I am speaking right now at a Bible college and the typical question comes to me after students hear and understand the implications of the Great Commission: “We can’t all go, right?”
I started thinking seriously about the implications if we all, today, just decided that we would obey they Great Command by leaving our Gospel saturated field in favor of a Gospel barren field by comparison barring any unmovable obstacles (ex: Married to a spouse who won’t, strapped with extreme debt, health, or other serious issues). I am talking about everybody from the recent college graduate to the youth pastor to the pastor to the retiree. So here is a list of possible outcomes I came up with:
1. The people of the church who couldn’t go would have to step up and fill in leadership positions evacuated by those who have left.
2. Those who have family members leaving may get more involved in financially supporting them. After all, money flows nowhere as generously as it does in a family.
3. Missions budgets would be way past strapped and alternative methods of funding would be invented. (ex. Through businesses, through employment on the foreign field, and a million ideas we haven’t NEEDED to come up with yet.)
4. Missionaries would tighten their budgets to include only the necessary expenses (I don’t think they’d be complaining, though).
5. The category of unreached and unengaged, numbering 2 million souls, would disappear from the missions chart.
6. The new believers and new congregations that would be started would begin to give thus supporting their under supported missionaries (think Paul and the church of Macedonia and Phillippi) and send support to the struggling churches back at the sending base (think Macedonia and Achaia to Jerusalem).
7. Christian schools would close down with a lack of qualified teachers or students to pay the tuition forcing Christian families to actually be the salt of the world again (this is my favorite one).
OK. I admit. I’m thinking a bit one-sided but…it’s worth the thought to get college students to stop using that ridiculous scenario as their excuse, don’t you think?
I’d love to hear your additions to this list!
Would love to hear your thoughts on how American Christians across the board should make a transition to a missionary lifestyle.
The almost 7,000,000,000 people have been on my heart recently, and I’ve been thinking about how Christ commanded us to preach to the whole world. If he commanded it, it must be possible.
This post confirms my thoughts.