Success on Mission
One of the key questions every missionary asks is this: how do I know I’m a good missionary?
The Apostle Paul wrote letters to his fellow worker and disciple Timothy in order to encourage Timothy in his work of spreading the gospel by establishing and supporting healthy churches.
A key theme Paul pressed is faithfulness: above everything else, Paul wanted Timothy to make sure that the spread of the gospel happened in a way that guarded the integrity of the faith that had been passed to TImothy.
2 Tim 2:2 “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
Often this verse is used to emphasize the generational fruit of the gospel: there is Paul passing the gospel to Timothy, who in turn passes it to faithful men, who in turn teach others. Praise God that the gospel creates generations of followers!
But don’t miss how concerned Paul is with faithfulness in this. The things you heard from me IN THE PRESENCE OF WITNESSES - a witness is someone who can verify the veracity of a claim or of a process - ENTRUST - a word that is used of a steward to safeguard something important or valuable - to FAITHFUL men - not just to anyone, but to those who are FAITHFUL and have been proven to be faithful - men who are ABLE TO TEACH others.
Likewise in 1 Cor 3, Paul says this:
1 COR 3:5-15 “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
Going on, at the beginning of chapter 4 he says:
1 COR 4:1-2 “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.”
As we prepare for full-time mission, we want to make sure that we are faithful.
One thing we cannot do is define success by the results of the work. Baptisms and conversions can only be accomplished by God - not us. Instead, we should define success by how faithfully we are accomplishing the hard work that God has called us to do.
Being faithful means that we
work hard: we give of our time, energy, and resources in doing what the Bible says gospel ministers should be doing.
We also work smart: we don’t do a lot of activity and call that faithfulness - no, we think critically about what we are doing - we consider our work against what the Bible says we should be doing. We allow freedom when the Bible allows for freedom in our work. We don’t just accept all gospel responses that come along - instead we critically evaluate the fruit of gospel proclamation. We continue to learn and adjust our approaches so that we can be more fruitful, always relying on God to bear fruit in our lives.
We trust God: we rest in God’s gracious power and trust him for all the results that occur. We will resist the temptation to be lazy and we will welcome transparency and full accountability for how we work.
Being faithful IS our work in the Lord Jesus - that is, working hard, working smart, and trusting God - this is our success.