Why Missions Can’t Fix Your Relationship with God

Mike Bowden • Sep 24, 2018

I listened as a seasoned missionary , more educated than myself, shared from his heart. He leaned forward and asked a question I wasn’t expecting: “Mike, what does it really mean to be loved by God?”

I fumbled for a moment under the inner pressure to respond with just the right theological answer. Thankfully, I hesitated and replied honestly: “I’m not totally sure. I am still learning that myself.”

The missionary leaned back with a sigh of relief and said, “Thank you. I was so afraid you were going to give me a formula.”

Since then, I’ve met with many successful and highly-educated missionaries and pastors. When allowed to share in a safe place, the two most common heartfelt questions that I hear are:

  • What is prayer, really? Beyond praying for ministry, interceding for others, or having a list of prayer requests, what does it mean to just sit with God?
  • What does it really mean to be loved by God? This is a hard question to face because we’ve helped others understand God’s love. And yet the question persists: How do I learn to experience and rest in God’s love?

Without real answers to these questions, many missionaries slowly give up on having an intimate relationship with God. Instead, they try to stay busy, focus on organizational structures, produce results in ministry or hide behind their area of strength.

Feeding an Addiction to Performance

In a paper titled “Spiritual Formation in Christ,” Dallas Willard addressed the sudden explosion of material in the area of spiritual formation.

Whereas spiritual formation for the Christian leaders historically went deeply into the inner spiritual life, the modern Protestant counterpart often focuses on “the outward behavior of the successful minister, pastor, leader, or full-time Christian worker. Spiritual formation (in this sense) can be thought of as the training that makes individuals successful in the aforementioned roles.

“Although it is recognized that the heart must be right, if one is successful enough in certain outward terms, very likely no further inquiry will be made. And, if something is known to be lacking on the inside or in the private life of the worker, as is often the case among those on a Christian staff, it may well be overlooked or justified for the sake of the ministry.”

With this focus on outward behavior, it’s no wonder many missionaries feel addicted to performance and productivity. Without help in transformational growth in prayer, resting in grace and being loved by God, outward success becomes the main measure for one’s self-worth and closeness to God.

So, how do we learn to rest in God’s love? We begin by remembering that spiritual practices involve the whole person. Done right, they will always move us toward love, as opposed to works-based, “one-size-fits-all” methods. Here are five ways to get started on your journey:

1. Remember that your ministry belongs to Jesus.

Missionaries very often feel pressure from supporters, teammates and themselves to get “their” ministry flourishing. These expectations can lead to justifying drivenness and over-commitment to reach the end goal. Is this Jesus’ way?

Jesus calls us to sacrifice and surrender but these are different than drivenness and over-commitment. Drivenness produces good things, but it’s often driven by an ego that is not surrendered.

Learning to do Jesus’ ministry instead of our own ministry is hard for many of us. The drive to produce and the adrenaline of ministry can be mistaken for the Holy Spirit. Positive results are often used as indicators that God is pleased. Our prayer life and ministry life can revolve around success, and we may not even know it.

But we must ask, “Is this really the ministry Jesus would have us do? And if so, are we doing it His way?”

2. Let doing flow out of being.

Grace is counter-intuitive. It’s much easier to repent of outward sins than to face what’s happening inside ourselves. We each create a false self that we present to others. But a godly person is one who has been transformed by grace, not one who knows all the right ways to behave.

Facing oneself is the hardest yet most crucial part of the formation process. God uses pain and struggle to wean us from the attachments to our false self. This inner transformation happens most readily in a loving, grace-filled community. Spiritual friendship and Christian counseling offer safe relationships where we can drop our guards and honestly look at who we are in context of God’s grace.

As we’re transformed, what we do for Christ will begin to flow out of being in and with Christ.

3. Develop true community.

Christian community is one of the greatest treasures of the Christian life. Yet, very few of us have experienced this in our churches or Christian groups.

Larry Crabb describes the counterfeit of spiritual community as congenial relationships. These relationships hold together because of a common goal. As long as the goal is shared and worked on, the relationships “work.” Conversation tends to be about the goal. Prayer is about the goal, and the enemy is anyone or anything that gets in the way of the goal.

