You Don’t Have to Be A Missionary

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I’ve noticed an unfortunate trend lately for the misuse of the term “missionary”. I’ve noticed it a lot in some church circles and also in YWAM.

My kids have a Bible Bingo game that defines a missionary as:

A missionary is someone who often goes to another country to share the good news about Jesus with people who do not know about Him.

I’ve heard a lot of people using that term a lot more loosely than that. According to some people being a missionary is being Christ like where ever you are, be it at school, work, or in ministry.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but being Christ like at school or work isn’t being a missionary, it’s called being a “Christian”!

Living out our Christian Faith means being a witness for Christ in all situations. We are all called to be  witness for Christ, regardless of if we are teachers, electricians, or missionaries. You don’t need to be a missionary to show Christ to other people around you.

Another disturbing trend with this is that Christians are forgetting that Christians don’t need a special “call” to be a witness to the people around them. There is no need for a “special” call to be a witness, if you are born again in Christ, and have accepted Him as your Lord and Saviour, than you are to be a witness to the ends of the earth …

Finding More Missionary Workers

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Even though it is not a popular word in Christian circles a lot of what I do consists of a lot of marketing. My desire is to get more people following God’s plan for their lives, and for some people that means being involved in missions. The avenue that I encourage to help people get engaged and find God’s will for their lives is Youth With A Mission (YWAM).

Competition for Workers in YWAM

When I was working specifically on a local base I found that we were quite often competing against other YWAM Centres. If we ran an advertisement on Google we were competing for words like “YWAM DTS”, “YWAM Discipleship Training School”, “YWAM”, etc. These terms are quite specific to YWAM and we were bidding against other Youth With A Mission centres.

I struggled with competing against other YWAM Centres for students and staff. Being a YWAM Centre in a developed nation we had a financial advantage over locations from developing nations. We could outspend most of those location simply because of where we were located. Even if they were offering a superior Discipleship Training School (YWAM DTS), people searching would find us near the top of the paid search results.

So big bases keep getting bigger and smaller bases struggle to compete.

Now that I have the privilege of working with Youth With A Mission in a more international role I have found that the struggle is still there, but in a different way …

Competing Missions Agencies

As I look at a communications and marketing strategy for Youth With A Mission I find that I am no longer competing between YWAM centres, but rather with other missions agencies. Many of these organizations, like Operation Mobilization, SIM (Serving in Mission), Africa Inland Mission, Samaritan’s Purse, etc. offer amazing programs and opportunities for people to become engaged in missions and in finding what God has for them.

In addition I feel that organizations like YWAM can also find themselves competing with more traditional bibles schools / colleges as students seek out God’s plan for their lives (this was my own personal experience).

Why am I competing against organizations that are following after God’s call and are working towards advancing the gospel and the Kingdom of God?

Who Should We Be Competing Against?

I think that competing with other missions agencies is really limiting God, splitting resources of the Church and like going for the low hanging fruit. These are people who are there already know that God has something for them and are actively seeking out God’s plan. We forget that they represent a very, very small proportion of people who God has a plan for.

We read in God’s Word that …

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  (Eph 6:12)

Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what He requires of you, and He will provide you with all these other things.  (Mat 6:33 GNB)

Ultimately we are competing against that lie of the enemy that says that God doesn’t have a plan for people’s lives. God has a plan for everyone’s life, if only we would take the time to ask Him what it is, and be willing to follow it. I took many different paths in my own life before I discovered the truth that God has a plan for my life, I only have to lay down what I am holding onto and be willing to follow it.

How Do We Compete Against The Lie?

The best place start to compete against the lie that God doesn’t have a plan for peoples lives is in the Church. These are people who already know God but haven’t yet figured out that He has a plan for their lives. It is estimated that there are about 2.1 billion “Christians” in the world today. That’s a lot of people …

As we look at the Church we can ask ourselves if people are living out their lives in line with God’s plan for it or are they pursuing their own plans. In Mathew chapter 6 we are told that if we line up our will and plans with His and concern ourselves with the Kingdom of God He will provide everything that we need. Many of us, myself included, try to work things out for ourselves, while neglecting what God is saying and requiring of us. We do this to our own detriment, and the detriment of the Gospel.

