Deep Mission Teaching

I was a little suspicious when I heard that another main speaker at our consultation was coming from a neighboring African country that’s a little infamous for it rich, flamboyant, and corrupt pastors.  But in his two days of presenting on methods for successful mission in his country, I was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t offer any slick, prefabricated, or kitchy programs to solve everyone’s problems.  Instead he took the group deeper in the Bible, hammering home the foundations of God’s mission and sharing the Gospel.  He related it all back to how from the beginning God has been “looking for lost souls” and so we have to remember that the ministry we’re trying to get better at is God’s work and God’s Good News, which goes forth with God’s power for God’s glory.  While tracing the example of Paul throughout, he reminded the leaders that we are called and set apart, not by ourselves for our work, but by Jesus for his work.  He hit home that we don’t set ourselves apart by our greatness at what we do, but we can be used for great things because of grace.  Everything about the gospel is a grace, but too often Christian workers forget it and make it about deserving something, accomplishment, and just another business.  This was a powerful teaching, appropriate for the setting, and reminded me of a surprise I had during our mission orientation two years ago.  A highly lauded professor was brought in from another continent to teach us about mission and the keys to being a missionary.  Instead of sharing the most cutting edge techniques available in mission literature, he spent several days sharing a profound study of parts of the early church in Acts, and explaining how we need to reflect on these passages for our current cross-cultural sharing as the church.  This is not to say that there isn’t any room to talk about new techniques and specific contexts, but it is a good reminder to me that often these secondary things can distract us too much from the deep well of teaching we have in the Word of God for carrying out God’s purposes in our lives.

-- El Padre