“What a group celebrates defines what it considers to be a success.”
―Doug Murren, Leader Shift
Recently I had an interesting and enlightening conversation with a very sharp and successful woman.
She is one of those rare people that really does come close to doing it all. Besides being a devoted wife and mother, she works as an executive secretary to a top executive in a large global company.
This means that she spends much of her life in a fast paced, high stakes, and high pressure world that most of us will never live in or even come close to understanding. And she does it well, and does so without compromising her Christian values.
She’s truly amazing.
But here’s what stood out to me in that conversation. Referring to the environment she works in she said, “I don’t need to go on a mission’s trip, I go on one every day when I show up for work.”
“I don’t need to go on a mission’s trip, I go on one every day when I show up for work.”
Now I will be quick to encourage her (and you) to go on a mission trip at least once in your life. It does us all good to get out of our little corner of the world and meet other people and cultures that God loves just as much as He does us.
But, having said that, I do want to offer this caution to pastors and ministers and all who live in a bit of a “church bubble.”
While we are cajoling and admonishing those we serve to go on mission trips and celebrating those who do, lets not forget to honor and treasure those faithful missionaries who sit on our pews every week who put their faith on the line in an increasingly tough mission field right outside the doors of our churches each week.
These work-week warriors not only pay the bills for the nation and our churches, they also make our communities better places to live by living out – in real time – the message we preach on Sunday.
It’s not an either/or. Let’s celebrate, honor, and support all our missionaries – both kinds – those who God calls to go across the world and those who God calls to go across the street. We need them all.
The ONE THING for today: High honor and many thanks to all you work-week warriors who are faithful witnesses right where God has planted you. Kudos and God bless! May your tribe increase.
You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
2 Corinthians 3:3
Photo by Bennie Bates on Unsplash
The ONE THING 