Mekdes Haddis: Our role and God’s role in missions

The power of Char­ac­ter: A clos­er look at Acts 1:8 shows us the clear instruc­tion and swift strat­e­gy Jesus gives to his dis­ci­ples for mak­ing an impact around the world. It’s a sim­ple and pow­er­ful yet heav­i­ly over­looked mod­el in West­ern Chris­tian­i­ty. The church was birthed on Pen­te­cost when the Holy Spir­it filled the dis­ci­ples with pow­er and sent them on mis­sion. Before that moment, they had been wait­ing dili­gent­ly in prayer and com­mu­ni­ty because they knew going with­out the Holy Spir­it was fruit­less. Their char­ac­ter was devel­oped dur­ing their time with Jesus and after his death and res­ur­rec­tion in their wait­ing. These dis­ci­ples stood up for the rights of the oppressed and con­tin­ued to heal and teach peo­ple just as Jesus had taught them to do.

Being in wor­ship of Christ and in min­istry in the Unit­ed States, I have observed a false dichoto­my in West­ern mis­sion move­ments, one that empha­sizes going some­where far away with­out first mak­ing sure those going have a lifestyle that resem­bles Christ.… I have seen greater empha­sis on ​“stay until you’re filled with pow­er” than on ​“go and make dis­ci­ples” in oth­er cul­tures who cling on to the pow­er of the Holy Spir­it for their abil­i­ty to be a missionary.

There is in West­ern the­ol­o­gy a lack of empha­sis on prayer, fast­ing, and the teach­ing of Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion and iden­ti­fy­ing with Christ in our suf­fer­ing; there­fore we don’t see the fruit of long-suf­fer­­ing in believ­ers. This robs the church of the abil­i­ty to not only send but even have faith­ful Chris­tians who can do gospel work where they are. An empha­sis to ​“BE” a dis­ci­ple before ​“MAK­ING” dis­ci­ples is nec­es­sary if the West­ern church is to remain an essen­tial part of the glob­al mis­sion movement.

The pow­er of a believer’s tes­ti­mo­ny is the ulti­mate weapon of destruc­tion against the ene­my. As seen in Rev­e­la­tion 12:11:

They con­quered him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
for they did not love their lives
to the point of death.

As believ­ers who are called to car­ry the gospel around the world, our abil­i­ty to tes­ti­fy of God’s good­ness in our lives has far more pow­er than our abil­i­ty to indoc­tri­nate others.

Greg Ogden uses the acronym FAT in the book Dis­ci­ple­ship Essen­tials, which stands for faith­ful, avail­able, and teach­able, to describe the peo­ple Jesus invest­ed in and sent off as dis­ci­ple mak­ers. Ogden also incor­po­rates this tool and describes mak­ing dis­ci­ples a few at a time in his book Trans­form­ing Dis­ci­ple­ship, empha­siz­ing char­ac­ter and will­ing­ness as decid­ing fac­tors in whether time and ener­gy should be invest­ed in teach­ing some­one to become a dis­ci­ple mak­er. This is ulti­mate­ly the call to the mis­sion field. We must ask our­selves, ​“What type of tes­ti­mo­ny do we have as believ­ers that is wor­thy of spread­ing to the ends of the earth?”

The mis­sion is not an expe­di­tion, nor is it a sto­ry of us sav­ing oth­ers. It is a call to die to self and live for Christ. It is sac­ri­fi­cial, it is cost­ly, it is bru­tal, and it tru­ly is a call to lose our pre­sup­posed iden­ti­ty so we can be one with Christ. Our life is to be eclipsed by his all-con­­sum­ing fire that unites us with every­thing he is so that we are sure exam­ples of Christ when the world inter­acts with us.

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