What is the Radstock Mission Manual?

In Romans 15, Paul makes the extraordinary claim that he has “fully proclaimed” the gospel from Jerusalem all the way to Illyricum (modern-day Albania). Even Google Maps can’t give directions for that trip, but it looks like 3500 km or so (more than 2000 miles). Of course Paul didn’t preach the gospel in every town and village along that route. But he was confident that he’d left behind converts and missional workers who would “put in order what was left unfinished” (Titus 1:5) by seeing churches established, who would go on and reach their region.  

This is still going on today. Communities of faith are, and always have been, God’s ‘plan A’. The local church has the responsibility to reach people locally, and to be wholly committed to sending people to plant churches to do the same globally. So all our mission ought to be planned and implemented with the local church at the core of our thinking. God has no ‘plan B’.

This conviction – that God’s plan has always been for mission to be at the heart of local churches, and local churches at the heart of mission – lies behind Radstock’s work. It is our hope that this manual will be used to inspire, challenge, encourage and equip church leaders, planters and members with not only the ‘why’ but lots of the ‘how' of finding our places more fully in God’s purposes.

We pray that over time, this manual will be just one way that your church can both benefit from and contribute to the shared experiences of the Radstock network: getting connected for global mission, to the glory of God.

Brian Jose,
Executive Director