Journey to Obscurity

In an orientation for Mission Ministries Philippines (church planters to the urban poor) Rainer Chu described their work as a journey into obscurity. After spending much of last week in the slums with MMP we are begging to understand what he meant. Church planting can be lonely, thankless work. There is no congregation to support you, no programs to glory in and precious little to point to as fruit of your ministry. Church planting among the poorest of the poor is exponentially lonelier. We have all been struck by the relentless dedication to Jesus and his calling on the lives that these Filipino missionaries to the urban poor walk with. They have chosen a vocation that is completely obscured as they labor in the places that the world would prefer to forget. They have no big congregations, no church salaries, no expense accounts, and precious little thanks. But they are content in a way that boggles our minds. We are beginning to understand that there is a greatness that is not measured in numbers or dollars, that there is kingdom fruit that seen and measured only by God. And we are asking our western hearts, is that enough for us? Can we too follow Jesus into the dark foreboding, forgotten alleys of Christian mission, into the places where he is, in fact, lighting the world. This journey to obscurity is actually the way of Jesus. It always has been. But we have believed the lie of the Hollywood, celebrity Jesus. We continue to be tempted (as Jesus was) by the false urge to become great in the worlds eyes, to make sacrifices for all to see, to throw ourselves down from our proverbial temples so that we can make a spectacle of Gods power and make ourselves celebrities and rivals with God. Jesus’ own walk in the desert was a foreshadowing of his calling, to walk toward death, his own identity, his own purpose, his own greatness, obscured. To say we follow Jesus is to walk that same path. We are learning more what that path looks like.