Missions: Every Christian’s Job
Jeff at “Until All Have Heard” has done us a great service in his post “The awesome power of ‘informal missionaries.’”
What are “informal missionaries”? Informal missionaries are normal, everyday Christians who work a job like everyone else, but how share their faith in Jesus Christ with the people that they meet. In other words, they are not paid to be missionaries, or pastors, or evangelists, or whatever.
Jeff quotes several authors who write about the importance of “informal missionaries” in the life of the early church. Here are two that I particularly found helpful:
“The chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession or a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion.” – Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity
“The view that witnessing is ‘every Christian’s job’ was certainly the belief of the early Christians. Their acceptance of this task was perhaps the single most important factor in the astounding outreach and expansion of the early church. It was not simply that Peter, Paul, Stephen, and others spread the good news of salvation in Christ. It was rather that all Christians—small and great, rich and poor, slaves and freedmen—made it their consuming passion to tell others about the Lord.” – David J. MacLeod, The Witness of John the Baptist to the Word
Being a witness for Jesus Christ and making disciples is certainly the “job” of all Christians. I wonder what would happen to our communities if every follower of Jesus Christ saw this as part of their “job description”…