HeartCry Missionary Society founder and preacher Paul Washer says churches need to be more “militant” with their missions.
During a Q&A session at the Shepherds Conference last week, Washer was among those asked about the state of missions in the church, including past missionary movements at seminaries.
“I think that when we go back to some of these missionary movements that gave us people like Amy Carmichael, I think the church was more — in a proper way, not political, not militant politically — but the church was militant to take the Gospel,” Washer explained.
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“It was reflected also in its worship. I’ve noticed that a lot of worship today is more about ‘me,’ where a lot in the great missionary movements, the hymns reflected ‘let’s go, let’s go.’”
Washer believes “pastors need to really work at putting this battle before young men. To put it before them and tell them, ‘we can live and die for something.’”
“We can serve a King incorruptible; we can build a Kingdom that is eternal and will never fall. There’s a reason to be alive,” he continued. “We need to constantly have this mindset of warfare.”
“There’s great deeds to be done, and men were made to fight. I think it’s very appropriate to say a soldier wants to die by the last bullet of the last battle, because that’s what soldiers do.”
Washer went on to say that it was “the preaching in the pulpit” about this higher calling “that’s going to inspire men to get off their phones and to get to the field.”
Abner Chou, associate professor of biblical studies at the Master’s College and Seminary who was also part of the Q&A, talked about “energizing” seminary students to do missions.
Chou mentioned the importance of “putting into action the activity of evangelism,” believing that “the love for that can only be gained as you do it.”
He then recounted how, as a college freshman, an older student took him out in the city to do “open air evangelism” for the first time in his life, with the student promising him a meal afterward.
“That’s what allowed me to understand what [evangelism] was and to love it,” Chou said. “And so, it is older taking younger; it is providing those opportunities to get people’s feet wet so that they love what they never knew they could love.”
“To not be scared, to not be intimidated by it. To think that the Lord can use me this way. And you know what? Getting shamed in public is not bad, for the Lord Jesus. I am no longer scared.”
Chou also believed that seminaries needed to “help give our students perspective,” since he believed that, for many young people, their “whole world is a 2 inch by 5 inch screen.”
“They think that’s the world, that’s all that exists,” he added. “And you have to remind them, ‘you’re not in college or seminary just for you.'”
“There’s a greater plan that goes beyond you. And I think we need to energize our young people who are sorely tempted by this world to just focus on themselves. That there is a bigger commission, a global, noble endeavor.”
In addition to Washer and Chou, other members of the Q&A panel included Conrad Mbewe, author and pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, and Joel Beeke, chancellor and professor at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Mark Tatlock served as the moderator.
Last Friday, as part of the conference, Washer preached a sermon in which he stressed the importance of pastors engaging in personal prayer, saying it “is something that even triumphs over sleep and definitely triumphs over ministry.”
“This Great Commission is not going to go anywhere — with all your expounding and all your preaching and all your diagramming — it’s going nowhere without prayer,” he stated.
