How To Be A Missionary Where You Are

Bloom Where You Are Planted: The Call Of Every Christian

We come up with many reasons to delay the call the Lord has on our lives for service. Our excuses may look like not knowing our gift, feelings of inadequacy, feeling like we won’t know what to say. Who? Where? When? What impact will this have on my life? Will these people accept me? Do I have the right clothes? Am I qualified? Age-appropriate? Will I be happy?

Valid concerns (maybe?), but where and when should never be an issue. Because now and where you are is the answer. Our calling is not just an event but a way of living. So, how can you be a missionary where you are? Well, you have to learn to bloom where you're planted.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, you may have been shown that you are to do a mission trip to Kenya this summer, but that’s still a while away–time-wise. Maybe bible college or seminary await. Or you may have received a call to do something full-time overseas in a specific region, and it will take a year and a half to get through all the red tape to get there. But your mission shouldn’t wait until then–there is still today. Samaritans are lying alongside the road on your way to Jericho.

This is what Jesus meant in the great commission (Matthew 28:18-20) when He said “Go therefore into all the world….” You may have also heard it translated to say “as you’re going” so our calling includes that as I am going on my mission trip to Spain this summer, I am also doing this and that to love and serve those where I am today. After all, wasn’t the great commission a summation of Jesus' ministry that He told us to continue, and also, didn’t He impact those that He encountered along the way? So, our mission field is where we are every day. That can be finding a role at our church, volunteering at a local para-church ministry, running into a person in need, going to Ireland, sharing our faith with a teammate, and, especially, discipling someone in our hometown whom God has brought into our lives.

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So, our mission field is where we are every day.

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When it comes to discipleship, we just meet someone at the level they are at. That may be sharing Christ with them for the first time or taking them deeper in their walk with Christ. It is all a part of discipleship.

Blooming where you're planted means that wherever you're placed, you have the opportunity to serve and follow God’s calling because you will encounter people wherever you are. Acts 1:8 tells us to go to “Jerusalem, Judea, and the remotest parts of the earth”.  It does not matter where you do it, but that you do it.

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Blooming where you're planted means that wherever you're placed, you have the opportunity to serve and follow God’s calling because you will encounter people wherever you are.

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We hear students and even adults at home who think that there is no way there is a place for them when it comes to impacting lives for the kingdom. But it’s true. He uses regular schmo’s like you and me. What? Do you think He is going to use people like Bob Dylan and Kanye West, who have seemingly made professions of faith because people will be drawn by their fame? Maybe. But God still uses the same plan that He has always used, in which He takes regular people like you and me and He gifts us in ways in which others can see Him through us. So whether it’s in Costa Rica, a church, or the cafeteria at school, we have a mission field wherever we are. And if the foreign mission field is a place you think you may want to be, we have an opportunity for you with summer trips for students aged 13-19 and roles for college-age students as well as opportunities for others who can get the summer off.

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