Unexpected Ministry
All of our missionary friends warned us that our journey of becoming missionaries would be full of surprises. They weren’t trying to help us avoid oncoming danger. It was more of a warning that powerful and unexpected things would happen, many of them quite wonderful.
I’m realizing this week that there’s an unexpected ministry role that’s taking place. So far missionary life is a whirlwind of activity. But right in the middle of it I have found an unexpected ministry – being the catalyst for people to wrestle with their tensions about international cross-cultural missions.
Pretty much every conversation I have will either start or end discussing God calling my family to serve the Hungarian people. What happens (and I’ve been slow to recognize it) is that once people know you’re headed overseas as a missionary they begin to openly share their convictions and troubles about the idea. For most it’s a chance for them to express their own curiosities and desires for such work. For others, it’s a chance to speak about things that trouble them. It may be something as simple as “what about your children” (I say simple because it really is a very simple matter – ask me about it sometime). Or it may be something larger like, “there are so many lost people right here, I don’t understand why we need to go overseas anymore”.
So in the middle of hustle and bustle, when I’m thinking it’s so much about my family and how God’s going to send us to Hungary…some unexpected ministry arises and I step back in grateful amazement at how God is mercifully letting us be both a safe sounding board and a voice of biblical conviction about God’s unchanged heart for the nations.
