Where are you sent?

Posted by Alan Knox on Mar 22, 2013 in blog links, missional | 2 comments

Tim at “Synerchomai” has written a very good post called “Missional Because We’re Sent.” As you can probably tell from the title of this post, Tim is writing about living as those who are sent by God into the world.

I love that Tim is writing about this subject. Well, I love that anyone is writing about this subject, but especially Tim because the focus of his blog (like the focus of my blog) is gathering together with our brothers and sisters in Christ. But, like I’ve also learned, Tim has discovered that it’s difficult to talk about gathering without also talking about being scattered into the world.

Here’s a small part of Tim’s post:

What really struck me was that believers who otherwise would have had nothing to do with one another were becoming excited about collaborating together to proclaim and demonstrate the gospel.

From this meeting together we will scatter, each to our own communities. That is our missional function. We’ll hope to gather again, to build one another up in a way that is truly organic. There’s something here I don’t quite understand: how we long to be together as brothers and sisters, yet we are sent out into the communities where God has placed us.

I think Tim is investigating something (or 2 things) that God builds into all of his children: a desire to gather together and a desire to go to others. Sometimes, we live as if these are exclusive issues, even giving special names (like “missionary”) to those who are called to go, while us normal Christians are called to go.

But, in reality, and like Tim says, we ARE all called to go into the world. We’re all sent by God as missionaries wherever we are.

Sure, God sends some around the world or across the country. He doesn’t send us all around world or across the country, but he does send us all.

So, the question is not, “Am I sent?” The question is, “Where am I sent?” or perhaps even better, “To whom am I sent?”

These are questions that we should all consider. Our brothers and sisters in Christ can help us with these questions when we gather together. But, we can only live them out when we scatter.

Talking about being sent is not enough; we must live sent.

So, where are you sent? To whom are you sent?