I once heard it explained that there were four major areas of foreign missions. Some of these are planting national language churches in a foreign country, helping locals plant churches in their country by providing pastoral and leadership training, etc. Another area, the one I will focus on, is planting churches among unreached and unengaged people groups.

When it comes to knowing your personal call to ministry, solidify that you’re not self-called or parents-called or pastor-called, or anything else. When you know you are called, you go through the doors that God opens for you, and God gives us choices. When people ask me, “How do you know for sure this is where I’m supposed to go, and what I’m supposed to do?”

In 1976 the Baptist Missionary Association Bible College in the Philippines began training the first Filipino pastors. The college has gone through many changes, most recently achieving CHED (Commission of Higher Education) accreditation.  In addition to offering degrees in theology and pastoral leadership, the institution also provides training in religious education and music.

If it were as simple as distilling down the Great Commission to specific skill sets, certainly those would include actively sharing our faith, intentionally discipling believers, developing new leaders, and planting churches. This writer commonly calls these skills the “GC Skills”–the Great Commission skills. Granted, the GC does not explicitly say to plant churches; however, the entire New Testament screams to us that when the GC is fulfilled it results in new churches being planted.