Mission Mindset

We've just returned from a mission trip to the Navajo Reservation near Bluff, Utah. It was a productive and blessed week; the culmination of four years of relationship building. We finished construction of a hogan meeting house for a group of Navajo believers there, and we look forward to beginning a series of local service projects on the reservation, which we hope will also be a great blessing to our Navajo brothers and sisters.

Each year when I return from this trip, I am mindful of the challenges of translating missions into a local setting. On a mission trip, the team is fully focused and committed to the task at hand. They are blessed to serve, and anxiously await God's hand in things. Upon returning home to all our normal distractions, it is difficult to have that same kind of focus; the same openness to opportunities. And we've been lulled into thinking that God is not likely to act in powerful ways at home, in the same manner we've come to expect on these ventures to new places.

This year I am keenly aware of how slow and difficult a process it is to befriend many Navajo people. They are generally distrustful of outsiders—particularly white outsiders—and often with just cause. It's been relatively easy to go and build something or complete some job that needs doing. The relationships we've created over the years have been more challenging. They simply cannot be rushed. They take time and attention. I am thrilled that we have finished the hogan (a project three years in the making) but I am convinced the real victory here is that we've come to be loved and accepted by some of our Navajo hosts, and we very genuinely love them in return.

I bring this lesson home with me, and consider how our area is not all that different in terms of the challenge of relationship. It is not that difficult to create programs, host events, or complete service projects. It's another thing altogether to create genuine community with people. Evergreen and the surrounding area is filled with highly independent, rather postmodern and largely unchurched people. When they have questions about life, they do not seek answers from churches or from the Bible. They look on committed Christians with some degree of distrust, or write them off with the familiar, "That's great if that works for you but I'm not into the whole religion thing."

Of course, they are into religion. It may be nothing more than the religion of self or some generic spirituality, but people here are very religiously committed and fervent. What they are not so keen on is the truth, as allowing any singular truth to be defined is a threat to individuality, which here, and in American culture in general, is often considered the ultimate good.

Most churches here end up competing over the minority of residents already inclined to attend a church. They sponsor big programs and events to draw them in.

We have begun to operate on a different premise. We want to be in conversation with unchurched and dechurched people about life and faith. This requires that we invest a great deal of time and respect in building relationships with people. We can't expect them to come to us, and we cannot force Jesus upon them. We must go to them, build community with them, and let them open the doors to spiritual conversation.

Our culture is accustomed to immediate results and gratification, so building relationships without some evangelistic plan of attack feels a little open ended, but this is about letting people learn to trust and love us, even as we learn to love and trust them.

As an example, I've got a bunch of neighbors coming over this weekend to help me build a ramping bridge from my driveway to my front door. These people, at various levels of spiritual awareness and religious participation, are not coming to my house as my "target population" or "evangelistic prospects." They are coming as my friends. And I can say, with great honesty, that I love and appreciate each of them. We are becoming a community, and I am choosing to rely on them in my time of need. I strive to be, within the context of that community, a man of God, and I look forward to the times they trust me with their spiritual questions, but I do not try to steer conversations. As I see it, my job for now is to love them and invest myself in them. Their personal spiritual journeys are far more dependent on God's work in their lives than on mine.

Along these same lines, God has opened another very interesting door. A few of us here, through a very interesting series of events, have come to host an "open mike night" at a local restaurant and tavern. This is not overtly evangelistic in the sense that we sing and play many secular songs, and there is no "come to Jesus" speech made at any point in the evening. But we do slip in a few songs that reflect our heart for God, and we are enjoying the opportunity to connect with local musicians and their friends.

We wait anxiously to see where God is going to take such opportunities.

Blessings,
Doug