What if I don't care about evangelism and missions?

by Jul 26, 2011

In Matthew 10, Jesus lays out the risks (arrest, betrayal and death) and rewards (greater awareness of God’s presence, guidance, and providence) for those who take the gospel to places where Christ is not welcome.

My prayer is that God will call many people from Harbor to go proclaim his kingdom in dangerous places where Christ is hated and slandered. This kind of calling doesn’t (usually) come suddenly. It’s slowly built on a foundation of passionate concern for the lost people God has already put in your life right now.

But what if you just don’t feel it? What if you’re happy to worship God, study his word, and fellowship with his family, but not at all drawn to developing gospel relationships with people who don’t know him?  In Let the Nations Be Glad, John Piper says it’s rooted in a lack of (true) worship:

Where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will be weak. Churches that are not centered on the exaltation of the majesty and beauty of God will scarcely kindle a fervent desire to “declare his glory among the nations” (Ps. 96:3). Even outsiders feel the disparity between the boldness of our claim upon the nations and the blandness of our engagement with God.

For example, Charles Misner, a scientific specialist in general relativity theory, expressed Albert Einstein’s skepticism over the church with words that should waken us to the shallowness of our experience with God in worship:

The design of the universe . . . is very magnificent and shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he’d run across did not have proper respect . . . for the author of the universe.

The charge of blasphemy is loaded. The point is to pack a wallop behind the charge that in our worship God simply doesn’t come through for who he is. He is unwittingly belittled.