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disciplesyouth.com : YOUth news : Missionary
So
you think you wanna be a missionary?
You're
sending me where? I knew that Croatia was a republic in what was then called Yugoslavia, and that a man named Tito ruled the country. I also remembered the 1984 Olympic Games were held in a mountainous winter wonderland named Sarajevo, Bosnia. That was the extent of my Yugoslavian knowledge. Why, then, would God send me to a place that was relatively unknown to me? Couldn't the Lord have found someone more qualified? More experienced? More skilled? Older? Wiser? Stronger? What was God hinking sending me? Apparently, there is simply too much work to be done on this Earth for God to wait around for the "right" person or the "perfect" candidate. Send
me? Craig Barnes wrote in When God Interrupts, "The most important thing we do in responding to the call of God is to show up. We don't have to be certain. We don't have to be the best. We don't even have to want to be there. All that would matter if we were responsible for making changes. But we aren't. That's the life we had to abandon when we started following God's call. Now we are just responsible to show up with a vision of what God is doing in the world."
Almost five years ago now I "showed up" in the former Yugoslavia, responding to the call of God. Let me assure you that I am not an extraordinary person, even though most people assumed I was after hearing that I had taken off into a war zone at the ripe old age of 23, not knowing the language or people in that region. I didn't enter the mission field because I felt I was "strong enough" to handle it. Instead, I took a leap of faith--a leap of faith any follower of Jesus Christ is prepared to take. But
I don't know how constant reflection, openness and flexibility. But discerning God's leading is not always easy. If we can allow ourselves to spiral into a process of spiritual discernment, we grant ourselves time to be alone, in solitude, free to do "nothing" other than to be intimately honest with God. Solitude can be a seedbed of creativity, providing a space in which to contemplate and express our longings, fears and joys. The capacity to be alone can be an invaluable resource, an opportunity to cultivate the arts of attentiveness and prayerful reflection that are a part of any search for insight and meaning. Discernment may involve meditation, prayer, reading, writing, walking, painting, Bible study or a combination of these exercises. Spiritual discernment is an experiential and inductive process that leads us into being; a wisdom-seeking to read the movements of our innermost essence as well as our external environment. Spiritual discernment demands constant reflection, openness and flexibility. It is crucial to remind ourselves that each individual will initiate and experience a process of discernment differently, in her or his own time, at her or his own pace.
You want me to
wait? In short, we must be willing to wait. Often it is in the waiting we come to clarity or see light at the end of the dark tunnel or find the hope we had lost. While we wait we become vulnerable enough, anxious enough, to be more receptive to God's faithfulness and prompting. After all, "those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength," said the prophet Isaiah. I learned a lot about waiting in the former Yugoslavia. In essence, I learned how to wait--a skill that is not taught very well in North America where productivity, achievement and "success" are not only encouraged but expected. After moving from Croatia to Bosnia to continue my mission work in war-ravaged Sarajevo, it became crystal clear to me that I had not been called to the former Yugoslavia in order to be a success by the world's standards. I was not there to rack up a list of accomplishments, nor to improve my resume. I wasn't even there to do most of the things I thought I would do as a missionary. The Lord sent me to Bosnia to be a person of faith. Called
to be faithful
"Faithful to what?" you may be asking. Faithful to the promise that no matter what, God is there, present, always has been there, and will continue to be there. God is present in places and people we may not like; God is even in war-zones. God is in the midst of all the pain and violence and suffering. And Christ intimately understands the suffering of our world. This is the hope of the gospel, the good news, to which we are called to be resurrection people: missionaries of faith in places of desolation, death and despair. Last spring as I was preparing to leave the former Yugoslavia, the events in Littleton, Colorado, took place. It was in utter disbelief that I watched the BBC report on the shootings at Columbine High School. It seemed tragically ironic to me that I sat in Sarajevo--a city recently under siege for many years during the bloody Bosnian war--and watched young Americans kill one another in a suburban town in beautiful Colorado. It was a loud and piercing wake-up call to me. Just as I was leaving a place that I had come to love so deeply, a wounded place of destruction and violence in desperate need of healing, God reminded me that there is more than enough work to do at home. Or
do mission here
It has been said that the United States of America is the next great mission field of the new millennium. There are strong arguments leading us to believe that this could be the case. Does a place on Earth exist that is not a great mission field? How are we defining the "mission field"? Sometimes our own hearts are the most challenging mission fields of all! Missiologists, historians, theologians and anthropologists are no longer viewing mission work in the traditional sense: the church commissioning its people to go into the world and win converts. Rather, we are discovering it is most effective to use our interests or field-of-work as a starting point to help determine our mission assignment. Missionaries today are students, mothers, grandfathers, teachers, human rights activists, truck drivers, farmers, mediators, nurses, construction workers and peace workers. Missionaries are retired persons, youth, middle-aged, married couples, families, and single women and men. To be in mission today is to enter into a process of cultural assimilation, not assuming that we are the omniscient "experts." From my perspective, an imperialistic, colonialist approach to mission work is not only unacceptable, it is not Christ-like. The mission field must be approached with a great deal of sensitivity, recalling that the field we tread is sacred ground. God has been to even the farthest, most remote and alien corners of the world long before we were. Our task, again, is to be faithful first to our Lord Jesus Christ, and then to the people with whom we are called to walk, work and accompany. Modern-day mission work should be a partnership between us, the church that commissions us, the people to whom we are sent, and our God who guides our hearts and actions. Missionary
as learner Gopp
currently lives in Washington, D.C. More YOUth News articles: Congregational
resources in wake of terrorism |
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