On-Mission Mondays: Why Go If It's Hard?

Each Monday I post about what it means to be "on mission" with Christ. I've been commenting on my thoughts/reactions to a book by Milfred Minatrea, but today I'm posting something from a missionary couple's newsletter.

I have some Caymanian friends from my former church who have just arrived in Southeast Asia to begin their new lives as international missionaries with OMF-UK. In their latest newsletter, Waypointz, they explained why they were leaving successful jobs and close family ties to serve halfway around the world. I asked their permission to share the following on my blog. I can't use their names for security reasons. Here is their answer to the question, "Why go if it's hard?"

Maybe some of you are new supporters and new friends…maybe we didn’t share the original vision with you. Now’s probably a good time for that. In 2004, a team from our seminary (CIU) visited an Unreached Muslim People Group in Southeast Asia. [An unreached people group is a distinct people that doesn’t have sufficient Christian witness within the group to evangelize its population without outside assistance.]

During our visit, we got a better understanding for these people--they were not antagonistic. They did not hate or want to harm Westerners. They shared their homes with us, shared their food with us, taught us about their culture and showed genuine hospitality. They also shared something of their beliefs and their fears. A year later, because of unexpected circumstances, D*** and I were able to join the second group from CIU in the same region, and during that time in the summer of 2005, we fell in love with the people.

The CIU team tried to “end-vision” [that is, think and plan strategically, based on our vision for the end result] what it would be like for a church-planting movement to erupt among these lovely, yet spiritually-lost people. What role could we play? We began to imagine ourselves as “firebrands” (tiny pieces of burning material) who, after the fire of our home church was prodded by the Spirit, launched up and out in the darkness surrounding a lost people. If you’ve ever sat around a camp fire, you’ve got the picture in your mind… While a firebrand is only a small light in flight, once landed it sparks off a fire that burns, seemingly out of control, impacting a vast area and repeatedly sparking new fires…new firebrands.

This is our dream for light coming to the “Fishing People.”

As I've so often said, missions is about what we support across the ocean and what we do across the street. While I have a burden in my present setting to point out how we've been neglecting the second half of that statement, we can never forget the first half.

While you continue to express the love of Christ "across the street," pray for my friends who are expressing the love of Christ "across the ocean." You don't need their names: the Lord will know!