From the beginning of the New Testament church, missionaries have been sent and commissioned from local churches. Acts 13:1-3 demonstrate the sending of Barnabas and Paul from the Antioch church. Local churches send missionaries not mission agencies. When did sending missionaries shift from the local church to mission agencies? In the article, “Reclaiming What was Lost: Returning the Church to the Heart of Mission,” Danny Davison calls pastors and churches back to church-centered missions and briefly traces the shift.
From the beginning, missions was inseparable from the local church. The first missionaries—Paul and Barnabas—were sent out by a congregation in Antioch (Acts 13:1–3). The church was not simply a supporter of missions; it was the beginning, the means, and the end of the Great Commission.
Over the past two centuries, however, the structure of missions has shifted. As the modern missions movement emerged, mission societies and agencies developed to coordinate the training, funding, and logistics of sending missionaries. These organizations proved incredibly effective, enabling thousands to serve around the world.
Leaders such as William Carey and Hudson Taylor inspired generations to carry the gospel to the nations. Movements like the Student Volunteer Movement, along with gatherings such as the Berlin Congress on World Evangelism (1966) and the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (1974), helped mobilize the global church for evangelism.
These efforts accomplished tremendous good. Yet over time, an unintended consequence emerged: the local church slowly drifted from the center of the missions movement.
In many cases, churches became donors rather than senders. Pastors became supporters rather than shepherds of missionary souls. Many missionaries now serve faithfully while remaining disconnected from meaningful relationships with a sending church.
I celebrate the return to church-centered missions. “Upstream Collective” and “The Great Commission Congress” are organizations that are intentionally helping local churches take initiative in sending missionaries. Here are current books written to help churches fulfill their God-given responsibility to train and to send missionaries.
Bell, Bradley. The Sending Church Defined, Second Edition. Knoxville, TN: The Upstream Collective, 2020.
Bell, Bradley, Mike Easton, Larry McCrary, and Nathan The Sending Church Applied. Louisville, KY: The Upstream Collective, 2024.
Folmar, John and Scott Logsdon. Prioritizing the Church in Missions. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025.
Martin, Ryan. Holding the Rope: How the Local Church Can Care for Its Sent Ones. Knoxville, TN, 2022.
Meade, David C. Missions on Point: The Local Church at the Heart of Ecclesiology and Missiology. Sharpsburg, GA: Send Forward, 2024.
Menikoff, Aaron and Harshit Singh. Prioritizing Missions in the Church. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025.
What defines the “sending church?” Bradley Bell provides an extensive definition in The Sending Church Defined on pages 13-14,
A Sending Church is a local community of Christ-followers who have made a covenant together to be prayerful, deliberate, and proactive in developing, commissioning, and sending their own members both locally and globally, often in partnership with other churches or agencies, and continuing to encourage, support, and advocate for them while making disciples cross-culturally, and upon their return.
In Prioritizing the Church in Missions (page 122), Folmar and Logsdon provide a concise definition, “Sending churches affirm, send, and hold the missionary accountable in the task. They exercise managerial authority.” ABWE and EveryEthne seek to involve the sending church in the mobilization of their missionaries. Our goal is to come alongside of local churches to help them send their missionaries well. In an effort to do this, we are developing a training to help local churches send men and women to the nations. Our training will be divided in the following six specific phases:
- Assessing the Reality – Church leaders will learn how to clearly assess their church’s current reality as a sending church.
- Missioning the Church – Church leaders will learn how to cultivate, infuse, and maintain a mission-sending DNA that is woven into the ongoing life of the church rather than treated as a periodic event or side program.
- Identifying the Called – Church leaders will learn how a church can biblically and practically discern when God is calling an individual to missions.
- Preparing the Identified – Church leaders will learn how to move individuals from good intentions to genuine readiness for mission.
- Sending the Prepared – Church leaders will learn what it practically means for a church to send missionaries well.
- Sustaining the Sent – Church leaders will learn how to build durable rhythms of care, support, and loving accountability that sustain missionaries over the long haul—spiritually, relationally, emotionally, and missionally.
In the upcoming months, I will have an article on each of these phases. Our desire is that every church would be a sending church and that every sending church would identify, prepare, send, and sustain missionaries into God’s abundant harvest (Matthew 9:37-38).
