Some mission myths…

I’ve been thinking a bit about some of the myths about mission and missionaries. You might not agree with me, but these are just a few random thoughts…

Mission is only for the young and unattached, with no commitments. Well, we knock that one on the head. We’re not exactly young. Apparently, according to my mum I’m not middle-aged. I think that has more to do with the fact that I’m her youngest, and if I’m middle-aged, she’s worried about what that makes her! Whichever way you look at it, we are certainly not spring-chickens. And we do have commitments. We have a teenager and a nearly teenager. We have parents who aren’t getting any younger. We had a mortgage. God doesn’t call us to give up on our responsibilities, but He does ask us to take a clear look at whether we are willing to trust Him with our concerns. A number of years ago, my dad wrote a book called “My rights, my God” which was then reprinted as “Jesus says Go”. I’ve found that a helpful and challenging read even though it was originally intended for the student age group. As the saying goes “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” There are no age-limits on mission – at either end. I’ve been enjoying reading Facebook posts from the 14 (?) year-old daughter of a friend who has just been to Romania with a youth team. Some of the most effective evangelism of the very young comes from their peers.

Mission is for those who are teachers, leaders, church planters, translators, medical experts, those with relevant professional skills. Again, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” There are definite needs for all of those skills and gifts above. But God values a loving and obedient heart over and above a dazzling CV. Neil’s a quantity surveyor – yup, no idea what that is really. We’ve been married nearly 20 years and I still don’t quite get it. He has business and project management skills, which will be useful. More importantly, he wants to go where God is leading.

Mission is for the spiritually mature and more holy. I’m really hoping this one is a myth! I don’t really feel like a missionary on the inside, and I’m not too sure whether or not I look like one on the outside. But as with pretty much anything God calls us to do, if I felt totally up to the task and thoroughly able to do it, then I’d be starting from completely the wrong place – a place of pride and not of humility and dependence on Him. We are all no more and no less than sinners saved by God’s grace, and anything and everything we do in serving Him, we do from the strength He gives us and the gifts and abilities He entrusts us with.

Mission is for those who go. Well, yes and no. “Going” is sometimes more of an attitude of mind than a question of geography. When Jesus told his disciples to “Go into all the world” at the end of the book of Matthew, they actually started where they were in Jerusalem. We all have a mission-field wherever we live and whatever we are doing. We live in the middle of people who don’t know Jesus. We work with people who don’t know him. We take our kids to school with people who don’t know him. Mission is an attitude of mind, of looking outward. For some of us, God takes us elsewhere. For others, He calls us to mission right where we are. And often that is much harder. In a different country and strange culture, everyone around us expects us to be odd. In our own country and our own culture, we are expected to fit in, yet as citizens of a heavenly kingdom, as children of the King of Kings, as people who are shaped by a spiritual culture, we don’t always fit in. And that is hard. Going might be hard, but sometimes staying is even harder.

At the end of the day, it’s less about whether we go or stay, and more about whether we, to use the words of a very old children’s chorus, “trust and obey”. Over and over in the Old Testament, we see that God values what is in our hearts much more than what is visible on the outside. He tells Samuel to pay no attention to the physical appearance of Jesse’s older sons because “people look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) God tells the people through His prophets that He is not interested in their sacrifices and outward worship – He wants their hearts. God judges us by what is in our hearts, not by any outward signs of success. It is a truth that is both liberating and deeply challenging. I am set free from having to show the signs of “success” that others around me expect. But I am accountable to the God of heaven for the integrity of my heart. Can I say in the words of Isaiah “Yes LORD, .. your name and renown are the desire of [my] heart”? (Isaiah 26:8)

Will we go? I hope so. Financially it looks impossible at the moment, but we keep walking forward in faith. Will we succeed in what we are planning to do while we are there? I hope so. But for all of us who are saved by God’s grace, success or failure must be judged not by outward results, by deliverables, by completed projects. God will judge success or failure, surely, by whether or not the desire of our heart was to glorify His name and to obey His call.

There was a train of thought going here that has just disappeared over the horizon without me. So that’s it for today. Thanks for reading.

Words of wisdom…

I think it was Confucius who said, “By the time you hear the dustbin lorry, it has already passed your house and you have missed it.”  We moved into our new house on Friday and one of the things on my to-do list was to find out when bin day was, and where they collected from.  The house is up some stairs, so do we take it down, do they come up and fetch it, or do we wheel it to the end of the lane at the back?  It turns out that they come on a Tuesday (today!), and after I had chased them down the hill, the guy told me that they will collect our rubbish in bags from the bottom of the stairs. At least, they would next week.  If I wanted my bin emptying this week, I could put the bags on the other side of the road and they would collect them on their way back up the hill.  The slight flaw in this plan was that the previous tenants had left a lot of loose rubbish in the bin, and being used to having the whole wheelie-bin up-ended into the back of a lorry, we had added to that. I decided that bumping the bin down the stairs was the lesser of two evils.

When moving to a new home, it’s important to let the neighbours know early on exactly what kind of people you are.  Turns out our neighbours now know me as the woman who runs around after bin-men and takes her wheelie-bin out for a walk, before abandoning it outside somebody else’s house just around the corner.  Shortly after which, the lorry came back up the hill and drove straight past the bins.  Followed within a few minutes by another one. Clearly, there is some kind of dustbin lorry hang-out down that road. So now I am strategically positioned by the front window watching for them to come back so that I can retrieve my bin, casually wander back across a very busy road and bump it back up the stairs.  It gives the people at the bus-stop something to watch while they’re waiting. Call it some kind of cutting-edge street performance art and give me a grant.

Apart from this minor bin saga, the move has all gone pretty smoothly.  From putting our house on the market to moving in here has taken just over four weeks. I think the estate agent was in a state of shock. It has been a challenge squeezing a large four bedroomed house into a smallish three bedroom semi-detached. But we’re in.  We are very grateful to people who prayed, helped move stuff, took stuff off our hands and cooked us meals. And we are so thankful to God for this house. Buying a house that we weren’t planning to live in for long was a strange experience, and we kept telling ourselves that we had to accept that the house might not work well for us. But in the end, we have a house that ticks all the key boxes.  It accommodates us now, it is rentable (one of our removal men wants to rent it from us), and should we have to move back into it at any stage, it would allow Izzy to go back to her current school. We are actually closer to school, and so for the first time in many years, I don’t have to do a school-run, as Izzy can walk to school.  We didn’t expect to particularly love this house, but we are beginning to find that we do.  The curtains even match our sofa!

The advantages of living in a smaller house: I can hoover the entire downstairs without having to unplug and replug the vacuum cleaner.  Ditto upstairs. I am hoping that it will force the less tidy ones amongst us (me and two daughters) to be a little more tidy. Our most untidy daughter has the smallest bedroom. If you leave so much as one sock on the floor in there you have lost about 50% of your available floor space. This is either going to be wonderful or truly awful.  She’s away from home at the moment, so it’s too soon to know how this is going to work out.

(Live update: Dustbin lorry number three has just gone up the hill. He didn’t turn down the road where I have dumped my bin, but started emptying bins at the house where I almost left it. Ho-hum, a poor choice.  There is still no sign of the other two lorries.)

We have no internet connection yet at the new house. It seems that the line coming to the house was “inadequate”.  I suspect that may be code for “an opportunity for BT to sting you for more cash”. In the meantime, we seem to be surviving, although it does mean that by the time I post this up to the blog, it will all be old news.  But I hope the image of a middle-aged woman (in heels… the one day I wear heels!) chasing after a dustbin lorry will be a timeless classic.  Depending on how much else happens around here, the neighbours may still be talking about it.

(A moment of excitement there… I saw the lorry, but no, it still hasn’t come to get my bin.  I know, I need to get out more. But I can’t… I’m waiting for the bin-men!)

P.S. I got my bin back.  But I think that is more than can be said for my credibility.

Missing you already

There are all sorts of things I will miss about living in Worcester. I’ve grown quite fond of this city, and am already aware of some of the things that will make me sad to leave.  

One constant source of joy and delight in Worcester has been the newspaper headlines that appear on the boards outside newsagents.  Not a lot happens in this city and that is reflected in the events that make the headlines in the local press.  When London burned in the riots a couple of years ago, the next day our local paper was keen to tell us “Man kicks seagull”. These things matter. Especially if, like I had, you have had the misfortune to have been “annointed” by one of these birds.

This week brought us this little gem: “Is Keith the seal pregnant?”  If you’re not a local resident,  you may be questioning that headline on a number of levels.  We locals know all about Keith, so we’re in the know about our gender-challenged seal.  Last year, an enterprising seal wanting to break out of the monotony and anonymity of life at the coast realised that fame (and possibly fortune) could be had by swimming up-river to a small city where not a lot happens.  The seal was spotted, welcomed with open arms and dubbed “Keith” after a loyalist commander in the Civil War – we may not have much happen around here, but we are pretty clued up about our historical heritage. Shortly after that, an expert in these things pointed out that Keith was almost certainly female.  The seal, that is, not the loyalist commander.  This minor detail came too late and so Keith has remained Keith, and apparently also remained definitely female.  There are reports of a seal pup having been seen with Keith. No name yet.  Although I hope we won’t allow trivial details like gender stand in the way of a good name. If Keith has piqued your interest, apparently she has a Facebook page and a Twitter account.  And yes, I am ashamed to admit that a seal has mastered Twitter before I have.  Particularly since I’m guessing that flippers make it hard to type.

More seriously, it hit me again today how much I am going to miss our church here.  We all know no church is perfect, but we are so thankful to God that we have been able to be part of a church where there is such a love for God and his word, so much love for one another and such a commitment to seeing people grow in faith.  Tonight we had the joy of seeing a young husband and father be baptised. There was rejoicing in heaven when he put his faith in Christ and there was much rejoicing here tonight as well. 

All being well, we will move house on Friday.  We have bought a smaller house which we aim to rent out when we go. We are thankful to God for his provision of this house, within our budget and within a reasonable distance of school for the girls. Because it is smaller, Neil has had to find an office to rent for the next few months, and again God has provided in the form of an office rented from a city church. So right now we are knee-deep in boxes and bracing ourselves for more chaos before we are able to start to restore some order. We continue to be thankful to God for so many encouragements he gives us, particularly as we see answers to prayer. Thank you for praying for us.