Sunday, July 29, 2012

A Reflection on Returning from Overseas

J.D. Greear:
As I re-entered the United States I was struck by how much weight we give to things that really don’t matter that much. I had been unplugged from the internet for about a week, and upon re-engaging it I was inundated with the usual controversies in the Christian world of who said and who thinks what and whose out of balance and etc. I think that secondary and tertiary stuff matters (ultimately everything in the Bible does), but all of it all to be held in the context of “the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” There are still more than 6000 Unreached People Groups in the world with no access to the gospel and many of my own neighbors do not even understand it.

If you’re rushing down a sidewalk to help rescue people from a burning building and someone is trying to stop you to engage in an argument you say, “I don’t have time for that foolishness right now.” I know that is a little oversimplified, but the bottom line is a lot of Christian bloggers should probably just go spend some time in an unreached people group, because the subjects they write so vociferously about now would probably look different when they got back. I don’t mean that to be self-righteous. I feel that way having just gotten back from being overseas. Given time and distance, my own heart will forget the urgency of first things and fixate and secondary and tertiary ones.

A lot of our intra-Christian problems would probably be fixed by a good mission trip. We’d still write about the stuff, but we’d probably do it differently. When we separate our theology from mission it’s bound to go bad.
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