I am not saying that we should be judging others or questioning their motives. What we should be doing is encouraging people into a place where they can trust God in taking the leap into what His plan is for them. A friend of mine in an email that he sent me last year said:

God calls us all to walk a different journey in our lives.

Missions is not God plan for everyone. I have unfortunately seen missions and full-time ministry be put on a pedestal as being true callings from God, while the rest is called “secular” or non-spiritual. This is another lie that has stolen the very call on people’s lives out from under them.

The same God who has called me to full-time missions also calls people to be the best business manager, electrician, teacher, mother, etc. that they can be. That call is just as spiritual and just as valid as being called into full-time ministry. There is no difference as long as it lines up with God’s plan for your life. The thing that matters most isn’t what you do, it’s whether what you do is what God wants you to do.

All that to say that as people line up their will with God’s, and start to follow God’s plan for their lives, there will be enough workers and enough provision to do God’s work.

From there of course we have the other 4 billion or so people in the world who God also created with a plan and purpose for their life. Many have never heard the truth of the Gospel or Jesus Christ. As they come to learn the truth, and submit their lives to God, then they too will be released into God’s plan for their lives.

Great, But How Do We Do That?

Yeah, well, that’s the million dollar questions then isn’t it?

Honestly, I don’t think that the ways we have been promoting missions will reach most of the people who God wants to be involved. We may reach a few in the Church who are already thinking about missions, but we will miss those who are not actively seeking God about what to do with their lives.

Ultimately I think it comes down to working towards the great commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28: 19-20:

Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age." (Mat 28:19-20 GNB)

As the Church focuses on making disciples, and not just converts, God will lead the right workers into missions.

Your Thoughts?

So what do you reckon? How should we best be encouraging people to find and follow God’s plan for their lives? Where do we find the right “workers for the harvest”?

Remember – Lest We Forget

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Remembrance Day is a day honoured in most British Commonwealth Nations around the world. Some places it is known as Remembrance Day, others Poppy Day, in others as Armistice Day and in yet others as Veterans Day. It is defined as:

A day of remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve our country during times of war, conflict and peace.

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Currently I have an uncle in the Canadian Air Force, one of my Grandfathers was in the Canadian Air Force during and after World War Two, and Tamara’s Grandfather was in the Australian Army Corp during World War Two (and his father during World War One).

We’ll never have a future if we don’t remember the past.

Today was a day for us to not only remember the sacrifices of these men and women, but also I think to remember that they fought so that we wouldn’t have to. The First World War was described as “The War To End All Wars” because it was so horrific. Obviously history has  taught us that was not the case, and that we continue to fight was around the globe. As Canadians and Australian’s however we do not usually fight wars as the aggressor, but in the defence of others.

Today I took the kids down to the Calgary War Museum where they were having the Remembrance Day Ceremony. I wish that Caleb was still up so that I could quote him exactly, but here’s a try at a seven year olds description of what Remembrance Day is:

A day when we remember the soldiers who died so that we can be free and live in a free country.

I reckon that kid nailed it on the head …

Re-Entry, Really? But I Am Still in YWAM!

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Re-Entry when it comes to Christian Missions is defined as:

Re-Entry – The process of transitioning from short-term or long-term missions to life at home.

Part of the last week of the YWAM Discipleship Training School is usually spent talking about re-entry. It can be quite a shock for people coming home to their friends, family, church, job and / or school. Even after only spending 6-months away on the YWAM DTS so much can happen, and so many things experienced, that coming back to where you left from can be a big challenge.

Because we were never actually leaving YWAM we did not prepare ourselves for “re-entry”.

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I guess that we should have known better if we had really looked at our situation. We were leaving a close knit YWAM community that we had grown with for the last 11-years. Everyday I was in the office working with missions minded people, passionate to do everything they could to further the spread of God’s Word and Truth. A few times a week we were at the YWAM Centre for a meal or event, and half of our friends were also part of YWAM in Townsville.

