everybody is a missionary

So here we are preparing to move to England to be missionaries and to be perfectly honest many people don't get why we would go to England. I understand where they are coming from, I mean in England you have running water and no one lives in grass huts. See for most people we have grown up with the idea that if you were a missionary you had to live in some remote and primitive place, and the truth is that for years that was true.

But here is my argument to that....all Christians are missionaries. Over the years we have put values on various people and what they "do" for God. If you were a pastor then you were more special to God and therefore more important. It also meant that pastors and missionaries were the ones who built the church and the rest of us just came to enjoy it. Well the more I read and think about it I see that we as Christians are all missionaries. Paul talks about in 1 Cor. 12 that there are many parts but one body, so there are many different functions but essentially we are all the same thing. We proudly wear the name of Christians and to do that means to be like Christ. So if we all call ourselves Christians then that means we all want to be like Jesus. Jesus was a missionary, so therefore we are all called to be missionaries. Being a missionary or "church-planter" does not mean that you live in a mud hut in the middle of the jungle (although that's great too!), it just means that in your normal life, you keep the Kingdom of God in mind and grow it actively through prayer, evangelism, meditation, and discipleship, all for the purpose of glorifying God by building his Church.

So yes we are moving to another country to be "missionaries" but in reality what we do and what you do is not so different. The people we reach will be in England, and the people you reach will be in the cubicle next to you, your neighbor, your professor, your child's teacher, the waiter at the restaurant, and even the grocery store clerk. So like Jesus said, "...the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand..." lets all go live like it. Go and be a missionary!!!