The World Awaits

Periodically I read articles that advocate missions as a project with a short term approach. Interestingly, nobody arrived at those conclusions by an examination of the biblical text or of mission history. It is something that has been created by the intersection of technological innovation bringing growing affluence, ease of travel, and inexpensive communication with cultural change in the West. I don’t want to review the arguments in the long-term/short-debate, other than to note that I am decidedly a long-term advocate and tend to feel like something of a dinosaur in the current climate. Now there are a number of reasons why I believe that going somewhere, learning a language and cultural system, and staying a long time to make a contribution to the planting, growth and development of local church movements is important. I also believe that cross-cultural workers adept in those ways are critical to the future prospects of missions, whether they are sent from the West or majority world emerging agencies. However, rather than discuss the reasons here, I want to illustrate one of them that I have begun to experience on a frequent basis as I moved into my second and more recently third decade of service.

The other day my wife and I decided to drop in, unannounced, at a small church in the city we live in. As is often the case, the pastor came up and asked me to speak that morning, reasoning that since his people hear him all the time a change would be good. So I tend to come prepared for anything in such circumstances. One of the families that attends this small church is E*, her husband N*, and their young son. We have known E* since she was 7 years old. Her parents were the pastors we worked with in L* in our first and second terms. Our daughters grew up playing with her, and she was often in our home in those years. She is now about the same age as her mother was when we first met her. Her mom passed away in her mid-40s with cancer, and seeing E* is like seeing her all over again. I shared a message out of Acts 18 looking at the implications of how Paul evangelized and planted new communities of believers and what that might mean for us in our setting in Bangkok.

After the prayer time we sat down to talk with E* and N* and had a very interesting conversation that reminded me again of why staying a long time means so much. E* shared about how her heart was burning within her as I spoke about sharing the Gospel as Paul had, and that she felt like she needed to rekindle the flames of spiritual zeal in her own heart. She also confessed how having grown up in a Christian home she feels very inadequate and unsure of herself in how to talk with Buddhist neighbors where she lives. It was a critical conversation because in this tiny group of believers E* and N* are key people. He is a new believer and she is a second generation Christian. If they become more than just Sunday attenders, it will have a real impact on this little church. E* has never turned from her faith, but like too many of us, she has seen the underside of enough church life. The messy lives of those who profess to follow Christ have taken a big chunk out of the joy of that first love. Her mother was a high-impact Christian in a very humble and unassuming way, and if E* and N* as a family can catch that vision for living a life on purpose, it could help tilt the church in a new direction. As we drove home later that day, we talked about how unique that conversation was in terms of its transparency and openness.

It was not the kind of discussion you can have with a relative stranger, or someone who does not know the language well. It is one of the benefits and open doors that come from knowing someone when he or she was a small child, helping them get their first real job in the big city, and just being a part of their life so that at a teachable and open moment, that kind of conversation can happen. I have come to see that part of what staying a long time means is that you are strategically placed to be on the ground and ready for that unplannable, unstrategizable, miniscule window of time when a word needs to be said, comfort given, or a warning delivered, and you become God’s agent-on-the-ground to carry the message. It is precisely those least-controlled moments that so often turn out to be where spiritual leverage happens or seeds are planted in good ground that bring abundant harvest down the line, in a time horizon unseen by us.

When God wanted to speak he wrapped the message in a person; He has spoken to us by a Son the writer of Hebrews reminds us (Hebrew 1:2). God does not do drive-by evangelism, tract blitzes, canned evangelism, or disembodied verbal presentations of the Good News in easily digestible sound bites from a safe distance. He became one of us, and lived and died among us. And although we are but fuzzy shadows and blurred images of his incarnation, the chance for an imperfect vessel to be used by God for his purposes in that way, is what, by God’s grace, will keep us on the ground in another culture for the long haul.