Who is the Missionary?

I want you to imagine for a second the person you know who is the least likely to wake up on a Sunday morning, get dressed, eat breakfast, get their family in the car and drive to a church gathering.

For many of us this is pretty normal behavior, it is what we do, because we are followers of Jesus, and this is a part of our rhythm of following him. But for many the likelihood of this happening is becoming increasingly unlikely. In the city I am in less than 5% attend any sort of ‘religious service’ on a Sunday, and the largest official religious category based on the most recent statistical data is ‘No Religious Affiliation’ aka ‘none’.

And when I check those stats against my personal experience, my neighbors, my friends who don’t know Jesus, they just aren’t even considering coming to a church gathering. It doesn’t even cross their mind as an option. Yet, despite what our ‘good theology’ tells attending a church gathering and hearing the gospel proclaimed from a stage has been one of the primary ways that the church has grown. But the future has come into the present and the landscape has shifted dramatically.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 10:14-15, ‘How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’

Paul makes a massive assumption in these verses - that the Gospel will be brought to those who need to hear it. Jesus says similar things time and time again towards the end of his ministry where he ‘sends the church’ to make disciples. From this we can gather, that like Jesus who came from heaven to earth to reveal the heart of God to us, we have been sent, as Jesus’ missionaries to do the same.

Yet, often we are asking the non-Christians to be the missionaries. They need to come to us to hear the Gospel, they need to overcome their hurdles, and their hangups, their fears, their inhibitions, they need to learn the particular Christian culture and language in order to hear about Jesus.

But aren’t we the missionaries? Aren’t we the sent people? Aren’t we the ones who have been called, empowered, equipped, by Jesus to go? What it would it look like for the church to go?What would it look like for the church to embrace it’s ‘sentness’. I think it would look like Jesus.