New Way to Be a Missionary

Owen Strachan, Managing Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School posted on adoption yesterday. I love his thoughts and dreams for the church when it comes to adoption and the church:

Perhaps in coming days, we’ll see churches flooded with children from around the world worshiping the living God, the One who cares for the poor and needy (Psalm 140:12).  Once abandoned, once destitute, perhaps we’ll see a great movement of children who now know not only warmth and care, but love in its most extreme form, the love of God in Christ as preached and lived out in the local church.

Were this to be true, we might see that all tribes and tongues of the earth may discover the gospel not simply through missionaries who go and stay, but missionaries who go and bring back.  That is, couples who could spend their money on a bigger home, or a faster car, or yet another expensive vacation will catch a vision for investing their hard-earned money in the salvation of the lost through adoption of the orphan.  Maybe you don’t have to be sent through a foreign missions board to be a missionary; maybe you can be one by the simple but life-transforming act of adopting a child or two (or three or four).

Couples could do this when past the child-bearing years, as well.  Have some money and extra time?  Maybe adoption–or support of the adoption efforts of other families–is for you and will be a better way to pass the time than still more perfection of one’s golf swing or enhancement of one’s wardrobe.  There’s nothing wrong with these things in moderation, but there seems to be a higher cause to serve with one’s time in later, more comfortable years.

It is difficult to estimate the difference we Christians could make if we wholeheartedly bought into this mission.  How much would we bless lonely, isolated, suffering children by adopting, and how much would the Lord bless us in our decision to deny ourselves yet another material pleasure and to spend that money as a missionary and an agent of mercy to the lost?