Thursday, September 9, 2010

Centripetal/Centrifugal

Not gonna lie, I had to look up the spelling for the title words. There's a reason I'm not a physicist...or an English teacher, I guess. Anyways, what do opposing forces have to do with missions?

I had never heard this concept explained this way, but it makes a ton of sense when I think about it.

In the Old Testament, movement towards God was centripetal - everyone moved to a central location. In God's infinite wisdom, this central location was the temple, located in Jerusalem, which really is the center of the Old World. God placed His people at the conjuncture of three continents, which gave them unique access to the trade routes and all the kingdoms of the world. In the Old Testament, everyone who worshipped Yahweh, Jewish or foreign, came to Jerusalem to the the temple.

However, we see a very different pattern emerging at the command of Jesus and throughout the book of Acts. God uses the phenomenon of people coming to the temple from all over the world to start His Church at Pentecost, but this is not the norm. The 3000 people that were saved at Pentecost, and the thousands more who heard the Gospel in their own language, take this good news home with them. Jesus commands the disciples to take the Gospel to Jerusalem AND Judea and Samaria AND to the ends of the earth. The movement is now centrifugal - moving away from the center to everywhere else.

Likewise today, our goal should not be to get people to come to a church building at a particular time. Our goal should be to take the Gospel with us into the world, wherever we go. We should be meeting people where they are, rather than asking them to go out of their way to find God. Ultimately, this isn't about we need to take more missions trip, but that every moment of my day should be focused on God and His glory and how I am to reflect that glory to a lost and dying world. The normal everyday encounters I have should cease to be just that - as I begin to see each encounter as an opportunity from God to share His glory.

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