Sorry about Thursday’s bodiless post!  Here is what I intended to post…

This is the seventh and final post of a mini-series on my emotional journey of leaving church-as-I-knew-it to become a missionary-as-a-way-of-life in Los Angeles.  To read previous posts, click below:

Something’s Crossed Over In Me - Intro. 

Part 1A – Mildly Panicked: Missing my old trees. 

Part 1B – Mildly Panicked: Naming my old trees.

Part 2A – Ravenous: Not on bread alone.

Part 2B – Ravenous: Feeding this hunger.

Part 3 – Wildly Free to be church at will.  

CONCLUSION

This ‘fast’ not coming to an end?

In Part 2 of this series I likened our missionary experience to fasting. Only instead of fasting from regular foods my team and I have been abstaining from several of our favorite and not-so-favorite ways of doing church for a year and a half. In other posts I’ve shared why this approach blesses the ones we’re reaching, but in this series I’ve shared how it is affecting me personally. This “fast” from Christian culture has messed with me. My emotions have run the gamut. 

There is a difference between this fast and a true fast, though. In a real fast you eventually return to the things you’ve been abstaining from. You start consuming your old menu again, ideally with a deeper appreciation for God’s provision. But in this case I’m not sure that I’ll be going back to some, perhaps all, of the things I’ve been going without. This realization also messes with me. I don’t exactly relish the thought of perpetually venturing into the unknown and unfamiliar, but that’s a given part of discipleship to Jesus. And I do rejoice in the lessons I’m learning along the way and the part God is allowing us to play in his mission. Something’s crossed over in me, and I can’t go back.

A word of thanks to those on whose shoulders we stand

I still benefit from my interactions with churches who are embracing the Christian culture so prevalent in North America. We visit each other’s churches, support each other and learn from each other. None of us owns the corner of the market on joining God in mission. We need each other. 

I’m thankful to the churches I came from. It is because of their love for the Lord that they have done and are still doing many wonderful things in Jesus’ name to bless the world. It is because of their love for Ed, Katie, Meredith and me that they taught us the joys of surrendering to King Jesus. And it is because of their love for others that they sent our two families away from their Christian culture to reach “those who would never come to us”.

It gives me great joy to know they aren’t the only churches who have done this. Thankfully, more and more churches are sending out some of their own number to start church planting movements. And they do this knowing ahead of time that the new churches they help to start will look very different from them. Yet they rejoice because these new groups of believers are loving and obeying Jesus. My suspicion and prayer is that something also is ‘crossing over’ in churches in North America.   

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