John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist, has a statement of faith, and here is an excerpt from it describing their view of missions.

We believe that the commission given by the Lord Jesus to make disciples of all nations is binding on His Church to the end of the age. This task is to proclaim the Gospel to every tribe and tongue and people and nation, baptizing them, teaching them the words and ways of the Lord, and gathering them into churches able to fulfill their Christian calling among their own people. The ultimate aim of world missions is that God would create, by His Word, worshippers who glorify His name through glad-hearted faith and obedience. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and the goal of missions.

Is that good or what? Piper just seems to have a way with words that gets you excited about God. So the ultimate aim of missions is to create worshippers. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. It’s kind of interesting how he seems to equate believers with worshippers. In our conservative church culture of today, it’s pretty popular to be a Christian, but not a worshipper. So maybe missions is for more than just the lost :-).

Another point of interest that should be noted here is that John Piper is a 5-point Calvinist, meaning he believes in predestination. If you did not know that, you may want to read the statement again with this in mind. So the old rumor that Calvinists don’t care about evangelism is kind of blown out of the water, you think? He sounds a lot more evangelistic than most Arminians I know. FYI, Arminians are the ones on the “free-will” side of the predestined vs free-will debate.