Last weekend I visited my friend Marty Longcor in Wisconsin. He's the Lord's tool, waking up that body of Christ to its glorious possibilities in the Kingdom of God.

To do that, some of the no-vision squatters who had taken up residence in church leadership positions needed to get out of the way (there is a ministry of getting rid of no-vision leaders who are using their position to advance their personal agenda instead of acting as stewards) - but that's another story.

Marty is a Kingdom guy. He wants everyone in his church plugging into the Kingdom in some way. So, when I spoke to the church, I talked about Madison being their Jerusalem. There are homeless people and the needy right in their back yard.

I talked about places like New Orleans as being a Samaria. There is still a huge need for help down there.

And I talked about places like Swaziland as the ends of the earth.

Whenever we want to take a closer look at what Jesus asked us to do, we can begin with passages like Matthew 9:38, Matthew 28:19, and Acts 1:8. There are five biblically-based foundations to our missions mandate. Let's begin by looking at the first one today.

1. Prayer

Ask the Lord of the harvest…
(Matthew 9:38)

The work of missions begins with prayer for more missionaries. I'd write more on this, but it is fairly self-explanatory and I'm out of time.

Continued in: Foundations of missions: Our Calling