The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

Do you have to go overseas to be a missionary?

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:8 ESV)

Boy we are quick to support missionaries who go to exotic places, Africa, Asia, South America. There is something exciting, almost exotic. Sure we understand that the missionaries we send there are in some danger and great discomfort, and we love to get and post the postcards on the wall. Almost as if we put them on the wall in the church to say "See, we support mission work. We are carrying out the Great Commission. Just look at those postcards! Yeah we never hear from them or see them or have any idea what they are teaching, but we send them checks and they always cash them so we are a 'missional church'!"

To be certain those places need to hear the Gospel. There are billions of unreached people in the world, and our mandate is to take the Gospel to as many of them as we can. But while we are here in the Detroit area sending checks out to missionaries all over the world, there a literally millions of people in Detroit who also need to hear the Gospel. Just up the road from where I work is Dearborn, Michigan with what is supposed to the largest mosque in America, The Islamic Center of America (pictured) and almost 30,000 Muslims. Shouldn't our bulletin boards at churches include pictures of missionaries in our own home towns? Isn't there enough mission work to be carried out in Detroit or Indianapolis or Topeka to warrant missionaries? Maybe there are missionaries, in fact I am pretty sure there are, but I can't name any. It would be great if we had missionaries who worshipped with local congregations on Sunday and then spent the rest of their time out evangelizing and mercy ministry among our neighborhoods.