Hey guys!

Here are three things to spark your inner missional flame:

💥 INSPIRED BY

Daily Missions Trips

For some reason, every time I travel to another country on a “missions trip,” my mind is framed a certain way. I am preparing to rough it, encounter situations requiring flexibility of my expectations. I am readying myself to try different foods, customs, or rituals.

I’ve got little of my personal possessions with me, mainly the essentials.

In all this preparation, we enter what we might call, “missions trip mode.” That is, the mindset we tell ourselves, “The purpose of the next ten days is to serve, not be served.”

So we live accordingly for those ten days.

But often, when I return home from a trip, I tend to turn off that mode.

But what if I didn’t? What if we lived everyday in “mission trip mode?”

🛠️ EQUIPPED BY

End Times Urgency For Artists

​Last week, I shared about Matthew 24 and 25.

How then (in light of last week's reflection) ought we, as artists, invest our lives? Am I suggesting that artists ought to just start loving the needy, hungry, stranger, sick, naked, and imprisoned by visiting them in hospitals, homeless shelters, and jails?

Maybe that’s what you should do.

Calvin Seerveld has this to say if you wondered:

So, that might be the proper expression for you. But I want to dig even deeper into this Matthew passage.

Even unredeemed people could do those works. Some might call that humanitarian work. No new heart required. What kind of person does the master allow entrance into heaven?

We learn three things from Jesus in Matthew 25:23. He says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The servant has three things going for him:

1. “Good” - He is useful, pleasant, and pleasure-producing.
2. “Faithful” - He is worthy of trust, persuaded easily by God’s purposes. This is the one who resolves, “I trust God!”
3. “Slave” - He gives himself to another’s will. It means devotion to another to the disregard of one’s own interests.

I see these three intersecting with each other:

These three qualities are crucial for all artists to understand. We go against the current in many ways in Western church institutions. We are perceived as rebellious, argumentative, and complainers.

What if that reputation shifted?

What if your elders bragged on you to others, “man, [Chris] is a useful guy to our people.” What if your leaders trusted you with influence? “I’ve seen [Julie] take some real steps of faith this year.”

So maybe you don’t have that reputation…yet.

There’s always “yet.”

🚀 SENT WITH

Eugene Peterson

-Matt