7 Easy Steps To Be A Missionary Where You Are

In my last post, I described the life of a missionary family I know that is living in Cusco, Peru. I told you about their basic plan, from start to finish, and how God’s call on their lives is not at all different from His call on your life or mine. In this post, I want to explain that idea further.

Basic Missionary Plan

If you remember, I gave you the basic outline of the missionary plan my friends have for taking the gospel to Peru. While it looks very simple, I promise it is a powerful and effective plan.

Now, in an effort to show you how you and I can execute this same plan exactly where we are, let’s go through each step of their missionary plan and apply it to our situation as Christian business owners and leaders. This plan will also work when applied outside of the workplace, but for the purpose of this blog we will stick to the workplace as the setting.

1. Establish a life among the people.

I am personally in the car business. I am not sure what your job happens to be, but most likely it includes interaction of some sort with other people. Regardless of the job or occupation, most all of us have people all around us where we work.

As a result, we are already established among those people. We work alongside them and have conversations with them. The easy part for us is that in most cases, we speak the same language and already understand their culture. For a foreign missionary, this is usually a fairly large hurdle. Not so for us!

2. Build relationships with them.

What you may not have – even for those you have worked with for years – is a relationship with them. Sure, you may say “Hey” at the coffee maker or as you pass each other in the hall. But you may not have conversations that go any deeper than that.

You need to become intentional about building a relationship with them. While you don’t need to start out with a really deep question, you do need to begin to make an effort to go a little deeper. You need to start seeing these other people as eternal souls that need what you have. While you currently have not earned the right to share with them, building a relationship over time will solve this problem.

For a larger company, it will be impossible to do this with every employee or co-worker. Don’t even try. Do with a handful what you wish you could do with all of them. Don’t let the overall numbers stop you from engaging the handful.

3. Do life with them.

This is obviously related to the first two points, but it goes an extra step. My missionary friends in Peru came up with a weekend retreat and an Olympics-style competition for the medical students they are getting to know. There was nothing overtly spiritual about the weekend – just spending more focused time together and relaxing away from the pressures of work and school.

We can do the same thing. Start planning opportunities to do life with these people. Plan lunches or other activities in which you can interact with them at work as well as in the community. Engage them when you see them in the grocery store or at the soccer fields. Show them that your interest is genuine (it needs to be!) and that you are not angling for anything other than relationship.

4. Sprinkle conversation with the gospel.

As you are doing life with them, allow the Holy Spirit to spill over into your conversations. If you are filling your mind and heart with God’s Word, it will start to appear in your interaction with them. Don’t go overboard – just relax and let God work through you on this.

Don’t forget, this does not only apply to your conversations. This idea applies to your actions as well. As you are doing life with these people, your everyday business decisions and actions should also reflect your beliefs. As I posted earlier, the conflict between your beliefs and your actions should be shrinking as you get closer to God. If not, this post may not apply to you.

5. Be prepared to share the gospel.

Over time, life happens. The people you are building relationship with will face tragedy or crises. So will you. When this happens, it is likely that you will have the opportunity to answer some questions about your faith. This will happen naturally if you are walking the walk.

When asked about your faith, it is not your responsibility to launch into a theological discussion and overwhelm them with your superior Bible knowledge. Neither is it acceptable to be caught unprepared to respond in a genuine and personal way. For that reason, you need to have a ready response for the hope you have. It should not be robotic, but should instead flow from your heart!

6. Disciple them to do the same.

For those that make decisions to surrender their lives to Jesus (and for those that already have!), you need to begin to disciple them. Obviously, encourage them to join a church and join up with a small group of some sort. But do not let that be the extent of your discipling program!

You may not have the time to meet with everyone of them on a regular basis, but you can still influence them in some way. As you do, show them this same pattern and encourage them to follow it as you have. If you do enough of this, you will have missionary work going on all around you!

7. Go somewhere and repeat the process!

When I say we need to go somewhere, I do not mean we now need to move somewhere else. Instead, we just need to continuously be on the lookout for others we can take through this process.

As you see those you have discipled go on to be mature disciple-makers themselves, you just begin looking for one more to replace them and start back at the beginning of the process. The key is that you have the mindset of a missionary. You keep your eyes and heart open to anyone that God is calling you to reach with His love.

Have you ever considered yourself as a missionary?

photo by Alex Dunne