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TL;DR: Church historian Mendell Taylor's memorable slogan emphasizes that sending and supporting missionaries is central to the Church's Great Commission calling. Churches that lose sight of global evangelism risk drifting away from an essential part of their mission.
Sayings about world evangelism that stir hearts and move people to action
“The Church must send, or the Church will end.”
— Mendell Taylor, church historian
Mendell Taylor's “sound bite” on the Church's obligation to send cross-cultural missionaries sounds poetic. It should. Taylor liked saying things in ways that would stick in people's memories.
Taylor was a church history scholar. However, his interests extended beyond centuries of doctrinal development (as important as that is) and theological controversies and institutional conflicts (as fascinating as those can be). In addition to the topics that often occupy church historians, Taylor seemed drawn to the Church's global missionary outreach and discipleship efforts. He was a founding professor of Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, where, from the start, he taught a History of Nazarene Missions course. Drawing on material from that course, Taylor wrote a three-volume history of the first fifty years of Nazarene world evangelism. He also authored a hefty textbook titled Exploring Evangelism: History, Methods, Theology.1 A large part of that book is given to global evangelism through the centuries.
During a sabbatical semester away from the seminary, Mendell Taylor made an around-the-world trip. It was not a pleasure jaunt aboard a cruise ship. Rather, it was a five-month-long trip to visit Nazarene missions work in 20 countries. Taylor used notes from the trip to write a book. The resulting Nazarene Missions International reading book was titled 50,000 Miles of People, Places, and Practices.
The declaration that “the Church must send, or the Church will end” reflects what Taylor saw in church history as well as what he personally observed. Taylor had read the Bible. He had studied church history, and he knew current trends. It was clear to him that God intended His Church to be a sending institution.
Taylor knew that if the Church was not sending people to reach the lost around the world, it would be ignoring a key part of its raison d’être, its reason for existence. Mission drift happens to organizations. When groups such as churches distort or drift away from their original mission, they often wither and die. That is the principle that Dr. Taylor was expressing. (More on mission drift)
Taylor's pithy sentence, “The Church must send, or the Church will end,” is more than a well-formed phrase. It expresses a serious warning: A congregation that turns away from Christ's mission risks losing its spiritual vitality and reason for being. A church that persistently turns inward risks becoming like a mausoleum—impressive on the outside but lifeless within.
That image calls to mind the words of Revelation 3:16: “So, because you are lukewarm— neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (2011 NIV). It also calls to mind Jesus' strong words to some of the religious leaders of His day: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean” (Matthew 23:27, 2011 NIV).
A saying often attributed to missionary David Livingstone offers an antidote: “The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet.”
What Mendell Taylor said has been said by others in slightly different wording:
Mendell Taylor's powerful phrase, “The Church must send, or the Church will end,” is a reminder of God's mandate that His Church is to engage in world missions. At the core of the Church's essence is God's call to spread the Good News everywhere. Sadly, churches are not immune to the problem of mission drift that often affects organizations. When churches drift away from their central mission, they can become ineffective and lifeless. In short, our churches must be sending bodies that commission and support missionaries.
— Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
1 Note: In addition to books dealing with evangelism and missions, Taylor also wrote two devotional books: Every Day With the Psalms and Every Day With Paul.