“Thinking
Like a Missionary” – Part II
Message
#2 in TLAM Series
INTRODUCTION:
Last Sunday we
began a six-part teaching series that we are calling, “Thinking Like a Missionary.” I explained that my goal is to help
us begin to see our church’s mission and ourselves in a new way—to see
ourselves as aliens and missionaries in a foreign land, and this community as
our divinely assigned mission field.
I explained that
being a missionary is a matter of attitude, not geography, or distance from
one’s home country. Getting on an airplane and travelling halfway around the
world does not make a person a missionary. I also explained that mission is
more about being than doing. It is a state of mind, a way of
looking at ourselves in relation to the lostness of the world, and the love of
God. It is based not on trading cultures, and clothing, and customs, and
cuisines, as much as thinking in a new way about how to win lost people to a
saving knowledge of Jesus Christ wherever we might be.
I also explained
that missionaries build their lives and ministries around a group of 15
commitments. We looked at the first of those last Sunday; namely, that
missionaries “own the Great Commission
individually.” By that I mean that missionaries, even more than other
Christians, believe that the Great Commission was given to them personally by
God, rather than just to the Church as a whole. They accept it as God’s
specific marching orders for them, and they set out to act upon that
conviction. They go out into the world preaching the Gospel, making disciples,
baptizing believers, and teaching new converts. They take personal ownership of
the mission that Christ laid out for us.
TRANSITION:
The other thing
that I did last week was to tell a story and create a scenario that I plan to
use for the next few weeks. My hope is that you will put yourselves into the
story and begin to feel that you are a part of it. However, some of you
were not here last Sunday so I am going to do it again because it is important
that you understand the context of my remarks. However, to gain time, I am
going to read it to you without comment.
I
want you to imagine with me that we are all career missionaries, appointed and
sent out by an evangelical missionary agency called the “New Life Mission.” [I
made up that name. I do not know if such a group exists.] In other words, we
are colleagues, teammates, and fellow missionaries from the same mission
agency. We have all come here to Ourtownistan from different places. We
possess different skill sets. Some have more Bible training than others. We
have different talents and spiritual gifts. Some of us are married; others are
single missionaries. Those with families have children to care for in addition
to their ministry duties. As I mentioned, we have all arrived here from other
places. None of us has ever been here before and none of us speaks the native
language.
After
much prayer and some extensive survey work our mission leaders decided to
target this small country of Ourtownistan because they believe that it is an
area that is ripe for evangelism and church planting. However, rather than just
assign one family to the area they have decided to do something different—they
decided to try a team approach and have sent all of us here to work
together to share the Gospel with this little country and to eventually plant a
strong, healthy indigenous church that will one day be able to reproduce and
start other new churches.
We
all arrived here within the past couple of months. We have all found housing
for ourselves and our families, although some of us are still living out of
suitcases until we can buy what we need and get all set up. We have purchased
cars and are learning our way around. We have gotten our kids enrolled in the
local schools and they are starting to pick up the language.
Now
that everyone is finally here, in country, we can begin to put the team
together and formulate a strategy for sharing the Gospel with the Ourtownites.
We have managed to put together enough money to rent this facility. It is old
and it is not pretty, but at least the rent is paid for the next six months and
it is a place to meet. But that is a problem because very few of the
Ourtownites know that we are even here yet. They drive by this place every day
but have no idea who we are or why we have come here. The ones who know could
not care less. We are invisible to them, irrelevant to their daily lives, and
insignificant.
But
we are not going to let that stop us or discourage us. We are here to proclaim
the Good News of Great Joy. God has sent us here to tell the Ourtownites that
God loves them and wants them to know Him. He has sent us to tell them that
Jesus died on the cross for their sins and that if they will just put their
complete trust in Him, He will save them and give them eternal life. Most of
the native people here have no idea of what God is like or who Jesus is. They
have heard of Christians, but many have never actually met one, much less had
one for a friend or a neighbour. Most of the Ourtownites are relatively happy
with their lives and sense no need for what we are here to give them.
Yes,
Ourtownistan is indeed a mission field, just as surely as any country in the
heart of Africa or in the least evangelized part of South America or Asia. Let
me explain: The Ourtownites have come to believe in their own religious
systems. Moreover, they have their own culture, and that culture is
noticeably different from that of the neighbouring country of Othertownistan.
