Yesterday was the final day of the 4-month-long missions course that Alexis and I have been attending.
I have mixed feelings about the course - as a modern rebel, I could not stand the packaged mode of learning and the over-simplification of the gospel mission of Christ. I was disgusted by the constant reference to “unreached” peoples, and the constant, underlying assumption that such “unreached” peoples lived somewhere far and distant. I was sickened by the unquestioned attitude of the course that the peoples around here are “reached”.
This course came at the same time as my own wrestling with my negativity and bitterness about church in general (see the “turning point” post), so it was probably not coincidental that I let such feelings color my attitude toward the course and I ended up simply rebelling - I didn’t do much of the last half of the course’s homeworks and readings, and I procrastinated on the final paper. Needless to say, I probably won’t be getting a certificate of completion.
Alexis, on the other hand, while she felt the same way about the unspoken assumptions of the course, had a very good attitude about it and did all the readings, the homeworks, and did a great job on her final paper 
Yes, it was a joint final paper, so I helped out somewhat too, but I have to be honest - she did a lot of the work!
Last night was the “Celebration” night for the course, and we were asked to fill out decision cards that indicated what roles we felt God might be calling us to. Again, I rebelled against such attempts to categorize my spiritual calling and did not fill mine out. The five roles were “goer”, “sender”, “mobilizer”, “intercessor”, and “welcomer”.
The unspoken assumption of the meaning of “goer” was “missionary to foreign lands far away”.
Alexis and I both feel strongly that God is indeed calling us to live in a foreign culture for a significant portion of our lives, perhaps the rest of our lives, in a few years. However, one thing we have found out through this course is we will likely NOT look like missionaries in the commonly understood senses of the word.
So I rebelled against being categorized as such - but Alexis felt that “goer” was the closest that came to capturing the undeniable sense in our hearts that we would, in fact, *go* at some point to wherever God calls us to.
There was a “commissioning” time at the end of the night, and the first group up were the “goers”. Before calling up the “goers”, though, Jeff, the man who organized the course, described this group as: “people who feel that God is calling them to cross cultural barriers and live with people in very different cultures from their own, people who respond to God’s calling to renounce their own cultural identity to identify with the people they find themselves amongst, people who seek to plant the seed of the gospel in that culture’s own soil rather than bringing in a potted plant of religion, people who strive to be learners, traders, and storytellers in their receiving culture to further the Kingdom”.
I found myself nodding to that - it was indeed a good summary of the role as taught by the course, and it was indeed what I felt strongly that God was calling us to be. Except that I saw us already IN a foreign culture that was so different from “church” culture, and I felt us being called to live among the NON-church culture right here, in preparation and practice for living cross-culturally wherever in the wide world God calls us to. But he’s already called us HERE (keep in mind, to me, this place IS a foreign place far from my home culture).
Maybe I had judged the course too harshly after all…
So, when Alexis asked me to go up with her (since she’s so acutely shy of the spotlight), I laughingly went along…
… but there were only four of us up there: Alexis, myself, and two other women named Emma and Sue.
No guys, and nobody else in the group of about 25 or so felt the call to live cross-culturally. Oh well…
So, we got commissioned!
Afterward I had this reflection on the truth of the calling - an identifying characteristic of “goers” is that they really “go” from their own culture to another culture so fully and wholeheartedly that people from their own culture don’t understand them. They are frequently misunderstood and far from their “own” people.
And that has certainly been my experience with church people - I feel so far from them, culturally, and so called to people who are NOT church people, that I’m certain of this calling to live OUTSIDE church culture.
So, we go
Now, if only I can learn to actually get along with church people…
May 16th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
I can only imagine that Jesus experienced the same feeling of outsider-ness when he was in the synagogue/temple situation. He wanted to celebrate, but was too distracted by the dishonest moneychangers and used cow salesmen to do anything but stew angrily when he was in the temple courtyard. He ended up going out to mountainsides before dawn to have his time with God.
And yet, how can we understand Paul in Hebrews 10:25 when he said not to give up meeting with other believers? I doubt Paul was referring specifically to attending formal church services, but then what was he referring to? A few years ago, an older and wiser believer corrected me when he said, “[Your relationship with God] is not ‘Jesus and Rachel on an island’.”
I believe that God speaks to me every day in words that normally only I can hear. Of course, I have to be careful to try every word to make sure that it is consistent with His written words and His work in the lives of all the people (believers and unbelievers) around me. I can hear a destructive/lying voice and my own voice as well, so listening takes effort on my part. Turning off the music I’m listening to, perhaps, or going someplace where I’m alone. Other times it can be in the middle of a crowd and a ton of light and music. The point is that I have to be quiet and wait, be okay with the silence and the not-knowing. To keep a short account with Him because I can’t hear Him very well when I’ve done wrong and not repented of it. To boldly act on something when I’m sure He’s telling me to do it, even if I don’t understand or am afraid that I’ll be a complete flop at it.
But most of the time, He’s not telling me to do dramatic things. I’m still learning to be content with just His presence in the everyday: it doesn’t mean I’m less spiritual because I’m not breaking new ground every day. When I read your words, I’m asking myself, “Am I making this quiet voice up? Is God’s real voice more reckless and challenging than this constant ‘trust Me’ reminder that I hear 90% of the time? Why don’t I feel like this other believer that I respect? Am I missing something, not sensing the deadness of the believer-life around me, or am I buying into the fat lies and dust that masquerades as true religion? Should I be restless and frustrated too? Should I be doing something different? Is he wrong instead? Why does it seem like You’re saying different things to the two of us?” and the only answer I get is “Trust Me” and the not-knowing and peace in the right now. Oh, and “get back to work and stop philosophizing.”
Praying for you, bro.
May 16th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
The major thing I’m wrestling with is exactly that piece of “fellowship with other believers”.
A (major) part of me wants to simply go it alone, like you put it - God and me on an island
However, the very core of my being knows how much folly there is in that course, knows it’s only my own desire for control that pushes me away from other believers. As Alexis and I “go”, right here in Burpsburg/Amherst/Noho, wisdom has us looking for other barbarian believers to push into the unknown together with.
So what I am realizing is that there’s a duality within me - there’s a very crucial part of my God-given identity that is marked for restlessness and adventure, that is shaped for the purpose of taking risks and stumbling in the process, for the purpose of journeying and discovering and questioning and breaking new ground in a never-satisfied quest for Jesus.
That part of me is in sharp disharmony with another part of me that wants to think in terms of black-and-white, binary, right versus wrong, and is insecure about which side I myself fall in. This part wants to make sure I am right about this, and one way of doing that is to make sure that those who don’t see things my way are wrong. This piece of my thinking automatically rebels against church people because, by identity, I am not comfortable in civilized surroundings.
“Not that church is bad or civilized people are bad” I want to say… but that’s a cop-out. I want to think that church is bad, because somehow it then legitimizes my wilderness-calling in that part of my heart that is so insecure that it needs to know it’s right in order to take the next step.
“Trust Me” is what God says - and there’s a place for me in the wilderness while there’s a place for others in the city and there’s the same God-story told among barbarian believers around wilderness campfires and among church believers around living room coffee tables.