Don’t Let the Engine Flood
October 24, 2008
When I told a seasoned minister about our church’s Mission and Mercy Month last year, his only caution to me was that we not let Sunday morning mirror the evening news and simply replay the reel of all the needs in our world. Such an approach would run the risk of flooding the engine, leaving us so overwhelmed with the needs “out there” that we despair and don’t do anything.
In case you have not been around much in October, let me remind you of the needs we have highlighted thus far: adoption and foster care, a church fund to help families cover the costs of adoption, local church planting, the global food crisis, the tragic shortage of missionaries and funds going toward the world’s unreached people groups, and the opportunity to share Christ’s love to children in dire poverty through Operation Christmas Child. Oh, and this Sunday the Congo team will share about their work of bringing God’s healing gospel to women in the rape epicenter of the world.
Flooded yet? What should our response be to this litany of local and global needs? I would like to share two.
First, we must know that one of the aims of Mission and Mercy Month is to alter our paradigm of the world we live in. We must not let our personal affluence (that is, having enough to eat, a place to sleep, and a hot shower) and free access to the gospel be our lens for viewing global reality. We must know that we live in a world where 1 out of every 3 human beings has never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. We must know that we live in a world where over 2 billion people live on $2 a day or less. We must know that, in the lands affected by the global food crisis, a child dies every 7 seconds from hunger. These facts must inform our understanding of the way things are.
Second, we must pray that God would make plain how he has called us to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom and portray the justice and mercy of the kingdom, and do that with all of our heart. This comes with the humbling knowledge that we cannot do everything. This was reinforced to me on Sunday when Kyle Wisdom shared about the work God has called them to in Indonesia. About 6 months before Kyle heard about this opportunity, Rachael and I were approached with the same position, and after much prayer and dreaming, realized that God had called us to pastor in the states. About a week after that we were in contact with Stevo about Whitton Avenue, and the rest is God’s history.
The point is that God alone can address all the needs of the world through the activity of his church. As individual members of his global body, we must be have an accurate paradigm about our world and labor well in the areas he has called us to serve.
So don’t let the engine flood. Use all God has given you for all that he has called you to, and pray the Lord of the harvest to send workers into the rest of the fields.
Pastor Chris