Coming here we were in a way coming “home” for me, even though I had been gone for the last eleven years. I didn’t really think of it as “coming home”, it felt more like “leaving home”, but Calgary is where a lot of my old friends are, my family is all here and my home church is here in Calgary as well. I think that the best way to describe it would be that I was coming back to where I grew up, rather than coming “home”.

Experiencing Re-Entry

We have found ourselves experiencing our own sort of re-entry as we have come here to Calgary.

Here are some points that I have taken from this article about re-entry:

Stages of Re-Entry:

  1. Initial Euphoria
  2. Irritability and Hostility
  3. Gradual Adjustment
  4. Adaptation

This article also has some really good points about re-entry:

  1. You have changed – I’ve been gone for 11 years. When I left I was 21, very new in my Christian faith, single with no responsibilities and no clear direction for my life. Now I’m 32, been involved in full-time ministry for over a decade, married with two kids and I feel that I have a relatively clear calling and direction on my life.
  2. Your friends and family have changed – Friends have moved, married, had kids, gotten jobs, made new friends and changed, a lot. Family has been through similar changes, even though at the moment both of my sisters are living at home with my parent’s, which still the same as when I left.
  3. Your church has changed – Most of the people of my age that were at our home church here in Calgary have moved to other churches in the years that we have been gone. There are new people, and a few old friends, but the face of the church has changed dramatically in the past eleven years. The church also went through a change in the senior pastor and youth pastor who originally sent me out to YWAM, which would obviously bring about quite a few changes.
  4. Your culture has changed – I am amazed at how much Calgary has changed since I left. The population since I left in 1998 has increased by about 20% to over 1 million people. The roads are busier, people a lot more rushed and a lot less polite. Even Tamara has noticed how much more rude people have gotten here since her first visit after we were married in 2001. Calgary has a much more cosmopolitan feel to it (cosmopolitan being defined as being made up of diverse peoples, showing cultural diversity and being more international in scope).

Because we were changing YWAM locations we didn’t expect to experience everything associated with re-entry (as well as culture shock, but I will write about that in another article). Part of why we feel we are experiencing it is because of the substantial difference between the YWAM community that we left in Australia and the YWAM community here in Calgary.

Another thing is that most of our friends in Australia were also involved in missions, but here in Calgary most of our friends are involved in main stream jobs. This brings with it a different way of looking at things, and it’s taking a lot for Tamara and I get to used to it. Just the other day I was sitting around a table with some guys as they were talking about finances and their jobs where they were earning two to three times what I do. I found it a bit of a challenge to know how to engage in that conversation. (Nothing wrong with a main stream job at all if that’s where God’s got you. He has a different plan for everyone of us, we just need to figure out what it is.)

I guess that it would have been nice to have been somehow equipped better for what we were walking into, but who knew eh?

Right now we are just struggling through it, hoping that the light we see in this tunnel is the end of the tunnel, and not the oncoming train …

Do You Fake It on Facebook?

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Is the person that you really are the person that we see on Facebook or other social networks?

Somehow I reckon that quite often the person that we portray on-line, whether it be on a blog, forum or social network, is not a completely true representation of who we really are. This “alternate personality” could be hugely misleading (Brad Paisley’s song “Online” personifies this), partly misleading (but still deliberately so) or simply missing pieces.

I’ll be the first to admit that who you see on-line is not a complete picture of who I am. I don’t think that it’s because I’m being deliberately misleading about who I am, it’s just that there is only so much you can say about yourself on-line. I am also generally pretty reserved with how open I am about some of the things that I’m going through in my personal life. Some things are better left to in person conversations I reckon.

Knowing how I represent myself on-line reminds me not to be quick to judge people by what I read on-line. It’s impossible to get a complete picture of someone simply by what I read on-line, even if they’ve written it themselves.

So that begs the following question:

  1. Can I get a full picture of who you are on-line?
  2. Do you judge others by what you read about them on-line?

Let us know below in the comments…