Unemployed Missionaries?

 

One day a few years back, when strolling through the historic Boston Commons with my new wife, we came upon a dressed-up college-age dude with a flattop and glasses carrying a book awkwardly.  He walked right up to us, beginning an uninvited conversation, and before long he let us know that he was a Missionary to Boston.  He was walking around downtown Boston and talking to people about his faith in order to grow the Mormon Church.

 

This was one of the only times I’ve met someone that called themselves a missionary yet didn’t live outside North America.  In fact, he lived and worked where I did.  And when I explained to him who I was, I called myself something like a “theological student preparing for the professional ministry” which seemed to sound more important than “missionary.”  That guy’s self-given title has bugged me to this day—because his radical life and mission was so clear and to the point, while mine was so ambiguous and ineffective.  This is made worse by the fact that he is serving an organization I believe leads people astray from the power of Jesus Christ, yet he is still motivated enough to be a missionary to the United States.

 

I am beginning to think that God has called me to be a missionary.  Maybe he’s called you to be the same… a missionary to the USA.

 

Why Be a Missionary to the USA?

 

Because the younger a person is in America, the more unreached they are.  Decade by decade in the US, our new generations become unreached people groups.  Take a look at the five living generations—The G.I. Generation, The Silent Generation, The Boomers, The Xers, & The Millennials—and you’ll find that the younger a person is the more unchurched they are.  This means two things: 1) It is not going to get better over time… it will get worse, and 2) We need missionaries to reach the unreached people group generations—many of which play in our neighborhoods in the afternoon.

 

Because the unreached number in our nation would be the fourth largest unreached people group nation on the planet after China, India, Brazil, and the former Soviet Union.  It wouldn’t take long to convince you that these other four in the top five need to be reached—but I bet some readers are already oddly uneasy or threatened about thinking of the United States as a mission field.  [See Tom Clegg’s second chapter in Lost In America. (Loveland, CO: Group, 2001) specifically page 25; statistic from Kent Hunter, Move Your Church to Action (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000) 12.]

 

Because we are the largest English speaking mission field on the planet.  If your primary language is English then there are more people going to hell in the United States that speak your language than anywhere else.  Understood?  (This may also apply to those that speak Spanish, especially if they live in Los Angeles or the like, which is said to be the second largest city population of Spanish-speaking people on the globe, behind Mexico City alone.)

 

Because we may be one of the only places on earth where Christianity is not growing.  It is amazing to see the church growing in places where the message of Christ receives opposition and even persecution.  These places still have a long way to go…and we need to provide more missionaries, support and prayer for them—this is not an argument against that vital “Macedonian” call (Acts 16:6-10).  But they are places where the trend is at least in the right direction.  Here, the trend is toward the decline of Christianity and the Church.  This is not just true in terms of attendance (at most, 40 percent say they go to church, and even that figure dropped about 9 percent in 9 years in the 1990s.)  The decline is far truer and dangerous in terms of influence.  Even the churches we do have today are having less impact on the community, with fewer influential points in social government & politics, and even more impotence in terms of true life-change in individuals.

 

Because losing our influence on the American Experiment will be too costly.  America has been a place like no other in history, and it continues to be so.  The ideal of democracy, although spreading across the globe—sometimes hand-in-hand with missionaries—still finds it source and prime example in our nation.  The experiment presented in our constitution and planned by our forefathers was a pivotal point in history.  What will the historical cost be for the Church if we continue to and eventually totally lose our influence in such a pace-setting place like the USA?  The best kind of patriot knows that cost will be too high.

 

Because the American Superpower will likely set the stage for globalization of economy, culture & communication in this new century.  Who else will do this?  Asia?  The European Union?  Watch a little of the BBC and you’ll realize that they even think we set the agenda and make it happen.  The power and influence of the US is staggering.  Our money, military, culture, books, news, television, music, films, style, politics & government have not just been influencers on nations around the globe—they have been models to be copied, so much that other nations fear our influence is stealing national identity away from their children.  What a shame it would be if we someday see the winning of the cold war as the point when Christianity began to be marginalized worldwide, and that an irreligious democratic-capitalistic ideal overtook the world’s consciousness instead of the cross of Christ.  What a cold war of the soul would be ushered in by that tragic misstep.

 

Because you probably can start tomorrow!  You likely would not have to move.  I think you can and should keep your job.  You will not have to raise money, and might even have to start giving more of your own away.  This is not a trite and simplistic idea—this is the essence of what we are about.  You can be a missionary!

 

What is even scarier than being called to be a missionary is the thought that maybe we all already are.  Maybe that’s what we’ve been supposed to be doing.  Most of us have had the job description for years, hear it preached about on Sunday and some of us even read it daily.  Maybe we’ve got the title but just aren’t doing the job.  We’re unemployed missionaries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

©2004 David Drury

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