It was August 1996. We'd polished off our Costa Rican lunch of chicken, rice, and black beans, and were half-way through the job interview with Seminario ESEPA. Suddenly "The Question" surfaced, first in Spanish, then in translation: "How do you know that you have had a call to missions?"
Well, this could spell the end of the Shogrens' brief international career, but I had my answer ready: "Actually...I, uh, don't believe that there is any such thing as a Missions Call per se. God may offer special direction to people. That could include direction to leave one culture and go to another. However, I don't read in the Bible that a traditional ‘Missions Call' is the normal experience."
Let me offer two hypotheticals, as illustrations of my point.
Hypothetical Situation #1. You work with a youth group in Calais, in the state of Maine. One day, the senior pastor in St. Stephen, New Brunswick (3 miles away) calls you: "Our church has no youth group. Would you come over one night a week and meet with our teenagers?" Of course, you would pray about it and seek wise advice. But do you need a special calling, seeing how you will be crossing the international border between the USA and Canada to do it?
Hypothetical Situation #2. You are a pastor in Philly. There are several Haitian families on your block, and it's evident that no-one else is reaching them. Your high school French is passable enough to witness to them. You would pray for God's help, of course. But would you hold back until you had a fresh calling to do cross-cultural evangelism?
In both cases, the Great Commission is specific enough. You've already got a calling to teach the nations. Missions is not a job; it's a place where you do your job. It's a location, not a vocation.
When we started, people often asked us: "You teach in a seminary now, but what will you be doing down there? Church planting?" It then came as a surprise that I planned to be a missionary professor. Our reasoning? Education is the critical need in the churches of Latin America and in other regions of the globe. Costa Rica has tons of local church planters. I don't have any experience in church planting. However, Costa Rica does have a serious shortage in home-grown evangelical exegetes, and that happens to be what I do. I will do it there until we can work ourselves out of a job and a Tico believer can take my place.
There is an embarassment of riches we have in North America, where something like 95% of all full-time Christian workers serve just 5% of the world's population. That imbalance holds true for professors, too. Every year, hundreds of new PhD's in theology, Bible, or ministry head into the job market, which is glutted already. I just looked through the Society of Biblical Literature's "Want Ads." This is the busy season for it...so how many New Testament positions do they list for North America this year? Just four. Three of the four require a certain denominational affiliation. We profs are stepping on each other's toes, while fine works in other countries go badly understaffed.
Consider the dilemma at ESEPA, one of the larger Bible Colleges and Seminaries in Latin America. Their New Testament professor had to leave in 1996. To get a replacement, this Bible college/seminary of almost 400 students had to wait 3 years while we made our decision, raised support, and then learn Spanish.
Are we just a bunch of those "missions nuts," who would have inevitably ended up overseas? I doubt it. Because of my training, the pull overseas comes to me through studying the New Testament rather than being a fan of missions. I catch up on missions theory with about the same energy I studied homiletic theory as a pastor, or education theory as a teacher (I confess, enough to perform professionally, but not a whole lot more). I have never been bitten by the "missions bug" as such.
But that strikes me as entirely right and natural. In fact, when I think about the missionaries I admire most, what stands out? It's not that they adore missions, but that they love the gospel itself. And in the end, the Shogrens are moved not by a sense of adventure or because we think that all international ministry is by definition a holy crusade. We're moved by Christ's call. Our little light can shine anywhere, but it will make a bigger impact where the light is dimmer today.
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