An Excerpt from The Fuel and the Flame
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When a New York professional sports team wins a championship they have a huge ticker tape parade down a street, lined with millions of cheering fans. The athletes are sitting, each on the back seat of a long line of convertibles that stretches out close to a mile, allowing each superstar to receive maximum adulation. The New Yorkers are ten to fifteen people deep, constantly jumping and swaying, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite athlete through the pressing crowd. Bit by bit the parade goes by, each spectator only seeing a small sliver of the action as it passes directly in front of them. Less than satisfied, they race home for the six o’clock news where they get the TV station’s video version from a much better angle.
What if you were there at the next parade, and instead of trying to wade into the mass of people street side, you were invited to come view the mile-long procession from the top of the Empire State Building? You’re thrilled because this time you get to look down and see the beginning from the end and every car and every athlete in between. This kind of perspective, in a weak human way, describes the view that God has on the world and life. History is passing by like a parade, and He does see the end from the beginning, and every detail in between! We may only be able to view a tiny bit of today’s events, but history is truly His story and the Lord is fulfilling His plan for the ages and nothing will deter it. We can either get on board with Him and view things from His eternal perspective, or we can live our quiet, little desperate lives never fulfilling the God-ordained potential He had planned for us.
God yearns for us, not to be worldly Christians (we have plenty of those!), but to be “World Christians.” This is someone that, not only is viewing the world and life from God’s perspective, but also has on their heart what is on God’s heart. According to John 3:16, at this moment and every moment, it is the world that is on His heart. David Bryant, former Intervarsity Christian Fellowship staff leader, and author of In the Gap, tells us of three stages in becoming a “World Christian.” Think of creative ways you can help your students catch, keep, and obey the vision that God wants every believer to possess.
A. Catch the vision
Continually expose your students to the world through mission conferences, biographies of missionaries, praying over a world map together, taking courses like Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, reading about world events in the newspapers and magazines, befriending internationals on campus, doing Bible studies, and memorizing verses on world evangelization. We have a guest apartment at our house for the main purpose of providing a place to stay for visiting missionaries, so our students and family get firsthand contact with these men and women who have gone to foreign lands to share the gospel with the unreached.
B. Keep the vision
Fan the flames of missions fervor on your campus by forming world mission prayer groups, holding a Friday or Saturday night “Concert of Prayer” lifting up the nations on a campus-wide basis, beginning small group dinners and Bible studies for reaching out to internationals or planning a mission trip for your students to be exposed to the world during spring break or summer. Continue to pray vision and passion into the hearts and minds of your students, especially those that are upperclassmen. Write down specific goals on what they can do to keep building their world vision now and when they graduate.
C. Obey the vision
Encourage your students not to leave campus until they have developed a world vision and, if possible, gone on at least one short-term mission trip with their church, campus ministry, or the many excellent mission agencies. There is a trend right now where numerous students around the country are taking a year out of school to spend on an overseas mission effort. As you spend time preparing your seniors for graduating and launching out into the world, make sure they know what their role is in Christ’s global cause. Guide them toward cities, churches, ministries, job opportunities, and possible mates that will help them obey the vision for reaching the world for Christ.
It seems as if everyone has mobile phones these days with a variety of calling plans available to fit each need and pocketbook. Many choose the local plan, some the regional or national plan, and even fewer the international plan allowing them to call anywhere in the world for one monthly price. Sad to say, but some people view Jesus’ last command on earth with the same “pick and choose” mentality:
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem,
and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
We may be given the option as to which phone plan we want, but Jesus Christ gives us no such choice when it comes to being His worldwide witnesses. We are all commanded to be on the “international plan” whereby we are simultaneously giving of our time, talent, and treasure to reaching Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the remotest parts. Like the bumper sticker on the hippie van that says, “THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY,” we are to build into the lives of our students that wherever they are, whatever they are doing, they’re to be carrying out a world vision that, yes, even includes their next-door neighbors! I’m not saying that every Christian should be a cross-cultural vocational missionary, but I am saying that every Christ follower should strive to be a “world Christian,” a conviction that is caught much more than taught.