Tena tātou katoa e te iwi mīhana… (Greetings to all the people in mission)

This month’s whakatauki (proverb) is: “Nā tō rourou nā taku rourou – ka ora ai te iwi.” (With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive). The emphasis here is that we are all better off when we work collaboratively. We all have something to bring to the table.

At times this concept feels VERY counterintuitive, especially in an ‘industry’ that is resource limited. We would rather conserve what is ‘ours’, but that is not the way to thrive.

You can take issue with my comment about resources being limited, and you should. Through the eyes of faith, God has unlimited resources to fulfill the Father’s will for the world. But the fact remains, most of us are struggling to realise those resources for our mission purposes.

Is our faith inadequate? Are we suffering from other people’s disobedience—people of God who have resources but prefer to distribute them elsewhere? Or is God making resource available in ways we cannot yet discern? The disconnect is disruptive and begs many questions concerning the long term viability of many of our mission initiatives—separately and collectively.

Resource follows prioritisation, which follows vision.

Resource follows prioritisation, which follows vision. Vision comes from inspiration and inspiration can be a very personal phenomenon. In our research for the book Mission In Motion, we could not discern any single effective mechanism that would convince people to become involved in mission. Rather, we discovered it was a mysterious, supernatural, personal experience for everyone we interviewed.

The “call narratives” of our respondents were so different that we could only conclude that involvement in mission is dependent on a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. This is the source of inspiration.

Convincing people to reprioritise their resources (or their lives) by other means can be manipulation, and that produces lower grade fruit. Only by inviting the Spirit to take the lead do we produce fruit that lasts (John 15:16).

God continues to inspire people to bring the best that they have to the table. The question is, are we making room for them? Just because we may not have acquired a taste for durian, balut, kimchi, or ugali doesn’t mean they are not valuable additions to the feast. Perhaps we need to refresh our vision to see the new resource available. Are our die-hard commitments still valid, or merely faded facsimiles of a bygone era?

Let’s pray the Lord of the harvest for fresh inspiration, allowing the Vinedresser, the Director of God’s mission, to prune, and anchor a new vision to the inspiration that develops.

With refocused eyes, I believe we will then see a shift of resource prioritisation to help us all to #stayonmission. 👊🏼

Ma te Atua e manaaki koutou (may you all experience the very best things from God),

Jay