Here I Am, Send Me – Isaiah 6:8
Letter from the Editor – Ron Barnes
On a recent trip to West Africa, I sat around a table with seasoned pastors and missionaries as we discussed future plans and strategies of ministry to schools and universities. I love these vision-casting ministries and strategic planning sessions; these moments truly energize me. We spend hour after hour throwing out ideas and opportunities, then try to pair them with solutions. I am wired this way.
But inevitably, one concern I am always left with is if they will actually see these plans through. It is one thing to have vision and plans, but another thing entirely to have someone committed to see them carried out. I often look across the table at such meetings and think our plans are not only going to keep these men and women busy, but likely will call for someone not at this table. Even more concerning is the thought that perhaps they don’t even have someone to do this job. So often we make plans without the key ingredient of someone to accomplish the tasks.
As I found myself once again questioning how this group of “older” men of God were going to penetrate the difficult challenges of a youthful college environment, along came the son of our West Africa national director and his classmate from the university, who both live at the SLM orphanage our director has in his home.
I decided to include these young men in the discussion about how SLM would best engage the young people on the university campuses in the city. As we shared our vision and plans, I implored these young men to share what they see as the most effective way to reach these students. Their answers were immediate and decisive, and even in unison… “Send us! We’ll go!”
These young men understand the challenges of ministry, growing up themselves in a pastor and missionary’s home. They know that putting their hands to the plow will not lead to a lucrative future, and will come with trials and adversity. Yet they also have come to realize that there could be no greater calling nor any more fulfilling future than to answer the call to serve the Lord.
But it seems fewer and fewer young people are responding to this call in a long-term, lifelong commitment to follow and serve Christ. Missions today is more commonly depicted as a week to two-week trip somewhere, just long enough to make one feel they’ve met their obligation, but just short enough to make little-to-no difference in their ongoing commitment to serve.
I surely don’t believe everyone is called to serve as a preacher or cross-cultural missionary, but I do believe every believer is called to serve with more than some sort of casual, periodic event of serving. I believe we are all called to seek and discover how to effectively use our gifts to serve God on a day-to-day basis, and we ought to specifically ask if it would be perhaps “vocationally.”
I’m surrounded in our office in Madison, Georgia, with people like my son, Ronnie, who doesn’t feel called to preach, but has chosen to allow God to use him full time in the ministry of SLM, using the gifts he has been given. Raising support is certainly a challenge for him, like the others who don’t have the natural ability to speak in churches in front of large congregations. But even that is a sacrifice they are willing to make to be able to be used of God in the areas where they are gifted. With a sense of humility, I observe them ask of God and us in leadership how they can best be used.
That’s what God expects of any of us, whether serving becomes our full-time vocation, or is a clear characteristic of our spiritual walk with Christ, He just wants us to serve faithfully. In fact, some of the most committed Christians I know are not vocationally employed, but rather give sacrificially to serve with their most valuable commodity, their time.
Source of Light operates off this principle around the world, as people have come into a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ after encountering our ministry, and then commit themselves to be used somehow in the ministry. I met such a person just a few months back, Evelyn Amankwah, who has faithfully been serving the Lord with SLM for over 20 years.
She came to the Lord when a missionary began using the SLM courses with her during a season of war in Ghana’s history, where the wealthy and educated—and even her own parents—left Ghana for the safety of a neighboring country. With no teachers or parents, the children were left to themselves. She thanks God for this missionary, who stayed and began teaching them.
She told me the only textbook she had at that time was SLM children’s lessons, and from those was taught to read and was led to Christ. She continued to be discipled by the missionaries, and continued in her studies to become a biologist. In recent years, Evelyn was commissioned by the government to release an official government study of the environment. However, her real ambition is to serve the Lord full time with SLM and not leave her job, but use it as a platform to get into schools to share the truth of creation and then the Gospel.
Evelyn is a prime example of the level of commitment to serve that SLM missionaries and volunteers experience, and is truly the type of Christian God is calling us to be, with a life of service and a heart that responds to His call… “Here I am, Lord. Send Me!”