Moreover, the people here have their own value system, language,
and social structure. Ourtownistan is a unique country and we must find
ways to bring the Gospel to these native folks in ways that are culturally
relevant to them. That is our task.
MAIN BODY:
One of my
favourite things, back when I was a missionary in Brazil, was our annual Field
Conference. Once a year we would get all our S. Brazil missionary families
together for one week. We usually held the conference at some beautiful,
restful spot where there was plenty for our kids to do while the adults were in
meetings, and for us to enjoy in our off-hours. For the adults it was basically
a working holiday. We would spend the days planning new strategies, giving
reports, praying, studying the Word together, and evaluating one another’s
ministries.
Our field
administration in Brazil was made up of a Field Chairman (now called a Field
Director), a Vice-Chairman, a Field Secretary, a Field Treasurer, and a
Member-at-large, all elected democratically by the missionaries on the field.
For purposes of
our scenario today I want you to imagine with me that we are gathered for our
annual Field Conference. I am the Field Chairman and will be leading our
meeting, but I will open it up for discussion and questions periodically.
As we begin, I
want to remind all you missionaries of some important principles that govern
our lives and define our ministry. I mentioned the 1st
missionary principle a few minutes ago: We have taken individual ownership of the Lord’s Great Commission.
When He said, “Go
ye into all the world and make disciples…” rather than waiting
around for someone else to act, we took that as our individual marching orders.
That commitment is what eventually brought us to this place.
The
2nd missionary principle
of our lives and our ministries is that we have all personally embraced God’s call on our lives. However, that
means different things to different people.
You are probably
aware that the subject of a so-called “missionary call” has been much debated
over the years. Especially during the last two centuries great missionary
movements have been started by people who felt that they had received some sort
of supernatural call to missions. That “call” often came after an emotional
appeal for missionaries to step forward as volunteers to carry the Gospel to
the ends of the earth. Sometimes this happened at the close of a powerful
missionary conference in a church, or around a campfire at a youth retreat, or
at a regional outreach conference like Mission ConneXion in Portland, Oregon or
the Urbana Student Missions Conference in Illinois. An invitation would be
given, and with tear-stained faces people would lay their lives on the altar to
go to darkest Africa or some other place. They would always look back to that night
when they received their “missionary call.”
Now I do not mean
to belittle that idea or to call into question the conviction that those
missionaries have of having been handpicked by God to become missionaries. I
can relate because near the end of my second year in college I had an emotional
experience in my life as well when I finally submitted my life and my future to
God’s Sovereign plan. That decision eventually led me to become a missionary
and to serve for three terms as a missionary in Brazil.
However, I have
had a lot of years to revisit that experience and to search the Scriptures, and
today I have come to a different conclusion; namely, I now believe that every
Christian has received a missionary call from God. It came when we took up
His name, and His banner, and His cross. It is simply part and parcel of being
a child of God. Every Christian is called to serve God “full time.” There is no
such thing as a “part time” Christian. Moreover, we all have a mission given to
us by God, thus making us “missionaries,” wherever we might be, whether in our
own country or across the sea. Distance is not the issue.
Unfortunately,
this idea of a specific “missionary call” has been terribly misused by many
Christians as a get-out-of-responsibility card. They say, “Well, I have never been called by God to be
a missionary, so I will just hang around here doing my own thing until such
time as He zaps me with lightening or speaks to me in an audible voice. If that
happens then I will know for sure that He wants me to be a missionary.”
However, when we
look at the verses in the Scriptures that refer to God’s call we come away with
a different impression. Certainly, the twelve Apostles were all called
personally by Jesus and handpicked for their missionary role in establishing
the Church. Moreover, there can be no question about the Apostle Paul. God
called him to salvation and to missionary service all at the same time.
However, to my knowledge Paul is the only person we can point to in the NT that
had that kind of a call. His call is the exception to the rule, rather
than the rule.
All the NT
passages that I know of that speak about God’s “call” are referring to the fact
that God calls sinners unto Himself for salvation and then to Kingdom service.
A good example is found in Romans 8:28-30. “28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of
those who love Him, who have been called
according to His purpose. 29 For those God foreknew He also predestined to be
conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many
brothers and sisters. 30 And those He predestined, He also called; those He called,
He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.” In fact, I can find no verse in the Bible that
supports the commonly held idea of a “missionary call.”
