Jeff Adams

Texas pastor Bob Roberts uses this phrase a lot. I’m not sure if it is unique to him or if he is passing it on. I have heard others use it, too. I like it.

Traditionally, we think of the church as sending out missionaries. God raises them up, they are trained, raise support and the church sends them out to plant other churches where there are none. That’s more or less the image that we have. There’s nothing wrong with that scenario, and God will continue to do just that as he has for the past two thousand years. There is, though, a sense in which the entire church serves as the missionary. I want to begin talking about that little by little over the months ahead.

This morning I had a wonderful experience that may help to illustrate what I mean by speaking of the church as a missionary. I was walking around the lobby just before the first service. I turned around and saw a row of four Asian faces looking at me. Two were immediately recognizable. One was Elisha, a student from Japan who is studying at Calvary Bible College and in our Shepherd School of Ministry at the same time. Beside him was his girlfriend, Monica, who is a Chinese-American medical student at UMKC med school.  They introduced me to two young ladies who have just arrived a month ago from mainland China.

One of these young ladies in particular spoke wonderful English. As I shook her hand she immediately said sincerely and with a smile, “I’m not yet a Christian, but I have been reading the Bible and am very interested! I am very glad to be here this morning.”

“Doesn’t she speak good English?” Monica asked. “She taught herself by listening to some tapes.”

I asked if they were Mandarin speakers. They were. Monica speaks Cantonese. “You’d better learn how to speak a bit of Chinese,” teased Monica.

“Yes, I suppose I should. With English, Spanish and a wee bit of German, I can’t keep up with the Chinese explosion.” I love being part of a multi-cultural church!

Both of these young women seemed so pleased to be here and so eager to learn the Bible. No one was trying to convince anyone, or trying to sell something. It was all so natural and authentic.

A few minutes later they met another one of our pastors. The articulate one announced proudly, “This is the first time I have been in a REAL church!” They already said they want to come back next week.

As churches we pray to send missionaries to China. That’s great! However, we need to remember that God can use the whole church as a missionary, just as he did this morning. In today’s world, God is bringing the whole world to our neighborhood. All we have to do is be sensitive to what he is doing. As Peruvian missiologist Samuel Escobar has said, this is the era of the the gospel going from everywhere to everywhere.