Velvet Elvis

I've been doing a lot of reading lately and this is one of the things that came up in one of my books. I don't wish to comment on it or really elaborate on my own thoughts. I just wanted to put this out there and let it work as it may in your own mind for yourself. So here is an excerpt from Velvet Elvis by written by Rob Bell.

 

"Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realize it. You see God where others don't. And then you point him out.

 

Perhaps we ought to replace the word missionary with tour guide, because we cannot show people something we haven't seen.

 

Have you ever heard missionaries say they were going to "take Jesus" to a certain place? What they meant, I assume, was that they has Jesus and they were going to take him to a place like China or India or Chicago where people apparently didn't have him.

 

I would ask them if people in China and India and Chicago are eating and laughing and enjoying things and generally being held together? Because if they are, then Jesus, in a way this is difficult to fully articulate is already present there.

 

So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst.

 

It is searching for the things they have already affirmed as real and beautiful and true and then telling them who you believe is the source of all that. "I am here to tell you where I think it comes from…."

 

And if you do see yourself carrying God to places, it can be exhausting.

 

God is really heavy.

 

Some people actually believe that God is absent from a place until they get there. The problem with this idea is that if God is not there before you get there, then there is no "there" in the first place."

 

 

Peace

 

 

*written November 11th