A Defective Missionary Comes Clean

So here I am, sitting in a non-air-conditioned, tile-floored room in the southernmost corner of tropical, non-USA North America, where I have no electricity today except for the battery-powered inverter whose name I bless every time the power goes out. Calling myself a missionary, learning how to minister to other people. But... I'm going to make a confession.

I don't like evangelism.

There must be something wrong with me. I mean, I clearly felt a call to missions. Isn't evangelizing what missionaries do??? But the thought of standing on street corners, preaching to convince people to change their ways, persuading crowds that there's a loving God who desires relationship with them... honestly does not inspire me. One on one I could share my faith til I'm blue in the face, based on my relationship with that person. But I just don't get excited about "the lost." I am not impassioned to reach this enigmatic "lost."

Aren't we all called to evangelize? Great Commission and all that?

This is something I thought about before I signed up to work with an evangelistic missions organization here in the Dominican Republic. A lot. And don't get me wrong, I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time for my journey, and I have a TON of respect for the ministry here at La Casa Grande. For this season, I'm called to serve them and learn from them. And that's good. 

Based on some reading I've done (the Perspectives course, John Piper's Let the Nations Be Glad!) and some helpful conversations with my friend Stacey, here's the conclusion I've come to about my mission-- as well as missions and evangelism as a whole.

Evangelism is a gift, and it's a phase of missions as a whole. But we are NOT universally CALLED to evangelize.

The Great Commission says "Go and preach" and "Go and make disciples," depending on which passage you read. Nowhere does it actually say "Go and evangelize."

A "mission," any mission (a spy mission, a shopping mission, a military mission) has a specific goal. For us, as Christians? It's to make disciples. Evangelism isn't the goal. It's a tool and a step along the way.

*Insert sigh of relief here.* I don't have to want to evangelize. I don't have to weep over the multitudes of lost souls in the world--although I may still have compassion for them. Very rarely is it even possible to deeply love faceless strangers whose stories we don't know. 

God's purpose in missions, come to find out, is his own glory. He works in us to demonstrate his glory in our lives-- thus, he is best pleased by us when our joy in serving him as a disciple, our joy in worshipping him, also points to his glory. When people who turn to follow him increase the amount of worship he receives from his creation. My ministry, my mission, is to help others learn to love God. To enter into worship with him. And that is an idea that truly thrills me to my core.

So sharing our faith, encouraging others to worship with us... isn't necessarily motivated by our love for people. It's motivated first by our love for God.

Missions exists because worship doesn't. 

Not because heaven's not full enough yet. Not because people are going to hell.

It's because God covets glory from his creation. 

And that's why I'm sitting here, hoping for a breeze. That's why I have to wipe sweat off my guitar in some of the windowless box churches we visit, why I keep going to evangelistic outreaches. 

That's how a defective missionary revives a mission: His is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever.