I had a great talk with one of my dear friends the other day and it got me to thinking. It got me to thinking that maybe many of us have a false idea of what missionaries are and what they do. I think most of us would say that missionaries are people who go to other places and share the gospel evangelically. This is all well and good but I would say that maybe we have missed the picture.

We are not here just to share the gospel evangelically. Why should we pick fruit and just leave it to rot? We do not want these people to rely on us for the word of God. No, they are smart and when they become Christians they too are called as we are. It is our desire to see these people come to know Christ in a real way, but also to be able to lead and disciple other Peruvians. We are not here to just teach, but also to encourage. We want these people to be able to teach themselves. Just as Americans taught us, Peruvians can teach Peruvians. This is vastly important so that we void creating dependencies. The people here don’t have, and they must learn how to share and teach the word without having. There are no projectors and few hymnals but they can still praise and teach. I don’t know if this makes all that much sense, but i hope to write more elaborately on this in the future. What is important is that you know that there is more to missions than the evangelist. Without discipleship and encouragement these people will just dwindle and be choked out, as the seed that the sower sowed among the thorns. Because here it is the thorns, just as it is in the states.

We had talked about all this with the REAP south team at our training during the first part of the summer. But I hadn’t really thought too much about it until now. And I hope that it will serve as encouragement to you, because we are all called. And though we are not all called to be evangelists, there is so much more to missions than that. We all have our part that we can play.