The Bible says
that every believer is “called” of God. We are called to Christ, called to
worship and to serve Him, called to walk worthy of our calling in Him, called
to obey the biblical creation mandates, and called to share Christ with others.
So, why am I
making a big deal of this “missionary call”? Well, it is partly just to clarify
matters. I think it is important to eliminate unbiblical teaching that tries to
dichotomize vocations and life into “secular” and “sacred.” The common myth
about a “missionary call” has been responsible for thousands of Christians
letting themselves off the hook with a clear conscience, leaving the task of
world evangelization to the “called” professionals. If every Christian would
begin to personally embrace God’s universal call to “full-time Christian
service” then we would get a lot more accomplished in terms of
Gospel-spreading, disciple-making, and church-planting.
That said,
let’s look at a couple more of those 15 principles that I mentioned earlier. The
3rd missionary principle reminds us that if we are going to
be effective missionaries for Christ here in Ourtownistan then we must clearly
identify our source of strength and
acknowledge our weaknesses. Paul tells us in Romans 14:23 that… “whatsoever
is not of faith is sin.” Wow! That means that if
we are trying to serve God in our own strength and by our wits rather than in
the strength of His might and wisdom then we are sinning. God certainly never
promised to bless our ideas, methods, and programmes. On the other hand, He did promise to bless His Word and to build His
Church.
We are not
strong enough, smart enough, wise enough, or creative enough to accomplish our
mission without His anointing. And anything we do manage to build on our own
will not last! If we are to be effective missionaries here in Ourtownistan
it will be through His power and by doing things His way.
The
4th missionary principle
involves those people who stay behind to pray and support the mission. We must build a support
team of “rope holders.”
You are probably
asking yourself, “What in the world does
he mean by that?” When William Carey, often referred to as the “father of
modern missions,” was leaving for India as a missionary, he told a group of
interested friends, “Saving souls can be
likened a to a man drowning in a deep well and a volunteer can do nothing
unless there are people who will hold the rope for him to be lowered till
he reaches the drowning man, and then pull them both up to safety.” Carey
added, “I will go to India as a volunteer
to seek sinners drowning in the well of sin. But I cannot do it alone. I
need rope holders. Will you be my rope holders?” Obviously
not everyone can be on the frontlines all the
time. The army has known this principle for centuries. In the same way,
missionaries have always depended on a support network of people who minister
behind the spiritual battle lines. There are lots of things to be done,
including praying, giving, and encouraging other team members. As I mentioned a
while ago, we are all missionaries, but we come with different skill sets,
different gifts, different levels of training and ability. But God wants to use
each one of us to accomplish His mission here in Ourtownistan.
CONCLUSION:
Have
you ever used the excuse that God has not specifically called you to be a
missionary? How does that work since the Great Commission is for every
Christian, and every Christian has the Holy Spirit living in him to empower and
equip him for missionary service? And how does that excuse hold up in light of
the fact that our team here has adopted a mission statement that says, “We are here to win people to Jesus Christ
and to help them grow to be like Him”?
Having a mission statement implies that we have a mission,
and having a mission leads us to the obvious conclusion that we are
missionaries. The only question is: Are
we good missionaries or lousy missionaries? Are we being successful in
carrying out our mission or are we caught up in status quo maintenance jobs
that sap our energies and blind us to what we are here on this mission field to
accomplish?
FEEDBACK:
I
want to give you an opportunity to interact with what I have shared in this
session. You are all missionaries and are all invested in this missionary
venture. Does any of this make sense to you or do you think I am all wet? And
if I am on the right track, what difference might it make in helping us
accomplish our mission here in Ourtownistan?
15
Guiding Principles that Govern All Missionary Service:
- Own the Great Commission individually
- Embrace God’s call personally
- Identify your source of strength and acknowledge your
weaknesses
- Build a support team of “rope holders”
- Go where “they” live
- Survey the mission field
- Learn their languages
- Love the people genuinely
- Adopt their culture and history as our own
- Feel their needs and sincerely empathize
- Contextualize the Gospel and proclaim it in culturally relevant ways
- Develop friendships that last
- Conserve the harvest
- Celebrate the results
- Return and continue the process
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