What is often missing in congenial relationships is a sense of grace, vulnerability, trust and relationship that goes deeper than the goal itself. And without that depth, it’s easy to keep our focus on outward appearances, not the heart.

4. Live grace, don’t just proclaim it.

A sense of grace is often the first thing that diminishes in any movement or ministry. Paul writes to the Galatians about this: “You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?” The context is that they started out in grace but returned to law.

Grace allows for expression of healthy emotions, sharing one’s deepest thoughts and concerns without fear of being judged. Grace gives the courage to face our deepest sin. Grace allows for differences in ministry styles.

What if missionaries first and foremost saw it as their goal to establish grace-based communities? This can’t be evaluated through cognitive-based questions but will reveal itself in such things as trust, vulnerability, forgiveness and encouragement. Such a community would be made of individuals who have been formed by Christ, working as a team to do Christ’s work, Christ’s way.

5. Measure success in terms of grace.

In simplest terms, a spiritually healthy ministry is a ministry saturated by grace. A spiritually healthy ministry won’t make decision based on expediency, but on how the decision will affect the ethos of grace. Success will be looked at as those who demonstrate lives of grace.

This can’t be expected or assumed. Many of us need to be retrained in order to operate in grace-based systems.

With grace as the operating system, the other indicator is spiritual depth. A healthy ministry is one that helps cultivate a healthy Christian spirituality. What does it mean to cultivate spiritual depth? The foundation for this must come from a commitment to be Christ-centered, biblically-based and Spirit-led.

Taking the Next Steps

As you reflect on these five points, ask yourself which points have caused tension, stirred a heart-level desire or reminded you of something about yourself. Follow up each section with personal nonjudgmental comments, using words like “ I feel …,” “ I desire …,” “ I’m sad about …,” and “ I’m encouraged by ….”

You may uncover some hard questions. You may find that you’ve been resting on your performance far more than you realized. But don’t take that as a failure. Take it as an opportunity to be transformed by God’s grace and trust that He loves us, even when we don’t understand how.

Bridging Dissonance: Finding Connection in Music and the Gospel

By Emily Sheddan • 18 Jul, 2024
TEAM worker Luke Standridge and his fellow musicians use music to build connections to faith in Japan. In music terms, dissonance creates movement or even suspense in a song. It invites tension. That tension is what helps grab our ear’s attention and the interchanging of these notes with pleasant melodious parts is what makes music such a delight. In a similar way, God is using music to grab people’s attention and catalyze Gospel impact in the largely unreached nation of Japan. TEAM Global Worker, Luke Standridge moved to Japan in 2019 with no clear direction on how he was going to use his passion for composing music while doing ministry. However, after Luke got involved with a local church and began developing deep friendships, the Lord opened unimaginable doors for Luke that in time, coordinating his creative skills with sharing the Word. “People Need to Come to Japan!” Growing up as one of ten kids in a family that was heavily involved in ministry and missions, Luke never considered that it would one day be a part of his own journey. In 2016, via a Japanese language learning class in Indiana, Luke and his brother had the opportunity to travel to Japan. Hearing, learning, and using the language in the context of Japanese culture was the goal. While it was Luke’s first international trip – even his first trip on a plane - it was also his first time hearing about the spiritual condition of the Japanese people. “And just through that, God did a huge 180 change on my heart,” says Luke. “More people should come here as global workers. People need to come to Japan!” The call God was laying on Luke’s heart is echoed when looking at the spiritual landscape of Japan. The nation is home to the second largest unreached people group in the world. It is one of the most difficult places for the Gospel to take hold and grow. Japan is also home to a deep and rich culture that prizes creative arts from pottery to ink to music to anime – a fact that would help Luke find his niche in life and ministry. God’s Guiding Hand In the short three-month timespan of that first trip, Luke found that opportunities came naturally to share about life, and people’s curiosity for Christianity grew. “I left Japan knowing I just had to come back,” Luke shares. “Even if I didn’t get back to the same area, I knew Japan was where God wanted me to be.” The Lord is good all the time and all the time the Lord is good. His plans do not fail. Luke returned to Japan in 2019, and less than a week after arriving, he was put in touch with a renowned composer in Japan. The composer saw some of Luke’s music and invited him to help write the music for a beloved in-country animated show. But God wasn’t finished yet! Fast forward a year, and more connections and opportunities allowed Luke to help with music for Pokémon - a franchise that has brand recognition around the world and was being developed into a TV series in Japan. Luke recalls how the Lord began using these connections in the production world to open doors for Gospel conversations. One night while having dinner in downtown Tokyo with famous artists and composers from all around the country, Luke was asked about his ministry-focused visa. This was a rare opportunity in a setting with people otherwise uninterested in Christianity. Luke shares, “The whole time I could see God’s hand in guiding the entire thing.”

Connecting in a New Kind of “Neighborhood”

By Lorena de la Rosa and Suzanne Pearson • 13 Jun, 2024
Through creative arts and other forms of innovative outreach, “The Neighborhood” is creating connections to the Gospel and the love of Jesus. CONNECTION. It’s a common word with powerful implications. Dictionary.com defines connection as a joining or linking together; a relationship between people or objects that unites or binds them together. God has created each of us with a deep need for connection with Him as well as connection with others. Hebrews 10:24-25 speaks to this, as the writer exhorts, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” This God-given need for connection lies at the heart of a creative and innovative ministry in Japan known as “The Neighborhood.” TEAM Japan global worker, Kelly and her family created The Neighborhood as a place where connections are formed through creative arts, educational opportunities, and simply just providing a space for people to be together. A Family Calling The journey to the creation of The Neighborhood began over 5,000 miles away from Tokyo, in California where Kelly, her husband Jeff, and their five children were living. The kids were the first to sense God’s calling to missions, and asked why their family wasn’t serving in this way. How Kelly and her family came to TEAM is a God-story in and of itself. “God placed a TEAM Japan worker at our lunch table the same week that the kids posed that question to us,” Kelly recalls. “We had never heard of TEAM and so we thought, ‘let’s check this out.’ After that, God just kept confirming that we were supposed to be here.” After a period of fundraising and with much excitement, the family of seven moved to Japan in 2014. For the first five years, Kelly and Jeff served as a part of other TEAM ministry initiatives, but they began to sense a stirring for something new. Creating The Neighborhood Kelly and her family truly have a deep gift for hospitality, and regularly opened up their home to others they met in Tokyo. They saw a great need for people to have a place to gather and connect, and they wondered what doors the Lord might be opening for them to meet that need. “About a year before we were to return the States on home assignment, we were just really thinking about our future in Japan,” Kelly says. “We saw a need for people to have a ‘third place’ – a place that’s not home and it’s not work. They didn’t have a church community or any other place where they could meet people and just connect.” Kelly goes on to explain that in Japan, the culture is such that people don’t generally invite each other into their homes, but as her family did so, people embraced that opportunity. “This idea formed in all of our hearts of a student ministry center – a place where we can create community and learning,” says Kelly. “It was born out of what we were already doing in our home, but seeing how we could expand it and have better space.” God’s Provision What happened next is a true testament to God’s provision. Kelly, Jeff, and the kids returned to the States and began sharing their vision for The Neighborhood with their supporters and churches who responded generously. Upon returning to Japan, the search was on for the right space. “We had a Christian realtor that we told our dream to, and he just went looking for it,” Kelly recalls. When the realtor found a 5-story apartment building, he said, “It’s kind of out of your budget but it has what you need and want.” The Lord provided the funds and the family moved into the space in November 2019. They now occupy all but the ground floor, with living space for their family as well as classrooms, areas to study or hang out, and guest rooms for exchange students or others who need a place to stay overnight. The first floor is occupied by a pizza shop – a welcome amenity for the many groups and students who visit The Neighborhood. “It’s very convenient!” Kelly says with a laugh. The Neighborhood began to see lots of activity right away until the pandemic hit in early 2020. During the height of the quarantine, Kelly and Jeff used the time to redecorate the space and plant gardens outside the building. Then as the restrictions eased, they invited individual students or families over for meals and fellowship. It wasn’t until March 2023 that The Neighborhood was able to fully open again as intended. Kelly shares that despite the setbacks of COVID, the Lord continued to provide the funds to pay the rent.
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