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Question 10
The commissioning service described in the “Garner Codex” includes missionaries urging the congregation to stay faithful in “visiting the sick and the imprisoned,” “providing for the poor and unemployed,” and supporting missionaries with “prayers and…material provisions,” even caring for widows and orphans if the men are executed; what concrete commitments would our congregations have to adopt for “every member…regarded as a missionary” to become real rather than inspirational language?
Another way to ask: If every member is really a missionary, what specific promises would our church need to make (care for the sick, poor, prisoners, and families of executed missionaries)? What would we actually have to do, not just say?

Direct Answer The transcript points toward concrete, shared commitments: a church must combine local mercy ministry with active sending, financial/material support, and a readiness to absorb the cost when missionaries suffer or die. “Every member a missionary” becomes real when the whole congregation accepts both local responsibility and global sending as normal discipleship.

Support from Transcript:

  • The commissioning service begins with candidates telling “how God had called them…to…other lands,” showing mission as a recognized church action.
  • Missionaries admonish the church to remain faithful in “visiting the sick and the imprisoned…providing for the poor and unemployed.”
  • The congregation pledges support: remembering missionaries “with prayers and with material provisions.”
  • The ceremony is whole-church: “observed by the entire congregation,” not a private sending.
  • High-cost realism: missionaries were often married men “leaving wife and children behind”; the church committed to care for “widows and orphaned children” if executed.
  • Taylor reinforces the broader principle: “Every member of the group was regarded as a missionary,” and there was “no dichotomy between…proclamation… and social concerns.”
Discussion Follow-ups If our church had to provide for missionary widows and orphans, what changes would we make now in budget, lifestyle, and expectations? What local ministries (sick, imprisoned, unemployed) would need to become as normal as Sunday services?

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