by Pastor Patrick Cho

Since starting its ministry in 1998, Lighthouse Bible Church in San Diego has been committed to proclaiming the glorious gospel to those who need to hear it. The goal and slogan of the original church plant was to be “a beacon of God’s truth and love” in the San Diego area. We wanted to see souls saved and for people to come to know our amazing God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We knew that the church might experience some transfer growth, having believers join from other churches, but what we really desired was for those who did not know the Lord to come to know Him and be transformed through the preaching of the Word.

This all stemmed from the clear command of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8). In His final instructions before ascending to the Father, the Lord commands His followers to make disciples of all the nations by serving as His witnesses even to the ends of the earth. The extent of the Great Commission is global, but the means of accomplishing it is clear: baptizing people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to observe all His commands.

By issuing the instruction to baptize, Jesus was calling on His followers to help others understand their need for salvation – the seriousness of sin against a holy God and their desperate need for forgiveness. This is wrapped up in the term “baptize.” It is more than just a commitment to an ordinance or an external rite. It involves everything that is associated with baptism, which is the ordinance that is tied to a person’s initial conversion. People need to hear the gospel in order to be saved, and they need to be taught that to believe in Jesus means turning from their sins and becoming His followers. Baptism is the public confession of one’s faith in Christ through an act of obedience. The ordinance depicts a person’s death to their old life and the newness of life that is found in Christ.

The second element of the Great Commission is to teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded. It is not “fulfilling” the Great Commission by simply making converts for Christ. Being a witness for the gospel and helping people come to know the Lord is certainly a crucial part of the work, but disciple making involves helping newborn Christians grow in their faith as well. Fulfilling the Great Commission requires coming alongside a person not only to help them come to the point of salvation, but also investing in them so that they understand and obey the Word of God, that their lives might bring glory to Him. These are the principles that Lighthouse sought to apply from when the church was first planted that drove our missions philosophy.

Seeking to be faithful to the Great Commission, there were two non-negotiable principles that the church committed itself to: a commitment to God’s Word, and a commitment to God’s methods.

1. A Commitment to God’s Word

While we had a strong desire to see people saved, our first commitment, ironically, was not to an evangelistic effort or missions program. While we understood that these needed to be an integral part of our church, a greater and deeper foundational principle drove our ministry: a commitment to live out the truth of God’s Word faithfully for the glory of His name. This became the driving force behind all we endeavored to do as a church, including missions and evangelism, and so it ought to be for any ministry seeking to honor the Lord through loving obedience.

It is through this commitment that we understood how best to measure our success in outreach ministry. It could not be measured by lives changed because that was completely out of our hands. God is sovereign in salvation and is merciful to whomever He chooses to be merciful. Our responsibility was not to find the key to a person’s heart that they might be saved. We knew that we were called to be faithful to the command of Christ and to be obedient to the Word. That way, we could say we were successfully accomplishing what we set out to do. Whether or not anyone actually became a Christian through our ministry, we knew we needed to be faithful to the message and faithful as God’s messengers.

The ultimate motivation of the church to be committed to missions and evangelism, then, is not first and foremost because of a love for the lost, but because of a love for the Lord. This is primarily because the true gospel is not ultimately man-centered but God-centered. John Piper famously and helpfully communicates the theological basis for this distinction when he writes, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.” [1] God must remain central in our outreach and our desire must be to honor and be pleasing to Him in our obedience.

This means that as those who are called to be His ambassadors to this lost and dying world (2 Cor. 5:20), we leave ourselves open and available to the Lord’s leading – whatever He would have us do, wherever He would sent, whenever He would move us. This is what shaped our missions philosophy and helped us stay focused on what we were called to do. There were certain non-negotiables for us in thinking through church-planting, missions, and evangelism.

2. A Commitment to God’s Methods

When it comes to missions philosophy, we saw in Scripture that missions and church planting were indissolubly connected. To do missions is to plant churches. This makes sense given the instructions in the Great Commission. The church is the institution established by God to not only help bring a person to saving faith but also to help them grow in faith by teaching them the whole counsel of God. We see this missions strategy worked out particularly through the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Wherever he went to spread the gospel, his ultimate aim was to establish churches and to appoint elders in every church. His ministry was very church-oriented.

Pastor John Kim, who helped first plant the church in San Diego, once defined missions as “doing church somewhere else.” I always appreciated that definition if for no other reason that it removed the romanticized view of missions work that so many Christians seemed to have. Missions was not only for the extreme few who were willing to explore unknown regions armed with a machete carving paths through the Amazon, often by themselves. Missions was taking what we were doing in San Diego and looking to plant that elsewhere, in the context of and with the cooperation of a local church. The consistency of the work was encouraging and communicating it this way opened people up to the possibility of participating in it.

Doing missions God’s way also meant keeping the message of the gospel central. John MacArthur writes, “The key to biblical evangelism is not strategy or technique. It is not primarily about style, methodology, or programs and pragmatics. The first and preeminent concern in all our evangelistic efforts must be the gospel.” [2] We were not interested as much in church planting and church growth strategies as we were in faithfully disseminating God’s truth to those who needed it. Scripture makes it clear that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16), and God does not need our help to improve on His strategy for reaching the lost.

These two non-negotiable principles helped shape our ministry. In fact, we incorporated into them into our Mission, Vision, and Passion statement (MVP).

• The Mission of Lighthouse Bible Church is to make disciples of Christ (Matt. 28:18-20). This is our commitment to help others come to know Christ and to teach them so that they can grow in faith.
• The Vision of Lighthouse is to be a church planting church (Acts 1:8). While Acts 1:8 does not say anything specifically about church planting, the verse does serve as a sort of outline for the rest of the Book of Acts. Beginning in Jerusalem, extending to Judea and Samaria, and proceeding to the ends of the earth, the Book of Acts shows how the Spirit worked through the early believers to take the gospel to the nations. Through Acts and the Epistles we learn that the primary vehicle used by God to accomplish the work is church planting. We simply wanted to be a part of that work, and all our members know from the outset of their commitment to the church that this is our direction. Our hope is to remain committed to this as long as the Lord allows.
• The Passion of Lighthouse is to love God and people (Matt. 22:37-40). While we could put every effort into the Mission and Vision of the church, we also know that if it is not motivated by a love for the Lord and for others, we accomplish nothing, we gain nothing, and we are nothing, according to 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. The Passion statement serves as the constant reminder that we are not just part of some work, but that all of our service is rendered to the Lord in joyful worship. It also reminds us that our faith in Jesus Christ has a direct impact on those around us. Our love for the Lord is fleshed out in our love for others.

Since missions is just “doing church somewhere else,” and the MVP summarizes how we “do church,” missions naturally dovetails with and is summarized by the MVP as well. It also illustrates why missions is essential rather than tangential. Because at the end of the day, while the particulars often look a bit different than what we’re used to here in southern California, “missions” and “church” are inseparable.

[1] John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, 3^rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 35.

[2] John MacArthur and Jesse Johnson, “Introduction: Rediscovering Biblical Evangelism,” in Evangelism, ed. by John MacArthur (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), viii-ix.