What is a Missionary Anyway?
by Dan HarrisonDan Harrison was the Director of Urbana 90, 93 and 96.
One of my daughters attended Urbana 84 as a senior in high school. I asked her, "What did you get out of the convention?" She said, "I was relieved to learn that, not everyone has to relocate and become a cross-cultural missionary!" That same daughter at age ten had said, "Well, when I grow up I'm going to hire a maid and send her to the mission field." We [hold the Urbana Conventions] to learn about missions: Webster defines a missionary as "one sent to spread his religion in a foreign land." In my view, it is a "sent one."
The essence of being a missionary is that we are "sent ones." Location is not the primary consideration. Being obedient to the call of God is. As the Lord of the Church, Jesus wants us to love our neighbors across the street or across the world. In this sense, ministering on campus is just as much missionary work as serving in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. To be obedient to Jesus Christ is to be a Christian. And to be a Christian is to be a "sent one."
How are you sent? In Acts 13, the church in Antioch set a pattern of identifying qualified persons; preparing and sending them out to share the gospel; demonstrating the love of Jesus. God declared his son to the Apostle Paul in a special revelation. God got his attention by a miraculous vision and temporary period of blindness. Sometimes God uses an extraordinary experience to give us a very specific call, as well. For most of us, however, this happens because someone encourages us to consider missions as a vocation or we sense God opening our hearts to that possibility and we move forward, looking for God's "seal" of approval.
Perhaps you wonder who are the "sent ones?" Well, some of them are the people who are sent out by their local churches, like the Antioch church sent Barnabas and Saul. What if we don't "go?" In a biblical sense, all of us who know the Lord Jesus and follow him as Lord are "sent ones." On a plane out of my hometown recently, I sat next to a Gambian student. He had just completed a three-year stay in the United States. In the next two hours, I learned a great deal about him, his Islamic faith, background and circumstances. At the end of our visit, he kept saying to me: "Oh, how I wish I had met you at the beginning of my time in the U.S." And I felt the same way.
Sadly, this person had been in the United States for three years and had not been in one American home. Mine was his first conversation with a Christian. As "sent ones," we can reach out in friendship to the international students on our campuses, in our workplaces and in our cities. There are half a million international students in North America. Part of the mission field has come to us.
There is a lot to do elsewhere in the world, as well. Acts 1:8 says that as believers, we are to be concerned about sharing the gospel both in our hometown (Jerusalem), our surrounding state or country (Judea) and to the ends of the earth. Does that mean that we should all relocate into across-cultural setting somewhere immediately? No, it doesn't. I'm told that businesses that intend to survive in the 90's must internationalize. If you get a job with a company of any size, you will likely have the opportunity to relocate. Why not relocate strategically into a region of the world where the gospel is not presently being shared?
More of us need to be willing to go into missions full-time. The Islamic world, with nearly a billion people, is still largely unreached for the gospel. Did you know that there is only one missionary for one million in the Islamic world? By contrast in the U.S., there is one full-time Christian worker for every 300 people.
When I was a senior at Cornell University, my wife, Shelby, and I learned of opportunities with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Papua New Guinea. We saw a need and said to the Lord, "We are moving to meet this need and are looking to You, the Lord of the Harvest, to confirm this direction." He did, in abundance.
Are you a "sent one?" If you love Jesus, the answer is "yes." As a "sent '' one," you are responsible to be faithful in sharing the love of Jesus and the message of the gospel in your present situation as well as to the ends of the earth.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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