Jason Jensen
What exactly is mission work all about? Is it about solving the mystery of
God’s call on our lives? Is it about performing all the things in ministry
that seem right—going to the right people with the right message at the
right time with the right strategy? Those certainly seem important, but
there is more, much more, to missions.
At Urbana 96, I met a man named Frank Murray. Frank was in his eighties, and
we were together on the intercessory prayer team for Urbana. We prayed
behind the scenes around the clock in three-hour shifts for God’s work
during the convention and beyond. During the conventions of the 1970s, Frank
had been the sole member of the intercessory team, as he prayed from his
home for requests called in by Urbana director David Howard. As I got to
know Frank, I learned that he had personally been praying for ministry among
students in this country since his own college days. He began ministering to
students and publishing a prayer newsletter for them before organizations
like InterVarsity or Campus Crusade even existed!
It was amazing to pray with Frank. His life and his manner of prayer exuded
a confidence in God’s power and a sense of God’s presence. Even more amazing
to me was the experience of attending Urbana plenary sessions with Frank,
where he wept openly with joy as he watched God at work. In worshipping with
19,000 students interested in missions, Frank was experiencing the direct
answer to more than 60 years of consistent prayer. My relationship with him
deepened my conviction that missions is God’s enterprise, and that we
participate in it as we pray.
Frank helped me see that God is working out his purposes in his own way and
time, regardless of our human efforts, successes and failures. Frank knew
that God is good and will fulfill his own purposes. Frank worked hard in
ministry as a student, a campus minister, and a pastor, yet he knew that God
was the one to accomplish his plan. As he prayed over the years, Frank
experienced the hand of God working in his life and ministry. He had entered
the “fifth dimension of missions.”
Enter the Reality Zone
Have you ever imagined being limited to fewer dimensions than we currently
perceive? We experience life in the three physical dimensions of space
(length, height and width) plus a fourth dimension of time. All we do and
observe can be expressed in these four dimensions as what happened, when and
how. But what would life be like if we could experience fewer than these
dimensions? Take the example of seeing only a two-dimensional (flat)
representation of a three-dimensional object: I recently handed a group of
people a photograph of a man sitting in a creatively-designed rocking chair.
As we looked at the photograph together, we could describe many aspects of
the chair. We could even imagine what it would feel like to sit in it. Yet
when I asked if anyone in the room had experienced that chair, the answer
was no. Even sitting on the photograph wouldn’t qualify as sitting in the
chair itself. We could only imagine the reality of the chair, because the
photograph was a limited, two-dimensional representation of a
three-dimensional object. In order to experience the chair fully, we need to
do so in all of its dimensions.
Have you ever imagined being limited to fewer dimensions than we
currently perceive? We experience life in the three physical dimensions of space
(length, height and width) plus a fourth dimension of time. All we do and
observe can be expressed in these four dimensions as what happened, when and
how. But what would life be like if we could experience fewer than these
dimensions? Take the example of seeing only a two-dimensional (flat)
representation of a three-dimensional object: I recently handed a group of
people a photograph of a man sitting in a creatively-designed rocking chair. As
we looked at the photograph together, we could describe many aspects of the
chair. We could even imagine what it would feel like to sit in it. Yet when I
asked if anyone in the room had experienced that chair, the answer was no. Even
sitting on the photograph wouldn’t qualify as sitting in the chair itself. We
could only imagine the reality of the chair, because the photograph was a
limited, two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object. In order
to experience the chair fully, we need to do so in all of its dimensions.
Lamentably, we often perceive Christian missions in too few dimensions. We
are like those who look at a photograph of a chair and believe in
the chair, yet never experience the chair in its fullness. As we
pursue God’s mission, we usually perceive and describe missions in the four
dimensions of our own worldly experience: length, height, width and time.
Yet the essence of God’s mission is not limited to our four dimensions any
more than the essence of the chair is limited to a flat photograph. The
mission of God includes our activities in time and space, but the essence of
missions lies in what I am calling the “fifth dimension,” God’s own choices
and actions.
We typically assume that ministry is all about being in the right place at
the right time, saying and doing the right things in the right ways to the
right people. We believe that God works in missions, yet we usually
experience missions in terms of strategies, activities, programs and needs.
How often we forget that the fifth dimension of God’s sovereign activity
among people is the controlling dimension of missions. Like the
three-dimensional chair in two dimensions, we can describe God’s work in
missions in our day-to-day four-dimensional concepts. We see evidence of the
salvation God brings, the transformation of hearts and lives, the hopes and
prayers and activities of ministry—but we do not personally experience the
movement of God unless we enter into his work on a spiritual level.
Through intercessory prayer, God invites us to enter directly into his
spiritual work. As we pray for missions, we stand as mediators in the
spiritual transaction between God and people. Exodus 32 and 33 give us a
wonderful example of intercessory prayer. Moses cries out to God for his
mercy instead of the judgment his people deserve after their idolatry of the
golden calf. He confesses their sin and pleads for forgiveness, offering his
own life in exchange for theirs (32:30–32). As a result of Moses’
intercession, God eases his judgment on Israel, and Moses experiences the
presence of the Lord. In intercessory prayer, God invites us, like Moses,
into his own decision-making process about people and history. Only then do
we experience the fifth dimension of missions.
Gaining a new perspective
As a student leader, you too are in missions. God has placed you on your
campus. He has given you a heart for some aspect of the ministry he is doing
among people around you. Within your fellowship, you serve in some way to
advance the mission of the group.
