Called to be Missional (part 1)

What does it mean to be missional? To be missional is to adopt the posture of a missionary sent to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a certain unreached people group. One of the heroes of my faith is Hudson Taylor who went to China as a missionary. In an effort to reach the Chinese, Taylor learned the language and the culture of the Chinese people he longed to see come to Christ. Eventually Hudson Taylor dressed and looked like a man from China in just about every way except for his skin color; he did this because he believed that this was the most strategic way to bring the Gospel to the people he was sent to. Missionary work was not something Hudson did on certain hours of the day; missionary work became his life in every way motivated by his love of the Chinese and his desire to see them come to Christ. Hudson Taylor embodied the missional life. Christopher Wright, in his excellent book, The Mission of God, does a fine job in showing his readers that from Genesis through Revelation the Bible is a story about a God on mission to reconcile all things to Himself. Wright writes that when it comes to mission, we must understand something very significant: "Mission is not ours; mission is God’s. Certainly, the mission of God is the prior reality out of which flows any mission that we get involved in. Or, as has been nicely put, it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world but that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission…" (Wright. The Mission of God, p. 62). We are not used to thinking of missions as a posture every Christian is called to take, but instead as an activity that only takes place somewhere other than the communities we live in participated in by a select few we have labeled “missionaries.” Did not Jesus Himself say, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matt. 28:19-20)?