Mission

Just thought I'd share an exert of a book that I have been reading. I really liked these thoughts about missions:

"Missions is less about the transportation of God from one place to another, and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realise it. You see God where others don't and you point Him out.

Perhaps we ought to replace the word missionary with tour guide, because we cannot show people something we haven't seen.

Have you ever heard missionaries say that they were going to "take Jesus" to a certain place? What they meant, I assume, was that they had Jesus and they were going to take Him to China or India or Chicago, where people apparently didn't have Him?

I would ask them if if people in China, and India, and Chicago, are eating and laughing and enjoying things and generally being held together (by God)? Because if they are, then Jesus, in a way that is difficult to fully articulate, is already present there.

So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people that don't have Him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life giving God who is already present in their midst.

It is searching for the things they have already affirmed as real and beautiful and true and then telling them who you believe is the source of all that. " I am here to tell you where I think it comes from...."

And if you do see yourself carrying God to places, it can be exhausting.

God is really heavy.

Some people believe that God is actually absent from a place until they get there. The problem with this idea is that if God is not there before you get there, then there is no "there" in the first place.

Tour guides are people who see depth and texture and connection where others don't. That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything."