I’d like to say a little more on my thoughts on being a missionary today. It’s really tied up with how my wife and I see the bigger picture of spreading the kingdom of heaven throughout the earth. We don’t have every angle covered here – far from it. But it’s something we’ve recently been thinking over again.

If we felt God leading us to be in Vietnam, China, or any other country, I would assume that I would take up work there and we’d become like normal citizens and contributors back to the community where we lived, then let the Lord reveal himself through us living our lives right along side others in our domain. Our first inclination would be to do exactly what we’re doing right now, only in another country. We’re being the church, and continue growing into being the church, in every way he leads us. God has us here in the pacific northwest of USA, but we don’t have a different understanding of what it means to be the church for different places of the planet. I’ve written elsewhere on this blog some related thoughts on this topic.

A fundamental belief of mine is that people everywhere need to see what the loving Father in heaven is like, and they see it by interactions with us of many kinds, a primary one being watching is go through the same life they go through, yet consistently, day after month after year, there’s something different in our lives. It’s the kindness of God poured out on us, and since we’re living under the same life burdens as others, they see a gospel that they can embrace. It’s essentially the message of Jesus’ life, who humbled himself and became like us, was tempted in the same ways yet without sin, and seeing this we are further enabled to embrace his Father as our own.

As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” In my own words, God wants to dump his kindness on us, in front of others, to show everyone what kind of Father he really is, so they’ll want him too, and he’ll get the chance to have relationship with them.

Now, we realize many followers of Jesus have chosen to try living in other countries on a long-term basis with a different approach than finding gainful employment in a community there. This usually amounts to some form of raising financial support from the generosity of others who are employed, and thus is similar to the concept of “full-time Christian work.” We have dear friends that we love and respect who do this. We don’t have to all agree on this stuff to stay side by side in the Kingdom. But the way they are going about trying to live in the foreign country is not the first approach we would naturally take ourselves, and so it is not aligned with the natural flows of our faith and passion for being the church in our world today. It’s in these situations that we often find the best we can do to support them is simply pray that God make his way clear to them and bless their faith and obedience to him.

Recently we came to another twist of this topic of giving money to others – what to do about giving to people who are involved with “missions” work. We’ve been assisting some people we know, and highly respect, who have chosen to live in other countries to work out the purposes and roles they believe God has given them for spreading the gospel. But something about supporting them financially was bothering me and felt inconsistent with the things God is teaching us.

A quick review: I believe that applying ourselves to work, ie. “a job”, is an important and godly part of life. It started in the garden (Adam), it’s been called one of God’s gifts in the book of Ecclesiastes (ch 5), and Paul warns that those who don’t work shouldn’t eat (2 Thess), and that Jesus’ followers should be “doing what is good, in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives” (Titus).

Now, when I came to see church businesses as a creation of man, soon to follow was reconsidering this whole idea that following Jesus can be a career path. Of course, it certainly is for many today, but it’s a concept that for many is getting unpacked, unraveled, and critically examined under the microscope of new testament simplicity and a passion for living by the Spirit of God. There are times in my life where I was supported by church businesses in either a full- or part-time capacity, and many other times when it was like a second job but without pay.

But there came a time when I found myself thrust by God out of hiding in professional church businesses to discover life as a participant in the mainstream of what most people in our communities are living, which includes working for a living.  This started about 20 years ago, though I’ve had a few dabblings back in the pursuit of so-called “full-time Christian work” along the way. God has been my Counselor and Guide, which is really good, because I’m not very clever when it comes to careers. We have a Father that remembers we’re made of dust. I love to tell the details of this story, and will do so in another blog entry soon. It’s amazing to see what kindness God has shown me and my family in regards to work and career.

So, about missions work: My thought is that when we’re a follower of Jesus, wherever we are, we’re a “missionary” – meaning we have a mission to be fully alive in who Jesus is making us to be, and to be about the work of advancing his kingdom in our domain. I’ve come to believe that our highest aim is to find productive work, that is, to learn the way of faith and personal growth in providing for ourselves through creative work outlets according to the common understanding of “work” in the community where we live. By this we engage in our community such that our faith is essentially “on the line” and real, for all to see. And by this, Jesus gets to reveal himself through us to others (Eph 2, Jesus shows “the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us…”)

In my study of what people did with money in the new testament, I come away with the sense that people mostly gave financial help to others who were in temporary times of need, not in the way of “full-time” support. To be consistent, this is what my wife and I have decided to do henceforth.

