What is it going to take?

What will it take for Christians to realize that if we are not reaching our communities for Jesus Christ that we will cease to exist, not to mention the important factor that we are ignoring the very mission we were given by Christ. (Matt. 28:18-20)

As Southern Baptists we have been trained to believe that the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board do "missions" for the local church. So we sit back and give to the Cooperative Program and expect them to do the work of missions.

What will it take to change that perception? Christians need to realize that we are missionaries called to reach the community around us.

We need to become:

• incarnational missionaries in our communities,
• learn the language and culture around us,
• engage the culture with the transforming message of the Gospel, &
• actively participate in contextualizing the methods that we use to reach people.

This is what missionaries have been doing in Africa, in South America, and all over the world for years, and we need to teach our people that every Christian is a missionary called to reach the people around them. Every Christan has a circle of influence at work, in their neighborhood, and in their home, and they need to begin to look at their co-workers and their neighbors as the mission field.

What is it going to take? We still have time to reach people, but it is going to take every Christian fulfilling the role of a missionary and for some that will be a radical life change, to realize that you are NOT just at that job to make money or to provide for your family, but that you are there placed by a Holy God in order to reach those co-workers. It is a drastic change of thinking, but it has to be done in order to reach people with life changing message of Jesus Christ.

What is it going to take?