mentioned, Christ to India, you’ve been over to India collectively. How many times would you say it’s been—five?
Bob: I think it’s five times. At least five or six times.
Cliff: Yeah. To piggyback on what pastor Bob just said of why a lot of churches aren’t hands on. It may be that that’s hard work. Because our ministry to India is training local pastors in India. And so, you know, some of our elders actually go to India. It’s a long, tiring plane ride. We go into the villages and travel all over, and it’s risky in terms of the travel that we do there once we get to India. So it’s arduous work. But we need to be hands on training these pastors, these local Indian pastors, so it’s a lot easier. I’ve actually been a part of a pastoral staff and team at other churches where they boasted of having a huge and massive influential missions program, and they say, oh, we support 53 missionaries around the world. And really all they’re doing is they’re just sending money and writing checks, and there’s never any boots on the ground from people at the church doing the work of missions. So those are two completely, totally different paradigms. One is hands on in the trenches. The leaders of the church are local pastors and also providing opportunities for your members to go on those trips as well and actually serve and evangelize versus kind of being a spectator and just sending money.
Bob: I was going to add to the point, you hear a lot of people now talk about, well, why not Skype or Zoom? You can do training all over the world very easily that way. And yes, that’s true, but the majority of the people that we reach to in India don’t even have electricity, right? Let alone the ability to have internet. So we’re going into places and the world needs that. We’re going into places that that kind of technology doesn’t work.
Derek: Yeah, you already alluded to it. And I want to see your guys’ thoughts on this. How do you think that changes a pastor’s perspective when he is engaged at a boots on the ground level in missions? How does that change his perspective towards missions as a whole, would you say?
Bob: For me, it changed my perspective. It did change my perspective in missions, but it probably made a greater impact on our church culture, right? Of how we view not only our own church worship and the needs of our own church, but to communicate that and involve the body so the body is not going to be going on short-term mission trips to India, but by the body being involved in other short-term missions, they much more understand what we’re seeing and doing in these other areas. Does that answer your question? Cliff?
Cliff: One of the things that I tell our people that was shared with me by someone very wise when I was a young Christian is, if you actually can go on a short-term missions trip, it provides you with a unique cross-cultural experience as a Christian. And you become a world Christian. Not just an ethnocentric, parochial, localized, narrow minded Christian. So when I started having opportunities to go do missions in Ghana, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Mexico, India, Honduras…it just opened my eyes that Jesus Christ, is the savior of the world and of the nations of the world. And then that that changed my entire paradigm and way of thinking about certain things, of being really ethnocentric in a lot of things. And I hear pastors today who will say things dogmatically from a very narrow perspective. And my thought is, I don’t think that guy’s ever been anywhere outside this country as a Christian. All he understands is the European, white, Anglo-English kind of post-Reformation small world of Christianity, which has zero application to some Indian pastor who speaks Telugu in some hut with no electricity. Or I’ve been on the other side of the world [and seen people] who love Jesus and no scripture, and he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care who the reformers were or their confessions, right? And he doesn’t have to know them. He’s got a Bible.
Bob: So many times, that’s the only thing they have, because they’re so few on other references and other things for the resources.
Derek: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s really helpful. And that’s exactly what I wanted you to touch on, is how does this change a pastor for the better? I think it’s, like you said, change the church culture. Change the pastor for better and prove his preaching, his ministry here at his local church, helping inculcate a real love for missions and a right view towards missions. And like you said, being a global Christian—that’s really helpful phrase.
Bob: And I find it amazing how many times Cliff was weaving some of that experience into his weekly preaching. Right? Because the perspective that that brings from all over the world and hearing, you know, when you’re talking about issues of the day. So we’re talking about any of the current issues of the day, not to give a list, the input that they get from other cultures. It just is amazing.
Derek: Any last thoughts you want to help people to understand this view towards missions, this philosophy towards missions that we have at CBC, that we think would be helpful for people to consider?
Cliff: I would just want to encourage pastors out there in local churches to just keep going back to the biblical model of missions, which is really simple. It’s the Great Commission. It’s about proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ and establishing churches. Actually, that is the ultimate goal of missions. Get the gospel. That’s what Paul did. It’s modeled in Acts chapter 28. It’s nothing more sophisticated than that preaching the gospel. See God bring people together and then establish a church. That’s the fulfillment of missions, really, of making disciples. And that’s why the local church has to be at the heart of true missions, which sets us apart, or the biblical model from just strictly parachurch organizations that are not rooted or connected in any significant way with a local church. And if that’s not even in their purview or their goal, then that means they don’t have a biblical view of missions.
Derek: It really is the case. And this would go into a different conversation altogether, but it’s an important point to make that we’ve already touched on. But when it comes to institutions that Christ has established, the church is the institution that he has established in every other institution, like a parachurch organization is a derivative entity. It’s not the original entity. The church is. And so if you are a so-called parachurch organization, then you should be built around serving the local church. So at the very least, we would, I think, would like to see that these big missions organizations reframe their own philosophy of assisting local churches to do missions according to the Great Commission and to see themselves as a derivative entity, not the original. And the ones that are helping assist the local church and making their focal point the local church, rather than doing things unto themselves and creating their own large organizations without reference. I mean, I recently did that. I went through a number of various parachurch organizations and read their mission statements, and few, I think, like out of all of them, maybe 5% that I looked at had any reference at all to the local church. And that’s for another podcast. But it does tie to missions. And I’m glad you brought that up.
Bob: Cliff—just one last comment. Piggybacking on something Cliff said is, it’s so easy to get involved around time, right? As a pastor, there are a thousand things vying for your time. And it’s like, if I’ve never done that, how in the world can I add that to my plate? And I would just say it has to be an issue of priority. And even if you have to go out 18 months, make a plan. It’s invaluable. And I would just encourage that.
Derek: Great. Well, thanks for joining us, Bob. It was fun to chat with you over these great topics and hopefully we’ll have you back sometime and maybe talk about parachurch organizations and your thoughts on that. So again, we thank you for listening in to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. Again, just another reminder to go to withallwisdom.org. We have all of our written and audio resources there, including these episodes, and we encourage you to check those out. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord in His Word.
