Missionary Identity

The reality is, Christians are interlopers. We are strangers and foreigners.

As Christians, I believe we should always be more driven by our missionary identity than we are by our national identity, our political identity, our environmental identity, our social identity, or even our church identity.

Don’t get me wrong. We ought to love our church. (I know I love my church.) And the Church (with capital C) is the bride of Christ, destined for eternity with God. But here on earth, we must face the reality that our culture is not to be our primary identity.

Our culture is a mission field. We must see ourselves as people on mission. This is not our home. This is our mission field. Therefore, we all must see our vocations as mission—as kingdom work.

Strangers in a Foreign Land

First Peter 2:11 tells us that we are strangers and exiles. This land is not our home. But part of the challenge is that a lot of people want to fight for their homeland instead of acknowledging that we’re supposed to have the mindset of foreigners and exiles.

Let’s put this into the facts that we know about our population. If the percentage of people who are nominally Christian is shrinking and nominal Christians become Nones, then we are dwelling in an increasingly secular land.

As a result, we need a re-emphasis on gospel clarity. Being labeled Christian no longer means a ‘social Christian,’ but instead is someone who’s been changed by the power of the gospel, if indeed you have. This is a vital theological shift in the way we are viewed and should view our land.

Understanding these shifts is necessary in part because we live in an age of outrage. People in our land get ticked off over things that they don’t like. This calls us to gospel clarity. And missionary identity, seeing ourselves …

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