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The Certificate track answers the multiple choice. The Associate adds the fill-in-the-blank questions; M.Div. and Th.M. add those and the short-answer questions. 90% of each part is required to pass.
Introduction: From the Story to the Soul
We have traced the missionary purpose of God from the promise to Abraham, through the Great Commission and the spreading gospel of Acts, and across twenty centuries of giants and martyrs. Now we turn from the story to the soul. What does a missionary heart actually look like? It is easy to imagine that such a heart belongs only to a special class of super-Christians. But that is not so. A missionary heart is simply the normal shape of any heart that has been gripped by the gospel. In this unit we consider three things that every missionary heart shares — a call, a cost, and a place in the sending church. For the Great Commission, as we have seen, lays its claim on every believer: some are sent to go, and all are sent to pray and to give. The fields are ready. "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest" (Matthew 9:37–38, NKJV).
I. The Call
Where does a missionary come from? Not from human ambition, but from the call of God. We saw it at Antioch, where the Holy Spirit said, "Separate to Me Barnabas and Saul," and the call still comes in the same way — out of a praying, worshiping church, to a heart already burdened for the lost. The call is not always a sudden, dramatic vision. More often it is a deepening burden that simply will not go away: a growing awareness of the millions who have never heard, and a willingness that says with the prophet, "Here am I! Send me" (Isaiah 6:8, NKJV). Not every believer is called to cross an ocean. But every believer is called to be willing, and to ask God honestly what part He has appointed for him in the great work.
II. The Cost
The call always carries a cost. The Lord said of Paul that He would show him how many things he must suffer for His name's sake, and Jesus never hid the price of following Him: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me" (Luke 9:23, NKJV). The missionary may be called to leave home, family, comfort, and safety. Judson buried his wife and children; Slessor labored alone among the dangerous; Elliot poured out his blood in the jungle. Yet the cost is never the final word. Jesus promised that whoever loses his life for His sake will find it, and the words Jim Elliot wrote before he died still answer every fear: he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. The heart that honestly counts the cost and goes anyway has understood the gospel.
III. The Sending Church
But a missionary heart is not only the heart of the one who goes. As we learned from the Great Commission itself, those who send have just as many responsibilities as those who go. The sending church is as necessary as the missionary it sends, for "how shall they preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:15, NKJV). Here again are the three duties of every sender, which we first met in Unit 3. First, to identify with the missionary — to make his work our work, and never to send him out and then forget him. Second, to support him in prayer — to keep the power turned on, lifting him up before God day by day. Third, to support him in our giving — to see that the work does not stall for want of means, counting it a privilege to share in a labor we cannot do ourselves. And the reward is shared, for Jesus said, "whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name... will by no means lose his reward" (Mark 9:41, NKJV). The one who hands a cup of cold water and the one who crosses the sea share in the very same reward.
Let this be more than a doctrine; let it become a burden. If we send them, they are an extension of us; their work is our work, and our work is their work. We have the responsibility to support them in prayer. When was the last time you prayed for a missionary? How many of us can even name three or four missionaries by name? Our missionaries may be wondering why they are not seeing more fruit; someone should tell them that the senders have turned off the power. Let us turn it on again. And we have the responsibility to support them in our giving. Those who go give their lives; those who send must see to it that the work does not stall for lack of support. Every year some who feel called as missionaries are turned away because the church cannot afford to send them. The lost world is crying out for the message of Christ, but too often there is no voice speaking to them — and many will live and die never having known the Savior, because no one was sent.
An illustration — Stephen Grellet and the empty lumber camp
Stephen Grellet, the noted Quaker, once felt a burden and the leading of the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel to the men of an American lumber camp. But when he arrived, he found the camp deserted, for the men had gone deeper into the forest. Believing nevertheless that the Spirit had sent him, he stood up in the empty mess hall and preached his sermon, heard, as he thought, only by the bare walls of the building and the lofty trees. Years afterward, crossing London Bridge in the evening gloom, he was stopped by a man who said, “You are the man I have been looking for all these years.” “There must be some mistake,” said Grellet; “I have never seen you.” “No,” said the man, “but did you not preach in a lumber camp in the American forest? I had gone back for a saw that had been left behind, and through the chink in the logs I heard you preach. I was convicted of sin, I got hold of a copy of the Scriptures, I learned the way of life, I was saved, and I have brought others with me into the kingdom of heaven.” The word of God does not return void. We are responsible to send it out — and to leave the harvest in His hands.
IV. Every Heart, Every Place
The missionary heart, then, is not the property of a few. It belongs to the pastor and the plowman, the young and the old, the one who goes and the one who stays. The question the Great Commission puts to each of us is not, "Are you a missionary by profession?" but, "Is your heart in the mission?" Some will be called to go to the unreached peoples of the earth. Many more will be called to send, to pray, to give, and to raise up children who will go. But no believer is excused from the mission, for it is nothing less than the heartbeat of the God who sent His own Son into the world.
Conclusion: The Heart That Loves What God Loves
A missionary heart is simply a heart that loves what God loves and wants what God wants — the salvation of the nations. It is born in us the moment we stop asking whether the task is ours and begin asking what part we will take in it. Whether God sends you across the world, or keeps you on your knees and opens your hand at home, the same Lord is served, and the same gospel goes forward to the ends of the earth. May He give us, every one, the heart of a missionary.
Unit 9 Final Exam
Certificate track: the 20 multiple-choice questions. Associate: multiple choice and the 10 fill-in-the-blank questions. M.Div. and Th.M.: multiple choice, fill-ins and the 10 short-answer questions. 90% of each part is required to pass. If you do not pass, the exam waits a short time before you can try again.
Multiple Choice — 20 Questions
Short Answer — 10 Questions
M.Div. and Th.M.: all five assigned readings are part of the course. Their separate exam is required after activation; see its page for the current rule. Honors remains optional and does not replace the exam.
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