This goes here; that goes there.

Compartmentalization. One of those rare seven-syllable words.

In my last post, I mentioned that missions gets compartmentalized. I then went on to compartmentalize it (sort of). When I say missions gets compartmentalized, what I mean is that, in relation to the rest of life, missions gets pushed into some separate sphere, some separate category. And partially, I think that's ok. Partially, I think that's tragic. To our 21st century American-Christianity mindset, there are different stations in life, each clearly distinguishable from the others. You can be a teacher, you can be an artist, you can be an accountant, you can be a marketing manager, you can be a piano teacher, you can be a pastor, you can be a missionary, you can be a church-planter. You can even be a tent-making church-planter or missionary. You can be this, or you can be that. And this goes here (or stays here, rather), and that goes there.

But answer me this: what makes a tent-making missionary in Bangladesh different from an elementary school teacher in Cary, NC? Well, the missionary goes to a foreign country-- overseas. Ok, right. True. And, to be honest, that's what I based my own compartmentalization of missions on. It makes sense: Missionary: missi: to send (Latin). Therefore, to go, like far away. The only problem is that Jesus sent all of us! GO into all the world sounds an awful lot like a missi, like a sending.

The world is not just a geographical globe. It is a very dysfunctional, disconnected community in a headlong fall. The world is a people-- all people-- that have become disconnected from God and, as a result, dysfunctional in the very thing for which we were created: love. To go into this world is simply to be where people are. When you are at the grocery store, you are in the world. You have "gone". Good! So that's half the command.

Now the rest is to make disciples of all peoples. Yeah, that's the hard part. No, it's impossible. What we as mere men and women can do, what is possible to us, is to make disciples for ourselves. We can get people to follow us. But to make someone a disciple of Jesus, they have to meet Jesus. There's a popular phrase I've read and heard, and I like it. It's the idea of Being Jesus to people you meet. That means, chiefly, to love them, to do good to them. For some people that's buying them a meal. For some that's adopting them as your child. For many it's simple taking an interest in their lives. That's love. That's what love does, of course (I Corinth. 13), and Jesus is most typified by love. It's as simple as asking the clerk at the grocery store how late she has to work that night and offering some sympathy. Finding out if he is in college or if she has kids and how old. When you start getting people talking about what they really love or really hate, you start to get into who they really are. And what they are is created to be God's people, His children, His love. I don't mean to make it sound easy. It's not. I'm terrible at it, mostly because I'm more compelled by fear than love.

Disciple-making is hard and nervous and scary. But it's what we're here for. It's what we were "sent" into the "world" for. In that sense we have wrongly compartmentalized missions. In that sense we are missionaries everytime we walk into that grocery store or Starbucks or assembly floor or office or school building or into the same room as your undiscipled child.

Have we forgotten this? Have I forgotten this here in America as I am training to "go?"

It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's not something I am a good example of. It's not (I am sad to admit) something that I do often. But I want to.

Jesus, you've given me what seems like an impossible command to follow. I mean, at least the second half seems impossible. I get scared when I think of initiating conversations with people I don't know. Please drive out this fear by giving me a love for You that spills over to people, to these people that you have sent me to. These whom you have died for. Let me be YOU to them. Let me love them. Compel me to love them!

Remind us that America is not our home. This is not where we "stay"-- this is where we have gone, where you have sent us. Remind us that we will stay with You one day, but now as we love you, we are to seek to do your will, which is to go into the world and introduce them to you, to show them who they must follow as disciples!

Here am I, Lord, BUT . . .

Missions. Missions has perhaps become too compartmentalized in our western perspective on Christianity. No, I'm certain it has become too compartmentalized. But missions is what I want to do. It's what God has given me a burden for. When I speak of missions I'm referring to traveling to a culture that is foreign to me specifically for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel "in the uttermost parts of the earth." This is a passion for me. I live in a land that is bursting at the seams it's so full of churches. When you look at the spiritual grid of the earth, America should stand out like a full moon, for we have in this nation the most numerous (except for China) and the most visible collection of Christians that the world has ever known.

My desire is to see other places in the world that are currently pitch black spots on that world lighting map become white hot lights of worship of the God who created all people everywhere. I want to be part of that. I want to go and be there where the world is darkest-- where no one else wants to go.Why there? Why those particular places? I don't know. It's hard to explain, and I hope it's not simply a maverick sort of attitude that's driving me. What I believe to be in my heart is the compelling urgency the springs from the Apostle Paul's own voice in his words from Romans 10: How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

It's that, "Who else?!" question that got me in the first place. I think I was in 9th grade. The summer before ninth grade, I think. There was an evangelist preaching a week of services at our church, during which we actually met in the National Guard Armory's gym because our church was under renovation. I remember sitting in those uncomfortable metal chairs in that sweltering humid heat and that evangelist listing off city after city of millions of people but with few enough churches to be counted on one hand. He talked about how for every ten missionaries that leave the field only one is going out to replace him-- and yet the world's population is growing?! I left that service thinking, "Wow. Something needs to be done! Someone needs to go!" But it had not yet occurred to me that I could go. That came later.

God and I had this conversation that I can still remember today. Now, you may think, Naw, God doesn't talk to people like that anymore! Not like He talked to Moses. And I would say, First, how do you know? And, second, no, it wasn't quite like that. It was more like a conversation I have with myself. Only instead of myself being the other thought-voice in my head, it was God the Spirit. I'm pretty sure of this. It went something like this, I was just boredly sitting on my bed thinking, thinking about all those people in those big cities in Asia and other places and how every two seconds or something, someone dies and how many of them go to hell, when God said--"said"--

"Well, what about you?"

To which I quickly and matter-of-factly replied, "Who-- me? Nah, I'm just . . . me. Just Seth. I'm not a missionary. No one in my family has ever--"

I think God kind of interrupted me there, but it was OK because I really had nowhere else to go; He said,"Why not? What does it really take to be a missionary?"

I was dumbfounded (you never win even a single point in a debate with God): "Huh . . ."

And He kept on coming, "If not you, then who? Who else?"

I think I changed the subject at that point, because there was no decision yet. It was something more organic than that. God changed my thinking with that conversation. It was more organic than some flash of light at midnight, called by a vision thing. Almost reflexively, I started to take an interest in missions, in traveling, in foreign cultures. I made a public commitment at my church the next year or maybe just a couple of months later, but that wasn't really the big deal. That's not what's kept me going towards the coasts, towards the airport terminals. I know some people say you have to have this "missionary call" or whatever, but that's bologne. How do you know what God designed you to be? I don't know. It's different for everyone. Love God and follow your dreams, pursue what you're passionate about.

I don't tell you about my "conversation" with God in order to give you a template of some mystical "missionary call." My point is don't rule yourself out, just because you don't think you're anyone special like a-- oooh!-- a missionary! Just think about it. Pray about. Ask yourself: why not?

So back to dark and forsaken places. Why? Well, I guess, I figure that if I'm going to be a missionary because we desperately need reinforcements, I'm going to go where those reinforcements are needed most: the darkest places. Of course, that's pretty general, and I may start out in a less dark place (like China) just to get my bearings and some experience until a more specific burden takes shape.