Prioritizing the Church in Missions: A Review

Folmar, John, and Scott Logsdon. Prioritizing the Church in Missions. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025.

This series of books from 9 Marks and Crossway on Church Centered Missions starts with an important question. What are missions? The answer is likely not the one that most people would use. Prioritizing the Church in Missions answers that "Missions involves churches sending qualified workers across linguistic, geographic, or cultural barriers to start or strengthen churches, especially in places where Christ has not been named." The first book in the series focused on the importance of missions. You can find a review of that book here. Aaron Menikff and Harshit Singh write about how churches need to be mission-minded. It is the work of the church to send out missionaries, after faithfully testing and equipping them for the work. It is not a responsibility that the church can pawn off on others. But that first book leaves open the question of what is at the heart of missions. What is the goal of missions? Ultimately, the goal is to make disciples of all people, but where are these disciples supposed to be discipled, that is, trained and built up? Simply put, disciples must be joined together in the church.

What is the Church? - The Beginning of An Outline

John and Scott start their short book on the importance of planting churches in missions by answering the question of what a church is. This is an important question. I do not think it is a question that many of us would struggle to answer, but it is one that we need to be clear on. "The church in the New Testament is a gathering. It's not a building or an event but an assembly of God's people." This is where John and Scott's definition starts, but it is not where it ends. He goes on to say, "The church is not just a gathering...It's a gathering of God's people who have been marked off and publicly affirmed by the ordinances."

After outlining a solid definition of what the word church means, the authors move on to defining missions. Where many are likely to be able to define what a church is, it is far less common to find a clear definition of what missions are. I cannot count the number of times that I have heard someone justify sending their children to public school by saying that they are sending their children as missionaries. But as the definition of missions above makes clear, that is not missions. As the authors put it, "We can't include everything a Christian does in our definition of mission. If we were to do so, we'd have to find yet another term to label the particular work of bringing the gospel to those who have never heard it." The point is that the work of missions is different from the general work of evangelism. Every Christian is commanded to evangelize. To be a light on the hill, sharing the gospel with the people around them. But not every Christian is called to move to a completely different context to pursue that work.

After these first two definitional chapters, the book gets to the heart of what it wants to tell us. Each of the last four chapters starts with the word church. Chapter three focuses on the "Church as the origin of missions." This chapter covers a lot of the same ground as the first book in the series, that the local church is where missions have to start. They are the ones who train, test, and send out missionaries. Throughout the chapter, the authors offer helpful criteria for assessing the suitability and readiness of missionaries. These include things like "Do the missionary candidates...believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and the exclusivity of Christ?" This and the other questions that the chapter brings up are things we should use when considering who we will send out. The rest of the book continues to build on the importance of the church being central to missions. The church trains missionaries, sends missionaries, and their goal is to plant new churches. They are to cooperate with other churches to further the work of the gospel.

An Important Reminder for the Church in Missions

I deeply enjoyed reading through this book in part because it is wonderful to find other people who are dedicated to growing the church. Over the last couple of years, I have noticed two things: the widespread neglect of healthy ecclesiology, especially in missions, and a growing recognition of how problematic this is. As a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, I love that we are a group that comes together for the work of missions. On the other hand, because of the increasingly low view of ecclesiology in missions that the North American and International Mission boards hold, it is difficult to be excited about participating with them. How can I, as a pastor, encourage my church members to give money to a work that does not faithfully seek to build healthy churches? We need to regain a healthy ecclesiology in missions.

We Need This Book

Getting the work of missions right is essential. We must take the biblical call to missions, within the context of the church, seriously. We need more books on missions like this one. I am thankful for 9 Marks and Crossway for putting this series together, and I hope that you will read the books and prayerfully and biblically consider what is said. We must take seriously the call to preach sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it. That sound doctrine includes teaching about the importance of the church in missions.

Soli Deo Gloria