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What is a missionary? One description I found on Wikipedia defines a missionary as, “a member of a religious group sent into an area to promote their faith or perform ministries of service”.
Allow me to recalibrate my question: Who is a missionary?
The Apostle Paul was a missionary. In the back of my Bible are maps that trace three missionary journeys he took. Paul was imprisoned, beaten innumerable times, whipped, stoned, beaten with rods, shipwrecked, and faced many other hardships. With Paul’s exploits I find it hard to identify.
I recall hearing of missionaries when I was a child and thinking of a land far away inhabited by people of a different tongue and living in poverty and ignorance. Like you might see in commercials where a white, salt-and-pepper bearded man approximately 60 years of age, walks slowly toward a camera among destitute black children surrounded by an obscene number of flies. He carefully gesticulates to accentuate the surrounding poverty while asking you for donations. If you’re like me, this takes place while resting comfortably on a couch while digging greasy fingers into a waning bowl of butter-slathered popcorn and binge watching several episodes of whatever-the-heck. But I digress.
We have missionaries connected with our church whom we support financially and through prayer. They, like my missionaries of childhood, are, for the most part, in a land far away and among a people speaking a different language. It is possible for any among us to become a missionary, in this sense, and indeed some have sacrificed much in doing so.
However, I don’t see myself leaving everything behind and moving out of the country. For several reasons this is currently not realistic. Indeed, if many were to do so those left behind would find it difficult to financially support those working abroad.
Yet, here we are faced with the Great Commission commanding us to go out into the world and make disciples of Jesus among all people. What to do? How are we to fulfill our mandate? Is it possible that each one of us has been given a mission to a unique people in our sphere of influence? Has God made us to be missionaries to those at our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, even in our own home? Is there any place or any time or any person to which the Great Commission does not apply?
At Elim, just above the double doors at the front entrance is a sign that reads, “You are now entering the mission field”. Is it possible that this sign is correct and each of us is a missionary to those in our path, in our influence, in our lives?
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