We are passionate for these things because we see in Scripture that God is passionate for these things.  It is a profound joy and privilege to be a part of this work.  Our passion is therefore mixed with a profound sense of gratitude that God would choose to use us in any way.  May God be glorified as His people join together to go about the excellent work of the Great Commission.
Listed here are some of our passions.  All but the last, we think, are passions that all Christians ought to have.  So, hopefully we’re preaching to the choir.  Hopefully you’ll see that we care about the same things you do, and you will joyfully link arms with us in this exciting work!

Our Passion for God’s Glory

I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.  Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.  Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. (Psalm 145:1-3)

Our God is great and greatly to be praised.  He alone deserves the praise of all peoples and all nations.  He alone created all things.  “To Him, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as dust on the scales” (Isaiah 40:15-16).  He alone is sovereign over all things. He alone could orchestrate the amazing plan of redemption: sending His perfect Son Jesus Christ to live a perfect life and pay the perfect penalty to cover the sins of all who would ever trust in Christ.  He alone can turn sinful hearts from self-worship to righteous worship of Himself.

It is our passion to see God glorified among the nations as He alone deserves.

Our Passion for the Great Commission

After His gruesome, sin-atoning death on the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ met with His disciples and gave them these instructions:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.  (Matthew 28:16-20)

It is striking that Jesus would leave this instruction.  Think about it.  His disciples had just abandoned him when he was captured.  Peter had denied him three times (as predicted).  Judas had betrayed him (as predicted).  The Great Commission is all about making disciples that glorify God by repenting of their sins and following Jesus.  It’s all about making worshippers out of the heathen.  Why would such an important task be entrusted to sinful, weak men?  We know our own sin.  We know the feeling of timidity that we feel when trying to share the gospel.  Why would God entrust the Great Commission to people like us?  He’s sovereign over all things.  When the nations rage and people plot in vain against God, “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.”  (Psalm 2:1-3)  Why doesn’t God just “make it happen?”

It seems remarkable, but God gives us the privilege of taking part in this work of the Great Commission – to go and make disciples.  “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.  For God, who said ‘Let light sine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”  (2 Cor 4:5-7)  So, it is not our strength but God at work in us.  He equips us to go.  He equips us to preach.  He turns hearts to worship Him.

We stand on the shoulders of giants who have faithfully responded to this Great Commission.  We ourselves know Jesus because others have faithfully responded to the Great Commission – our parents, friends, neighbors, classmates, co-workers, preachers, door-to-door evangelists, etc.  How about us?  Will we choose to take an active role in the Great Commission?  Will we pray for, give to, and support those who go?  Will we go?  Will we glorify God as we trust Him to work through our weaknesses?

It is our passion to join with others in responding to the Great Commission in humble obedience and full reliance on the strength and wisdom of God.

Our Passion for Preaching the Gospel

In Acts 10, Cornelius (a gentile) is in Caesarea and has a vision from God.  God says “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.  And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter…”  About 30 miles away in Joppa, Simon Peter gets a repeated vision and instruction to follow those who come looking for him.  Cornelius’ servants and Peter return back to Caesarea.  Peter then proceeds to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.

30 miles in those days was no trivial trek.  Why would God bother doing this?  Doesn’t it seem horribly inefficient?  Perhaps, but we see God’s greater purposes in this.  First, through this experience, Peter and thus the Church came to the conclusion, “then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”  (Acts 11:18)  We also see here the normative model of people coming to repentance and faith through the preaching of the gospel.

We see a similar situation in Acts 8:26-40. God sends an angel to tell Philip to go to a particular road in the desert.  There, he happens on an Ethiopian eunuch who is reading Isaiah 53 (which prophesies about Jesus the suffering servant-messiah).  The eunuch doesn’t understand the text, and Philip “opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.”  He believed and was baptized.
What are we called to preach?  The gospel of Jesus Christ.  We join Paul in proclaiming, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…”  (Rom 1:16)

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.  For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.  (1 Corinthians 1:21-25)

Social change is good.  Helping people out of poverty is good.  Meeting people’s felt needs is good.  But at the core, we must preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, “for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”  (Acts 4:12)

When Paul speaks of the message of salvation given to all – both Jew and Gentile – he explains what it will take for the lost to be saved.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.  (Romans 10:14-17)

Faith comes through hearing the gospel – through the faithful preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ.  And so, it is our passion to see the gospel preached to this dying world in which we live.

Our Passion on Reaching the Unreached

We love Paul’s drive to preach the gospel to those who have never heard.  He is so overwhelmed with the good news of Jesus Christ that he cannot help but carry it to new people.  We see Paul’s heart in Romans 15:20:

…and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”

As we look at the world, we see countries and people groups with little to no gospel witness.  The 10/40 window is packed with countries with less than .03% Christians.  Our passion is to those who are least reached with the gospel.

Our Passion for Biblical, Cross-Cultural Church Planting

The Great Commission speaks of making disciples.  What do disciples do?  They gather together as local churches.  We must not forget this in the task of missions.  We must remember the work of planting biblical churches as we think about taking the gospel to the unreached of all nations.

The local church is the visible display of God’s glory on earth.  As God’s people gather together and love one another.  And so, the author of Hebrews instructs: “and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”  (Hebrews 10:24-25) Throughout the New Testament, we see Paul’s concern to plant churches and raise up faithful men to lead then.

1 Corinthians is all about church conduct, and the example of casting out the immoral person speaks clearly to the kind of witness that a local church is to have.  1 and 2 Timothy are filled with exhortations from Paul to Timothy for raising up leaders (elders and deacons) in the church.

It’s no accident that the Bible is filled with instructions for how believers are to gather together.  Thus, it is our passion to see biblical, cross-cultural church planting.

Our Passion for Excellent Business as Mission

When people talk about “Business as Mission”, the business can sometimes simply be a “front” to provide a visa to enter the country.  Some people just look for “cover” in order to get into a country.  Our sense is that Gospel-preaching, discipling, and church planting takes time and careful effort.  We need to have longer-term solutions to reaching the unreached and think carefully about the type of witness that our business activities have.  If we claim to do import/export, but don’t have any real business activity, this will be perceived as deceitfulness in any culture.  It will hamper our witness and lay a bad groundwork for self-sustaining local believers and congregations.  When Paul says “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31), that includes how we do what we claim we do.  Business can and should be done to the glory of God.