Foreign Missionaries Called to the Community

From the Pastor’s Heart….

After hearing the report of the teenage shooting in Powhatan County, I decided to call Ambus Bailey, my African-American pastor friend, Pastor Russell Cress, and some others to meet at the Powhatan Courthouse to pray for our community. As I drove to the courthouse on that Saturday, I began to get nervous. I really couldn’t put my finger on what I was feeling. When I pulled up to the courthouse, off to my right was a state trooper sitting in his car. Immediately I had flashbacks to Belarus, and this didn’t seem to help my nervousness very much. Finally, several from our church showed up, and so did both pastors. There were only seven of us there as I shared a few statements I had wanted to make. I asked for forgiveness and repented for being silent in the community. We each prayed, and it seemed to me that we drove some stakes in the ground right there in the symbolic center of our community. It also seemed as if God was speaking directly to me, but it was only after we had finished praying and all three of us pastors were sitting around talking that I finally realized why I had been nervous. It was because I realized I really was not out in the community, and this was my first time to publicly do something like this. Sure, I reach out to my neighbors, and we had a neighborhood Bible Study (which has since died), and I occasionally get to meet people and talk with them, but it was quite clear to me that I was not in the community in any organized way. In other words, when there are community events, I never attend them. If there is a fund raiser for something in the community, I don’t go. If there is a steer roast by a local organization, well, I would never spend that kind of money. When the community gets together, I never feel the need to go; in fact, I always feel the opposite. The community does its thing, and we do ours.

Later, as I mulled it over, I couldn’t think of any Mennonites where I grew up that were involved in the community. I guess I caught what I saw and assumed we just don’t do those things. I realized I reach out to people but always ask them to come to my territory. I invite them to come to church. I invite them to come to our home. I invite them to come to special events like the Chicken Run motorcycle event or the African Children’s Choir. I invite them to “our” things but rarely and almost never go to “their” things on “their” turf. Even when I had a retail business in Illinois (silent “s,” please), and I interacted with people from the community, I was with them because they HAD to come buy what I was selling. I very rarely was with anybody in the community just to be with them or participate in something they were doing.

Yes, I can already hear the warnings. Next thing you know we’ll all be drinking beer, eating BBQ ribs and dancing with wild women. I understand those who fear the community and seek to pull themselves into a tighter circle. I really do understand. It is scary. It is threatening. But don’t we ask missionaries to involve themselves in communities all the time?

I am choosing to walk into the community. I hear God telling us to go into all the world, and surely our community is part of that world.

Your Pastor, Tim.

For questions or comments you may email the pastor at timbev2@yahoo.com or the webmaster at hffinc@i-c.net