Thoughts on Mission

There was something really unique about the mission team that was here a couple weeks ago. Not so much the team themselves (although they were all wonderful individuals), but more so the opportunities we had for outreach while they were here. Before moving here two years ago, both Sarah and the Zickafooses were involved in fulltime campus ministry in the States. For the past ten years Sarah and Joe have been bringing mission teams to Scotland, first to Inverness and then in 2001 they started coming to Aberdeen. The team that came this year was the first to be able to do outreach and have such a presence on campus - no doubt the fruit of years and years where others who came were able to do nothing more than prayer walk. Thanks to our Amazing God.

I'm reading a fantastic book right now called Off Road Disciplines by Earl Creps. In a chapter on mission and evangelism he refers to unsaved people as the "sought". We often refer to non-Christians as seekers, but in reality they aren't the ones seeking, God is. When Adam and Eve chose to disobey, it was God who searched the garden, crying out "Where are you?..." He is the Seeker. They are lost and Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost - making them the sought. Creps has many other interesting thoughts such as....

"The Church's job is not to save people but to shape the space in which God calls them to Himself. So I propose that, in addition to other perspectives, we start thinking of evangelism three-dimensionally, as a volume of missional space..."

Heart: "Embracing culture and loving the ministry are not enough. Mission begins in feeling the Seeker's love for the sought poured out 'into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given to us.'" In the heart dimension, the sought become more than simply the goal of our program, but the one He died for. We need to see them as a person who needs love and ask ourselves if they are feeling loved.

Venue: "Love needs an address. Without a specific location, it remains an abstract idea or a sentimental impulse, the kind of love on which pop music lyrics obsess." Practically, this means we need to ask ourselves if our venue is a place the sought want to come and will come. Is it the right missional space for the sought to ask questions, make friends, and find help?

Spirit: "The Spirit dimension involves the infusion of God's presence and power into the venues (personal, electronics, institutional) in which the Church interacts with the sought. Sensitivity to this dimension comes from realizing that, no matter the depth of our relationship with the sought, only in a relationship with the Seeker will they be 'called out of darkness and into the wonderful light.'" It is not enough for the sought to make a relational connection with us. Although this is vital, without also connecting them with God we've missed the point. There needs to be some kind of movement in terms of their receptivity. In other words, the sought needs to move closer to the Gospel. Whether by program, atmosphere, relationships, or all of those, the sought needs to be impacted and moved closer to realizing that the Gospel is an option for them

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One thing that really sticks out about Jesus is that He kept getting invited to parties. That really speaks something about His genuineness in His relationships with others. He must have been a really good friend. It was so rewarding to see how many unsaved students showed up to our Ceilidh on Friday night. Most of them had never been to a Radiate event before. One of the girls in my small group brought several unsaved friends with her. One of them said as they were leaving, "For church people, they sure do throw a good party." Another one told her it was the first Ceilidh she'd ever been to where she wasn't drunk. And she had a great time. That says a lot! It's a big deal because students like that will wonder why we can have so much fun without getting wrecked on alcohol. Maybe that girl will start to wonder if she needs to be drunk to really enjoy herself. Maybe she'll even start to ask herself why she uses alcohol to cover up who she really is. Having that much fun with "church people", in a church, will make them think differently about God. After a bit (or a lot) more time investing in relationship with them and consistantly showing them a kind of Love they can't get anywhere else, they start to realize that God not only loves them, but He likes them as well. And maybe, just maybe, He can take the broken bits of their lives and make them whole. I have seen this happen with my own eyes. It's a beautiful thing.

We are still learning a lot about how to reach the sought in Scotland. If you looked over the schedule of events from when the mission team was here, you probably noticed that the majority of them were social events. There is a reason for this. We've tried a number of different things and used to do what seemed like the most non-threatening of all outreaches: We met in a pub for a year and a half. During these meetings we'd eat and fellowship, our band would cover secular songs, Sarah would talk for maybe 15 minutes about a relevant topic, always sharing truth from God's Word but sometimes not even mentioning the name of Jesus. And for quite a while, this worked. Radiate more than quadrupled in size during that time, but it got to a point last sememster where our students were saying their unsaved friends didn't want to come because "they knew what we were up to." BUT, they loved coming to our social events which, most of the time, met at the church.

So this semester we've taken one step backward and are doing more social events for our outreaches, in addition to our Bible studies and services that meet on a regular basis. The goal is to create moments where we can interact with university students and show them God's love and truth thru our relationships with them. Cause honestly, that's the only way they're going to see it. So with the Cafes (one of our outreach events, which happens biweekly) we use the platform of our students creative arts to talk about God. It's not about us being as clever as we can in our presentation, but about us being authentically honest about who we are and who God is.

We don't pray to a dead god, we pray to the only God. Please continue to pray that we will have divine appointments with university students, and that we will have the opportunity to introduce them to God.