God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

This is a guest post from a friend of ours who is a missionary doctor working with Muslims. It is the final part of his guest series, "Day-to-day Observations from Asia."

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If our goal in sending Christians around the world is to see thriving indigenously led and supported, theologically accurate churches rapidly multiplying in unreached cultures, then it behooves us to think about the means that are most worthy of our support and effort. 

To have a church, one does not need a building or denomination or organization or even instruments or chairs. The most important part of any church is the Bible. 

Missionaries come and go, but the Bible will be with the church forever (or else it is not a church). So they had better know how to study the Bible. Hence, teaching bible study methods is missions and everything else supports that goal. 

(By that definition, I spend about 10-20% of my time doing “missions” and the rest of my time doing “support.”  So I am not trying to deride “support”; I am just trying to point out what we need to strive to do.)

Christian literature is rife with “golden keys”:  Do this and your church will grow! Use this method and experience Christian success! This one thing will cause your ministry to expand!

Many of these keys are fabulous and godly tools. The Jesus Film or the Alpha Course pop to mind. But they are just tools. 

There is no golden key. It’s mostly just hard work—the stuff expected of everyday Christians. 

• Consistently show up at work on time and do a good job. 
• Express appropriate grief and mourning when there is a death in the neighborhood. 
• Build a reputation (and it can take years) of being a godly man, a holy man, with a god-fearing wife. 
• Drink a lot of tea (or coffee, etc.) with your friends. Many cups a day, day in and day out, for years. 
• Be known as a “Bible man.” Memorize Scripture and quote it regularly to your non believing friends. Try to bring up Jesus or the Bible within two minutes in every conversation (time yourself if you must). 
• Bathe everything you do and say in prayer. 

As a hero of mine has said, “Nothing works, therefore try everything.” There is no "golden key" other than the Holy Spirit and hard work.