GOD IS A MISSIONARY GOD - PART 2

Where is the mission field for a local church?

In the previous post we explained why it dare not be thought of as basically within the boundaries of the church sanctuary within the further constraints of a Sunday morning worship service (or a Friday evening evangelistic one, for that matter.)

Practically speaking, you only have to look away from the chancel to one of the outside windows and you will lock eyes on a church's primary mission field. It is the community that you enter when you walk out the front door of the church. It is the immediate neighborhood that you drive through "on your way to church."

For too long the world missions referred to something done overseas among people often very different from ourselves. And according to the Great Commission, that is one of the mission fields that every local congregation has a responsibility for. But Jesus also said, "First y0u will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea ...." Our primary mission field is always right outside our front door. No amount of concern for the lost in Bangladesh and Haiti and regions beyond give us an excuse for ignoring the spiritual darkness of our immediate neighbors.

Of course, the former is easier. We can send missionaries but we don't need to be missionaries ourselves. We can invest monies to pay the bills, but we don't need to invest ourselves in transforming lives. The latter is far costlier to us in reality. It generally requires us to give up something we value (like our time) in order to reach the people who we live with day in and day out. It requires us to look at the way we do church and honestly ask the question, "why doesn't our neighbor find this important?" People in faraway places are not like us, and that causes no real emotional upheaval. But people living close to us who are not like us require us to ask, what do we need to change in order for them to finally see Jesus in us?

The mission field next door is more costly in terms of our comfort. Yet it is our primary mission field.