Life As Mission

Life as Mission: How does one describe a week of mission work? Granted a week is a sorry limit to what one can and should do in service to Jesus

Christ and his kingdom.

This year is different than last year’s trip to New Orleans. In New Orleans, the buildings, at least the vast majority of them, were still there. They were just abandoned. In Joplin, there are no buildings. Vast stretches of what used to be neighborhoods are now fields with a few broken trees, some trying to sprout leaves from what remains of their branches. This is all that remains in some places. Oh, in 10 years or so, you won’t recognize the city. One of the reasons we were tagging streets is that some residents already have trouble recognizing it with old landmarks gone and new street signs not in place yet.

Each year we make these trips I come back challenged. I struggle concerning what to do with what the group has seen and learned, what we have done and experienced. I think of mission as a way of life. This year I see something different. I see life as mission. Yes, go back a sentence of two and read those two phrases. Take out a piece of paper and write them down side-by-side if you have to.

Mission as Life involves throwing one’s self into the mission as experience and having that experience invigorate an individual or group. It isn’t a bad thing, no, certainly not. The problem is that it is simply inadequate. The motivation cannot outlive the feeling, the spiritual high of the moment.

Life as Mission involves a total commitment of the self. Not to the mission experience, but to mission itself. Not a mission, but to the mission. Not to a single project, but to a relationship.

“One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”[1]

The following is a daily, life long, journey that will lead you to the greatest life experiences you can ever have.

Pastor Craig

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[1]   (2009-03-19). Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible (NASB 1977 edition) (Kindle Locations 34714-34715). The Lockman Foundation. Kindle Edition.