Missions at Home

I have been reading Let the Nations Be Glad, by John Piper, and I have to say that I love books about missions. I love the stories of the missionary movement and the icons of history who have died for the sake of the gospel. I have always been so intrigued by missions work overseas and the notion of leaving everything I have to reach a foreign culture. I am naturally drawn to the most radical expressions of Christianity, not in a charismatic way, but I look for where the real self-abandon is in a faith. You cannot find any more self-abandon than the stories you hear of people who gave of everything to share the gospel with an unreached people. To me it would be an honor to be named among people like Paul who were beaten and dragged out of the city only to get up and go right back in to continue sharing the gospel.

This may really bother you, but I assure you I am pursuing no such calling. For now, the self-abandon of intercessory missions at IHOP will do just fine. I have no plans of going overseas and dying in a foreign land (although God may do whatever he wants). I am not leaving, because I am too gripped with the disaster in my own land. What does it mean to be a missionary in America? Do we have to sell all of our belongings and travel to some distant land? Not at all, and to some extent, that is the problem with missions in America.

Americans have so much surplus that we do not recognize our need. The Bible has been the #1 best selling book in America for decades. There are churches on every corner! Yet globally America is considered to be a nation in a spiritual recession as well as an economical recession. How can I be a missionary in a land like this? The message is the same, but the missionary target audience must first be the church.

While it is still necessary to convert new believers, we need to reconvert so many who have been converted into a false Christianity. Christianity in America carries far less power than it did when America started. The church has become a hobby, a preference, a mere opinion. And our converts in America have no idea what truth is!

Did you know that all Christians in America believe in heaven, but only 40% believe in hell and Satan?

Did you know that only 46% of Christians in America believe in absolute moral truth?

Over 20% of Christians believe that the Bible has errors.

Approximately half of the church believe that salvation is based on works.

Only 60% of Christians believe that Jesus lived a sinless life!

And those statistics are FAR worse as you go younger in demographic. The Barna Research Group did a study that showed 9% of American adults completely agree with a Biblical Worldview, but less than 0.5% of college age students agree with the Biblical Worldview.

Did you know that?

Not only that but Christianity has become so mutated among the teenagers that scholars are saying it has branched off into an entirely different faith. Secular researchers are saying that the Christianity that teenagers are claiming by definition is no longer "Christianity." Now it is called "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," which basically means they believe in a system of values from a God who exists merely to meet their needs.

We live in one of the most difficult yet necessary mission fields of our day. And being a missionary in America has nothing to do with physical martyrdom or poverty like it might in a foreign country. It is so easy to get by unscathed if you just live quietly in America. Christians can still live a normal life in most parts of the nation, but for how long?

It is absolutely necessary for the church to return to message of Jesus. We don't need another set of values or 5-points to your best life now. We need a church that is alive in Christ, and not through external expression but an internal burden for His glory. Jesus is, and always has been, the centerpiece of Christianity, not just a sideline topic we use to strengthen our point. Jesus is the greatest truth we need to stand by. Abortion happens, poverty happens, but an entire generation growing up as "Christians" without knowing Jesus is DOES NOT HAPPEN.

That is why the greatest mission field in America is our schools. That is why I have given myself to training leaders and jump-starting prayer meetings on school campuses, because if something doesn't change now, it's over with for Christianity in America. I'm not about to go to another country with the gospel that my own country desperately needs.

Be a living witness. Encourage the students who are participating in outreaches in their schools. Stand for truth and raise your families on the foundation of Jesus. That is why stay-at-home mothers are the greatest leaders in America; because they are raising the future of America. Don't think you have to sell all of your belongings and move to a shack with a dirt floor to be a missionary. Walk into your school! You don't even have to sell your iPhone! Just read and embody Philippians 3:7-8, and share that truth with whomever is in your sphere of influence.

Also, you may not be called to a missionary lifestyle, but you can still participate by financially supporting missionaries in America. Did you know that Daniel Lim, the CEO of IHOP-KC, is an Asian who moved to America as a missionary to strengthen the church? Did you know that most missionaries in America give up after 2 years because of lack of funds (even in such a rich nation). I want to encourage you to find good soil to sow your seeds of finance. Find a ministry or an individual that is laboring for eternity and give (Matthew 6:21).

Lastly, no matter how large the crisis is in America, the greatest crisis is that Jesus is not known. Abortion is a large issue, the homosexual agenda is a large issue, but all of that changes when people receive the revelation of Jesus. We reach the lost because Jesus is worthy of their worship. Your ministry success has nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with glory to Jesus. Christianity in America needs to return to the foundation, the centerpiece. Jesus is the head, and we are the body, and without him we can do nothing.