Here I’d like to explain my use of the term “church business.” But first, a little background is in order so you don’t get the wrong idea:

I’ve spent over twenty of my strongest years helping to start, strengthen and expand churches, parachurch organizations, small groups, small group networks, high-school church groups, college church groups, guys-only groups, mixed groups of both genders and all ages, prayer groups, worship groups, discipleship groups, groups that met at church facilities, on school campuses, and in homes. And I haven’t stopped, but I did take a few years to re-evaluate a lot of things, and then slowly, over the last 5 years or so, my wife and I have been getting back in the pool, only this time with a much clearer understanding of what we’re about, and more importantly, what we believe God is about. I’m convinced this will be a work-in-progress till the day we die, as it should be.

When I first came into this new relationship with the living God as a high-school kid, I took a lot of things for granted, one of them being that the current idea of “church” you might find on any street corner was the way it always had been since Jesus and his first followers were walking the earth, and therefore it was endorsed by God. I was confused, however, with these things called “denominations,” and I found solace in churches labeled “non-denominational” and parachurch organizations that managed to avoid many of the pitfalls of contemporary church systems. As the years and decades clicked by I got more and more committed to various church and church related activities. While I started out clueless about church history, and still only consider myself a novice, there was always this little voice inside me saying something like, “it’s not supposed to be this way; it’s not supposed to be so complex.” Several times I’ve been invited to “come on staff” at a church, and did so, thinking this was the “ultimate” in being a follower of Jesus. But it doesn’t take long being on the inside of these places before you get a close look at abuse among relationships in the church. Sometimes it’s very strong abuse, which usually takes the form of threatened leaders using their position to cause duress of some kind to others so as to remove them as a threat. Invariably it is done as though by instruction from God, perhaps with scripture verses validating the deeds. This is terrible stuff, and it’s rampant. I myself have been on the receiving end of great relational trust violation and abuse from church leadership, as a church leader, at least twice. They happened in two different states & different church systems, and over a decade apart. The first was as a single man, and during the second (I guess I’m a slow learner!) my wife was taking shrapnel right along with me. It was this second time, seeing the hurtful impact on my wife, that I finally stopped, got off the merry-go-round, and asked myself and God “what’s going on here? why does this happen?” I knew that I had brought this on us by chosing to commit so strongly to this system we called “church,” and now I needed to know if this system was really by God’s design. I finally acknowledged how much I had taken for granted 20+ years earlier, and started listening to that little voice inside me saying “it wasn’t meant to be this way.” No matter how long it took to sort out answers, I had to ask all the deep and scary questions I had been avoiding for years. Thankfully, my wife was as committed as I was, and together we embarked on an incredible journey of finding out how God meant for us to be the church, rather than continue going to church. We’re still on it.

Back to my beginning point – most “churches” today are really what I call “church businesses.” There’s a lot going on there that is related to being the church, but there’s quite a bit that isn’t: hierarchies of leadership and the associated “fear-of-man” in participants, payrolls, church buildings with mortgages, equipment and utility bills, money that has to come in to pay for it all, rules & policies, 501(c)(3) by-laws and non-profit requirements, formalities & traditions, fund raisers, over-busy evenings and weekends, etc. etc. All of this has everything to do with growing a business, but nothing to do with being the church. Taking an objective look at the popular church business approach, you’ll find it quite difficult to support much of any of it from the new testament writings. And worse, many design elements are working directly against the commands of Jesus, and council of the new testament writers, and thus the essence of what God’s church is all about. If you’re curious, you’ll easily find plenty of books doing a good job documenting these things, and they keep coming and getting better. It’s as if “something like scales” are falling from the collective church’s eyes and we’re finding the ears to hear what the Lord is saying.

If you embark on this journey, and I hope you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you’ve spent a lot of years involved in the common church businesses of today, and have many friends there, be prepared for a bit of a wild ride. It can be downright frightening to seriously re-evaluate something you’ve held dear for so long, especially when it comes to the things of God. Our fellow believers will not always be kind, so you may have opportunities to practice forgiveness. But I hope you’ll press through till you get back to the core basics of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and part of his family. And then I hope you’ll give your insights back to the church, because we need it! I see more each passing year how much we really are like a body, where each part has it’s role to play, and we aren’t complete without all of it.

God is putting this on the hearts of many. I won’t say it’s for everyone. In fact, if you have no inclination for this, and you feel God has put you in the midst of the life and times of a particular church business, then may you continue to prosper there in all that God has for you. But for the others, join us in going back to our bibles and taking a fresh look at the life experienced by the new testament church. It’s like coming home.