Cut the compartmentalised living

Mission is not something we do from time to time it is something we are always engaged in as we follow Jesus.  Jesus life is lived for a purpose - he came to save his people from their sins.  Everything he did was geared up towards fulfilling that mission from victoriously battling temptation and being baptised, to calling disciples and deliberately apprenticing them in mission.  Jesus was always on mission from the desert of Judea to the Garden to Golgotha.  In the same way as disciples we don't have times when we are on mission and off mission.  We are always disciples, or as Paul puts it to the Corinthians we are ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.  You aren't an ambassador sometimes and not at other times.

I've been musing on this as I've thought about a number of things, an advantage of a week without pressing sermon preparation to complete.  We compartmentalise life.  Home, work, play, church and so on.  We even compartmentalise roles: parent, child, aunt, uncle, employee, boss, deacon, elder and so on.  I wonder if that constant compartmentalisation, encouraged and fostered by societies pressures on us to have a divided professional and private life, leads us to think of mission like that.  I am on mission then but off mission then.  I am on mission when reaching the people I am praying specifically for, but not when in the office with colleagues I am not.  I am on mission on camp but not at work or school.  I am on mission at Holiday Club but not in Asda.

Maybe we even carry that across to the way we think of church, we think of the church as having a mission, rather than of its mission being our mission.  We, tragically, listen to preaching about mission, whilst assuming that applies to everyone else but me.  We nod along to the prayers for the lost without ever speaking the gospel to those we are praying for.

It's that time of year when I am asked to write references for leaders for camp and the like.  Mostly I enjoy doing so, especially as the amount required seems to have gotten shorter and shorter.  But here's my plea; if you want your pastor to write you a reference for camp or a short mission trip - give them something to work with.  If the only evidence of evangelistic zeal is your application to lead on a christian camp your pastor cannot write you a reference.  If all year you come and sit, with your screen saver firmly fixed and unchanging whilst listening to the sermon - be it the 'Is there a pulse' screen saver, or the 'Bored now' screen saver, or the 'startled' or 'outraged' screen saver (ask your pastor he'll be able to demonstrate each for you) - and then leave again without ever engaging in reaching the lost, in showing concern for people's eternal destiny there is something wrong.  Why then do you want to lead on camp?

The proving ground for mission for the local church.  Reaching the lost is not something we do one week a year, or 3 weeks a year but every day of our lives.  To get the gospel, to taste and see that the Lord is good is to want others to share in that too, or we have not drunk deeply enough of it.  Compassionate concern for the eternal well being of those facing a Christ-less eternity cannot be  slotted into our vacation time.  How you engage all year in mission is your reference.

As a pastor it is joy to write those sorts of references, about someones whole-hearted prayer-saturated concern for their lost friends and family which has led them to witness to Jesus despite opposition that makes them suitable to lead on camp.  Or about someones walking with friends and family through suffering and pain whilst demonstrating and speaking of the love of Christ that proves they are ready for short term mission.  Make that the kind of reference your pastor can write for you.  Not because you want a good reference but because you've drunk deeply of God's grace and it has gripped your hard and imparted to you Christ's compassion for his children who face a lost eternity.