If you claim the title of missionary, then

Part of me rebels against the phrase “we are all missionaries.” I want to keep the term “missionary” for those who go cross-culturally and make disciples of non-believers.

Yet, most of me acknowledges the phrase is obviously true (which is why I am trying more and more to talk about ‘cross-cultural workers’ rather than ‘missionaries’).

When you hear the Greek word “Ekballo” (as in Luke 10′s “send forth laborers”), the word “ekballo” is translated in the Latin Vulgate into a form of “mittere,” and it is from this Latin term that missionary descended. To be a “missionary” is to be “sent.”

Anyone can be sent by God to someone(s) – to a “field” of some kind, that is ready for harvest. Whether God sends everyone is a matter of semantics that could be debated, but I won’t debate it here.

The problem, for me, is the same problem some people have with the term “Christian.” It’s the problem of those who say they are missionaries, but never do the missionary task (just as the problem of those who say they are Christians, but never show any fruit).

It’s a dangerous thing to say “God has sent me as a missionary to __” — and then not do anything about it.

Jonah was a really extreme example of this: a man who really didn’t want to see a people saved, and then railed bitterly against God when they were. A lot of us don’t go so far as Jonah. We don’t say “God has sent as a missionary to my Jonah” and then go out and get a Jonah somewhere else just to avoid it. We don’t rail against God when all our coworkers respond to our invitation to come to church.

No: we go to Nineveh, and we don’t speak at all. We just go and stand in the market, and buy our food from day to day, and eat it–and don’t do anything else.

If you are indeed sent as a missionary to a place, then you already know you have a responsibility – a fearful responsibility – to act. I have no problem agreeing that you are a missionary – but I say to you, if you claim the title, then woe to you if you do not act on it.