I have just completed a course on PERSPECTIVES on the World Christian Movement. This training was started years ago by Ralph Winter and the U.S. Center for World Mission. Usually the class meets once a week for several months, but I was in an intensive version that lasted for seven days. Through readings and a variety of speakers, each participant learns about God’s global purpose through four vantage points or “perspectives.” The four perspectives are Biblical, Historical, Cultural, and Strategic. Avery Willis stated about “Perspectives” that this course is “finest overview of God’s worldwide work available.”

One of the articles that I read as a part of this training was written by John Stott. He explains the Biblical foundation for missions beginning with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3. He states that the “whole of God’s purpose is encapsulated” in these verses and especially in the phrase, “by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen. 12:3) Stott explains that this expression “reveals the living God of the Bible to be a missionary God… We need to become global Christians with a global vision, for we have a global God.”

As I went through the Perspectives training, I thought often about the mission field of Dallas and Rockwall counties. People from all over the world have come to our city. More than ever before, we have an opportunity to reach people from many different people groups.

Stott closed his article with this challenge, “So may God help us never to forget his four-thousand-year-old promise to Abraham: ‘By you and your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.’”