Stories of Mission
Explore mission themes in our quarterly magazine as workers tell stories of making disciples in the way of Christ.
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Moving Together in Mission
A few years ago while recovering from surgery I picked up a book gathering dust on my shelf called In His Image. I found the combination of medical insight, missionary zeal and biblical wisdom to be fascinating and moving at the same time, especially fitting to read while my own body healed.
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Worker Profile: Jhustin Thompson
Jhustin serves in a college ministry assignment with Every Nation Campus and VMMissions. “My work and goal is to show the love of God and be a light to campus. I want to see lives changed by the good news and do the work of God,” he writes.
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Call to Prayer: Joining God’s Heart for Mission
Prayer is a fundamental underpinning of how we partner with God to engage in our small part of the great gospel task. As followers of Jesus pray together, the Holy Spirit enables us to see the grand reality of God’s plan for the restoration for humanity, and to see the immediate needs of the people right in front of us.
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God Helps Us Speak the Message
Receiving the call to go to another place implies many changes and a lot of learning in unfamiliar areas, such as language, culture, and food. All of this can become overwhelming,” David and Marta write. “But we can be filled with encouragement and hope knowing that the Lord will be with us.”
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God’s Mission Is Bigger Than Mine
“God’s mission is bigger than mine,” church planter Juan José Lagos writes. “That allows me to join his story and his mission rather than carrying the burden of accomplishing it all on my own strength. This is how we must see ourselves as we follow the call of God our Father who reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ.”
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God’s Heart Is for Reconciliation
God leading this mission helps me acknowledge that he doesn’t need us to accomplish his plans, but rather, God invites us to partner with him. Personally, this demolishes any ounce of pride in my heart that tries to make disciples without Christ’s partnership. This also allows me to rest in the fact that I don’t have to be in control.
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God’s Mission Has a Church
Our church history is shaped by the legacy of Christendom: the church aligning with political power to protect and maintain our position in society. This is vastly different from understanding the church being shaped as a missionary church whose calling is to be embedded as “sent ones” in our own societies.
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Doxological Mission
God’s mission is first and foremost about the pursuit of God’s glory. It includes us, but it is not primarily about our needs, ambitions or hopes. God’s burning desire is for all of creation to know God’s glory and to give him the praise he deserves so that we might enjoy him together forever.
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Whose Voice Are We Listening To?
Anita (name changed), serving in a slum in Indonesia, writes, “It is lovely when we have attainable rhythms and goals to keep us healthy and measure “success” clearly. But on the mission field, so often this seems impossible. Much of our energy is spent just surviving in a different culture, language, and religious context. And it can feel impossible to measure.”
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Success Requires Transformation
“In my four years on the VMMissions Board of Directors, I have found that our vision statement serves as a beautiful and life-giving objective,” Paul Yoder, board chair, writes. “The verb “envisions” speaks to the “picture” that we are painting. Three scriptures have recently been helping me more fully “envision” success in God’s kingdom.
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Success Can Rise Out of Failure
Anne (name changed) shares an experience that illustrates her struggle with success. “How could people in our own faith community act so vengefully and with so little consideration for their children’s faith?” she writes. “Just when I rejoice at how much fruit is resulting from my ministry, things fall apart. I could easily name ten other situations like this.”
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Success Is Doing What Pleases the Lord
“My own definition of success has to run deeper than just a sense of accomplishment, or I’m not going to make it very far,” Nathan Carr writes. “Early in my ministry I fell into that trap of thinking I was the one who had to make things happen. I put everything on my own shoulders, and it wore me out. I was forced to face the reality that I could only give them so much.”
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