Picture this: You are sitting knees to knees with someone you love and trust, looking each other in the eyes. The light is soft, and they are holding your face in their hands. You feel warm. This person has experienced the worst and best of you. Their knowledge of you is deep and intimate; their judgment of you is fair and true.
A call to include Global South TCK voices...
As a thriving university student working his way through one of the top undergraduate business programs in America, cross-cultural missions was nowhere on my radar.
"Don’t even think about going on the mission field until you love the people you seek to reach,” a missions speaker declared. You’ve likely heard similar appeals to missionary work based on a love for the lost.
Missionaries are called to love. No one disputes that—at least in theory.
Lord Jesus, we have it on good authority that you love all peoples and have planned to include all peoples in your kingdom of light.
Is our misinterpretation of the Great Commandment sabotaging how we live out the Great Commission?
A few years ago, I was invited to speak about mission to a gathering of underground church leaders on Zoom. I started by describing our organization’s purpose, which begins with, “With love and respect...”
If I speak in the tongues of unreached people groups, but do not have love, I’m just making noise.
If I have the gift of evangelism and know the best ministry strategies, even if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, the fruit of my efforts will wither.
Two statistics:
1) 1,500—the number of missionaries to the Muslim world (That was in the late 1970s!)
2) 2%—the percentage of all missionaries sent out, that those 1,500 people represented.
Statistics motivated Dr. Jay Smith to give his life to arguing for Christ in hostile environments among Muslims. That is what first motivated me to go to the Muslim world too.
It was a classic scene from one of countless missions conferences, retreats, and Sunday sermons. The well- meaning speaker of the day said, “There is a lost and dying world out there. God is sending you to make sure that they do not burn in hell forever.”
Great forces such as love have an ability to amp up our motivations for action.
This statement calls the global church to recover the vibrant, Spirit-empowered character that animated the earliest communities of Jesus’ followers.
It is said that Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators, would wake up each day and ask, “Why am I doing what I am doing the way I am doing it?”
Last spring I had the opportunity to be a videographer on a mission trip to Cuba. Stepping onto the shores of Havana in early April, I was aware that I was stepping onto more than an island known for its music and friendly people.
When the love of God captures our heart, we experience all the colors of the spectrum. Color this picture while meditating on God's love for you.
The Prodigal returns through Uzbek eyes. May you experience God's extravagant and scandalous love afresh as you meditate on this painting.