The Mission Report

Short-term mission trips are weird animals. On the one hand, one of the worst mistakes the modern evangelical church has made is reducing missions to "we'll just go hammer nails for a couple of days up in Poverty Ridge, Arkansas and help those poor unfortunate folks out". This is NOT fulfilling the Great Comission of Matthew 28. The Biblical idea of missions is a state of mind, not a weekend trip. With this in mind, a weekend mission trip becomes a means to an end, not the end itself. The idea is to immerse a group of people in the problems of poverty, etc. in such a way as to transform hearts and minds and bring about mission mindedness (and if we can help somebody by hammering nails along the way, then all the better).

That was the idea we had in putting together our weekend in Birmingham. We set up our trip to work in a horribly impoverished area, stay the night in that area (on the floor, not in comfy beds) and then worhsip at an urban church that seems to understand that the Gospel is not just for white people from the Memphis suburbs. However, as practice rarely resembles theory, the reality of our trip was quite different than the plan. While Daniel Cason and his ministry to impoverished, elderly folks on the north side of Birmingham was nothing short of inspirational (as was worship at Red Mountain Church), the things that seemed to stick out were Guthrie's Chicken, New York Pizza, and Old Navy.

This bothered me for a minute until I remebered my RUF training: God is at work, it's up to us to figure out how and where and jump on board with whatever He's doing. Here's the thing: while I was so busy worrying about whether or not we "got" missions God was at work building deep, rich Gospel community in our group! God took my weekend about missions and turned it into a weekend of brothers and sisters stregnthening the bounds between the body of Christ! All of us have a weekend full of memories and closer relationships with one another as result of everything we did on this trip. Once again the God of the universe has humbled me and showed me exactly how foolish the best laid plans of mice and men can be. I'll let Him worry about planning the seeds of mission mindedness in our group. Right now I'm gonna sit back and enjoy the sweet community God is building among us.