This weekend was a big missions emphasis weekend in our church community and in the city. Cincinnati hosted the annual National Missionary Convention and our congregation helped volunteer in various ways. We had some guest speakers today from the Ukraine who our church supports.

I have to admit I've been a bit deficient in my understanding and involvement in world missions up to this point in my life. It's really good to be a part of a congregation that is so involved in so many areas of the world. I have a lot to learn. I feel like things are starting to make connections for me in some surprising ways. For several years now I've best understood American culture and the role of the church through a "missionary lens." Through the teachings of missiologists who have applied their understandings of foreign mission work to current Western culture, I've discovered a new faith vocabulary and framework for understanding theology. This has been a welcome change for me as I have for quite awhile felt uneasy about the western, expansionist vocabulary and "strategery" so often associated with traditional evangelism.

As I said, I have a lot to learn - but as I'm growing in my knowledge and relationships with more globally connected and engaged Jesus-followers, here are some things I'm picking up:

>> The missionary mindset does not bemoan the marginal status of the church. Rather than trying to fight for a central voice in culture (something they likely have never had to begin with) the missionary mindset recognizes it's challenges (and threats), but seeks to find creative ways to live out the gospel in a limited situation.

>> It understands the value of slow change. Seed change. My new friends working in the slums of Kenya are doing amazing work. However, when asked about how they define "results" - they emphasized the "one person at a time" result. This, in a slum that is home to over 800,000 residents. One at a time. And slowly. Through building trust. Through setbacks. Through dogged faithfulness even when you wonder if you're really making that much of a difference in the big picture. And when asked if they could see a point when they would be able to look back and say, "We did it!" They replied: "When Jesus comes back." The work never ends.

>> The missionary mindset understands the difficult challenge of an enculturated gospel. At their best, missionaries understand that the form of God's community will be most true when it takes on the indigineous particularities of a given context. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to faith and community development (most likely a western plan), missionaries understand that time spend learning the languages (verbal, visual, relational, political, etc.), establishing trust through shared life, and acting out the gospel in ways that make the preaching seem secondary (like the footnotes on the actions)... these are the moves that can bring about an authentic, indigineous expression of a Christ-community. Which means that it will look as different from other Christ-communities as the contexts themselves look different from each other.

>> Missionaries also know something about suffering. They have witnessed a depth of suffering most Americans can only have nightmares about. They themselves have often suffered greatly. I read an article a long time ago about a guy who works for the government investigating war crimes around the world. He goes into villages, after a raid of guerrilla fighters have come through and killed men, women, and children. He wades through their corpses (sometimes knee deep) trying to figure out what happened and who is to blame. I remember him mentioning in that article that we cannot fully know the God we pray to until we have also, like God, stood knee-deep in the suffering of his own children. Many missionaries have an understanding of the gospel that has grown up alongside an acute understanding of suffering. Therefore, their gospel is one that suffers even as it heals. This seems to me to be a radically important aspect of the gospel that is missing for most American Christians. What would it look like for our gospel understanding to have global suffering woven into it's content and therefore shaping the various ways the gospel is formed in society?

I know I have a lot to learn from these people - both home and abroad. Missionaries have always struck me as a bit quirky - a bit odd. To be completely transparent, in my younger (more immature) days, I wondered what they had to offer to those working in the American context. I couldn't see how what they were doing related to what we were doing. Of course, they could benefit from us - but not necessarily the other way around. I see now how ridiculously uninformed and arrogant that view was. It revealed the myth that says America is the fount of all good things - education, wealth, health, power... I'm embarrassed I ever thought that way. Thankfully that illusion burst for me years ago. For a few years now, and especially lately, I'm realizing how much we need to learn from those who were brave enough to hop the pond and discover what that gospel means in a context completely unlike their own. They have lessons to teach us about how to be Jesus-followers in our own context.

The question always seems to come up: "How can we help those people?" (and to be sure, we have some resources that ought to be used to actually help.) But I really feel like it's equally, if not more relevant to ask, "How can those people help us?"