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To Know How To Sow

I’ve been around a lot of people who are into missions.  They talk about people groups, missiology, ethnography, and mobilizing  After listening to them talk about reaching the unreached, I sometimes come away wondering if it can be done.  All of the social science and methodology which make up modern missions objectify the ones we’re trying to reach and somehow almost puts them out of reach.  Missions has become a sadly ironic academic persuit in many cases. 

I believe there is a necessary distinction to be made between missions and mission.  To follow Christ is to be on mission and vice versa.  In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus told us to make disciples.  Observe that he gave no missiology.  His command was as large as the world and yet for some reason he seemed to believe that simple proclamation, baptism, and teaching would be enough to complete the task.

Not only does Jesus fail to give us a strategy, he depicts his method of proclamation as being haphazard.  Consider the “Parable of the Sower” in Matthew 13.  The sower flings his seed on any and every type of soil.  Most of his seeds fail to produce.  However, his approach is vindicated at the end of the story since the good soil produces 30, 60, or 100 times what was sown.

Could it be that Jesus is saying that it matters little how we sow or where we sow but rather that we sow?  What would happen if every believer imitated his Lord’s indiscriminate broad-casting of the gospel of the kingdom right now, right where he lives with faith that seed, soil, and Spirit will bring the result?  Would there be a result?  What sort of result might it be?  Would it be inferior to a more strategic approach?  What if sowing like this became the normal Christian experience?  Would the world ultimately be reached?

Perhaps missions has a place.  I’m just concerned that missions supplants mission.  It bothers me that many of my friends who are involved in missions do little if anything to actually make disciples where they live.  If we fail to make disciples here who assume that following Christ means to be on mission for him, then who will we send over there?  On the other hand, if we simply get on mission in our neighborhoods, offices, and schools, and make disciples who are like us, we will find that the gospel will spread from person to person and cover the globe.

So what about all the difficulties of crossing cultural barriers?  I believe that Jesus covered that bit with his promise to be with us until the end of the age.

Owl Pellets and Trampolines

I have kids.  God has blessed me with two sets.  Our eldest turned 18 last year and our youngest is 5.  I’m going to be parenting for a relatively long time.  While my wife and I don’t regret having our younger set of kids, we sometimes wonder what life would be like if we were just two years away from an empty nest as opposed to 13 years away.  There are days when we wonder if parenting isn’t better suited to younger people.  I think today might have been one of those days for my wife.  Perhaps because she’s trying to homeschool and support her minister husband and keep an immaculate house- all of which she does exceptionally.

Today was not one of those days for me.  When I came home for lunch, my 8-year-old boy pulled me into his room to look at a partially digested bird skull which he sifted out of an owl pellet.  We talked about how we’d seen and heard owls around our house and wondered if we should go on a search for the biological gems under the trees in the backyard.  He decided that he would paint me a picture of an owl to hang in my office.

After lunch, my 5-year-old daughter drug me out to jump on the trampoline with her.  I was reluctant.  I had a lot of work waiting on me at the office and, frankly, jumping on the trampoline has lost a bit of it’s mystique for me over the years.  Her persistence, as it most often does, won out over my laziness and I went.  I’m glad I did.  We bounced in an alternating rythm like two pistons in an engine.  Every time I passed her face, the sheer look of glee, washed over me in waves of sublime satisfaction.  This was eternity and it would pass all took quickly.  That’s why I write this- to hold onto that holy eternal moment.  I only hope that in the timelessness of my God we will be granted the right to revist times like this whenever we wish.  Just in case we can’t, I pray for the grace while passing through this brief existence to seize his blessings to be found in owl pellets and on trampolines.

An imbalanced approach

I’ve always tended toward being obsessive-hardly a complimentary adjective. Perhaps our negative view of obsessiveness comes not from the quality in and of itself but because it is too narrowly focussed.  When this happens, the obsessed person becomes imbalanced, as resources flow to one side of his personality. Well-meaning counselors might suggest that a person spread out his attention to find balance.  But, what if obsession found an all-encompassing object.

For years I’ve heard that a balanced person puts God first, family second, work third.  To put numbers to it, one might say we should give 50% of our resources to God, 30% to family, 20% to work.  Of couse this formula would never work.  A “balanced” approach never does.  God deserves no less than 100% and in fact by giving him his due, somehow we’re able to give 100% to everything else.  Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, “The one who would lose his life will find it.”