Our Football

“This is a football.” What an important reminder Pastor Bob gave us last week. Our “football” is to be a disciple-making church (Matthew 28:19-20). It is “taking our Christ-given mission and participating in its accomplishment.”

Our current emphasis on prayer, care, and share has helped us to advance the football here in Iowa—as we should. But to stop here would be to fumble the ball. Jesus’ command was to make disciples of all the “nations”—literally all “people groups.” Put simply, a people group refers to a community who shares the same language, culture and geography. They are able to communicate without facing a major geographical, linguistic, or cultural barrier. If a refugee from Iraq who speaks only Arabic moved next door to you, you would face both a cultural and linguistic barrier in sharing the Gospel with him.

I believe our participation in accomplishing our mission is not done until there is a church within every people group on earth. If this is true, it has an impact on our strategy for missions at New Covenant. Let’s go back to a football analogy. While I lived in Dallas, I became a Cowboys fan. But for a number of years, they were not a good team. Yet during those bad years they seemed to always be able to beat the Washington Redskins. That victory was always sweet, but consistently winning against one team does not take you to the Super Bowl!

In a similar way, there are people groups that already have an established church. If we only send missionaries to those places, it would be like the Cowboys always playing the Redskins—it is a game that must be played, but it does not complete the whole football season. There are good reasons to send missionaries to people groups that have an established church. But we must also send missionaries to those who have never heard if we are to be obedient to Jesus’ command to make disciples of all people groups.