Are We Missing the People of our Mission?
When was the last time you were in a store somewhere or at the mall or on a highway or at your office building… and just noticed all the people.
One of the interesting things that I see in the gospels about Jesus is that He noticed the people. He didn’t miss anybody. From the woman at the well by herself to the blind man on the side of the road to the mass of people following Him, He noticed them all. That is really contradictory to the way that we live today. We drive, by ourselves to our workplaces where most of us sit at a desk, by ourselves, then go home and shut the door so that we can have some privacy. No one better knock on our door or call us on the phone and disturb our solitude.
If Jesus were walking in your life, how would He engage your world? Would he carpool to be with others? Would He be the one to bring snacks to the office so that He could converse with His co-workers? Would He walk his dog in the neighborhood and attend block parities to meet His neighbors? Would He be involved in aerobics at the gym? Would He become a regular at a restaurant to get to know the people there by name? Would He attend the office Christmas party (read John 2)?
These are the questions that we need to ask ourselves. But the one question I constantly hear from people is “Where would I find the time to do church and be on mission?”. That is the real beauty of the incarnation of Jesus. He stepped into the world and walked in it. Look at His life and think about His lifestyle. Did Jesus attend the synagogue? Yes, by all indications He regularly attended synagogue as an observant Jew. He worshipped and yet through the activities of His life, He encountered the lost and the hurting.
We can live the same kind of life, if we would do it with purpose and with mission. I have heard and read some emerging church critics talk about how they no longer worship in an “institutional” church and how church activities are a drain on our time to live the mission. I couldn’t disagree more. Our worship and discipleship growth are a key to empowering us for the mission that we will live. Reading one blog, the writer said that he skipped church one day and went to the park, only to discover that a lot of people weren’t at church. Well, what a revelation (note extreme sarcasm). Those same people who are at the park on Sunday are also at your workplace on Tuesday, in your favorite store on Friday, in their front yard on Monday, at the baseball field on Saturday and at the PTA meeting on Thursday. You don’t need to skip worship and discipleship and fellowship to encounter lost people, you just need to live life.
The mission is the people. The missionary is you. The missionary needs to be equipped, empowered, energized and experience the fellowship of the church so that they can engage in the mission of reaching the people that they encounter on a daily basis. To be like Jesus, an authentic follower of Christ, means that we will worship, we will learn and we will fellowship with the church and we will engage the world in mission wherever we go. This is not an “either or” but a “both and”. We need to worship with other believers. We need to study together and pray together. And we need to engage the world in mission and be out among those who need Christ.
