I set out to understand missions - to dive in and get a grip on the purpose and function of missions.
A divine discontent constrained and drove me.
I felt that something was not right with the American/Western missionary machine.
I found that our acts of compassion were gigantic, commendable, and well known if not well funded. We were painting more churches than we were planting. We were feeding more mouths than souls. We were hugging more orphans than we were adopting sons into the Kingdom of God. Our practical service was amazing, but real spiritual fruit, measured in terms of new disciples and new congregations and the growth of the Church, was on that same scale spotty and paltry.
I became critical.
We had delegated the husbandry of our spiritual "farms" primarily to a Gentry Class - a Few Paid Professionals whom we called our Full Time Missionaries. Meanwhile, our own congregants, churches full of disciples, were ill equipped and weakly motivated to obey their own personal Calling to the Great Commission.
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to my understanding of missions. (I am still not there.)
I began to hang out with missional disciples - with long term missionaries and stateside ministers who had borne real fruit at home and in the field... fruit that remained and multiplied and grew and bore yet even more fruit.
I committed to learn, became willing to challenge all prior assumptions.
I became less critical.
I learned to drop the trailing 's' from "missions", and call it Mission.
To replace, "What is missions?" with "What is the Mission of Christ and His Church?"
If Mission is about the expansion of the Church (it is), then I could not study the Mission of the Church without learning more about the Church itself.
So I began to study the Church.
And I found I could not study the Church without learning more about the One who passionately loves the Church.
I began to see the DNA of Christ's Body - this DNA is a Redemptive Dynamic - as the gathering force of the Church and the sending force of it's Mission. This gathering/sending dynamic is the Power over which the Gates of Hell cannot prevail.
A funny thing happened on my quest to understand missions.
I began to fall in love again.
My own ember of discipleship - my daily, face-to-face relationship with Christ, deep in my own heart - was reignited.
I followed my Calling all the way back to the One Who Calls, followed missions all the way back to The Mission. And in return, my love and appreciation deepened for Jesus, His work in my heart, His loving Mission to the world, and His Church as the actual presence of His Life on earth.
This life of love and grace must be shared, and we are the vehicle Christ has chosen. We are the Church He loves. That Call to expand - to cross the line between churched and unchurched in order to share this Life and make new disciples - is our Mission.
I could die for that.
