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!