It has been my privilege to be part of AFM’s home office for more than 17 years now. You would think that after all these years I would have figured out at least the basic questions of missions, but one question in particular keeps coming back to my mind again and again: Why us?
If I were God and I was crafting the ideal game plan to rescue my sin-imprisoned children; if I gave my human disciples any part to play, it would be something that fit their abilities—something marginal and non-essential. After all, eternal life and death are at stake here! There is no room for weakness and error, is there?
But what did God do? To a great extent, He elevated us feeble, fickle, flaky humans to the role of gatekeepers, able to release or to dam up His transforming gospel—to go out or to stay in, to open our mouths, or to keep them shut.
Does that seem reckless to you? Certainly God isn’t in the business of risking the eternal lives of those He loves so deeply that He became sin itself and died the unimaginable second death in their place. There must be something else—some other compelling reason to give fallen humanity such an important role in the plan of salvation.
I believe I have found at least part of the answer in reading the stories our missionaries write in Adventist Frontiers each month. Ask any missionary, and they will tell you that their work has profoundly changed them. There is something about getting involved in the work of salvation that brings us closer to the heart of God in a way nothing else can. In fact, if God’s seemingly risky gamble is any indication, could it be that our part in the saving work may be of as much consequence to our own salvation as it is to that of the unreached people we minister to around the world?
