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As a kid, I thought of a cross-cultural missionary as a church planter or community developer sent by a denominational agency to some remote country of Latin America, Asia or Africa. Frankly, that definition left most of us comfortably outside of any of the possible lines of responsibility.

As I grew older I realized that my childhood image was not all that Biblical. The Bible seems to be quite clear that we all have been selected (elected) for a mission, not just some of us. And this mission seems to be as wide and diverse as God’s good creation. Thus, a business person is as much called to be a missionary as a pastor or community developer.

But there is also another sense in which my childhood image has altered with the passage of time. No longer does one need to be sent as a church planter or community developer to rub shoulders with people from other culture. Whether our mission is business, or being a student, or even just being a tourist, most of us will frequently come into contact with people from other cultures — if not in other countries, then next door. So that the hog farmer from Iowa who hires immigrants from Central America may be as much called to cross-cultural missions as are my wife Jeannie and I.

As we move from the idea that only a select few of us are missionaries to the more Biblical understanding that God has called each of us to a mission there are questions we must ask:

  • How do we disciple each other to do cross-cultural missions “WITH” and not “TO” or “FOR” other people?
  • How do we harvest for all of our benefits the wealth of experience our denominational agencies have gained (most often through the school of hard knocks!), in doing mission in a way that empowers others rather than makes them dependent?

Yesterday I talked with people at Third CRC in Lynden, Washington, who are making mission “WITH” rather than “TO” or “FOR” part of the DNA of their church. Phrases like “grace flows to the lowest places” and ministry to the “least, last and lost” in the “hard places” weave naturally into their conversations. They attribute this to vision trips they have taken to Guatemala under the leadership of Joel Van Dyke, a CRWM missionary supported by their church.

Joel Van Dyke distinguishes vision trips from mission trips. The purpose of a mission trip is to do. The purpose of a vision trip is to see. A vision trip is an invitation for an outsider to come and see what God is doing through local, grassroots leaders who are serving their own people in hard places.

But it is not that vision trips are all seeing and no doing. It is that the doing takes places when the visitors go back home. The whole vision trip is a challenge to each participant to re-imagine and broaden their own personal understanding of life and mission.

My new friends at Third Lynden told me how they had begun to identify the hard places in their own community — many of which they had not even noticed before. They excitedly shared how they had begun to develop deep relationships with residents of a trailer park and how skateboarding was providing a bridge to at-risk youth.

And I wondered if I had seen part of the answer to my questions. 

Comments

When preaching or teaching about missions, I often ask people to tell me how many missionaries there are in their church.  Answers usually reflect the number of overseas and/or domestic missionaries, working for a mission organization, that are supported by their church.  I then ask them how many people are in their church.  I then continue by saying that, biblically, if the number of members isn't an exact correllation to the number of missionaries in their church, they have not properly understood the Great Commission.

This series has pierced deeply my unbiblical assumptions. Concerning your first question in this post, I think we need to be steered back to Jesus’ command: “Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Are we willing to shed our rights for the sake of another? Are we willing to level at the table to become learners like everybody else? We must keep our love for another warm as we love the Lord our God and obediently respond to Christ's commission from our backyard and beyond.  Our tendency to abstract the Great Commission from great commandment one and two is unbiblical and hinders our capacity to be missional WITH. 

There is such a rewarding feeling seeing people integrated in the development of heir own communities, working together with outsider help.  Make me think when the missioneries or the foreing organization leave,  the people here would be still stand up, developing their own lifes.  It always remind me when i was a teenager and i thought i could fix my parents house kitchen, i asked some money to my dad to fix the floor, that wasn't the best floor done, but i had so good feelings that i can be part of the solution and empowered me to fix later the roof and walls.  I still think that kitchen looks good because my work. 

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