Life-Changing

In the next few days as we attend the 45th Pan American Lectureship, and as we interact with lots of good brothers and sisters who have a heart for missions, Jan and I will share one message again and again. For us, the Pan American Lectureship in 1996 was a life-changing experience.

I am convinced of the value of short-term missions. We need more and more Christians to see our world as it is. Our youth need to see our world as it is. Those who will take the reins and lead kingdom-people into the future must see our world. We are terribly self-centered. We are the proverbially “navel gazers” almost without exception, even the most evangelistic and mission-minded congregations among us. Far and away a majority of our expenditures are inwardly-turned and focused. We can construct our budgets so they look as though we are looking outward, but generally, we are not. Missions funding receives a pittance of our total funding in most churches.

The challenge remains on the mission field, perhaps is even greater. Mission work, even foreign mission work, can quickly turn inward. Satisfaction can set in. I do not know how–it is a tool of Satan. Our globe is filling with teeming millions in the ever-growing metropolitan areas of our world. Untold millions untold. We are throwing small pebbles into an ocean of folks.

Jan and I have been blessed, because God is so powerful in transforming folks who barely want to be transformed. God has opened doors, but the best door he opened was the door that enabled us to see all of the other doors.

I know we are not big on experience in churches of Christ. But I encourage you to seek a life-changing experience. It does not have to be the Pan American Lectureship, although that choice would bless you. Opportunities abound–let us get out of our comfort zone, find transformation and genuine resurrection, and go tell what God has done.