Millennials and Mission.

On mid February I joined a conversation in Twitter about World mission and Millennials. I was encouraged to write some thoughts about that, starting from an article that you can read here: https://www.kouya.net/?p=10687

I promised to write about that but as you know already, things changed quickly and after 43 days in lock-down finally I found the time to gather my notes and put something together after sweeping the house, washing dishes and clear some toys of my 2 year old daughter.

So, Eddie mention on the article a couple of ideas that i would like to talk about.

Let´s start with the idea of " Involvement with world mission means involvement with a mission agency".

Personally i think it is not necessarily like that. Even when I remember that what sparked the first ideas of serve cross-culturally was reading an article of a secular Colombian doctor going to serve as an obstetrician in Afghanistan during the war of 2001 with an international NGO (a structure), now days people like Sam George, member of the Laussanne Movement, has been talking for years about the concept of migration itself as a movement made from God whit the purpose of using it to spread the Gospel and reach communities never reached before.* So, this "mission trips " have the shape of a refugee leaving his country because of war, a young person making an exchange with a university the other side of the ocean, a family looking for a more opportunities in another country or even a business man opening the market of his company.

Therefore, that implicates the fact that world mission is not an "activity". It is not something that starts when your plane lands in the country that you are going to "serve" and finishes when you take your plane back, but is more like a conscious lifestyle based on trying to be be a wideness of Jesus in your homeland or wherever you are, every day of your life. and i love that concept!

As well, now days are so many virtual resources that easily you could contact someone from the other side of the world and organize a trip to visit him or her. Of course is easier to say it than to do it, but it is possible, so, churches could contact other churches to send from one end to the other people interested in serve cross-culturally. If we see world missions from that angle we could think that mission agencies are unnecessary and in some ways they are, because God can move people from different reasons and still use them to do what He wants to, and in order to reach people , God is not "Agency-dependent".

But if we really think about what I just said (even being as positive as me) and we think carefully all the details to arrange, all the risks we will take, all the options to explore, we have to realize that is not as easy and that we need to do mission together! and sometimes it means contact a mission agency.

From the very beginning God designed us to be in a community, Jesus sent His disciples in couples, Paul had Silas and afterwords had Timothy, and now we have one another. We

as one church should work together to establish His Kingdom on earth and as Millennials we have to understand that, because world mission is not about us but about others and about God. With this in mind, even if you want a 4 weeks experience in another country, you contact a Tourism office for organize that for you! so we need one another!!!

I work as a coordinator of volunteers in Colombia because I believe that my job enable volunteers to do what God leads them to do, because as coordinator I provide to them a structure for them to hold on to when things are not going as they expected, and that is why i believe that is not compulsory but helps a lot having a bit of help if you go in a cross-cultural mission.

This Covid experience that all of us are living is going to mark us forever. And as missionary, this experience is teaching me the importance of my role and the importance of the structure around me. A sense of community. A synchronize work between me and the sending office of the volunteers under my responsibility made possible their return to their home countries when all borders were closing due the virus. Having a protocol and a plan made things a bit easier to manage. It was easier and reassuring for them to know that i was helping each one of them, in their particular scenarios and it was easier and reassuring for me knowing that it was a broader bunch of people praying for us and helping logistically. It really made the difference. And when they arrived they could use that structure to debrief their experience and not face reverse cultural shock on their own.

Anyway, to conclude and without talking about training, resources, financial support, the role of the church and other stuff, I think that an agency that want to get involve Millennials in world mission is an agency that offers structure that is not rigid, that is ready to explore new ways to do mission, that is focus in the missionary as an individual, meaning with this that is adaptable to the needs of that missionary in the context where this person is before going, in the serving country and afterwards. Millennials hate institutions and structures because they could be impersonal, distant, not honest or not genuine and because they care just for their own needs. A mission agency and any Christian organization should be the opposite. (i´m not a guru, i´m just sharing my point of view)

I love the mission agency that i´m working with for loads of reasons, but one of them is because i remember clearly this words from the International leader: "The structure that we have is not there to overseen work, but more for care people".

Thanks Paul and Neil to introduce me to this conversation! i hope is not too late for Eddie.

* In this link you can find more about Sam George and some articles that he wrote for the Lausanne movement: https://www.lausanne.org/about/leaders/catalyst/sam-george

Note: Sorry about any grammar mistakes or typos, English is my 2nd language! .