We understand the concept of being sent. Our college sends us to a recruiting event to represent the school. The coach sends us as part of the away-team to the semifinals. The accounting firm we intern with sends us to observe an audit. Our campus club sends us to the university administration to help ensure the interests of our club are represented. We are sent.
Jesus framed his identity around the notion of being sent. In fact John repeatedly describes Jesus as sent. “
Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is
this: to believe in the one he has sent.’” (John 6:29). In John’s gospel, the words for “sent” are used sixty times (more than any other book in the New Testament). They are used primarily to describe the identity of Jesus. Jesus saw himself as sent into the world by the Father to do His will.
Jesus’ passions flowed from his understanding of being sent. After being energized by the life-turning of the woman at the well, Jesus said, “
My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). “Food” is a euphemism for what energizes him. Jesus understood himself as sent, and that identity propelled him into life-changing ministry in the world.
In the same way Jesus understood himself as one sent, he asks us to understand ourselves as sent. Before the cross, Jesus prayed, “
As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18). After the cross, the risen Jesus said, “
As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21).
We are sent just as Jesus was sent. Every Christian is a missionary. Every church is a missionary church. Our passions flow from this sense of identity
just as Jesus’ passions were rooted to his sense of being sent.
If we are sent, then we will share in the following five passions:
1.
We will seek ways of acting that reflect our missionary identity. As a church or campus ministry, we need to ask, “Are there works we need to be part of that better reflect the nature of the church as sent”? We need to be involved in works that remind us of and are reflective of the fact that we are sent.
2.
We will see missions not simply as one category of work, but as a way to approach all our work. Here the question is, “How can we look at what we are already doing through this lens of being sent?” Another question we mustask concerns how God can use us in our current major (accounting, engineering, etc.) to reach and save others. Being sent doesn’t necessarily mean changing your campus ministry calendar or shifting your major. It does mean we will see that God’s work is a 24 hour-a-day vocation, not just something we do when we gather on the weekend. Christians who consider themselves mere “members” of a church or campus ministry, will never be able to engage their world like Jesus did. However, those who see themselves as
sent will realize Jesus is calling them to be every-day missionaries.
3.
Every member will see him/herself as a missionary. Part of the problem with the word “missionary” is that we tend to reserve it for those who are qualified by a unique set of gifts, experience, education, and funding for a stereotypical role. If we are all sent, it means, at some level, we all wear the missionary label. If we follow Jesus’ lead we will not be content merely to send others out into the world. We will see ourselves as sent into the world.
4.
We will engage our community as a missionary engages their community. A missionary church does not maintain a fortress mentality shutting herself off from the rest of the world. Being sent implies a purpose. It impacts the way we interact with our context. A missionary campus group takes the initiative to engage its community. A church that sees itself as sent will ask, “What needs exist in this community? What is important to our community? How can we highlight those needs/values to draw our community closer to Christ?”
5.
A missionary church takes its primary identity from the sender, not from the place to which it was sent. A missionary, regardless of how long they live on a field, will never truly be at home there. They will always carry with them a sense that they do not belong there. They live in that field, but they are not of that field. Jesus says that we are in the world, but we are not of the world. A campus ministry that is sent will never completely feel at home in their culture. We do everything we can to engage our campus community and reach out, but we do not take our primary identity from the campus. We do not fundamentally belong to this place. Our primary allegiance and our actual home is with God.
Jesus’ passions flowed from an identity informed by the reality of being sent. He knew he was sent by God, and this identity influenced his purposeful engagement with the world. We too are sent by God. Every church, every campus ministry, is a missionary group regardless of geographic location. Allow God to fashion your identity in this framework, and then let him propel us together into life-changing ministry in the world.
Craig and Leslee Altrock served four years with the campus ministry in Memphis, TN and currently work
with the Let’s Start Talking Ministry which mobilizes (and sends!) hundreds of colleges students every year to share their faith and their lives in mission settings around the world. They live in Fort Worth, TX with their three boys; Joshua (7), Matthew (4), and Andrew (1 ½ years).
