You are called to change the world where you are… you don’t have to go to Africa

We used to think of Missionaries as the spiritual people who went to Africa.  We may not have realised it at the time, but that was a cop out.

We are all missionaries in our own particular mission fields.

In 1975, the founder of Youth With A Mission, Loren Cunningham, believed God showed him a different view of mission. A day or so later he met Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade and found that God had been saying the exact same thing to him. A few weeks later he discovered that Francis Schaeffer was saying the same thing.

The realization was that mission was more than geographic. All three men believed God had shown them that the church needed to see the different spheres (taken from 2 Cor 10:13) of the world and to ensure that they each were being influenced by mission.

Loren outlined what he believed were the seven spheres that the church needed to discover its ministry in:

1. The Family
2. The Church
3. Education
4. Media
5. The Arts, Entertainment and Sports
6. The Economy including business and science
7. Government

I don’t claim to have heard the same thing from God, but I do find it an interesting and broad enough framework to create a space for most people to find their vocation in mission. The one question I have is where the Healthcare industry fits in, and it is surely a place where Christians need to be bringing the lived cross of Christ.

In each of these seven areas we have had wonderful examples of Christians living their faith in ways that has been transformative.

Two of my favourite examples of Kingdom Cells who transformed different spheres of society are the Inklings and the Clapham Sect.

Two of the most influential authors of the twentieth century were good friends. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were both professors at Oxford University and formed a group that met twice a week called the “Inklings”.

The members believed in the power of the written word and the purpose of the group was for members to receive often robust criticism from others about their unfinished work. Tolkien and Lewis particularly both understood the importance of myth in shaping identity (Tolkien wrote a famous essay on it), and both undertook to write books that would serve that purpose. The Narnia series and Lord of the Rings were the result.

Amongst the Inklings we see all the elements of the Kingdom Cell, but instead of changing a community they were bringing redemption to literature.

The Clapham Sect is another example of a Kingdom Cell that was transforming a different sphere, but this time it was the sphere of government. Historian Stephen Tomkins describes them as

“a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love for each other, and by marriage.”

Historian, Dr. Marjorie Bloy, says of the Clapham Sect,

“It is doubtful whether a single small congregation has in the history of Christendom exercised such a far-flung influence. They fostered evangelical Christianity; encouraged the Church Missionary Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society; encouraged the good administration of India;  encouraged education and backed the Sunday School movement (Robert Raikes); founded Sierra Leone, and Zachary Macaulay put it on its feet; attacked blood sports, duelling and gambling; set higher standards of morality in public life; set higher standards of active concern in politics and abolished the slave trade. “

Not every Kingdom Cell will have such profound and far reaching impact, but every Kingdom Cell will change the world as they discover their vocation and pursue it.

Imagine what would happen, if there was an active Kingdom Cell in every one of Loren Cunningham’s seven spheres, in every city on the earth!

 Our society gets things mixed up in terms of what it values. Bono points out,

“Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it’s mad that people like me are listened to — you know, rap stars and movie stars. You know, rather than nurses and farmhands and others.”

It may be that God is calling you to a less glamorous vocation, one that will affect a small number of people, but the job is still the same: to bring God’s love through the redemptive act of the cross.

Some of the vocations that can have the deepest personal impact on another person are also the vocations that our society overlooks, like being a mother or being a nurse.

At one point, Tony Campolo’s wife was asked what she did by someone who obviously thought they were her superior. Campolo recalls his wife’s response with pride,

“I am socializing two homo sapiens into the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be the instruments for the transformation of the social order into the kind of teleologically  prescribed utopia inherent in the eschaton!”

We need more mothers like Peggy Campolo, who can proudly stand up and claim the truth of their calling to that vocation.