Part 1 - Living in a Mission Field
Mission work is very demanding. I always think it is ironic to hear church goers praying for revival, while missionaries who are in the midst of great moves of God are praying for someone to come and help them! It’s funny and sad that church folks seem to assume that if God is going to send revival, it will be within the walls of their church.
As far as I can tell, Jesus never told us to pray for revival. If we want to experience the atmosphere of Heaven, He told us to repent. Revival is a natural result of deep repentance.
“Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”—Matthew 4:17 (NLT)
Rather than focus on bringing revival to our churches, Jesus redirected our attention. He told us to “wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest” (John 4:35 NIRV). His focus seemed be on sending laborers out into the harvest that was already in full swing.
“The harvest is bigger than you can imagine, but there are few workers. Therefore, plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest.”—Luke 10:2 (CEB)
As difficult as mission work is, maybe it’s not surprising that there are many ways to fail as a missionary. But many of them can be corrected and overcome by applying the wisdom of Scripture.
One of the most common causes of failure in mission work is, surprisingly, not realizing that we are missionaries living in a mission field. This may be a primary cause of failure of the Church in America to reach more people in their own country. There seems to be some disillusionment among Christians in North America who believe that we are living in a Christian culture that has already been saturated with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That may have been true at one time, but we are living in a different world today.
When we awaken to the fact that we are missionaries living in a mission field, then our eyes can be opened to see the needs all around us and to reach out to meet those needs with God’s love and power.
Missteps in a New Frontier
Another of the most common causes of failure in mission work is in not looking to Jesus as our model for outreach.
Recently, I watched a video recording of a seminar about how to plant a church in the Metaverse. I was interested in seeing how we might bring the good news of Jesus Christ into this new digital frontier which many are calling the next incarnation of the Internet.
The seminar was packed with good technical information and good advice for beginners (like me) who want to get their feet wet in this new realm. There was so much good technical information in this seminar that I watched it again … and again.
The technical information was great, but as I listened to these pastors relate their experiences of interacting with non-Christians in the Metaverse (I’ll just call them Metaversians), I began to seriously question their ministry approaches.
As he offered advice to ministers who were interested in planting churches in the Metaverse, the host pastor related experiences in which Metaversians entered his church services and either used offensive language or offensive gestures. He advised ministers to learn how to block people and mute them when their behavior becomes too offensive or disruptive.
Block people? Aren’t these the people you are trying to reach? And you are training people to block them because they react negatively to your presence in their space?
If there are Metaversians who do not know Jesus, then they are sinners, right? Are we justified in blocking people who are simply acting according to their sinful nature? Is it really the best practice to block sinners for acting like sinners? If we block them, then we will cut off any chance that we have to reach them!
Is that how Jesus treated people? Did He “block” them? Did He cut them off?
NO! Jesus never cut off relationships with any of the people that were attracted to His ministry.
Jesus never cut off communication with anyone. He never even cut off relationship with Judas, even though Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him to death. Whenever Jesus had conflicts with people, He always looked to His Father for solutions, and through those solutions, Jesus overcame evil with good. He may have had to patiently write in the sand while He waited on the solutions to come, but as Jesus was faithful to wait until He saw what His Father was doing, God was always faithful to provide the perfect solution to every conflict.
The most difficult outreach event that I ever experienced was in a park in a predominantly atheist country. We faced determined opposition. People vandalized our property. Someone attempted to steal our chairs. People seemed to come against us even before they knew why we were there! Our host minister told me that he had never seen opposition like this. We seemed to accomplish nothing the first day. It was exhausting.
But that night, I had a dream. In my dream, the frustrations of the day played themselves out in a battle on a spaceship. But then the scene changed. The tide of the battle turned and victory was won!
I laid awake for an hour, replaying the dream in my head so that I would be able to communicate the details of this message clearly to my team in the morning. We had faced fierce opposition, but God was going to turn things around for us!
We could have taken steps to block or remove unruly people from our area. We also could have pulled out of the event. But God had a solution that allowed us to overcome evil with good!
When we default to the wisdom of our natural mind, we miss out on lessons that God wants to teach us, and we miss out on His solutions that allow us to turn seemingly hopeless situations into victories!
“Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.”—Isaiah 55:9 (ERV)
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in victory through Christ. God uses us to spread his knowledge everywhere like a sweet-smelling perfume.”—2 Corinthians 2:14 (ERV)