ARE YOU A MISSIONARY OR AN IMPOSTER?
Lately I have been reading about disciple making movements that changed the world and have found some ideas very interesting. For example, in 1850 the Methodists had 4,000 itinerant preachers, 8,000 local preachers, and more than one million members, which made them the largest religious body in the nation and second largest national institution behind the government.
Steve Addison, on this movement, said, "This achievement would have been impossible without the mobilization of ordinary people-white and black, young and old, men and women-and the removal of artificial barriers to their engagement in significant leadership as class leaders, local workers, and itinerant preachers."
Addison is getting at something here that I don't want our church to miss. In many churches and denominations, it has become all about the "professional" Christian doing the work of ministry. Even in many of our local churches we will hear the pastors say, "You guys need to be involved with this, do ministry, etc." Then what is communicated through their actions is the attitude of, "I am the seminary trained one here, so allow me to be the face of everything in regards to ministry." It is also communicated through who serves the family meal (communion) and who baptizes, which neither has to be "professional ministers."
This kind of attitude communicated to the church is what has often stifled its growth at many times and in many ways. During the surge of growth in the Methodist denomination they had no college-educated people in ministry, sounds slightly similar to Jesus day to me. The decline of the Methodists church came during the time when the amateur people in ministry were replaced with the seminary educated professionals.
Now, let me clarify that I am not against seminary if you take that route as part of your equipping and I am seminary trained. However, I do believe that there has been too much emphasis put on seminary education and not enough on the local church equipping and training its members to go out to be ministers in their everyday lives. Until we as a church (universal) get back to the place where the Methodist were in 1850, we in many ways are the cause of stifling a movement that could change the world by not equipping every follower of Christ to take the message of freedom and family to those around them.
I leave you with this, as the planting pastor of Sojourn, I want to always be mindful that you are being equipped and mobilized to go out as missionaries in your everyday life. We are a church made up of ordinary people, my question is how are you intentionally being a missionary and making disciples in your everyday life? In the words of Charles Spurgeon, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” Which one are you?
