This is what I think

I think that members
in the American Church seem trapped sometimes.
We see missions and
we see it as being an outward focus, something that depletes ourselves of
… us …
and then we become
disillusioned to what missions really even is.
We’ve convinced ourselves
that to ‘reach the nations’ means we have to leave the comforts of our borders
and do something radical in the name of Jesus elsewhere.
Something like living
overseas for a year.

 But we forget that
babies are dying in America.

 Just because America
has affluence doesn’t mean it’s immune to the need of hope and the basic human
need of love.
 

Yet we do forget that.

We forget that the
first mission field we should be taking care of is outside of our own front
doors.
Sometimes its inside
our front doors.
Yet we hate focusing
inward, even for a season.
It seems selfish.
We’re afraid to look
at ourselves, whether in the mirror or each others’ eyes.
We live in fear at
recognizing our own need for God.

What if we have a
problem?
What if there’s a
plank in our own eye that we’re not willing to see?
Because there is.
What if God calls us
to fix ourselves before we fix others?

I think that the
American Church needs to get over disillusionment.
It needs to get out
of the box.
Becoming missional is
more than sending yourself or others overseas.
Sometimes becoming
missional means cleaning your own house first.

Because we have the homeless.

We have AIDS orphans.

We have victims of
human trafficking.

We have injustice all
over the place.

And it’s even in the
Church… in America.

Let’s clean house,
shall we?