Every Believer a Missionary

It might come as a bit of a shock to speak about every believer being called to be a missionary. We have had such a strong default view of a missionary as a person who leaves their home country and goes to another country to represent the purposes of Jesus Christ there. The Bible doesn’t support any such distinction. If you think of everything a missionary might do in another country, there is nothing they do that could not and should not be done in their own community. Its just that we have separated things that shouldn’t have been separated. A missionary is someone who represents the plan and purposes of God. So everyone who is a follower of Jesus must be a representative. In the churches of western culture we have come to associate following Jesus with attending a worship meeting, reading the Bible, prayer and living by Biblical moral values. The exceptions have been the pastors and missionaries (the overseas ones). This has no support from Scripture. What has happened is the institution and its programs have become the missional substitute. We now have church programs that are supposed to be the missional agent. Followers are supposed to bring their friends to the meetings and the meeting are supposed to be the missionaries.

At Grace we don’t put any effort into seeker sensitive programs, we want to equip every believer to be seeker sensitive. Instead of opening our doors and hoping people will come, we are sending people into every sphere as missionaries, just the way Jesus said it was to be done, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16)