Connected to the Global Church
The Faith Driven Movement is Global
One of the biggest myths in the Christian church today is that the calling to use your life in God’s commission is a sacred, mystical experience reserved for only a select few. More specifically, it’s a calling that you can only fulfill if you’re a pastor or a missionary.
But here’s the truth: All Christians are called to ministry. Not necessarily to vocational ministry, but to leverage their lives for the Great Commission. After all, that call was included in the initial call to follow Jesus. “Follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:19). That means when you accepted Jesus, you accepted the call to mission.
Currently, there are 40,000 evangelical missionaries (from all denominations) living in what missiologists call the 10/40 window. (That’s the area of the world located between the 10 and 40 degree latitude lines, where the most unreached people groups live.) Every one of those 40,000 men and women are doing God’s work. Praise God for it! We should pray for them. We should support them financially. We should honor their sacrifice. And we should send far more of them.
But we also need to frankly admit that 40,000 is a pretty small number when placed next to the billions of people who don’t know Jesus.
Compare this with the roughly 2,000,000 Americans working in other fields in that same 10/40 window. Half of them (that’s 1M) identify as Christians. Even if you skeptically write off 90% of them as people who aren’t really serious about their faith (and that really is skeptical of you!), you still have 200,000 Christians strategically placed among unreached people groups. That’s five times the number of missionaries in the same region.
The question is no longer if you are called, only where and how.
Scripture references:
And that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations. - Luke 24:47
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” - Matthew 28:18-20
It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. - Acts 1:7-8