You know you've arrived when you're the main feature on the church sign.
It still stops me a little short, though, whenever I hear or see myself being called a 'missionary.' It's an accurate description of what I'm doing, but that word carries a lot of baggage for me.¹ I grew up reading biographies of people like William Carey, Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, pioneers who gave up everything and risked their lives as part of their calling.
Me?
I have a comfortable flat,
good friends,
plenty to eat,
relatively frequent visits back home,
easy communication with friends and family around the world,
opportunity to study at a university,
and the list could go on.
That's not to say that it's all sunshine and smooth sailing, but I find it hard to place my experience in the same class as others who might share the same job description, but who risked and suffered and gave all they had. Early pioneers in the American missions movement packed their belongings in a casket when they set sail, knowing it was likely that they'd die overseas.
My suitcase has rolling wheels, a telescoping handle, and a frequent-flier priority-handling tag.
A closer look at the church sign, however, shows that there's more than one name on it,² and this is where things start to get interesting. One of my best friends from growing up is now the pastor at the same church we went to as teenagers. Perhaps one of the more surreal moments³ during my entire time in the U.S. was arriving at this church to speak one Sunday morning, and being ushered into the pastor's office, now inhabited by my good friend. Who would have guessed that almost fifteen years after we both started going to this church, that we'd have ended up there in that room together, now as a pastor and missionary, both supported by this small but vibrant community of believers?
God uses the unlikely, the unexpected, and the unforeseen. I see it reading through the stories of those who left home and country to pursue their dreams and callings. And I see it around me, along the twisted paths of life winding their way to a place that could only have been coordinated by someone with both a sense of humor and a sense of purpose.
I'm hesitant to call myself a missionary, for a multitude of reasons. Some reasons come from a good place,⁴ and others from insecurities, doubts and fears. But I do find a sliver of ownership in that word in this sense: I've sought to make myself open and available to wherever the spirit of God might lead me;
sometimes it sends you around the world,
sometimes you end up right back where you started,
sometimes you find yourself in over your head, and
sometimes you find yourself in a spot that is perfectly you.
Missionary or student, warehouse worker or meter reader, the name of the job is less important than the availability of the heart. My prayer is that whatever my job title is now or in the future, that I will keep striving to make myself available, wherever that might lead and whatever labels might be applied.
¹Good baggage, but baggage nonetheless.
²Just in case you thought I was growing overly egotistical
³In a good kind of surreality
⁴As much good as has been done by people bearing the title of "missionary" over the years, it can carry a negative connotation for some people. I hate to put myself in a box, or to allow others to do so, and try to avoid easily-defined labels. That's just how I roll
