We recently received an end-of-the-year letter from friends who serve in an Asian country. One of their comments particularly caught my attention. They wrote, “Our national leaders are making disciples, bringing transformation to their communities, and raising up new missional leaders without dependency on outside support.” Although all of these actions are important, the last item stood out. When we talk about the missional church, we emphasize the idea that every believer is a missionary. No matter what one does for a living, he or she is on mission in that vocation—embodying and articulating the Christian mission in the marketplace. To put a different twist on this, how important is it to equip and empower individual Christians to have a vocation and be self-supporting? During the colonial missionary period, missionaries often referred to “rice Christians.” These were native believers who participated as long as the free food las...
Comments from a Christ-follower on things that matter to him