2/06/13. WHO ARE THE LABORERS WE ARE ASKED TO PRAY FOR?

BLOG 2/07/13 WHO ARE THE LABORERS WE ARE ASKED TO PRAY FOR?

There is a very familiar saying in the teachings of Jesus that goes like this: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest” (Matthew 9:17). It is my (Bob Henderson’s) personal opinion that this is a text that has been hijacked and misused tragically by missionary zealots. Let me explain.

I have been reading of a personal journey by a person into the Christian faith, and one of her very supportive friends in that journey heard that text quoted in a missionary conference, and concluded that to be a faithful laborer, one should go to seminary and become a church professional, and it all became very traumatic, if not disastrous, for that person. I was a victim of a similar “full-court press” into (so-called) full-time Christian service as an adolescent—and at this point am thankful, but with some reservations. The implication was that if you really wanted your life to be significant to God, then the route was to become an overseas missionary, or a church professional, or some such.

Please note right here that I am very aware of the vast need for messengers to go to the unreached people groups in the world. I’m enormously thankful for the great Urbana Missionary Conferences sponsored by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and the thousands of gifted young men and women confronted with the mission of God in the world.

But as one recent speaker at Urbana reminded his audience, that the initial object of our missionary efforts should be our next-door neighbor.

The harvest field is the real world around us. It is our home, our neighborhood, our workplace, our hangouts, our professional or occupational associates (even out churches?)—wherever. When the account in the Acts of the Apostles declares that “the word went everywhere,” and that day-by-day multitudes were being added to the church … it is the account of a contagious Christian community that couldn’t keep the thrilling news of Jesus a secret, or hide their new creation lives of faith, hope and love.

The laborers we are to pray for are, primarily, every member of the Christian community, and the focus of our gatherings is never to be detached from our calling to be the church scattered into the harvest field as laborers. If there is an obvious mandate for the teaching forum, or for the teaching-shepherd of a community, it is according the Ephesians 4 to equip God’s people for maturity and ministry as evangelists, church planters, and discerning of the cultural-social-economic-existential context of our daily lives.

And in this global society of the moment, it is to equip God’s people to know how to be the children of Light in their international business trips and conferences.

Pray to the Lord of the harvest for laborers? Absolutely. Who are they? Look in your mirror.

And then, and only then, if folk in our Christian community are obviously gifted as communicators of the gospel of the Kingdom, the rest of us might encourage them if they themselves sense God opening some door in another region of the world in need of Light in the darkness.

Meanwhile, missiologist are recognizing that Europe, Great Britain, and North America are major unreached (post-Christian) mission fields themselves.

We live in the midst of the whited-harvest field. We are the laborers. All of us, every baptized believer by virtue of his/her baptism is ordained to be God’s missionary people.

Go for it!

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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