THE MISSION FIELD OUTSIDE YOUR FRONT DOOR

Inward focused churches do have an outward focus-missions. Traditionally this is thinking in terms of world or overseas missions. Support is built into these churches' budgets for places like Haiti and India. In some sense this is a proper value because it helps remind such churches that there is more to ministry than maintaining the building,being sure there are regular worship times, and pastoral visits to their own sick and needy.

Unfortunately these churches may have little relationship and little impact on the immediate neighborhood around them. They put up a sign "come one, come all" but often act in ways that would make such a visit a temporary one.

These churches also tend to think of their nation (even if they are fearful of their own immediate neighborhood) as a Christian nation. At best they see their society as only a few steps off God's mark. Now only a good piece of political activism or a dose of religion in the schools will set that right and they can go about living comfortable lives until our Lord returns.

What they fail to realize is that our own country is not essentially a political version of the Kingdom of God. It is a mission field--where Christianity is a counter-cultural entity. Only about 14-15% of Americans in 2009 could be found in a Christian church on a Sunday morning. People go about their business of living with little reference to a biblical faith. Organized Christianity is often viewed with suspicion--as if Christianity would undermine the larger pluralistic and relativistic values of the prevailing culture.

Those who recognize this tend to focus on something they perceive has been lost, circling their emotional wagons and digging in lest any more be lost to an immoral surrounding society.

What such a reality provokes (and it is reality for most communities)in outward-focused and missional churches is the admission that the mission field begins at the front door. On a mission field in a foreign land, the missionaries put their best efforts of changing hearts of non-Christians one-by-one by reconciling them to God through Jesus Christ. They engage in practical ministry towards the physical needs of their target community through things like medical care, quality eduction, irrigation projects and clean drinking water. These are done to bear witness to the target community that the God they represent is concerned about the needs of the whole person and to develop a level of trust for the deeper need of helping people find Jesus Christ.

The mission field in America now starts at the front door--and outward focused churches take their cue from their mentors in cross-cultural missions.