The hearts of Christians beat with passion for the Lord Jesus, and for the Great Commission. In a sense, that passage at the end of Matthew 28 could be called Jesus’ “last will and testament.” But that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, since He still lives among us and dwells within us. His resurrected, glorified body was received into heaven at His ascension, but He promised that His spirit would be with us to the end of the age. And in issuing this Great Commission, He assured us that we would not be carrying out that commission in our own strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit.
One of the marks of a healthy church is that there be a widespread missions mentality. This means more than simply assigning a portion of the church budget to support for missionaries and mission agencies. That can and does happen, but then members of the church have little knowledge of it, and receive no encouragement to become emotionally and prayerfully engaged in missions. In contrast, there are churches that promote missions by having a separate missions budget to which people are regularly invited to contribute, by praying for missionaries by name in morning worship, by including brief missions reports in Sunday announcements and monthly newsletters, by holding a missions conference (annually) with guest missionaries speaking to share their ministry reports and visiting at meals and in members’ homes, and by enlisting members to go on mission trips to spend a week or two with missionaries in the field to experience that foreign culture and see first-hand what church planting is all about.