Beth and Tom Ogburn lead a workshop on helping local churches develop a missions strategy during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s 2004 General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Make it personal. Make it a priority. And make it pervasive.

Those are the key guidelines/goals when rewriting a congregation’s "how-to-go-into-all-the-world" manual, according to Tom Ogburn and his wife, Beth. The couple, former missionaries in Thailand, led a workshop on developing a local church missions strategy during the final day of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s General Assembly June 26.

Tom, who is based in Dallas, is now associate coordinator for volunteer and partnership missions for the Fellowship. After serving with CBF Global Missions, Beth founded and now operates Mentoring Missions, an organization that consults with churches to help them with strategic and effective missions.

"What does it mean to ‘do’ missions?" Tom asked. "Who owns the task really matters because most people in the pew don’t feel gifted and trained to be missionaries. So it is easy to segregate ‘missions’ to specific programs at specified times – like WMU or summer youth trips. That way most of us can reduce our involvement in the Great Commission to writing a check and studying about how other people do missions."

But Scripture teaches that the entire church is to be involved, Tom pointed out. Churches should invite all interested church members to discussions of the missions program and survey the congregation to see what resources for doing missions are already in place. For example, how many business people in your church travel internationally, which ones have specific interests in feeding the hungry or helping the homeless, and which ones have professional training and experiences that can carry over.

Most churches already have in place numerous "vehicles," such as prayer ministries and Bible study that can carry the missions program.

Missions education – equipping people to go and do something specific – should be ongoing. "Members need to understand what the Bible says about the body of Christ needing all believers because God has gifted us to work together to do His will," he added. "I know of one church that has started an on-going weekly class teaching its members to learn Indonesian because they want to be able to communicate with the people the next time they take a mission trip there."

Additionally church staff, especially pastors, can model individual engagement effectively by getting personally involved. "It works so much better when the pastor asks, ‘who will go with me’ to do missions instead of just challenging others to go," he pointed out.

Noting that "the Bible plainly teaches that the Church has three specific tasks – worship, discipleship and missions/evangelism," he asked where missions showed up in the church budget, facilities and budget. "We have budget, staff and space to enhance worship and discipleship—but what about missions?"

"Churches tend to keep $99 out of every $100 they receive for their own uses," Ogburn said. "A lot of that goes for fellowship – and while I think fellowship is a wonderful thing and vital to a healthy church, I can find no specific Biblical mandate for it. Yet how many churches have staff, budget and facilities for fellowship and recreation while missions and evangelism is not highlighted?

"Support for Christian colleges and seminaries, for Bible distribution and even for state Baptist newspapers is wonderful but why not ask what percentage of the budget directly goes to doing missions," Ogburn said.

Missions should internally "impact every aspect of the church," Ogburn insisted. And it should reach out to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the "uttermost parts of the world."

By keeping open the planning of and participation in missions activities and involving the broadest representation of the membership, missions education and interest will percolate throughout the church. Regular reporting about missions in worship services, in church bulletins and newsletters and prominent display areas keeps interest stoked.

Since implementation of a wide-ranging missions program requires intentional planning, he suggested that every missions activity be listed under the appropriate category to be sure the effort and resources are balanced across all of the Great Commission und