Me, a missionary?

I went to a talk at lunch yesterday given by a new professor at Denver Seminary, Dr. Alex Mekonnen. From the description distributed in the campus newsletter, he seemed to have an interesting background, and I thought I might enjoy hearing him speak. Plus, there was free pizza.

The talk did turn out to be interesting. In fact, I learned about a new attribute of God that I hadn't considered before. Besides being holy, loving, infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient, I think God is also rather sneaky. Okay, that may not be a definitive characteristic of God, but I all too often miss the things that God is doing right under my nose.

The talk was put on the by missions society here at the seminary (though they didn't announce that before hand), and the topic was on a new missions curriculum that Dr. Mekonnen would like to put together. He envisions a program that is made up of classes in theology, anthropology, and missiology; a program that can create pastors with a heart for missions and missionaries with a heart for pastoring. Here's the sneaky part: I think God has been preparing me for just such a calling, and I didn't even know it.

For years, my greatest passion has been for the Church. How does our theology and our values influence the way our local church communities look? How do we balance the need to be connected to our local culture with the desire to be connected to the history and tradition of the church? How do we build churches that reflect the diversity of God's kingdom? How do we draw upon the strengths of various Christian communities across the globe to construct local communities that are more than a product of our culture? These are the kinds of questions that light a fire within me. What I didn't realize, or at least only sort of realized, is that all these questions are connected to the idea of missions.

Too often, we think of missions as an individual endeavor. There is certainly room for that: many of Paul's missionary journeys brought the gospel to places it had never taken root before. However, wherever the good news of Jesus took root a church was left behind, and it was this community, with all its shortcomings, that was expected to continue to transform the culture around it. Passion for the church is in many ways a passion for community based missions. Even the edification of those within the church should serve as a beacon to the world around us that there is something good here.

I believe that the church is the vehicle by which the "already" portion of God's kingdom is realized on earth, and if we are not bringing that reality into the world around us something is woefully wrong. From a purely sociological standpoint, organizations that do not continually reach out to and bring in new members are doomed to failure. If our churches are not doing missions work within their own communities, they will die. If I am to successfully lead a church at any level, I must consider the role that missions plays in that endeavor. God has planted within me the heart of a missionary, and I didn't even know it.

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of years.