Sent

Growing up and being educated in Southern Baptist culture until my mid-twenties, I experienced quite a few “Missions Sundays.” The flags of the nations would line the sanctuary. Foreign missionaries would come and speak about their work on the field, appealing to (pressuring?) younger people to surrender their lives to Jesus for foreign missions. Lottie Moon Pies were given out to children. (To understand that one, you will have to be old school Southern Baptist with the emphasis on “Southern.”) I graduated from a seminary whose founder and president had the goal of sending out one hundred foreign missionaries a year. “Wherever He Leads, I’ll Go” and “I Surrender All” were sung on repeat until people came and “surrendered to the call” of foreign missions.

Though it may not have always been intentional, it was implied that there were two tiers of Christians: those missionaries who work for the kingdom and those other Christians who supported kingdom work by supporting the missionaries. First-tier Christians were in vocational Christian ministry and, especially, foreign missions.

Being sent out by the church into cultures not your own has biblical warrant. In Acts 13, for example, the Holy Spirit directs the church to send out Barnabas and Saul for the work of planting churches (among other things). The dedication and sacrifice many foreign missionaries make are to be commended and emulated. Faithful foreign missions should always be encouraged and supported by local churches.

However, foreign missions are not the totality of the church’s mission. Foreign missions are only one aspect of the church’s mission. In fact, the church doesn’t “do” missions. The church “is” mission. The church in the totality of its life in the world is God’s mission in the world.

When Jesus told the disciples in John 20:21, “Peace be to you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” it was within a rich symbolic context. Jesus was resurrected early that same morning on the first day of the week. Up to this point, John has recorded seven signs Jesus performed, indicating that he is making a new creation. He takes the old creation to the grave, and the eighth sign, the sign of new creation, is the resurrection. At the time he gives this commission, Jesus breathes upon them and tells them to “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Images of Genesis 2:7 are clear. God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed his Spirit-Breath into him so that he became a living soul. The Spirit animates man for the purpose of taking dominion of the world. As the image of God, he must form and fill the unformed and unfilled world so that it faithfully images heaven. Jesus’ body is the beginning of the new creation, the “stuff” in which the creation holds together (Col 1:17). His disciples are re-created to be new Adams who will bring God’s wise order to the world, forming and filling it.

One reason he sends them is to see people converted, but that is only the beginning. The church is sent to be the living, breathing new creation existing in and overcoming the old creation that remains.

We are sent by God, first, to order that bit of creation over which he has given us special authority: ourselves. We are to order our hearts, affections, speech, and actions to conform to his will. We are sent by God to be married and have our marriages reflect the relationship of Christ and the church (Eph 5:22-33). We are sent to be fruitful and multiply, having children who will be like arrows in the hand of a warrior, who will be true and sent out in the war to do the same (Ps 127). You are sent by God to bring wise order in the medical field, the IT field, the agriculture field, the government, construction, plumbing, and any other field into which God places you. Missionaries aren’t the only ones sent. We are all sent, and that doesn’t mean that we are all sent to do the same things. Nor does it mean that someone else’s calling is “real kingdom work” while your calling only “supports kingdom work.” Anywhere the creation needs to be tamed and ordered under the lordship of Jesus is where we are sent.

Be faithful in your kingdom work, no matter what your particular calling is.

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