We talk a lot @ CV about how ALL of our people are missionaries... NOT just the ones in foreign countries who we get slideshows from once every three years.  YOU are a missionary to your spheres of relationship.  Full stop.  The question is only whether you are effective or crap!

This is something that has been difficult for many to get their heads around.  I can see it in the faces.  You see, communities of grace are just SO wonderfully nourishing and encouraging and life is SO difficult and the temptation to think "yeah yeah yeah, we'll get to that sometime in the future... right now I'm really enjoying just soaking and healing" is very real.  I understand.  That's natural.  But as we say so often, our aspiration is to be a M.A.S.H. unit, not a hospital.  We don't want to be totally healed up, that is unrealistic this side of glory.  We just want to be well enough to walk in a straight line and "fire a gun!"  The need is so compelling that we cannot afford to dither.  We must engage.

One of the reasons why this commitment to being a "community of missionaries" is so crucial and one on which we cannot compromise is that the rules of our culture around faith and spiritual quest are changing... big time!  Read this great blog from a guy named Tim Stevens who explains the changes very succinctly (although he is writing from a North American context).  The fact is, his ratio of the shrinking 40% and the growing 60% is more like 20% and 80% in England.  Our user-friendly "come to us" approach to mission will be effective with a disappearing demographic.  WHAT ABOUT THE 80%???  Who will reach them?  One cursory read of Luke 15 should answer that question for us forever.  

We must follow Jesus out into the lives of our friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours etc...  OUT.  I was once in a gathering where a pastor told the whole church to go the windows and look out.  "That is your congregation," he said.  "You are the leadership team."  Do you get it?  We must go OUT to connect, journey alongside and pray for God to give us wisdom to "pastor" the people who make up our lives.  You are their "pastor."  You are a missionary.  Will you be effective?  Lord help us be what we need to be to play the role for which You have created us.  Make us the type of missionaries we each are meant to be.  And may our lives bear fruit that glorifies Jesus in this city and nation.  Amen.