Christ for the City International•Articles by: Eric Tonjes

Author: Eric Tonjes

Growing a Vision for Missions: The Five Stages

Many Christians long to see their local church grow in its vision for missions. Whether they are leaders or members, they desire a deeper passion—for themselves and for their church—for God’s every-tribe-and-tongue work in the world. Yet while that desire may be present, many struggle to know how to help their faith communities grow in that vision.

Part of CFCI’s mission is partnering with local churches to help them engage in God’s global mission. One helpful way to think about that journey is to break it into five stages. Here they are—and how we can help.

1. Knowing

Every journey begins with understanding some foundational truths. God’s people need to know things like:

  • The gospel is not meant to end with us; it is something we receive and then share with others.
  • The kingdom of God is advancing, and we are invited to offer our lives in service to that work.
  • God’s mission is global, encompassing people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
  • The Great Commission is the mission of the Church.

Teaching these truths is essential. If people do not understand them, the later stages will never take root. Most churches, however, do teach these things. The challenge is that many Christians can repeat the information without allowing it to shape their hearts and lives.

Why does that happen?

2. Doing

In the Christian life, knowing leads to doing. Until truth is put into practice, it has not yet fully taken root. When it comes to missions, one of the best ways to understand God’s heart for the nations is to participate in His work.

At the same time, growth happens in stages. Jesus spent three years preparing His disciples before sending them out. Paul likewise spent years growing in faith and understanding after his conversion. Yet throughout that process, he was already participating in God’s mission.

So what might those first steps look like?

Begin by making a concrete plan to join God’s work in your local community or a neighboring one. Learn to serve, witness, and love people in your own cultural context before stepping into another.

This is the vision behind CFCI’s Urban Plunge program. It creates opportunities for churches to engage with the spiritual and physical needs of a nearby urban center. Along the way, participants are challenged to deepen their own walk with Jesus as well.

3. Going

While local ministry is invaluable, few experiences help believers catch a vision for God’s global mission like a short-term mission trip.

These trips do two important things:

  • They call us out of our comfort zones. As we take larger steps of faith into unfamiliar situations, our trust in God grows as we experience His faithfulness.
  • They introduce us to the wider Church. Serving and worshiping alongside indigenous believers and leaders is often transformative. We discover that God—and His people—are far bigger and more beautiful than we imagined.

CFCI facilitates these experiences through our Global Trips. These trips provide opportunities for teams to serve alongside local ministries around the world, witnessing what God is doing and contributing in meaningful ways to that work.

4. Partnering

It is one thing to experience the global Church. It is another thing entirely to develop lasting relationships within it.

Cross-cultural partnerships make the communion of the saints visible and tangible. They remind us that we belong to one body, united in Christ despite differences of language, culture, and geography.

One of the most exciting aspects of CFCI’s Global Trips is the opportunity they create for ongoing partnerships. Teams can return to the same ministry locations year after year, reconnecting with familiar faces and witnessing firsthand how God continues to work. We are always excited to help cultivate and strengthen these long-term relationships.

5. Sending

While every church can know, do, go, and partner, our prayer is that God would also call some individuals to devote their lives to cross-cultural ministry.

This calling is not for everyone, but it is something every church should celebrate, support, and pray for.

CFCI provides a unique environment for those exploring such a calling. Our Global Ambassadors program offers training, support, and opportunities for longer-term service experiences lasting up to a year. We can also serve as a sending organization for those whom God leads into long-term missionary service.

Wherever your church may be on this journey, it is worth asking: What is the next step?

How might God be inviting your church to grow into a deeper vision for His mission?

And wherever that next step leads, know that we at CFCI are here to help.

What We Mean By Holistic Missions

There is sometimes a tension in missions between two approaches.

One is centered on what we might call a spiritual mission. It looks at the world and sees people who need to be reconciled to God, so it focuses primarily on evangelism and helping people become followers of Jesus.

The other is centered on what we might call a physical mission. It looks at the world and sees the ways sin has broken people’s lives and circumstances, then focuses on bringing healing, justice, and restoration to those areas of brokenness.

