I have always appreciated the ways missionary speakers inspire and challenge our local churches. The missions conversation with Matt and Michelle Norman on August 6 let us hear how they are bearing witness to the Gospel among internationals and students in the highly-secularized communities around Barcelona, Spain.
The Normans also described how they are building an innovative connection between their ministry “over there” and our life “over here.” The Normans serve churches like Yates by hosting “missions learning labs” in Spain. The idea behind the labs is to ask congregations to consider how their local neighborhoods – and ministries to them – might look when viewed in the way missionaries see the places they are sent to serve. Nothing is assumed as strangers in a foreign land. Missionaries perform careful, prayerful analysis of the history, culture, language, available assets, and present needs of the people of the neighborhood as vital parts of meaningful witness and effective disciple-making.
Students in a mission learning lab are immersed in a foreign culture, accompany and assist the Normans in the tasks missionaries regularly undertake, and debrief the work to draw connections between the work of a global missionary and a local church. Participants return from the lab to their more familiar neighborhood equipped with practical skills, fresh insight and a new perspective on how the local church is a missionary presence right where God has planted it.
We gather and scatter from 2819 Chapel Road in Durham, as we have for many years. If we invest in the church facilities as we’ve discussed in recent days, it represents a deep commitment to this location. I understand this to be the Yates’ recommitment to this place and time. It is a gesture of presence to the neighborhood, a sign of the Kingdom of God, a way of saying “God has sent Yates Baptist Church here.” If we, too, are missionaries sent right where we’ve been for so long, we’d do well to ask whether we’re assuming some things that are holding us back. What might we need to learn in order to fulfil that calling going forward? How might it all look with a missionary’s-eye-view of our corner of the world? I’m sure I don’t have all the answers, but that missions talk this month provoked some powerful questions! Thanks be to God.