The danger in thinking only a few are missionaries is

…In order to simplify our lives, and deal with information overload, we use broad generalizations and stereotypes in order to categorize people and respond with them. Briefly, we put people in boxes and judge books by covers. It’s the only way, really, to deal with the massive amounts of information that come at us everyday.

I believe it’s true that only certain people are missionaries – that the “missionary task” goes beyond being a witness to one’s neighbor. That the missionary task requires intentionality to reach a people and a population, not just individuals.

But the danger in recognizing this fact is that we are tempted to assume the “missionary box” is small – that we shrink it down to a certain size, and make its boundaries fairly rigid.

We go from “There are only a few missionaries” “Only a few people can be missionaries” “I am not one of the few.”

I think that only certain people are missionaries not because many can’t be missionaries – but because most choose not to be.

We might think of missionaries as the “super-sainted-elite,” which I can’t be part of because I’m not saintly enough. Or, we might think of missionaries as the “radical few” – the people who do crazy things (living in mud huts? eating bugs? memorizing the whole Bible?), which I can’t be part of, because I’m not crazy. Or, we might think of missionaries as the “called in a lightning flash” – the people who God appeared to in a burning bush, and I can’t be part of it, because he’s never called me like that.

We can “live on mission” in our daily lives yet never “cross the border” into being one of the “radicals” who “take the trip.”

Yes, God may very well have us where we are in order to be salt and light to those around us.

Or, we may very well be where we are because we have succumbed to apathy and passive disobedience.

There are 2 billion people who have no access to the Gospel. And the reason they have no access is not because of their rebellion, but because no one has crossed the hard lines to get to them.

Obviously, there are some people, somewhere, who should be crossing those lines – and are not.

They probably think they couldn’t possibly be missionaries, because they don’t fit the missionary box. The job of the mission-passionate is to shatter the box.

To say, “There are only a few missionaries” because too many people think missionaries are few in number – and never realize that there are many missionaries, just most of them don’t realize what they can be.