Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just don’t realize it. You see God where others don’t. And then you point him out.“Perhaps we ought to replace the word missionary with tour guide, because we cannot show people something we haven’t seen.“Have you ever heard missionaries say they were going to ‘take Jesus’ to a certain place? What they meant, I assume, was that they had Jesus and they were going to take him to a place like China or India or Chicago where people apparently didn’t have him.“So the issue isn’t so much taking Jesus to people who don’t have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst.“It is searching for the things they have already affirmed as real and beautiful and true and then telling them who you believe is the source of all that.“And if you do see yourself carrying God to places, it can be exhausting.“God is really heavy.“Some people actually believe that God is absent from a place until they get there. The problem with this idea is that if God is not there before you get there, then there is no “there” in the first place.“Tour guides are people who see depth and texture and connection where others don’t. That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything.“In the books of Matthew and Mark, Jesus has dinner with a group of religious leaders and a woman crashes the party, pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’ head. The people Jesus is eating with are mad. This perfume could have been sold and the money used for all sorts of worthy causes. But Jesus defends her. He says, ‘She has done a beautiful thing to me.’ Jesus and his dinner companions experience the exact same event, yet they see it from totally different perspectives. Jesus sees another dimension to the events: For him it is a profoundly moving, spiritual, worshipful experience. He points out the beauty of it. The others miss it. He sees it. He is a tour guide. Pointing out the holy and sacred that are present, right here, right now.”
So I don’t necessarily think all missionaries should rename themselves tour guides, but the basic principles behind the name change I believe are good. In certain places I have been since September, it is sometimes hard to think that God is there. There are people living atrocious or distraught lives, but yet God is still there and loves them just the same.
In terms of me taking Jesus with me, I believe that God’s Holy Spirit lives inside me and is with me wherever I go, but to think that God is not somewhere until I arrive makes God dependent on me. I believe that God delights in using His children to share with others around the world, but He does not have to use us, He wants to use us. He delights in us. He delights in me. He delights in you.
