I just arrived home last evening from a week away.  While there were a few days of visiting family in Portland, the reason for the trip was ministry related.  I was attending the second of four meetings with fellow pastors and leaders from our North American Baptist family.  These meetings are worth the time and effort due to the relationships I have experienced, but there is an added bonus as well.  The bonus is that each time we are together we are visiting a ministry that is evolving and finding fruit with regard to being on mission in the context that they find themselves.

This last trip was the one that I had been waiting for.  We were gathering in Tacoma, Washington at one of the neighbourhood churches of Soma Tacoma.  Soma until recently has been under the leadership of Jeff Vanderstelt.  I have known of Jeff for many years and have enjoyed watching what God has and is doing through him.  I was not disappointed with our time.  I was sufficiently challenged during the time with Jeff and the team that is now giving leadership to Soma.

As I sat down to begin writing this post, I was reflecting on what we experienced last week.  I was amazed at the degree to which Jeff and his Soma community were on mission to their neighbourhood(s).  The truly were about the mission of God where God has planted them.  One thing Jeff mentioned was “Mission is inviting those who need Jesus into our everyday life.”  They are all about living with people who are in need of the gospel and then finding opportunities on the natural path and pace of life to present them with the Good News of Jesus.  If we are living to bring glory and honor to God in every moment of life then all we have to do is invite those in need of Jesus into our everyday life.

As we live our everyday life, trying to serve Jesus and at the same time become more like Him, we will have countless opportunities to share the gospel.  Jeff said it this way:

“Every time you live out an attribute of Christ you create a metaphor for sharing the story of the gospel.”

His point with this comment was that when you treat people with the love and respect of Christ, we will be given opportunities to explain why we would do such a thing and this will be accomplished through sharing a snippet of the gospel story.  We will be able to tell people of the God we have been changed by and the work that He has called us to in bringing hope to a hurting world.

I will write more for Thursday’s post about what an everyday missionary does, but for now consider how to go about the task of “Inviting those who need Jesus into our everyday life”.  If you do this you will be well on your way of doing what an everyday missionary does!