Go Home

When God told me not to be a missionary…

The insulting phrase “GO HOME!” rolled around in my head for multiple days after attending Catalyst Conference in Dallas back in May, 2012. I was in the middle of my seminary education at Dallas Theological Seminary and I had just switched my degree from counseling to pastoral theology because God’s plans were different than mine. After much deliberation, prayer, and the counsel of friends and advisors I changed the course of my life and ministry forever.

I didn’t know what “go home” meant for me at the time, but Judah Smith was loud and clear (figuratively and literally) about his intentions for us as an audience of pastors and ministry leaders. Preaching from Mark 5, he very energetically exposed a major point in that story that we often overlook; the fact that Jesus tells the guy “NO, you can’t follow me. Go home.” This insight did something more for the conference attendees than just highlight a different perspective on that passage, it hit at the heart of every local pastor in the auditorium. The desire to escape our homeland in search of something different, something more exciting and fulfilling, something more…missional.

I was very angry to be honest. My wife, Katy, and I had spent the previous semester researching and contemplating mission work in Europe or possibly in New England (might as well be a foreign land for two “southerners”). Our thoughts and conversation very clearly revealed we were riding the 21st century “escapism” bandwagon: that insatiable desire for adventure, to be lost in another world. But what we thought was a desire to seek out something new and exciting and challenging was in reality a desire to escape a way of life and people that we were fed up with. We just disguised our fears and frustrations as a passion to be missionaries.

Now don’t hear me wrong. This has nothing to do with the vast number of American missionaries outside our borders who clearly heard the call of God to go to “the ends of the earth.” This is a confession. A confession that I (and many other pastors like me) NEVER heard the call to abandon my people to minister to others. I was just scared and didn’t have the guts to take on ministry in the southern United States or I just didn’t want or care to…which is worse.

That day at Catalyst, God told me not to be a missionary.

He very clearly spoke against my selfishness and challenged me to face my fears. I realized that my calling to ministry had always confused me because I was wanting to use it the wrong way, to the wrong places, for the wrong people. My desire to escape the racism, bigotry, church-on-every-street-corner world didn’t make me a missionary…it made me a coward.

Jesus commands us to “love your neighbor” and for me that most certainly did NOT mean my fellow suburbanites. Although, in the past four years God has completely turned my heart around. I now see that when Jesus says “love your neighbor” he was speaking to the families who lived in suburbia. He was speaking to folks who knew better, folks who were educated, financially stable, involved citizens, folks who generally care about others.

How do I know this? Read Luke’s version in 10:29, “But he (the scribe who asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was), desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?” (emphasis mine) This guy had a comfortable life because by the end of Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan, he had obviously NOT been loving his neighbor. Jesus had to call him out on it. He had let his life get too easy only loving those who loved him. Suburban life is comfortable. I really like it. But loving my neighbor is not comfortable so I need to go do ministry somewhere else where life is definitely NOT comfortable. Huh?!? (again, I’m talking to the 99% who aren’t called to overseas missions…)

Jesus never left his home turf in his small corner of the middle east. He didn’t pack his bags and travel to distant lands. He brought the mission of God to the family that lived next door, or the guy he passed by every Sabbath on his way to church, or the cashier at the market place down the street. He loved his neighbors in suburbia. All of them.

My hope is not to belittle foreign mission work, God knows we need it. I’m here to encourage the other 99% not to give up on their own hometowns and their home-people. When we give up on our own callings here at home, we fail those in foreign missions. We’re not helping the spread the call to love. We’re only shifting it from one side of the planet to the other. Instead, I want to pass on Judah’s message reflecting the original command of Jesus in Mark 5, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”

So go home and love your neighbor. Be a missionary.