Casting Crowns - Until The Whole World Hears

Today, I attended a missiology (missions) conference in the Chicago area (I don't say in Chicago because it's not actually there, according to Joel...). The main emphasis of the sessions was 'missions in the city', but there were several other tracks throughout the day including 'diaspora missions', 'social justice', 'witchcraft accusations', and 'short-term missions'. There were some really interesting topics I got to hear today, but one of the most interesting ones was about pursuing 'Cruciformity' in missions. Rather than being focused on our own agendas, our own convenience, and our own culture, we should follow the example of Christ. He moved rather towards contextualization, God's calling, centrifugality (rather than centripetality- missions revolving around our own context), and a consciousness of God's divine purpose.

When we take the focus off ourselves and place it instead on those that we're trying to reach, we have a much greater impact, because we're allowing God to work through our weaknesses rather than having to take our strong, prideful personalities along for the ride. We have to follow in Christ's sacrificial, others-focused example in order to maximize the effect we can have in reaching others for His Kingdom.