Advocates of both approaches can be suspicious of the other side—and both have compelling biblical arguments. Those emphasizing spiritual ministry might ask, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). Those emphasizing physical care might respond, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15–16).

So how do we decide? Which side is right?

Like many apparent conflicts in the Christian life, the way forward is not choosing one side over the other but recognizing the truth in both.

One of CFCI’s core commitments is holistic missions. Through our network of ministries around the world, we seek to address both spiritual and practical needs through discipleship, youth outreach, medical care, education, community development, and more. We do this because we believe these ministries belong together.

We see this integrated approach in the ministry of Jesus Himself. The words of the kingdom and the works of the kingdom—the proclamation of good news and the restoration of what sin has broken—were inseparable in His mission. As Matthew writes, “And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction” (Matthew 9:35).

Sharing the gospel is essential to God’s mission. We are called to bear witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus and invite people into new life through Him. Without this inward transformation, our outward efforts can never fully address humanity’s deepest need. Furthermore, the good works Christians are called to pursue flow from the gospel itself. We care for physical needs because the Holy Spirit is reshaping our hearts and priorities.

At the same time, the good news we proclaim should be accompanied by lives and ministries that embody that good news. We are not called merely to make converts but to make disciples—people whose lives are increasingly transformed to reflect God’s character and purposes. And because we proclaim the gospel of a kingdom, our work should reflect the justice, compassion, and love of the King who reigns over it.

Far from being opposed, the spiritual and physical dimensions of mission work exist in beautiful harmony. This is exactly what we see in CFCI ministries around the world. Our hope is whole people being wholly restored by Jesus. Through evangelism and Bible study, visiting prisoners and empowering the helpless, the gospel is being shared in both word and deed. As a result, lives are being transformed and the kingdom of God is advancing.

Short-Term Missions as Formation

From the beginning, Jesus’ followers have been called into a worldwide mission. As Luke records Jesus’ final words to his disciples:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

We are both the fruit of that witness (imagine the gospel traveling from Jerusalem all the way to a continent the disciples didn’t even know existed!) and participants in the same calling. While not all of us are called to go to the ends of the earth, all of us are called to support that vision.

Some people struggle with the idea of short-term mission trips. They ask important questions such as:

  • How much good can I really do in a week?
  • Aren’t people within a culture better equipped to share the gospel than I am?
  • Isn’t this an inefficient use of resources and money?

Each of these questions contains truths that we need to consider carefully in how we approach mission. However, they also reflect an assumption: that the purpose of mission is only about what we accomplish at our destination during a short visit.

The idea of short-term mission trips actually originates with Jesus. We read in Luke 9:

“And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” (Luke 9:1–2)

The disciples go, and when they return, Jesus gives them further instruction. Then He sends out a larger group of seventy-two disciples to do the same thing (Luke 10). When they return, their hearts are filled with excitement over what God has done through them.

“The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!’” (Luke 10:17)

Why did Jesus send out these disciples?

They didn’t yet have the full story to share—Jesus’ cross and resurrection were still in the future. They didn’t yet have the full power to proclaim it—the Holy Spirit had not yet been given at Pentecost. So what was the purpose of these short-term trips?

The answer is found in Acts 1. By the time the disciples received their calling to be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth, these earlier journeys had already taught them what that meant. They were formed to be lifelong witnesses through seasons of focused witness.

I remember voicing questions about short-term missions to an older friend who had spent much of his life on the mission field. He agreed that the concerns were valid, but then said, “Let me tell you how I sensed a call to missions.”

He described a short-term trip he took as a college student—an experience that completely transformed his understanding of God’s mission. It put him on the path that had defined his life Then he added, “I don’t know many missionaries who didn’t catch their vision on a short-term mission trip.”

At CFCI, there are many reasons we support short-term trips, both in the United States and around the world. We seek to conduct them in ways that thoughtfully address the concerns mentioned above. There is real value in the work our teams accomplish.

But we also support them because we believe in their transformative power for those who go. Mission is formation. Going out—even for a short time—teaches us how to live as witnesses for Jesus wherever He has placed us. And sometimes, it opens our hearts to a new and unexpected calling that changes the course of our lives.

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