missionaries are a bridge between two worlds

The boys and I arrived in America from Cyprus last Friday. Our bodies are adjusting pretty well to the 7 hour time difference, and so far I’ve managed to keep on the right side of the road while driving. But the other adjustments – the deeper cultural adjustments – may take a bit longer.

I live in two worlds. One world is an urban, multicultural world in a European capital where I often dealing with problems of poverty, racism, injustice, loneliness, and a general feeling of exile. But now I’ve traveled back to a world that is more financially blessed, where evangelical Christianity is a powerful cultural, financial, and political force (though that influence is waning).

These are two different worlds, and yet God is at work in both. One of the joys of my job is that I’m able to be a bridge between these two worlds – urban and suburban, multicultural and homogeneous, poor and affluent. Both worlds are changed when they come in contact with one another, and that often happens through missionaries.

If you can forgive me for quoting a whole paragraph from Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making, I think you’ll find he describes this well.

[God] makes known his redemptive purposes for us through both the powerless and the powerful, using both to accomplish his purposes. When God acts in culture, he uses both the powerful and the powerless alongside one another rather than using one against the other. To moblize the powerless against the powerful would be revolution; to mobilize the powerful against the powerless would simply confirm “the way of the world.” But to bring them into partnership is the true sign of God’s paradoxical and graceful intervention into the human story. I believe this pattern – God working through the poor and the rich, the powerless and the powerful – serves as a kind of template for seeking out what God might be doing now in our human cultures. (209)

So these three months aren’t about fundraising.  They’re about facilitating relationships and bridging worlds. For the last 21 months I’ve been seeking God in an urban, inner city environment. For most of the next three months I’ll be seeking him in the suburbs.

And as these two worlds come together, may God change us all.