Giving your life for a cause that is eternal is worth it every time! After more than 20 years in full-time ministry as missionaries it has come time to talk about what it means for us to be missionaries! After all, aren’t we all called to be missionaries? Aren’t we all called to be the hands and feet of Christ? What is a missionary? One on a mission? One with a task to accomplish? Like the Great Commission Jesus gave us in Matthew 28? YES!
God is on mission to get his children back, and those who participate with him on His mission are missionaries! There are those who are occupational missionaries and those who are workplace missionaries. There are those who evangelize, make disciples, train leaders and send people out for a profession, and there are those who do it alongside their career. But none are exempt! If we follow Jesus, we obey His command to love God, love people, and make disciples!
In today’s world, especially in the western and more christian world, there are many church planting movements. There are those who raise money, gather people, and start a church, hoping that before the pledged money runs out, the church’s income from tithes and offerings will be sufficient to live off and continue the church. Therefore, raising money is a temporary thing to help a leader get started. This is fine, but this is NOT what we do.
We are full-time professional missionaries and will probably never be paid on-staff pastors. For some people that seems strange, but maybe its because they are looking through a pastor’s lens. I am clearly an evangelist with an apostolic vision, therefore sitting in one spot, taking care of already born-again christians doesn’t interest me long-term. At this point, it also does not interest me to gather christians to start churches or Bible studies.
We are pioneers, builders, and leadership development mentors. Our job is to start things through evangelism, discipleship, and leadership development. We then build foundations for the church and empower leaders. As a result, we are ready to do it again, and again, and again! In fact, that is our story for the past 20 years: University of Houston, Innsbruck and Salzburg, Austria, Nürnberg, Germany, Budapest, Hungary & Marseille, France.
A full-time, classic missionary, is someone who lives by faith in the goodness of God in order to move his/her family to another place: a city, a state or sometimes a foreign culture and foreign language. The work of a missionary isn’t necessarily to get a church launched that will support his family. The work of a missionary should be to make disciples of a nation, which includes dissecting the culture: listening to the people and their stories, learning the customs, and contextualizing the gospel in their language. This is so they can start preaching the gospel and declaring the freedom, power and love we have in Christ. After that, comes the follow up, meeting with people to lay foundations, creating small groups/communities, which are the precursor for starting a church.
In my opinion, God’s goal is making disciples not merely planting churches (Matthew 28:18-20). Church plants are a result of making disciples. Therefore planting churches is important. Jesus said HE would build His church and WE are commissioned to make disciples. This thinking can change how we do life with the King, if we let it.
Mine and my wife’s hearts are to be a part of the “old-school” camp of missionaries. This thing is for life. We have sold out. We have burned the ships, we are abandoned to God’s purposes for our lives, be it dying in France, Europe somewhere, or back in Houston, Texas. We will never give up on lost people. We will never stop loving them, reaching them. We will never stop starting small groups, winning students to Christ, & seeing families transformed by the power of the gospel everywhere we go.
The strategy God has given us is to have a partnership team for moral, prayer and financial support because we love the idea of being missionaries with people, instead of alone. We need one another, and together we can always accomplish more. Thanks for joining us on the crazy faith-filled adventure, seeing God’s love and power on display.
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