By Not Known
Christian mission takes a wide variety of forms today. Just think about these present examples from within ORPC:
- Paul Johnson using his computer skills in the full-time, life-long work of supporting Bible translation.
A member using some of her present school holidays to serve in a Christian orphanage in inland China.
- Another member doing a weekly volunteer stint at the local 'Christian Outreach to the Handicapped'.
- A team from our Sunday School running a one-day outreach camp for children at Joyful Grace Presbyterian Church, Pontian, last Saturday.
- The Moores, Michells, Pipes, Cochrums and McConnells who have left family and home to serve God's mission in SE Asia
- Choir members preparing to pay time and money costs to go on a mission trip to Malaysia over the National Day weekend.
- Some of our members taking training and then serving as class leaders for our outreach Bible study programme.
All of these people are different and they serve God's mission in different ways. These are ordinary people whom we sit next to in church on Sundays. What distinguishes them is not ability, but availability. Mission is ordinary people being available to God:Here am I, send me, is their prayer.
Mission was once largely a matter of Europeans and Americans going to the far parts of the world in life-long service as full-time missionary workers. This patten is changing. Some go for terms ranging from a few weeks to a few years. Some go as self-supporting workers who use their profession to gain access to difficult nations and to build outreach opportunities. And, of course, some still go into life-long, full-time service.
Increasingly, missionaries comes from non-western nations. This is a combination of several factors: the political unacceptability of westerners in many places; decline in the western church; surging strength in the non-western church. There is a remarkable example of this in the present ‘reverse‘ Silk Road mission of Chinese Christians – to take the gospel back down the ancient Silk Road into the Middle East and Europe.
Whatever form missions takes, it needs ordinary people who make themselves available to our extraordinary Lord. What is your part in this? In what ways are you part of the answer` to the prayer that the Lord would send more workers into the white harvest field (Mt. 9:38)?