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The mission is not a checklist

iGo Global Staff • May 12, 2015

We sure do love our check lists. We love to-do lists, grocery lists, honey-do lists, bucket lists, packing lists, and Base Camp supplies lists (iGosian costumes and confusing airport signs–check). Lists can help us for sure. There are all kinds of lists that can help us be more productive. There are even lists of the lists that can help us.

But lists also give our hidden (or not so hidden) OCD that much-needed feeling of accomplishment. We like to check things off the list.

Speaking of OCD ? The image that you see above? iGo VP Brad Cardwell’s OCD got the best of him yesterday during our warehouse cleaning. The doors on that cabinet wouldn’t stay shut properly (it was given to iGo circa 2002). So Brad “fixed” it. It stays shut now. Or it did. Somebody needed something out of there today, so the whole thing unraveled.

There is, however, a potential problem when we bring our checklist-obsessed worldview and preconceptions to the Text. Try this example:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea andSamaria, and to the end of the earth.” – Acts 1:8

Our checklist compulsion makes it really easy to see it through that lens. We want to believe that Jesus is saying, “Ok guys, first start in your hometown with the mission. Then go to the nearby towns and your state. Then go to states that are really different than your state… like Arkansas. And finally, when you have all those other things done, you need to think about going overseas.”

But the truth is Jesus wasn’t giving us a checklist for missions. He was describing the scope of the mission. In fact, he isn’t even telling them to start in their hometown. We see that clearly in Acts 2 when the promise of Acts 1:8 was fulfilled:

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10  Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11  both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” -Acts 2:5-11 (emphasis added)

They were filled with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and the result of that was that the Jews from all over the world that were living in Jerusalem were able to hear the gospel in their native language. Don’t miss what they said about the disciples. “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?” These disciples weren’t from Jerusalem. They were from Galilee. The mission didn’t start in their hometown. Instead, it simply started right where they were at that moment.

So what does that mean for us? It means that if we are going to embrace the Acts 1:8 life on mission, then we need to embrace the description of the mission and move away from the checklist mentality. God desires to use you right where you are right now. In that English class, as part of that club, on that campus, in that dorm, on that team, living on that street. And it also means that God desires to use all of us on the front lines of His mission to the “ends of the earth.” And you don’t have to wait until you get “done with your hometown” before you go somewhere else.

Embracing the ends of the earth mission means getting on airplanes, raising funds, and going to the front lines. It also means recognizing that the front lines have shifted around some and the ends of the earth have come to our university campuses and our cities, and even our hometowns. It means understanding that we are always on mission….even if we find ourselves in Arkansas.😉

Where will you be on mission today, this week, and this summer? We would love to know.

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