No Theology, No Missions

Reflections on the PCUSA. Sound Doctrine, and the Great Commission

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you! - Psalm 67:4-5

Pulling the Plug on Spreading What Gospel?

I was surprised when I heard the news, but I was not surprised as to why. On the April 25, 2025, edition of The Briefing, Dr. Albert Mohler gave commentary on the news that the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) recently fired all its missionaries and shut down its foreign missions agency.¹ Pause for a moment and think about that slowly: an entire denomination’s mission entity meant to mobilize personnel to be sent to areas without the gospel is gone. But if you know anything about the PCUSA, you wouldn’t be shocked that this came to be. As Mohler highlights:

Now the story here is that the PCUSA, as it’s known, has now formally ended its missions program. So what’s the bigger story? Well, in order to understand this, we need to look at just urgently important issues, particularly in the beginning of the 20th century. During the late 19th century into the early 20th century, the encroachment of liberal theology and American denominations became profound. This came to a great battle between conservatives and liberals, and let’s just remember what is at stake, just essential Christian doctrines such as the Virgin Birth of Christ. And it wasn’t just that you had the liberals saying, “We don’t believe that’s absolutely necessary.” You had leading liberals say, “We don’t believe it anymore.”²

Long story short, over time, the PCUSA consistently grew in abandoning historic Christian theology, which thus fed into their practice. During the 20th century, the denomination would reject the authority and inerrancy of Scripture and the exclusivity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation. This has led to the abandonment of biblical ethics, which can be seen in its embrace of progressive social practices and ideologies. But it doesn’t stop there. Because they were compromising both their theology and practice, the PCUSA would also compromise in how they understood evangelism and missions.

In summary, as Mohler aptly concludes, “If you don’t believe in missions anymore, guess what? It’s because of a loss of confidence in the gospel. And guess what? Everything else is going to dry up and wither pretty soon inevitably.”³

Here is the sad reality and warning for all Christians: When sound doctrine is not upheld, then there is no gospel worthy of sharing with others.

No Theology —> No Worship —> No Missions

John Piper famously wrote the following words that helped spark a resurgence in global missions, specifically to unreached people groups:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. 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. So worship is the fuel and goal of missions.⁴

Notice the fuel for missions. The reason why Christians and churches must be involved in missions is that God is worthy of all our worship. But if that’s the case, then what fuels worship? If the spreading of the gospel of God to unbelievers is fueled by the worship of God, then who and what is the God that we ought to be worshiping? What about God’s nature and works qualifies him as worthy of our total worship?

It is easy for modern Christians like us to be swept away by the ever-increasing fads and trends that seek to persuade us that effective missions and evangelism are driven by attraction and relevance. The problem is already apparent in this because this vision will focus on what is attractive and relevant to the recipients, not on what God has revealed as what all sinners need. If the standard of sharing the Gospel with the lost is based on pragmatism or ideologies that add to or reject the Gospel, we lose the gospel, which brings sinners into true worship of God. Thus, our philosophy of how to do global missions is not primarily a missions question but a theology question. How one understands who God is and relates to him will determine what he or she will do in light of him.

I’m no missiologist, but you don’t have to be a scholar to see that this tragedy in the PCUSA didn’t happen overnight. This downward spiral to missiological self-destruction is the ripe fruit of more than a century of gradual theological atrophy, which led to several churches breaking off and forming their own denominations.⁵ Such breaks had to do with not tertiary or secondary disagreement, but with the primary assumptions of Christian orthodoxy, like the exclusivity of Christ in salvation and the authority of the Scriptures. Behind it all was the classic liberal theology, which grounded all theology and practice not from the foundation of God’s self-revelation but on human experience and treatment of the Bible as a mere human document. As Stephen Wellum writes, “One consequence of this theology . . . is that it no longer claims to have an ‘objective’ truth about God, self, and the world grounded in God’s external word. Instead, it only results in ‘subjective’ conclusions since ‘revelation’ is located in human religious experience. Theology is less about dogma in the historic sense; instead, its main concern is with ethical, social, and political action.”⁶ Do you see how the seed of how to do theology is what led to the destruction of a missions agency? Why continue the work of seeking to convert people in foreign lands to a religion when you believe that religion is based on your subjective experiences with what you recognize as divine?

In essence, liberal theology, which leads us to no sound theology, kills missions because there is no worthy God to call people to worship. If anything, the god liberal theology gives is one made in our own sin-stained image, not the God who made us in his image and also redeems us.

Always Contending for the Faith “Once for All Delivered to the Saints”

“Hey Jude! Why don’t you chill out, man?” It would’ve been easy for Jude to just assume and allow his fellow Christian brethren to drift into false teaching. In fact, he was eager to just talk about the common salvation, but something was so off that he “found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). It is easy for Christians, local churches, and their denominations/associations to just slide into a comfortable compromise to gain social capital or cultural relevance points, but for Jude, guided by the Holy Spirit, he called his fellow Christians to take not that “certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungoldy people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).

Theological Liberalism and the end of missions and evangelism happen when Christians and churches do not proactively preach and make disciples by keeping with sound doctrine that leads to joyful worship of God. But when Christians/churches are actively concerned about “building [themselves] up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,” they will “keep [themselves] in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 20-21). When Christians/churches contend to defend and enjoy the gospel of Jesus and the truth revealed in Holy Scripture, they “have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire” and “show mercy” (Jude 22-23). Missions exists because worship doesn’t in people groups and areas that have no gospel presence, and “‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news” (Rom. 10:13-15)!

Question: How can they worship God if they don’t know him rightly? How can we send ourselves to others who don’t have the gospel if we ourselves are not captivated by the God who gave us this gospel?

In our lives and our local churches, let us not go down like the PCUSA and other like-minded denominations. Let us not lose sight of the great God who has revealed himself to us and redeemed us from our sins to bring us to himself through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. There is no other name by which we must be saved.

Contra the PCUSA, let us remind ourselves of this good news (1 Cor. 15:1-3) and point the lost around us and beyond us in other lands to the words of God through Isaiah:

“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other. - Isaiah 45:22

1. R. Albert Mohler Jr., “The Briefing, Friday, April 25, 2025,” The Briefing, April 25, 2025, https://albertmohler.com/2025/04/25/briefing-4-25-25/.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 15.

5. See Joe Carter, “How to Tell the Difference Between Presbyterian Denominations,” The Gospel Coalition, accessed May 10, 2025, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/tell-difference-presbyterian-denominations/.

6. Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology, Volume 1: From Canon to Concept (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 60.