My Mission. HIS Church.

My husband led a team of 20 people on a mission trip to Haiti a few weeks ago. We caught up over the next couple of days.  We talked about the trip, the ins-and-outs, the people of Haiti; the weather, the food, the team dynamics. And I started thinking about our history with missions... and the Church.

We have both felt a love for and calling to do missions since we were married. Tim served in a local church as a youth pastor where we could regularly challenge the youth and teach missions. During that time we became frustrated and disenchanted with the Church as an institution. There were so many experiences, of so much hurt, and very little reconciliation.

It was in the middle of this frustration with the Church as a whole, that we actually began the application process for long term international mission work. We were just a couple years into our marriage. Our plans abruptly came to a halt, however, when Tim was diagnosed with a rare medical issue just a few short months after we started.

Tim is still a youth pastor. (A really great one, if I do say so myself). Every year he gets the opportunity to go on a couple of short term missions trips, mostly leading youth, but often challenging adults as well. Every time he comes back we lay awake at night dreaming of what it would be like to have our family in this place, or that place, and what GOD is calling our family to. And every year the LORD teaches us more and more about HIS Church and what HE is calling HIS Church to. And it is beautiful!

This time, as we processed Tim's trip to Haiti, the LORD whispered on my heart, "reconciliation of the Church." HE has actually been shouting this same message at me for the past couple of years. I have seen the Church for what it is and what it's supposed to be... faulty, unworthy humans living out the overflowing love and grace of GOD. Forgiving because we've been forgiven. Loving because we have been loved. (Some of us need a little more forgiving and loving than others.) I have seen the Church be the Church described in Acts 4:32-35 over and over again and seen GOD's faithfulness and blessing poured out on HIS people over and over.

And I hear The SPIRIT whispering to me that I could not do missions until I loved the Church and was reconciled to the Church instead of tolerating it as an institution.

Before, you would almost get the sense that we were trying to head to the mission field as a way to run away from the Church... and in many ways we were. We acknowledged that the Church had a role to play in missions but did not fully recognize the complete dependency one has on the other. If we had gone on the field when we originally wanted, we would have ended up using the Church instead of loving it.

Tim and I still feel the call of missions on our lives as strongly as ever. (In fact, as I write this Tim is in Costa Rica preaching on Grace.)  For now we will do our best to live this out daily here in the States. But maybe... just maybe... the LORD will release us to "go to the ends of the earth" sooner, rather than later. We have hope in a GOD that is big enough to heal the physical ailment that HE so graciously used to bring us here.  Here to a place where HE could heal our hearts and reconcile us not only to HIMSELF, but to HIS Bride.

- tiffany