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When our family moved to Greenville in 2009, my husband and
I focused on finding a place to live that was affordable and safe. Pregnant
with our first son, being missional in our home’s location was not something we
considered. We settled into a two-bedroom apartment and that cozy dwelling was
the first home for our sons, James and Liam. After Liam was born I spent my
days in that small apartment often alone and frequently feeling cut-off from
the outside world. My husband, Nathan, is on staff with InterVarsity Christian
Fellowship and his daily work in ministry involves leading college students to
be missional. But where did I fit in? For most of my life responding to the
Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations,” (Mt 28:19) has been
important to me. The short-term international mission trips I’ve gone on have
expanded my mind and my heart so that I burn to just go sometimes. But what could I do with young kids? Planning a trip
to the grocery store felt overwhelming, how could I even think about planning a
trip across the world?
Around that time I read a book by Helen Lee, titled Missional Mom, which explores what it
means to live missionally during this season of life raising young children.
Lee suggests that it isn’t necessary to pause the work of the Great Commission
in order to focus on the four walls of our home. Instead, we need to change the
ways we think about mission so that we can include our children, moving
missional living from an individual endeavor to a family affair. This requires
either that we re-structure our short-term mission trips to be family-friendly
or that we look for ways to invite our children into mission with us in our
local communities.
I still remember reading Lee’s book and coming to a certain
line. It was on the left-hand page toward the bottom. She made a point about
what it means to obey the Lord. When we say, I will obey you Lord, as long as my children are safe, it isn’t true
obedience. We cannot put qualifiers on our willingness to follow where he leads
us. “Sometimes our step of obedience as parents is to entrust our children’s
safety to the Lord. Not recklessly, but prayerfully and thoughtfully.”
And as Nathan and I discussed this concept, the Lord moved
in our hearts. Out of the box missionality converged with surrender of our
family to the Lord.
We moved to West Greenville.
In many ways we weren’t sure what we were getting ourselves
into or why we were doing it. We clearly felt the Lord moving us but we weren’t
sure what the practical day in and day out would be like. I had grandiose
visions of house parties and rapid transformation. I thought we were moving in
as missionaries to “bring Jesus” to an unreached part of town. How naïve we
were!
We purchased a house on West Third Street in November of
2012 after one year of renting in a different part of West Greenville. Many
people in our neighborhood know Jesus and love him. Many are cultural
Christians. Many are saddened by the ways that part of town feels forgotten.
If I’m honest, I still struggle with looking beyond the four
walls of my home because if anything, the needs of my children have only
increased in the three years since we moved here. We are the only white people
on our street and living here has made us confront prejudices in our own hearts
we didn’t know we had. We have turned to the Lord in the midst of those and he
has given us profound love for our neighbors; in fact, the only Kingdom growth
I know for certain that has come from our move has been in us.
Living missionally has been a process of humbling and
surrendering ourselves to the Lord. It hasn’t been about dramatic changes or
showy sacrifices but about following Jesus, step-by-step, wherever he moves us.
For some, that obedience takes us across the globe. For others, it takes us
across town. Still others are simply being called across the room to love an
acquaintance by the grace of Jesus. This act of surrender is the same for
parents as it is for professors. The same for health professionals as it is for
office executives.
Where might Jesus be calling you?
Liam and me, the day we purchased this house
Liam playing at the community center down the street
