Seeking significance

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Posted by Justin Long ⋅ September 1, 2006 ⋅

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This is the one year anniversary of Momentum. It snuck up and surprised even me. Looking back over the past six issues, it is amazing to see how much we have covered. Yet, as one might imagine, a lot of the articles seem to be less about momentum that is building and more about building momentum and momentum that needs to be built. We still have a long way to go.

Here was a recent reality check for me: A good friend recently shared some thoughts about security and the struggles to keep some things quiet. “When it gets right down to it, I don’t think they’re really going to care,” my friend said. “What is happening is barely a drop in the ocean. It’s not making a significant difference anyway.”

What is happening is barely a drop in the ocean.

In a recent sermon at our church, a visiting South African pastor compared the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah) to the state of missions today. The walls, he said, were broken. People had been living apathetically in Jerusalem’s rubble for 70 years. Statements like “I can’t do anything about it” were likely common. Yet Nehemiah believed the walls could be rebuilt if everyone worked together.

Nehemiah was pretty successful at what he did. He obviously had the ear of the king and the queen. Yet, Nehemiah wasn’t as concerned about something successful as he was about something significant: the reconstruction of the temple and the restoration of God’s name.

We could argue about whether missions to the unreached is as broken as the walls of Jerusalem. However, the apathy of many—most?—Christians about missions is pretty clear. We touched on this a bit in last month’s Reality Check. Put simply, the number of missionaries is growing again, but not fast enough.

However, I have hope, too: I had picked up a copy of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church (which I’d never yet read) and was skimming through it one day last week. I was struck by one statement, which I’ll paraphrase here: “Life wants to grow. God made it that way. Our job isn’t to make life grow, but to remove the obstacles from its growth.” He was writing about church growth, but I think it’s applicable to missions as well.

God wants us to finish the task. He wants to send His Spirit to spark church growth worldwide. Our job is to obey, to bring the Gospel, to break the barriers of our own apathy, sin, and fear.

This issue’s theme is to seek significance over success. I have been impressed with how it has come together. My wife and I had been very busy with Vacation Bible School here where we live. I had received several submissions for Momentum but hadn’t reviewed them until the last couple of weeks as I began putting things together.

I had an article I had been working on for some time: an expansion of a smaller, standalone piece I had published about a month ago on the Momentum website.

Then I opened up Josh Snyder’s piece. One of the things I had written about was the need to recruit from non-Western regions. Here was a great article about a training center that helps Asian missionaries get to the field. I hope readers will be inspired and encouraged to create similar schools. If you want to attend the school, or get in touch with its leaders to see about replicating it, just drop us a note and we’ll be happy to refer you to them.

We also received Robert Hancock’s piece on transformational change agents imbedded within cultures—which was very similar to the mission swarms I wrote about.

Ryan Shaw’s monthly column for students also reflected on the need to mobilize hundreds of thousands of new missionaries. It all fit together very nicely.

I found this issue somewhat easier to put together because of a new database we’re keeping on the Momentum website. The Monitor page tracks events, new statistics, trends, analysis pieces and more on a semi-daily basis: see it at www.momentum-mag.org…. You can even register and leave comments on specific articles.

It is somewhat daunting to think that, with all our activity, we are doing great things—but not enough. Still, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God wants the Good News to travel throughout the whole world. We need to obey Him and do what He has called us to do in this. I hope this issue’s articles give you seed for thought. If they do, then (in line with this month’s Reality Check on sharing), please drop us a line and share the thoughts you have.