In what may be the best paragraph to begin a book on missions, John Piper writes this:
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. [Let the Nations be Glad.]
There are several implications of these statements:
- Our evangelism will be stimulated by our own increasingly joyful worship.
- The effectiveness of our missionary endeavors will be revealed and measured in the exaltedness of our worship.
- The goal of missions is not to encourage decisions but to create worshippers.
- Because missions is not eternal, time is of the essence.
- Just because worship is eternal does not mean that it is not essential now; because it is eternal, it is more essential now.
Words of Grace 
John Piper is great. This part of the book really convicts me about unity in the church…people of different cultures, denominations, gender, etc.
Apart from my own father, no pastor or writer has influenced me more than John Piper — what a great blessing his writing has been in my life.