A Few Thoughts on Missions

As many of you know, I recently returned from Colorado for a missions trip. A missionary family that spent much time with us at our church has gone out there to plant a church in the Denver area. It is more specifically in the nearby city of Aurora.

Let me first start out by saying that this post is in no way intended to be a comprehensive view on what missions is all about. It is simply, as titled, a few of my thoughts on missions as inspired by the trip.

In the past, I’ve invited people to church. I’ve witnessed to them. I’ve even been on door to door visitation, asking people to come to church to hear the Word of God preached. Yay for me. Through my own fault, I’ve never felt a huge sense of urgency in it all, until this trip.

As we were going door to door in Aurora, mostly hanging packets containing the book of Romans and information about the church on doors, my eyes began to be opened a little. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in Denver and the surrounding cities. Aurora alone has upwards of 300,000 people. In the entire area, we know of about 5 churches that we would consider good, solid, Bible preaching, Bible believing churches. That just isn’t enough to reach them all.

I began to think about that as I placed more packets on door knobs. At a few of the houses, the home owners were outside and I was able to talk to them briefly. Every single person expressed appreciation and interest in the opportunity to hear God’s Word. Whether they will act on it is of course up to them, but their receptiveness placed an even bigger sense of urgency on the entire idea of missions in my heart.

Many of these people have probably never heard a clear presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They live in an area that is so Spiritually dry, that they are never exposed to it. Many times here in the southeast, if you ask someone if they’ve ever received Christ as their Savior, they buck up and say something along the lines of, “Of course! I took care of that years ago!” All the while they are in a drunken state, unable to remember what happened only hours ago. I stereotype, I admit. But the example serves its purpose to show that the southeast is so saturated with preaching, Bible, church and everything else you can think of. The people here have heard it over and over, and have grown seemingly immune to the whole idea. But in Colorado, they were so receptive of the idea, it was almost a shock.

There was one man sitting on his porch that we handed a packet to and invited to the services on the upcoming Sunday. He immediately opened the packet and began reading what was inside. We had to drive to another neighborhood to pick up the rest of our crew to take them to another area. When we came back, the man was still reading intently. He was hungry for it!

So what’s my point for this post? I got a first-hand experience in seeing that there is a world full of people, oblivious to our great God, dying and going to a real, eternal Hell. They are starving for truth, whether they realize it or not. While it isn’t necessarily ‘fun’ to go door to door, not knowing what to expect out of the person you may have to talk to, it is truly a joy to be able to introduce the first little bit of truth to someone for the first time.

After all, the ‘Great Commission’ isn’t just for missionaries, pastors and evangelists. It’s for all Christians to tell the world about our great Savior! God help us all to fulfill it!