What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. - Eleanor Powell
“God’s mission is smaller than you think. Look around you, in the neighbourhood he placed you in. Your neighbourhood, God’s mission is much bigger than you think.” These were the wise words of Jim Tebbe in the opening session at Urbana ‘09. It wasn’t obvious to me what he meant by this at first, until we went into depth the gospel of John.
THE WORD BECAME FLESH (John 1:14) - God became one of us. He came into our “neighbourhood”, both figuratively and literally. Incarnation is the means to reach out to us. In many cultures, to honour somone you go to where they are to bridge the gap between yourself and them.
Oscar Muriu’s words challenged me on the second day of Urbana:
“God’s way was quiet, and subtle, and subversive and therefore God’s way won and changed humanity. God’s way was the way of incarnation. We need to examine and question the way we’re doing mission today, and the way we’ve done it for the last hundred years. Our desire for instant results, our belief, that we would never admit, that more money and power are the real answer to today’s need; if only we had more money and more technology and more power we would get the job done. And it is exactly at this point that we go wrong in our attempt to win and change the world. You see, so often we’re in too much of a hurry and we believe that more handouts and building world-class institutions- create wealth is the answer to missions. And so we jet into the hard places of this world- expecially among the poor and the powerless. We get into our air conditioned limousines and short-term mission buses. We drive into the inner city communities, into the slums and favelas of the world while the poor stand by the roadside and they wave us “bye”. We get out, we address them, we paint a clinic or two. We take a few pictures, we make a few promises about building them schools and about sending them scholarships. And then we get back into our limos and we go off to debrief in some safari. Mission accomplished- quick, clinical, easy. But nothing changes through these helicopter missions. Being what Jesus called in Luke 22:25 “the benefactors of the world, who lorded over the poor” just doesn’t work. Jesus said You are not like this, you are to be servants. And so God did not send Jesus as a king, or as a benefactor. He did not use CNN or Independence Day [movie example from earlier]. He chose a different way. A slow, gracious, but difficult, dangerous way. He incarnated into our reality and he dwelled among us. When he had touched humanity for eternity, he turned to his disciples and said “as the Father sent me, so send I you.” On the first evening of Urbana, our bible expositor Ramez Atallah said “The incarnation is our model for ministry”. How is it so, and how does it model for us today? In the book of Philippians chapter 2, Paul gives us the answer when he says “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfishness ambition or vain conceit. But in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should not only look into your own interest, but also to the interest of others…your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appeareance as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Oscar Muriu inspired me to make some decisions pertaining to some of my life choices. I must learn to patiently invest (TIME, energy, emotion) in others more and use life as the mission field itself, boldly going forward with the knowledge that I will succeed because of the strength of God.
