Have you ever thought you might have a calling to missions?\u00a0 I have a suggestion for you.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t try to convince you that this new field is more deserving or better or more desperate than a hundred others.\u00a0 All mission fields are important.\u00a0 People might get competitive about missions, but how can God compete with himself?\u00a0 He calls different people to different jobs, and it could be that one of you might find your calling here.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u201d is in rural and small-town America.\u00a0 But don\u2019t come to do vacation Bible school or build a picnic shelter or even start a church.<\/p>\n
Most small towns have a church and VBS, and we can build our own picnic shelter.\u00a0 What we need is a grocery store.\u00a0 A doctor\u2019s office.\u00a0 A hardware store.\u00a0 A co-op to package and sell locally grown produce.\u00a0 We need the necessities of life and meaningful employment in a place that feels like home.<\/p>\n
My family and I live outside a town of a thousand people in western Indiana.\u00a0 A hundred years ago our town still had a thousand people, but it also had a theater, a grocery store, a general store, two hotels, a high school, an elementary school, a grain terminal, a Carnegie library, and a hardware store.\u00a0 The last four remain.\u00a0 A few years ago the state tried to shut down the little library, but our petition drive was at least temporarily effective.\u00a0 The grain terminal will stay in business, I guess, and so will the elementary school \u2013 although several nearby have shut and some children now spend an hour each way on the bus.\u00a0 But our wonderful hardware store, that smells of old wood and nails and oil and paint, with the window display of 19th<\/sup>-century implements and the mannequin legs sticking out of the claw-footed bathtub \u2013 it may close when the proprietor gets old.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From iMonk, by Damaris Zehner: What can be done? Is partnership a good idea? How? Have you ever thought you might have a calling to missions?\u00a0 I have a suggestion for you. I won\u2019t try to convince you that this new field is more deserving or better or more desperate than a hundred others.\u00a0 All […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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