Choosing a Mission Field: Strategic Places and Strategic Living
Phil | September 25, 2008 5:00 am
Thoughts on strategy from a recent Way of Life Village gathering…
When we started out on this mission we told people why East Hollywood is a strategic place for us to share and demonstrate the message of Jesus Christ. People are closed to religion but open to spirituality. Since so many people in E-Ho have relationships in other areas of the city and globe, as E-Ho residents discover the joys of surrendering to Christ they have the potential to share this new life with people in areas we could never touch ourselves. For this reason, I still believe this place is “strategic.” (Only God knows what really will happen, though.)
But those of us in Way of Life Village also like to say that any place can become strategic as long as Christ’s followers are willing to arrange their lifestyles accordingly.
Does God call certain people to live and minister in certain cities and countries at certain times in history because “the fields are white for the harvest?”
If so, does that mean God has given up on the other places that aren’t “hot spots” right now in human opinion?
Churches in the U.S. get excited about sending missionaries and church planters to foreign countries and our nations “inner city” neighborhoods. Yet many of these same churches lack zeal for missions done in their own communities where they could have the most influence.
God wants people to experience salvation in the United States and Asia. Outside the “10/40 Window” and inside it. In the bus stop of dusty Barstow (a small town in the California desert) and the urban ghettos of Los Angeles.
Paid missionaries and their sending churches and agencies will continue to ask themselves, “Is this a strategic place for us to be right now?” I support that thinking.
But I wish all Christians everywhere would ask themselves, “How are we living strategically in the place we’re in?”
The Great Commission as I understand it is not a divine order to send a few Christian missionaries away to a few “strategic places.” As I intrepret these words of Jesus, it is a call to live strategically and intentionally for the gospel, making disciples of all ethnic peoples as we go. Some of us will end up in other places of the world as we respond to this call. Others of us will stay right where we are. But for all of us, joining Jesus in mission will become a way of life.
One Response to “Choosing a Mission Field: Strategic Places and Strategic Living”
Amen brother. What is really cool is that once we embrace that call to live out the gospel with all that we are, then the possibilities to live out the great commission are as many as their are places on this earth. The other interesting thing is that although God can, has, and does give people specific calls to go to specific places, he has already given us the call to love God and love our neighbors and all that is revealed to us in our pursuit of Christ is applicable now and anywhere and everywhere.
Finally, this gives us a lot of freedom to move about this earth in strategic and intentional obedience to God. I also think of Paul and the plans and desires he had to go to certain places and yet God used him continually even while Paul’s plans were regularly thwarted by weather and/or incarceration. I think a life focused on faithfulness to God will always lead us in very strategic places where God can manifest HIS glory.