As a student leader, you too are in missions. God has placed you on
your campus. He has given you a heart for some aspect of the ministry he is
doing among people around you. Within your fellowship, you serve in some way to
advance the mission of the group.
How do you perceive the mission that God has given you? Do you think of it
in terms of responsibilities you carry, or tasks you need to accomplish? A
clear indicator of this misguided perspective is when we feel the pressure
of responsibility. We feel that we need to perform well for the sake of God
or others. Most of us believe that God is at work in us and in our
ministry, because we see evidence of his power in our own lives or in
others. We live, however, as if missions were completely dependent
on our own efforts. We are stressed and busy, hoping that the next strategy
or program or relationship will bring success and relief.
God calls us, his campus missionaries, to live in the fifth dimension of his
sovereignty, trusting completely in him and experiencing his work in the
lives of those to whom we minister. Through prayer, we center our ministry
in him and gain the perspective of the fifth dimension. We see that our own
actions bathed in prayer give us the privilege of participating in the
ministry that God is already accomplishing. To the degree that we make
prayer the place of perception, discernment, refreshment and power in our
ministries, we are released from the stress of performance.
Yet prayer is often a difficult area of growth, because it requires us to
trust more in the presence of the Kingdom of God among us than in those
dynamics which we can experience with our five senses. So how does one seek
to grow in prayer? How can a campus fellowship make prayer central?
In the coming three years, my staff team and I have set our goal to “become
a people of prayer.” I think student leaders can do the same. We want to
center our team and our ministry in the fifth dimension. In pursuit of this
goal, we are considering the following practical possibilities, some of
which might work for you:
Ask God to grow us in prayer.
Learn from the prayer lives of those in Scripture and throughout
church history.
Seek mentors in prayer.
Use good books on prayer or devotional prayer guides, such as A
Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (The Upper
Room).
Approach some of our Bible study through prayer, using traditions
such as contemplative meditation on Scripture or lectio Divina,
a tradition where we listen to the Word read aloud several times
slowly, allowing God to speak to us personally.
Pray more. Take every opportunity possible to pray alone as well as
with groups of believers.
Give quality team time to prayer. We want to begin our team meetings
with extended prayer, so it isn’t just an afterthought.
Give quality individual time to prayer. Hold one another accountable
to consistency in devotional prayer.
Seek to pray with everyone we meet. (Instead of saying, “Well, I’ll
be praying for you,” let’s say, “Hey, why don’t we pray right now!”)
We look forward to the ways God will transform us into a people of prayer as
put these into practice and trust in him.
Joshua in the Zone
Joshua is one biblical example of a mission leader profoundly centered in
the fifth dimension. While we usually associate Joshua with the amazing
things he accomplished in leadership, Scripture makes clear that he led his
people primarily in spiritual ways. Consider some examples taken from the
beginning and end of his life.
Joshua is one biblical example of a mission leader profoundly centered
in the fifth dimension. While we usually associate Joshua with the amazing
things he accomplished in leadership, Scripture makes clear that he led his
people primarily in spiritual ways. Consider some examples taken from the
beginning and end of his life.
In Exodus 33, we see the source of Joshua’s sense of mission and reality. He
was Moses’ disciple and personal servant from his youth. Joshua formed his
values and perspectives by observing and serving his mentor. In this
passage, Moses meets with the Lord in the tent of meeting, and intercedes
for himself and the people. Although God proposed that his sinful people
enter the promised land without his presence, Moses begs of the Lord, “If
your presence will not go [with us], do not carry us up from here.” Moses
makes clear in passionate word and deed that the presence of the Lord is
more important than the fulfillment of Moses’ mission. Moses knows that he
can not accomplish his goal by his own effort. He longs for the people of
Israel to be in the presence of the Lord. Exodus 33:11 points out that
Joshua was the only person who was with Moses during his meetings with the
Lord. This is the foundation of Joshua’s leadership: learning from a
prayerful leader that the presence of the Lord is of utmost importance. He
begins his lessons in leadership from the perspective of the fifth
dimension, God’s spiritual action within his people.
At the end of Joshua’s life, we get a glimpse of his own legacy. “Israel
served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who
outlived Joshua and had known all the work which the Lord did for Israel”
(Joshua 24:31). It’s fascinating that Scripture doesn’t even mention
Joshua’s great military and political accomplishments. Rather, his legacy is
the two generations of Israelites who had relationship with God. Somehow in
Joshua, people were able to see through his leadership to “. . . the work
which the Lord did for Israel.”
I want to leave a legacy like that, the legacy of a true missionary—one who
gives his or her life to active ministry and intercessory prayer together,
in an indivisible way. The very manner of Joshua’s leadership points to the
reality of God’s presence, goodness and faithfulness. He led people to see
and know the work of God, by seeing and knowing it himself.
What legacy do you want for your life? If you live in the urgency of
performance, your legacy will be about your work. If you, like Joshua and
like Frank Murray, live a life of mission that is soaked in prayer, you will
experience the five-dimensional mission of God first-hand. Your legacy will
be about the story that God tells through your life.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jason Jensen is husband to Susi and dad to Abby and Gabe. When he’s not
hanging out with them or riding his motorcycle, he is the area director for
InterVarsity® in the East San Francisco Bay Area.
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InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the USA
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