Thank you for being a missionary

Dear pastor, dear missionary,

Thank you for being a missionary. Here are a few thoughts about the missional call we have from God above:

Starting as a missionary, beginning missionary work in a new place

Many times we wait too long to interact and engage.

Our fear overcomes us. We somehow believe that simply being in the new place is enough.

Going to China and sitting in the airport is not enough. Neither is settling into a nice apartment or hotel room in a new city in France. Being near is not the same as being with. It is far too easy to allow fears to cripple any outward activity to be a missionary.

Missionary work is hard. It is intentionally with the unreached. It is on purpose with the lost. It is distinctively for the people who are sinning, worshiping false gods, addicted, broken and hopeless. It is for people who don’t look like us. It is for people who are making unwise choices and possibly (probably) won’t make our lives easier or better in the short run. When we begin work as a missionary it is all giving out and very little receiving back.

Missionary work is slow, must be intentional and furthermore faces many obstacles. For one a missionary is interjecting themselves into a place, culture, group, etc sometimes without prior invitation. There is a “presumptive” behavior chosen by the missionary to decide to show up to another person’s “family reunion” with the idea of bringing something that they need (and that they might not want or even know that they need).

Missionary work is about building trust. It is about earning the right to be heard. We must as missionaries be with the people, we must connect, interact, fellowship, build bridges of trust and become a safe place for people to be heard, loved and affirmed. Missionaries truly have to consider running a marathon not running a 100-yard dash. The dash leaves people feeling used, pushed around and abused. A pastor or missionary who is always in a hurry may seem not only preoccupied and unnecessarily consumed with their own importance but also will convey a disingenuous feeling to the people. A missionary has to be intentional and take their time to communicate the value the people are to God and themselves and that the help they offer the individual is of equal importance to the help offered the corporate body.

Missionary work is full of love and of course the sharing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Missionary work is availing oneself to the culture you are embedded in, cooperatively sharing stories, ideas, differences and similarities in order to develop a relationship wherein the eternal story of God’s salvation may be told, retold, unpacked and received but also where a new human story may be written which launches out from “Before Christ” into “In the year(s) of (serving) our Lord” (Anno Domini).

Furthermore, missionary work is about trusting God to do what only He can do. It is about relying on His Spirit promptings and supernatural power. Missionary work is remembering that it is the Spirit who gives life not we ourselves, it is the Lord who draws people to Himself, it is the Lord who saves, grows and gives the increase. Missionary work is about utter and complete dependence on the Lord for everything!

Thank you for being a missionary! Thank you for caring for the lost. Thank you for taking the time necessary and not allowing the frustrations, hurdles, weariness or setbacks to deter your call to see God’s kingdom come on earth as in heaven.

*I am certain of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it on to completion and that you who stand firm to the end will not only be saved but will also help to save your hearers!

*See Philippians 1:6, Matthew 24:13 and 1 Timothy 4:16

So grateful that Christ is with us and Christ is in us!

Mike J