Missions Catalyst 06.14.06 – Practical Mobilization

In This Issue: Called to Be a Nine-Percenter

Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!

Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.

Called to Be a Nine-Percenter

From: Stan Nussbaum, with Shane Bennett

Introduction

This month’s Practical Mobilization floats out a cool idea from Stan Nussbaum, resident missiologist for Global Mapping International. Stan presents a missions role to encompass all those who fall in the wide gap between full-time missionary and occasional check-writer. He calls the role “9%ers.” Since you’re raging mobilizers, Stan has agreed to let you have a swing at the idea. Please fire back your thoughts, encouragement, and critiques. I’ll assemble them, send them to Stan, and (with Stan’s permission) share them here.

What Is a 9%er?

A 9%er is either: (a) a person who believes that there is a discount on tithing this year! or (b) a person who is called by God to have more hands-on involvement with cross-cultural mission than the average Christian, but not presently called to become a full-time missionary.

9%ers cultivate a long-term interest in whatever God is calling them to connect with. Usually this is a particular place or people group, but it may be a particular type of cross-cultural mission activity, such as medical work or English teaching.

A lot of people are already functioning as 9%ers without calling it that. We believe that putting a label on it is helpful for at least two reasons:

1. It helps people who already are 9%ers to understand their calling, stop thinking they are misfits, and explain themselves to other people.

2. It challenges every church member toward a deep personal reconsideration of whether they are called to mission, not as 1%ers (traditional missionaries) but as 9%ers.

It’s More Like Falling in Love

Unlike a one time event such as a short-term missions trip, 9%ers see missions as a personal, ongoing, and open-ended connection, probably related to their ministry or employment at home. It is part of their personal identity, not a two-week blip on the radar screen of their lives. They believe God has some 9% role for them to grow into and that he will make it clear over the coming months and years. They also know it will take some work, like any other calling.

And yet it is not really work. It’s more like falling in love. What 9%ers are actually doing is opening up to God as he puts his love for a certain place or people into them. As that love grows, they do not know exactly what shape the relationship will take or how fast it will develop, but they know it will be good.

Signs God Is Calling You as a 9%er

Perk up if God has already given you at least one of the following hints in that direction.

– Have you been a little puzzled or even frustrated that God seems to be leading you toward some kind of involvement with mission but you are left cold by the thought of following the beaten track of mission service?

– Have you been in a mission meeting where people were called to commit to a life of missionary service and been disappointed that you did not sense God’s call in that way? Or perhaps you went forward to declare your willingness but God seems to have declined your offer?

– Have you been on a mission trip and sensed that for a week or two you were really living in the center of God’s will and loving it, yet you were not called to go back there?

– Have you suspected that God may want you to become a full-time missionary but for various reasons it won’t happen for another 10 or 20 years?

– Is it easy for you to get fired up about mission in general? Are you in a mission prayer group or on a committee that promotes mission to others?

– Have you already served as a full-time missionary overseas but had to come back to this country for some reason?

How Can I Tell for Sure if I’m a 9%er?

Take a step toward some mission-related interest or person God has put onto your radar screen. Ask questions. Get on a mailing list. Surf the web. Start with three or four interests if there is no obvious frontrunner. See what he opens up for you next.

As God steers you, take a further step or two. Talk to some other 9%ers about their stories and find out what they are in love with. Keep feeding your prayer life and your curiosity via the web, movies/documentaries, books, and talking to people who have been there. Consider taking a mission trip and/or doing a prayer walk there. Buy a simple phrase book in the local language.

The Bottom Line

Throughout the discernment process, 9%ers constantly keep one question in mind, “Lord of the harvest, if you want me to be a 9%er, where’s the niche with my name on it?” Your part will usually be some sort of long-term, low-level involvement, sustainable as a part of life while you keep your day job.

As God shows you your role, just keep walking into it one step at a time. It will often fit hand in glove with the life you are already living and the interests you already have. It may also involve massive personal sacrifice and some major changes. But you may not notice them much because your new God-given passion will eclipse them. Gradually the part you play becomes a central dimension of your identity and your reason for taking up space on planet earth.

A Few Footnotes

1. Why 9%? OK, we made it up. Well, not entirely. We are starting from the suggestion made by mission mobilizers that churches should aim to send 1% of their people as full-time missionaries. Each individual then has to determine before God whether she is called to be in that 1%. If not, then she obviously remains in the 99% who pray for and support the 1%. All we are doing is splitting the 99% into two groups, 90% plus 9%. The 90% pray for and support the missionaries. The 9%ers go for hands-on involvement.

2. Where did this idea come from? It’s actually more of an observation than an idea. God is already calling quite a few people to the kind of mission involvement we are talking about. We just haven’t put a label on it yet because it does not fit with our normal ways of thinking about “missionaries” and “mission trips.” It’s time for our thinking, labeling, and budgeting to catch up with what God is actually doing.

Fifty years ago or even twenty, it would have been difficult for very many people to become 9%ers. Travel was too expensive, e-mail didn’t exist, and there were not nearly as many migrant workers and refugees in the US. Today there are thousands of new possibilities for 9%ers to explore here and overseas.

3. What is the long-term vision for the 9% idea? How does it fit into the big picture of mission? The entire missionary structure and tradition of evangelicalism has long been built around full-time professionals, 1%ers in our terminology. Locked into this tradition, we raise the missionaries to elite status (only 1% make the grade!) and we relegate everyone else including the 9%ers to the sidelines of cross-cultural mission. As far as I know, all mission agency policy manuals cater to the 1%ers, not the 9%ers whose needs, assumptions, and calling may be radically different than the 1%ers.

If it really is God who is calling people to be 9%ers, then our traditions obviously have to change. But if we move with God on this one, imagine where we end up. Congregations would have 9% of their people with a personal long-term connection with some form of cross-cultural mission. Those people would be talking to their friends in the 90%, and the whole congregation would be buzzing with mission conversation all the time. And God would be smiling. That’s the long-term vision, a great big smile lighting up the face of God.

Please send questions, comments, rants, and raves to Shane.

General questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.

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