How to be a missionary at the place you currently live? - Ed Sivets

Why children? There are several reasons. Children are easier to work with. In addition, due to the early mortality (the average age is below 30 years), serving children is "promising".

Our Sunday school is 3 times larger than the church, and the youth ministry is 4 times larger than the church.

An important point is also the health issue, since it is difficult to heal souls, if the bodies are not healed.

How to be a missionary at the place you currently live? After all, this is not Africa, there are other challenges here.

There is such a thing as "the image of a missionary". In the minds of people, a missionary is usually a person who has traveled very far to an African country, where everything is very bad. Therefore, when we ask someone "Are you ready to be a missionary?", the person "downloads" this image and says "no". But in fact, a missionary is a person who is the cause of change in other people.

It is important to say that violent changes are ineffective in working with children. I compare these changes with charging the phone: even the latest phone is not able to work without charging. We made rosettes in the churches in Africa so people could charge their phones, and we can "charge" their souls while they are charging their phones.

There is such a thing as "kerygma". It means to filter out the pure Word of God from different cultural layers and impurities and bring it, the pure Word, to people. We create a system of access to grace, taking into account the local culture. The apostle Paul says: "I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise." (Rom. 1: 14). Jesus Christ came as a "set of adapters" to give "charging" to very different people. Casting off the identity of a person leads to an ineffective mission and it is not the gospel.

Another point: if we loosely "sit in the socket", then one day we can "get out of the socket", because of the testing that comes after conversion.

Why did Jesus send two? You need a friend, a person who will hold you when you fall.

Rule # 1 for communication: Never to be surprised at anything openly. My reaction is being read and can build a wall.

To build a wall is quite easy but to achieve others, bridges are needed.

Rule # 2: Qualitative approach to the case.

The formula for achieving authority: C + S + T = AUTHORITY.

C = Competence. If you are more competent than others, people will come to you.

S = Sacrifice. It is impossible, having competence, not to be sacrificial. But we have to be competent, otherwise we cannot help. There is a saying: "Imagine that your doctor studied the same way you did."

T = Time. It takes time for these two things to bear fruit.

Rule # 3: People need to be loved.

I call this the "five stages of love."

1. "I love everyone". New missionaries love everyone. But this love is short-lived.

2. The next stage is called "I have questions" or "I hate you, you do not give me an opportunity to love you."

3. "I would kill them!" We pray that God will give us love.

4. "It's not so bad." It turns out that there are people who want to change.

5. "I love them". It sounds the same as the 1st stage, but it's totally different, it's much deeper.

If I do not do a mission, then I have lost the meaning of Christianity. If I do not influence my environment, then I ignore the Great Commission.

The mission is not only in Africa, it is where I am.

Ed Sivets – teacher, missionary and blogger.