Join the movement

I was talking yesterday to a young man who had recently married and moved, of all places, to the Middle East to learn Arabic. His goal: to plant churches in a country where, if they find out you’re a Christian, they’ll kill you.

We talked about an acquaintance of his.

“Oh yeah, he’s in the movement,” he said in an off-handed way.

I knew the church operates under deep cover there. “You mean the Great Commission?”

“That’s right, building the kingdom.”

“I’ve never heard it called ‘the movement’ before.”

“Well, I’ve not referred to it that way before, but we’re part of something profound and supernatural that God Himself is doing.”

The phrase “the movement” speaks of something beyond academic conferences, missions strategies, and committee meetings. It connotes something powerful and independent like a river in flood stage that has spilled its banks. A movement is beyond the control of men, it flows where it will.

God initiates and sustains movements. What’s been going on in South Korea since its civil war looks like a movement.

Those of us with attention spans of 15 seconds struggle to comprehend these generational ebbs and flows of humanity in accordance with God’s design for the planet.

In China, there’s a movement within a movement called “Back to Jerusalem” that envisions 100,000 Chinese reaching out to the Middle East. Many of them are already there, ready to be martyred in service to the movement if necessary.

Missions may be on the wane elsewhere. The Great Commission may be going out of fashion in the West. But the risen Christ, the hope of glory, is burning in the hearts of millions the world over who have joined the movement.

They don’t worry about retirement packages, how do you retire a dead man? They don’t ask about safety issues, they know that beheadings are normal, that Jesus’ counsel to take up our cross and follow him is not figurative language, but a very real occupational hazard.

The young man I was talking to has joined this God-initiated movement. He has dreams just like you or me. He hopes to have a family and knows he’s putting their lives at risk. But he also knows the stakes are high from God’s perspective and he trusts Him. Being in the movement is more important than safety.

In 2007, I want to pay less attention to risk analysis and more attention to the movement that God has started in the world and how I can jump into its great flow. How about you?