Your Life is a Mission Trip

A couple of weeks ago, we (Holly, John, Clay, Brian, Mark and I) had the opportunity to accompany Grand Parkway Baptist Church's students on a mission trip. They were serving City Church in Amarillo. Our experience taught me a lot as the week went on.

First of all, City Church loves their community. They feed thousands of kids every month. They feed the kids of people who spend food money on drugs. They take the food into the 'hoods where these kids live. What they've gained in the process is an opportunity to procalim the message of Jesus. The week we were there, the church held a three day crusade to reach out to the families of these kids. Jesus earned the right to talk to people about who He was because of the unbelievable love He lavished on people. City Church modeled this. The beauty was that these people did "church" completely different than we would have, but God used it. You know what was more important than the style of how they ministered? It was that God had told them to do it, and they said, Yes, Lord. We learned a lot - not that we need to go home and do that, but that we need to continue to be who God has created us to be in our community.

I learned something else from my Father-in-law, the Yoda of Youth Ministry. Rick told the kids in a teaching time, "Your life is a mission trip." What a concept. How could I have missed that? Why do we think we have to spend some money and go to a different place to do missions? The reality is that now people are sending missionaries to the United States to reach the pre-Christian population. We should be offended! We should be filled with holy anger! That's why God put us here - to reach our community. We are missionaries. Wherever you live, your life is a mission trip. If we lived each day as if it were a mission trip, we would see the Kingdom of God growing in our daily lives. Acts says that day by day and house by house people were being added to the Kingdom. That's an attainable goal for us or any community of Christ-followers continually devoted to pursuing the fullness of God. Let's live on mission together and pray that the Kingdom would come on earth, maybe even in San Marcos.