Thursday, March 30, 2017

Product of a Mission

Why I am a product of mission—not missions.


Something has happened along the way in the culture of the church. Perhaps not Freedom Christian specifically, or perhaps it has happened to us too—at least in our hearts. We all know that as a group, Christians are pretty prone to “Christian-ese”, a language that is technically English (or whatever the native language of your area is), but is beyond understandable to those outside of our group. While most “Christian-ese” is relatively harmless, there is one word in our vocabulary that has morphed just enough that we need to talk about it.

That word is “missions”. MissionSSSsss.

The difference is so subtle I’m sure it’s completely evaded many of us. We have taken the heartbeat of the gospel, the very thing that brought us all together and continues to move us out to the world, beyond ourselves, and categorized it in a way that allows us to separate it from ourselves without much concern. While having a “missions” category is effective for things such as church budgets, referencing intentional living, and ministering to those around us as “missions” and not simply as the way we live—it has also caused us to detach from the work God is doing around us. Categorizing missions puts a distance between the way we perceive ourselves and the way we perceive those we send out officially into other countries to spread the gospel.

It’s true, those two lives are very different ones, however, neither are called to anything besides THE mission. Though it might look different or sound different, it is the same God whose will we are called to be a part of.

Though my ‘missions’ giving supports different, specific people and purposes around the world, their objectives are no different from what mine should be. While a missionary meets with a friend for noodles on the other side of the world to talk about the gospel, I might drive down the street to a coworker’s house to do the same. In this way, we cannot categorize the call of God to mobilize the message of hope, of peace, love, joy, or any of the things that drew us to Him for the first time.


This week, I challenge you the same way this past Missions Sunday challenged myself—to think about “missions” differently this year. Not as something that can be categorized, or put into a box. But a fluid, necessary, integral part of all of our lives that cannot be confined to a word or a financial pledge. Ask God this year how to be a part of mission, and to reveal the way He is moving all around you.

Written by: Brianna Vanderveen
Edited by: Tamara Sturdivant

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