In my life, there are words I've come to dislike. For a variety of reasons, there are just simply words I don't like. Most of us have them. I have a friend who hates the word "moist." No real reason. Except for her, it sounds like a bad word.
One of mine is the word "nice." I just don't like the word. While it's a good word, with positive meaning it is very vague. A placeholder word. Something you say when you can't think of anything else to say.
I don't like the word "religious." Another word that is overall positive and should be good, it implies something else. It implies studied, but not personal, not relational. It means rule follower for no other reason than there are rules. And until recently I didn't like the word "missionary."
Now it's not that I didn't like missionaries, just the word. And it's not a good word for me to not like. For all of the great wonderful things that it does mean, I would only have one thought pop into my head. I would think of a person so bent on "saving the lost" that they would never listen. For some reason, I had the image of a person who didn't care about the past or the future of the person. I had the image of a person who cared about jewels on a crown. Even though I had never met a missionary who fit that strange description I had, I still thought of it. And I've spent the past year and a half changing that definition.
I've been working in my hometown church for the past year or so and it is because of these people that I've changed my definition. Many of them are previous pastors, or missionaries, long and short term, and they all have a gentle heart filled with a fire that cannot be quenched. Two of them served in Africa for 40 years, through war and genocide, they loved like God does. We had missionaries visit us, many I knew before they left for their field.
And I realized that my definition needed to change. Here was this beautiful word and I was pinning it to the ground, not allowing it to show what it was capable fo meaning: lover of Christ; carrier of the good news; servant of the King; Brother; Sister; Shelterer; expression of His love; picture of possible hope; example of His enduring love; child of faith. I've come to realize that there are more titles that can be given to Missionary than I can think of. And so I redefined "Missionary" to "Child of God." We are all His Missionaries, carrying His mission. We show His love. We share our faith through actions and when necessary, we use our words to affirm those actions.
