All That You Can't Leave Behind

This book tells our story, the story of two American twenty-somethings who heard a whole lot of talk about reaching the lost and going to all nations, but didn’t see a whole lot of it happening.  Whenever there is a lot of talk about something, but little changes, it makes me ask two questions: Are the talkers liars? and Why is nothing changing? 

We found that many folks were paying lip service to missions.  I stood in churches where they would pray for the world to be reached every Sunday, but they would send none of their members and very little of their money. 

This confused me.  Were they praying for some pixie dust to fall from heaven and help these foreign people?  Was there a real face to missions out there or was the American church mired in hypocrisy?  In the end, I couldn’t answer my first question.

The answer to my second question was two-fold.  One, real change is happening throughout the world, but where can the average Christian hear about such work?  The non-partisan 6 o’clock news?  Standing around the water cooler at work?  Doubtful.  The Gospel has been exploding throughout the world, mainly in places with very little money and thus very little international press to report it.  But things are changing because of missions. 

Two, the main vehicle that churches seem to use when it comes to “missions” are short-term mission trips with devout and passionate individuals who are often untrained cross-culturally.  They are whole-heartedly committed to give a few weeks of their time to reaching the lost, and then they return to suburban living.  If you study history, the real change, the powerful movements of God, began through long-term, career individuals who devoted not 20 days to a people group but 20 years; people who gave more than a few weeks of sweat; people who gave their lives.

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